Redemptive and Covenantal Foundations (Foundations Series 5 of 6)
Redemptive Foundation
Sound theology is more than biblical, missional, and centered on God as Triune Lord. Sound theology also reflects how God, as Triune Lord, enters time and accomplishes his redemptive plan for fallen humanity and creation through real historical events.
When God reveals in Scripture who he is and what he does, we see an amazing story unfold from the beginning to the end of time. This story tells of the historical progression of God’s creative and redemptive purpose for the world in Christ. It unfolds throughout the Bible like a four act dramatic play.
Act One: God’s creation of the world and humanity
Act Two: The fall of humanity and the world into sin
Act Three: God's redemption of all things lost in the Fall through the person and work of Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit
Act Four: God's final restoration of all things when Jesus returns to establish God’s kingdom on earth for eternity
This understanding of God’s Word includes a robust biblical doctrine of creation that far transcends a narrow focus on what happened at the beginning. It’s a view of redemption that reaches beyond saving souls.
The early church father Augustine (354-430 AD) describes the essence of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ as restoring all things lost in the Fall by using a series of Latin couplets that describe God as “Former and Re-Former,” “Creator and Re-Creator,” and “Maker and Re-Maker.”
Therefore, Augustine understood the essence of salvation in Christ as transformation, seeing creation as formation, the fall as deformation, and redemption as reformation.
He saw this as more than speculative doctrine to teach and defend. He recognized it as truth that is meant to lead us to worship and enjoy God for who he is and for all he has done in creating and now re-creating all things in Christ.
This is why Augustine often included these couplets in public worship and offered them as a simple prayer.
May the one who formed us reform us, the one who created us recreate us, the one who installed us restore us to perfection.
Likewise, in his theological writings from the late 19th century, Herman Bavinck concludes from Scripture that the essence of salvation is "Grace restores nature."
He shows how the goal of salvation in the Bible is not only to forgive and relocate believers to heaven, but to restore fallen humanity and creation by re-establishing God’s kingdom on earth. Consequently, human beings are restored image bearers flourishing on the earth as God intended in creation. Bavinck writes,
“Grace serves, not to take up humans into a supernatural order, but to free them from sin. Grace is opposed not to nature, only to sin … Grace restores nature and takes it to its highest pinnacle.”
Understanding who God is and what he does as Triune Lord to restore fallen humanity and creation gives us four major categories to guide our study of theology:
Creation: Knowing God the Father as Creator
Fall: Knowing the Human Race as Fallen
Redemption: Knowing God the Son as Redeemer
Restoration: Knowing God the Spirit as Restorer
As we saw earlier, the writers of the early church creeds and the writers of the Reformation, like Luther and Calvin, followed this Trinitarian-Redemptive approach to the study of theology.
But in the late 16th century, many theologians stopped following this historically ordered theology and created more speculative categories, relegating this Trinitarian-Redemptive method to a sub-category.
Instead of using the biblical narrative in the Apostles’ Creed as the overarching approach to the study of theology, they adopted a list of topics related to salvation that are most often used in contemporary systematic theology.
Bibliology: The study of the Bible
Theology proper: The study of the nature of God
Anthropology: The study of humanity
Hamartiology: The study of sin
Christology: The study of Jesus Christ
Ecclesiology: The study of the church
Pneumatology: The study of the Holy Spirit
Soteriology: The study of salvation
Eschatology: The study of the end times
Our approach in Applied Theology is to integrate the study of these topics into the Trinitarian and redemptive-historical approach.
Creation: Knowing God the Father as Creator
Bibliology: The study of the Bible
Theology proper: The study of the nature of God
Fall: Knowing the Human Race as Fallen
Anthropology: The study of humanity
Hamartiology: The study of sin
Redemption: Knowing God the Son as Redeemer
Christology: The study of Jesus Christ
Ecclesiology: The study of the church
Restoration: Knowing God the Spirit as Restorer
Pneumatology: The study of the Holy Spirit
Soteriology: The study of salvation
Eschatology: The study of the end times
Following this approach will allow us to study the traditional topics used in systematic theology without losing the redemptive-historical narrative.
