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COVENANT

A covenant ordinarily refers to an agreement that is arranged between two or more parties: It states their relationship and stipulates their future rights and responsibilities. Such an agreement rests upon the promise, ability, and full faith and credit of the parties consenting to it. Although covenants may recognize natural (e.g., kinship) relations, they do not rest upon them for social power. Covenant signifies a preeminently historical relationship, more like a social contract than an organic process.

The term “covenant” enters Christian theology from the biblical world, where it is said that God relates to all creatures, especially to Israel and the church, by a free decision and the gift of life together. In the Hebrew scriptures, covenant is prominent in the Deuteronomic tradition, in which God and Israel establish a moral relation that authorizes ethical relations between persons within Israel. E. P. Sanders refers to this as “covenantal nomism.” Whether as a social ideology for a premonarchic egalitarian society (Gottwald) or as a theological construct of the preexilic prophets to delegitimate established power (Nicholson), the idea of God’s special interest in and concern for justice and peace as the basis for human flourishing, and God’s promise to see to it that such a condition is realized, remain at the heart of the matter. In the stories of Israel, there are covenants with the patriarchs, with Moses and all Israel, with David, and, in the prophetic hope for Israel, with all people and the earth itself.

In the Christian scriptures, “covenant” is an important theological concept, especially in the texts concerning the Lord’s Supper and in Romans and Hebrews. The promise, “I will be your God and you shall be my people,” is fulfilled in the life and destiny of Jesus Christ, anticipated in the Christian community, and ultimately realized in the transfiguration of heaven and earth (Revelation). Paul uses covenant to speak of the economy of grace whereby God ordains salvation, life, and blessedness for us. While he contrasts an old and a new covenant in II Corinthians, it is clear that they represent one saving purpose of God (Romans 4).

Theologically, “covenant” signifies four complementary ideas. As an arrangement created by God who makes covenant, it is a gracious gift. As it stipulates a form of life based on the gift, it is realized in a response of faith and obedience. Because it is based on consent rather than coercion, it establishes a responsible moral relation between people and God; sociality becomes solidarity. And as it envisions a way of life pressing beyond the limits of any particular culture, it establishes a history of seeking a universal community of justice and friendship, “a blessing in the midst of the earth.”

The idea of covenant has always been one of the themes of Christian theology. It is present in principle wherever a history of salvation approach is taken, as in Irenaeus (c. 130–200). It was taken up especially in Reformed theology, in which it signified the entire relation of God to creatures and established a history of redemption and creation. Following Calvin (1509–1564), one gracious covenant was held to be the unifying purpose of all God’s ways and works, the framework for specific “covenants.” Beginning with H. Bullinger (1504–1575) and continuing through the seventeenth-century English Puritans to J. Cocceius (1603–1669) and the “federal theology,” the idea of a covenant of grace served as an organizing principle for systematic theology. Originating with an eternal election and ending with its realization in the final state of creatures, the divine design is woven into the fabric of natural and historical solidarities. The effect of this was to limit the covenant of grace to a select group, however, and to exclude all others on the basis of a covenant of works. A tension existed between the universal and the restrictive understanding of covenant.

In the twentieth century Karl Barth (1886–1968) used the idea of one covenant of grace to link God’s activity in creation and redemption, thus situating Christ in a cosmic context. When so construed covenant emphasizes the idea of the divine self-limitation as well as the central meaning and purpose of creaturely life and human history. God is the One who makes and keeps covenant, and human beings are those who are to co-exist in responsible relations of praise, love, and justice. In this view, Christ makes actual the divine election that embraces all, establishing the conditions for human partnership with God. The covenant of grace is unrestricted.

Socio-politically, “covenant” belongs to the establishment of a community rather than to its originating events (Bellah). It provides the arrangements within which ordinary life can flourish. It defines the common center of value that holds the community together and creates the conditions for free and responsible interactions. All historical covenants appear to have been restrictive (constituting a people over against other people) and broken (subject to the struggle of interests and temptations of power). The theological idea of an unrestricted covenant of grace is a critical principle that justifies human attempts at solidarity but denies the claim of any to be God’s order on the earth, pointing beyond all arrangements of the terrestrial city to the better justice and peace of the city of God (Augustine).

THOMAS D. PARKER

Bibliography

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/1 (#41) and IV/1 (#57).

Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial.

N. K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh.

E. W. Nicholson, God and His People: Covenant Theology in the Old Testament.

E. P. Sanders, St. Paul and Rabbinic Judaism.

Cross-Reference: Biblical Theology, Civil Religion, Ecclesiology, Election.