Why is the world not destroyed by cataclysmic natural disasters? Why is God’s purpose of salvation for His people secure? Two very different questions, with one answer.
And that answer was once one of the hallmarks of historic Reformed and Evangelical thought – the idea of covenant. Professor John Murray (1898–1975), of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, wrote: ‘Covenant theology is … a distinguishing feature of the Reformed Tradition … the idea of covenant came to be an organising principle in terms of which the relations of men to God were construed.’ The theology that came from the Reformation was emphatically a covenant theology.
But does covenant theology deserve that central place? Does it really answer the two questions at the start of this article? Well, yes, because at every pivotal event in the history of divine revelation a covenant initiated by God appears.
