# Is CT a heremeneutic?



## JM (Mar 25, 2007)

> *What is covenant theology?* The straightforward, if provocative answer to that question is that it is what is nowadays called a hermeneutic -- that is, a way of reading the whole Bible that is itself part of the overall interpretation of the Bible that it undergirds. A successful hermeneutic is a consistent interpretative procedure yielding a consistent understanding of Scripture in turn confirms the propriety of the procedure itself.



and



> *It is a hermeneutic that forces itself upon every thoughtful Bible-reader* who gets to the place, first, of reading, hearing, and digesting Holy Scripture as didactic instruction given through human agents by God himself, in person; second, of recognizing that what the God who speaks the Scriptures tells us about in their pages is his own sustained sovereign action in creation, providence, and grace; third, of discerning that in our salvation by grace God stands revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, executing in tripersonal unity a single cooperative enterprise of raising sinners from the gutter of spiritual destitution to share Christ's glory for ever; and, fourth, of seeing that God-centered thought and life, springing responsively from a God-wrought change of heart that expresses itself spontaneously in grateful praise, is the essence of true knowledge of God. Once Christians have got this far, the covenant theology of the Scriptures is something that they can hardly miss.



Do you agree that CT heremeneutic?

ON COVENANT THEOLOGY

Thanks.

j


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## BobVigneault (Mar 25, 2007)

Yes, I agree with Packer. Dispensationalism is also a hermeneutic, a bad one.


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## JM (Mar 25, 2007)

Wow, thanks. I always thought our theology was the result of our hermeneutic not the other way around. But isn’t that assuming CT or Dispensationalism to be true and then setting out to find proof for it?


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## BobVigneault (Mar 25, 2007)

No, only Scripture is true. Convenant Theology as a hermeneutic gives us a much more consistent approach to interpreting scripture. It better captures and helps us to apprehend the full scope of the redemptive history. It truly unifies the two testaments. It maintains the beautiful backdrop of the covenant faithfulness of God toward his elect. It removes a lot of the gaps we might find in a dispensational approach.


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## JohnV (Mar 25, 2007)

I think it is an important point that CT is not first of all a hermeneutic; it is a result. It comes from a careful reading and heeding of the Bible as God's Word. CT is just a name given to a natural reading of the Word. 

After we see that CT is what the Bible presents, then it can be applied to the less clear passages, as being continous or consistent with the rest of the Word. 

As soon as we see it as a man-proposed theory placed upon the Bible in order to understand it, then we're bound to run into trouble with it. We have to see it as a Bible-proposed consistency, not a man-proposed theory or interpretation. 

So to say CT is a hermeneutic is the same as saying the Bible interprets itself. To say that CT is a hermeneutic, and that Dispensationalism is another, is to assume a man-proposed status to CT. We're saying that there are two or more proposals for interpreting, one of which is better than the others. And I think that this would be wrong. 

I believe we've come by Covenant Theology honestly.


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## BobVigneault (Mar 25, 2007)

JohnV said:


> I think it is an important point that CT is not first of all a hermeneutic; it is a result. It comes from *a careful reading and heeding of the Bible as God's Word*. CT is just a name given to *a natural reading of the Word*.




But John, these are also part of our hermeneutic.


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## Herald (Mar 25, 2007)

> I think it is an important point that CT is not first of all a hermeneutic; it is a result. It comes from a careful reading and heeding of the Bible as God's Word. CT is just a name given to a natural reading of the Word.



John - all the major theological systems (CT, NCT, DSP, PDSP) would say the same thing. But I agree with Bob. It becomes part of your hermeneutic.


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## MW (Mar 25, 2007)

Covenant theology is a hermeneutical perspective not a heremeneutic per se. Willem VanGemeren: "The Reformed exegete approaches the prophets from the perspective of the unity of the covenant." -- “Israel as the Hermeneutical Crux in the Interpretation of Prophecy (II),” WTJ 46 (Fall 1984), p. 269.


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## JohnV (Mar 25, 2007)

Bob and Bill:

I won't disagree. That's right. Matthew's summative answer and quote says it all. I know that other hermeneutic persuasions will answer that their's is Biblical too. But we have the Bible's own witness for ours. That is, not ours, but the Bible's. Dispensationalism, and the prophetic sects even more, put more emphasis on their eschatological guesses, for example, than they do upon the plain reading and emphasis of the Word itself, as Covenant theology does. 

It's not really right to call the system of theology that we subscribe to Calvinism, because Calvin didn't invent it. It doesn't belong to him, is not ascribable to him, nor owes anything to him. He's just one of our best defenders of it, that's all. What we really mean by "Calvinism", or what we really should mean by "Calvinism", is "Biblical". We certainly should not be ascribing soteriological truths to Calvin from the pulpit or any official church position, because we are strictly a Biblical church.

But to call it "Covenantal", well that's not ascribing anything to man at all. It's ascribing to the Bible what it the Bible's own in the first place. 

Sure, a Dispensationalist will say that his hermeneutic is the Bible's. It wouldn't be a debate at all if they didn't. That's why it's not a debate here on the PB.


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