by Angus Harley

Some NCTers (followers of New Covenant Theology) are not aware that Progressive Covenantalism (PC) says that the New Covenant is both conditional and unconditional in its nature. PC’s position is unacceptable as a theology, for it undermines the utter inviolability of the New Covenant: it has no ‘conditions’ to be kept. There is not built into it a potential for ruination and failure due to not keeping ‘conditions’. I will go one step further: the entire covenantal discourse in theology is full of loaded terminology that runs along the lines of covenant obligations. This I reject, too, for the New Covenant.

As many NCTers are not too familiar with this theme of conditional and unconditional covenantal elements, I will react only to Stephen Wellum’s short article, “How to Interpret the Covenants and the Nature of Typology: A Companion Article”. I will respond to his short article in two or three similarly limited pieces. This is the first brief response, and it defends the nature of the New Covenant as not at all tied down with obligations, or conditions, or a balancing off of one covenant partner with another. The New Covenant is about blessings from the hand of the Creator, not covenantal obligations and conditions.

As an added feature, in this particular article I will limit my criticisms via the OT text Jeremiah 31:31-34. I will not go to the NT’s reading of these verses. Why do I do this? Because PC has accused NCT over the years of failing to take account of the OT’s witness. I will show that NCT is more in keeping with the OT model of the New Covenant than PC is. The articles that follow this one will pursue other features of Wellum’s covenantal argument in his short article.

Wellum’s conditional/unconditional view of divine covenants

Aspectival covenants

Wellum states his position concerning all divine covenants:

“Third, to categorize the covenants as either unconditional/unilateral (i.e., royal grant) or conditional/bilateral (i.e., suzerain-vassal) is inadequate and reductionistic. Why? Because the truth is that each post-fall covenant contains both aspects, even though it is true that some of the covenants emphasize one aspect more than the other.”[1]

There it is: all divine covenants are both unconditional and conditional, aspectivally. The unconditional, or unilateral, aspect of a divine covenant is performed by God himself, wherein he takes upon himself an obligation of a given covenant. The conditional, or bilateral, element of a divine covenant is the obligations engaged by men in covenant with God, which is done in coordination with God’s covenantal obligation and action.

Of the Abrahamic Covenant, Wellum writes:

“Or, think of the Abrahamic covenant. It is strongly unilateral; especially in its covenant ratification ceremony where God is the only party who walks through the pieces thus taking the entire covenant obligation on himself (Gen. 15:8–21). Yet, God also continues to demand perfect obedience from Abraham, which reveals that the covenant includes bilateral elements as well (Gen. 17:9–14; 22:15–18).”

God’s action by himself: he alone walks through the fire of the covenant; man’s actions alone: Abraham is to perfectly obey God’s demands. Two sets of obligations: one that is done, without question, by God; the other that, by man, has to be done.

Christological solution to tension

The “tension” naturally created by both unilateral and bilateral actions is “only resolved in Christ.” Wellum explains:

“On the one hand, the post-fall covenants reveal our triune covenant Lord who makes and keeps his promises. As God initiates covenant relationships with his creatures, he is always the faithful partner (Heb. 6:17–18). Regardless of our unfaithfulness, commencing in Genesis 3:15, God’s promises are certain. On the other hand, God demands from us perfect obedience, thus the bilateral aspect of the covenants. Yet as the covenants progress, a tension grows between God’s faithfulness to his promises and our disobedience. Obedience is not an option for us. God is holy and just, but we have sinned against him. And, in light of Genesis 3:15, God’s promises are tied to the provision of an obedient son, who will undo Adam’s disastrous choice. But where do we find such a son who fully obeys and meets God’s moral demands? And how can God remain in relationship with us unless our sin is removed? It is through the covenants that this tension increases, and it is through the covenants that the answer is given: God himself—our covenant-maker and keeper—will unilaterally act to keep his own promise by the provision of an obedient covenant partner, namely our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Note, of first importance, that in the post-fall era, the divine covenants are made and kept by the God. Man, however, as to his part, does not uphold his end of the bargain, for he sins. So, as time goes by, and one divine covenant is followed by another, a tension builds, for the same relationship of success on God’s part and failure on man’s continues.