Covenantal Foundation
The Scriptures teach that God, as Triune Lord, has a unique way of carrying out his plan of redemption in the unfolding eras of Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. It’s through a series of covenants.
The biblical word for covenant is translated from the Old Testament Hebrew בְּרִית (berith) and the New Testament Greek διαθήκη (diatheke). A covenant is an oath-bound agreement between two or more parties. Marriage is an example of a covenant.
In the Scriptures, the Lord sovereignly establishes his covenant with his creatures, in which he binds himself by his own oath to keep his promises.
The Old and New Testaments describe the special relationship God has with his people as a covenant. Like the Trinity, the concept of covenant is more than a narrow point of doctrine. It also gives us a conceptual overview by which we are to understand all of Scripture.
We’ll study the biblical covenants in greater depth later in this series, but let’s start with a brief survey of the major covenants that will shape our understanding of theology.
The Eternal Covenant of Redemption
Theologians call the most foundational covenant in Scripture the Eternal Covenant of Redemption because it takes place before time among the persons of the Trinity (e.g. Titus 1:1-2). In this covenant:
The Father establishes God’s plan of salvation (Eph. 1:3-6, cf. Rev. 13:8).
The Son agrees to accomplish the plan (Eph. 1:7-12, cf. John 10:17-18).
The Spirit agrees to apply the work of the Son to fallen humanity and creation (Eph. 1:13-14, cf. Rom. 8:19-23).
The Triune God carries out his Eternal Covenant of Redemption in a series of other covenants after the world was created, starting with the covenants God made with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
The Edenic Covenants
The covenants God made with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden are often called the Covenant of Creation, the Covenant of Works, and the Covenant of Grace.
In the Covenant of Creation, God reveals his basic design for humanity and creation in a series of commands, called the creation ordinances. These include the responsibility of productive work (Gen. 1:26-28, 2:15), a Sabbath rhythm of life (Gen. 2:1-2), and the institution of marriage (Gen. 2:24).
In the Covenant of Works, God makes a covenant with Adam as the representative of all humanity and promises to bless him if he keeps the conditions of this covenant, by continuing to obey God’s will in all things. When Adam and Eve disobey by eating of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God keeps his promise to curse them (Gen. 2:16-17, 3:14-19).
The Covenant of Grace
But God did not abandon his plan for humanity and the world. Instead, he announced his Covenant of Grace by promising a Savior, called the “seed of the woman,” (Jesus Christ) who would destroy Satan and redeem God’s people (Gen. 3:15).
Following the Flood, God reveals his Covenant of Grace in his covenant with Noah, promising to never destroy all life on earth in that same way (Gen. 8:20-9:17).
Later, God makes a covenant with Abraham and promises him a prosperous land and a great nation, through which he would bless all the families of the world (Gen. 12:2-3).
With Moses, God’s Covenant of Grace includes the more formal, written statements of God’s will and character which we call God’s law (Exod. 20, Lev. 18:5, Gal. 3:10-14). Under God’s covenant with David, God establishes his throne and kingdom on earth at a temple on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem and promises that one of his descendants would sit on his throne forever (Ps. 78:60-72).
The New Covenant
Through the Old Testament prophets, God reveals his promised blessing of a New Covenant, which is the culmination of the Covenant of Grace, through which he pledges to keep all his previous covenant promises (Jer. 31:31-34). Again, God promises a coming anointed King in the line of David, the Christ, who will be a perfect covenant-keeper on behalf of his people.
Nothing would thwart God's mission to redeem and restore fallen humanity and creation. How would God do this? Through the Christ of the covenants. Under God’s Covenant of Grace, Jesus Christ accomplishes for us what Adam failed to do in the Covenant of Works (Rom. 5:1-12, 1 Cor. 15:22).
A theology that is sound and faithful to Scripture must reflect this story of God’s unfolding covenants in history. Therefore, in this series you’ll learn that the topic of biblical covenants is not an isolated topic in theology but one that can help us understand all other theological topics.