# Ned B. Stonehouse on the covenant of grace as a unilateral arrangement



## Reformed Covenanter (Sep 9, 2021)

The term “covenant” indeed, as a rendering for _berith_, is not entirely felicitous, and thus it is of vital importance that our usage of “covenantal” be informed by reflection on the Biblical point of view. Because of its usage in describing purely human relationships, as in the Wilsonian “open covenants of peace openly arrived at,” the term readily brings to mind the notion of a bilateral agreement, and perhaps even that of a contract between two independent parties. While there is, in truth, an element of mutuality in the theological _berith_ in the sense that the covenantal relationship of personal fellowship between God and his people is conspicuously in view, it is necessary to insist that even more fundamentally the covenant between God and his people is primarily a unilateral arrangement initiated and effected by God himself. The Biblical perspective in this regard comes to accurate expression in Hebrews 8:6 in the reference to the enactment of a better covenant. ...

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