However, this tension is resolved in Christ Jesus. “God himself—our covenant-maker and keeper—will unilaterally act to keep his own promise by the provision of an obedient covenant partner, namely our Lord Jesus Christ.” Thus, God’s unilateral act of always fulfilling his covenantal duty becomes the key as he provides the Lord Jesus Christ who is the obedient covenant partner.

New Covenant

All the previous divine covenants made with man, including the covenant before the Fall made with Adam, are fulfilled in the New Covenant alone, “no covenant makes sense apart from its fulfillment in Christ.” Christians are no longer under the other divine covenants (the exception being the Noahic Covenant). Jesus was the only one to fulfill the covenant obligations perfectly. So, we see that the New Covenant is one of both unconditional and conditional elements, with the divine being kept by God through his unilateral act of providing the Son of obedience.

What follows is the critique of Wellum’s position.

Conditions and obligations are rendered irrelevant

In the OT, the main text on the New Covenant’s nature is Jeremiah 31:31-34, and as said in the intro, I will delimit my responses to its OT content. Let us quote it in full:

“31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” ”

Conditions irrelevant

In this OT description of the New Covenant, there are zero obligations of any kind cited. There is no tit-for-tat: ‘I do this; you do that’. There is no obligation on God as differentiated from an obligation on Judah and Israel. There is not a sniff of the notion that if Judah and Israel fail to keep the conditions of the covenant, then it will fall apart, or they will be punished. Indeed, the concept of conditions, as far as Israel and Judah are concerned, are entirely redundant and irrelevant, for both groups are, within this covenant of Jeremiah’s, ‘pre-made’ as utterly devoted to Yahweh, incapable of violating his covenant.

Obligations irrelevant

Nor is this about an unconditionally kept covenant by God. There is nothing in the text to suggest that God will carry a burden, an obligation, in sustaining this covenant.

This is to say that, the general, comprehensive, category of obligations is itself rendered useless and irrelevant.

Creator’s blessings, not conditions and obligations

The Creator’s covenant

What we do have is a summary statement of the complete success and inviolability of a newly created covenant and a newly created covenant-people. It is inviolable because the covenant itself cannot be broken for God has created it to be so.

The reader ought not to confuse this with the unilaterial vs lateral aspects of Wellum, nor with any notion of obligation. For God is sovereignly acting to create a brand-new covenant and a brand-new people, based on a brand-new covenant. A new-creation via a new-covenant!

Just as Yahweh spoke into existence this created world, so his covenant promise and word will speak into existence a new creation of a new covenant and its new Israel and new Judah.

Creation blessings

It is not like the Old Covenant, therefore, which was broken- over and over and over- and was characterized by divine severity, endless commandments, and the ‘weighing scales’ of blessings and curses.  

The innate nature of this new covenant is that it brings with it full covenantal union between the Creator God and his new creation, Israel and Judah. This union is ensured through the following four blessings (not aspects, obligations, conditions, or elements!):

  1. “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it;”
  2. “and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
  3. “They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord,”
  4. “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

God is blessing his people, not ‘unilaterally fulfilling a covenant obligation’. This blessing is a creative blessing, like God’s original-creation ‘word’.

Creator-husband vs contracted partners

It seems to me that the conditional/unconditional model reduces the difference between God and man. To Wellum, the conditions for humans are obligations, specifically, to obey God’s commandments. Yet, God has ‘obligations’, too. He has a ‘work’ to perform. Both sides are tied down with obligations and doing as crucial covenant elements in themselves. This model is the old-school Reformed one of contractual obligations. We now have two parties or partners with duties, who are meant to balance out one another in a covenant.

Yet, Jeremiah 31:33-34 is dripping with the majesty of God as the Creator and Sustainer of this New Covenant, and Israel and Judah are the recipients of its many blessings as covenant ‘creatures’. There is no contract, no balancing off of partners, no sense of a tension that is being worked out.

Or, we might put the emphasis on the implied metaphor of marriage: the Old Covenant was a ‘marriage’, so the implication is that the New Covenant is a marriage, too. It is a union, a creating of one flesh, as it were. Whereas, in using the same marriage metaphor, we might describe PC’s reading as being more like a prenup in which parties to marriage enter into a contract.

