I’ve just been chatting with a friend about O. Palmer Robertson’s superb book The Christ of the Covenants. The conversation set me thinking again about the book (which as it happens we’re currently reading in the current module of the theology course at Emmanuel Training and Resources), and in particular about the very few points at which I might be inclined to offer a slightly different perspective from the one set forth by Professor Robertson. Here they are:
1. I’m not sure that the definition of “covenant” on p. 4 (“a bond in blood sovereignly administered”) is broad enough to accommodate all the relationships that are explicitly described as covenants in Scripture. Something more like “a relationship involving more-well-defined-than-usual demands and sanctions” might be better, provided those demands and sanctions are then defined in more detail depending on the identity of the parties in the covenant under consideration.
2. Related to the first point above, I wonder whether a broader definition of covenant might make it easier to see how the intra-trinitarian relations might helpfully be viewed in covenantal terms (without of course moving towards social trinitarianism or denying the significance of divine substance as an ontological category), thus making more sense of the biblical material in John’s Gospel, for example, where the ministry of the Son in history is seen as an outflow of the relationship between the Father and Son in eternity. (See p. 54.)
3. I wonder whether a more satisfying exegesis of Galatians might be given (see pp. 58-61) by taking into account the significance of the salvation-historic transition occasioned by the resurrection of Jesus and the inauguration of the new age in Christ, since in Galatians this issue appears (to me at least) to occupy more of the foreground of Paul’s concern than a critique of legalism.
4. I feel uncomfortable with characterizing the Mosaic covenant as “an externalized summation of God’s law,” describing its stipulations as “stark, cold, externalized,” and reducing God’s “law” to “an externalized summation of God’s will” (pp. 172-173). Actually, I feel more than uncomfortable – I feel downright twitchy. Merely on the basis of Deuteronomy 6:4-6; 30:14; Psalm 37:31; 40:8; 119:11, for example, it seems to me pretty obvious that under the Mosaic Covenant the righteous man had the law of Moses upon his heart.
But those quibbles aside, this is truly a great book. Well worth the investment of time needed to digest it thoroughly.
