1. God’s promises are not what they seem. God made many specific promises to Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, to the nation Israel and to David. These promises involve a specific bloodline and
a specific plot of ground. If the nation Israel is no longer a part of God’s plan and if the Jews
are no longer God’s people, then dozens of promises that God made directly to various Jews
from God make very little sense.
2. According to Covenant Theology, there is a limit to God’s patience. The Old Testament is a
book which testifies to Jewish failure more than almost anything else, yet God is with the Jews
throughout the Old Testament. The book of the Judges is remarkable as to how many times
Israel would go astray, and yet God was always faithful to them. In Covenant Theology, God’s
patience has limits; you can fail enough times where God removes you completely from His
plan.
3. Most people who believe in covenant theology do not believe in eternal security (which means,
once you have believed in Jesus Christ, you cannot lose this salvation).
4. The Jews failed so spectacularly, that God, for all intents and purposes, withdrew His specific
promises from the Jews, and has substituted a spiritualized meaning and understanding of
these promises. Or, more accurately, covenant theology always believes that these promises
were spiritual promises.
5. Covenant Theology takes two very different entities—the church and the nation Israel—and
says that they are, in essence, the same thing.
6. Dan Smedra writes: With all varieties of Covenant theology, there is an obsession for an
overriding continuity or unified purpose for the sixty-six books (Canon) which comprise Holy
Scriptures. Rather than having wisdom to discern the real difference among things which
resemble one another, the covenantist is driven to find an "integrating" principle to produce
theological uniformity, in hope of discovering "what the Bible is really all about." Their "key" is
the erroneous concept that every relationship between God and man must take the form of a
covenant or legal agreement. From this notion, albeit logical, has arisen their apocryphal and
overarching Covenant of Works and Covenant of Grace.1
a. As an aside, there are a variety of consistencies throughout the Bible: God’s character
and essence, the fundamental concept of believing in Jesus Christ (or Yehowah Elohim)
for salvation, etc.
7. Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer, a dispensationalist, writes:2
a. A theology which penetrates no further into Scripture than to discover that in all ages
God is immutable in His grace toward penitent sinners, and constructs the idea of a
universal church, continuing through the ages, on the one truth of immutable grace, is
not only disregarding vast spheres of revelation but is reaping the unavoidable confusion
[fog] and misdirection which part-truth engenders. The outworking of divine grace is not
standardized, though the Covenant idea of theology would make it so...
b. A form of Covenant Theology which would thread all of Jehovah's purposes and
undertakings upon His one attribute of grace could hardly avoid confusion of mind [fog]
in matters related to His varied objectives. Covenant Theology, in consistency with its
man-made premise, asserts its inventions respecting an Old Testament church, which,
it is claimed, is an integral part of the New Testament Church and on the ground that,
since God's grace is one unchanging attribute, its accomplishments must be the
realization of one standardized ideal.
c. A Covenant Theology engenders the notion that there is but one soteriology and one
eschatology, and that ecclesiology, such as it is conceived to be, extends from the
Garden of Eden to the Great White Throne. The insuperable problems in exegesis which
such fanciful suppositions create are easily disposed of by ignoring them.
d. Covenantism, which has molded the major theological concepts for many generations,
recognizes no distinction as to ages, therefore can allow for no distinctions between law
and grace. This dominating attitude of Covenantism must account for the utter neglect
of life-truth in all their works of theology. No more representative theological dictum from
the Covenant viewpoint has been formed than the Westminster Confession of Faith,
which valuable and important document recognizes life-truth only to the point of imposing
the Ten Commandments on Christians as their sole obligation, this in spite of the
teachings of the Pauline Church Epistles which assert that the law was never given to
Gentiles or Christians, and that the latter has been saved and delivered from it--actually
dead to it (Gal. 2:19).
8. In short, covenant theology takes something which is clearly found in the Bible (covenants
between God and man), and from this, infers 2 or 3 overarching covenants (which are not found
in the Bible), and then superimposes the inferred covenants over all of Scripture, in order to
give it a unifying set of factors.
9. Covenant theologians must therefore go back and interpret all of the covenants which appear
to have a clear meaning, and yet that meaning must be reinterpreted to fit within the umbrella
of covenant theology. The end result is, many of God’s promises are not what they seem.
10. Therefore, those who believe in covenant theology often reject God using Jews in the future;
they reject the importance of the nation Israel (although it is found in prophecy); and they reject
the millennial rule of Jesus Christ. Again, promises and prophecies which appear to have clear
meanings must be reinterpreted to fit into covenant theology.
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which is translated dispensation, and means the administration of a
household). There are certain truths which transcend all dispensations: that Jesus Christ dies for our
sins and we are saved by faith in Him, is one of these truths. This was taught in the Old Testament,
although quite obviously, OT believers did not have a clear understanding of what they were believing
in (which is true of NT believers, who first believe in Jesus Christ, and then find out exactly what it is they
signed up for).