Old Covenant vs New Covenant

Wellum’s argument is that the Old Covenant was one of grace but that it also revealed sin:

“…one of [the Mosaic Law’s] main purposes is to reveal the disastrous nature of sin….one cannot understand the Mosaic covenant apart from God’s grace, first in election (Deut. 7:7–11), and second in terms of its gracious provision of a sacrificial system that prophetically anticipated the provision of the Redeemer to come”.

Wellum referred to a tension in all of the OT’s divine covenants that was to be worked out in Christ. Yet, what he has done is ignore Jeremiah 31:31-34 and its clear reference to the failure of the Old Covenant from its outset. It was an abject failure because Israel broke it. They were unfaithful. In fact, the implication of Jeremiah 31:31-34 is that any grace that was, from an OT perspective, in the Old Covenant was spurned from the outset. How do we know this? Because the Israelites from the beginning did not: have the law on their hearts; know him; or, enjoy the forgiveness of sins. Israel, in other words, was not revealing the one-flesh principle of marriage.

We might put the same theology in this way: the Old Covenant was breakable, violable, and was deliberately made by God as such. Not so the New Covenant.

Another way of referring to the contrast in covenants- again from an OT perspective- is that the Mosaic Covenant was a covenant of grace-unrequited; and the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31:31-34 is a covenant of sheer grace and blessing that is inviolably imprinted, even created, in all the covenant’s human participants.

Love vs whoring

I could have also mentioned the innate and internal nature of the New Covenant in contrast to the external and alien nature of the Old Covenant. And on and on we could go with contrasts (all from an OT perspective). However, we’ll close out with one final contrast (which is once again from an OT perspective): the New Covenant is clearly one of hearts of love over against the Old Covenant that exposed Israel’s whoring heart.

There is, in Jeremiah 31:31-34, the clear implication that Judah and Israel will love God with their hearts. God’s law, like love letters, will be imprinted on their hearts, and they will ‘know’ intimately and naturally their divine husband. The divine husband is so closely ‘one-flesh’ with them that he forgives their sin. This is love transmitting from one side to the other, drawing one unto the other!

By contrast, Israel had no love for God. It complained of God’s harsh ways. It cared not for the covenant laws of Moses. And it, like a whore, gave its heart to another…then another…then another.

What about obligations to this New Covenant law in the heart?

There is a hard question this NCT reading must answer. If obligations and conditions are out, what do we do with the presence of ‘law’ in the hearts of Israel and Judah? Surely this implies duty, commandments, conditions, and obligations.

In the context of Jeremiah, we are not told what that the law of this new covenant will look like. One can assume that it does imply commandments, for it is law and we are in the OT. One can, contextually, assume that it automatically conveys love for God, full-blooded commitment on both sides, the forgiveness of sins, an intimate spiritual knowledge of God, and everlasting union between God and Judah/Israel. That being said, it is wrong to think of this law as the commandments of the Mosaic Law. How so? The Mosaic Covenant had one law: the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law belonged to one covenant: the Mosaic Covenant. That is why Jeremiah’s account of this law of the new covenant is one that is purely internal, not written on tablets of stone or on parchments. It is, by implication, a law of action and fulfillment, not of mere ‘commandment’, or of obligation, condition, and duty. These commandments are ‘alive’, enlivening, powerful, and incapable of being removed internally (it is an inviolable covenant). Nor is any of this a NT reading: it is an OT reading of Jeremiah’s New Covenant.

I am aware that for NCTers my response is artificial as it does not rest on the NT itself, and because it was locked into Jeremiah 31. Sometimes, however, it serves us as NCTers to show that the OT itself has enough of a record of God’s plan of redemption that we can see the outlines of the NT testimony of the Christ event. Also, I have not in this article responded to Wellum’s other arguments. Following articles will do this.

[1]Stephen Wellum, “How to Interpret the Covenants and the Nature of Typology: A Companion Article”,  Christ Over All, September 6, 2023, https://christoverall.com/article/concise/how-to-interpret-the-covenants-and-the-nature-of-typology-a-companion-article/.