This book—which I’ve been anticipating for several years—releases in February:

Parker, Brent E., and Richard J. Lucas, eds. Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture. Spectrum Multiview Books. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2022. (266 pp.)

I just read this debate-book, and it’s as good as I had hoped. I plan to require it in my systematic theology course on the church and the end times.

I commend the editors for choosing the four positions (the four most prominent evangelical views today) and for lining up the four authors (each of whom would be my first choice):

1. covenant theology: Mike Horton
2. progressive covenantalism: Steve Wellum
3. progressive dispensationalism: Darrell Bock
4. traditional dispensationalism: Mark Snoeberger

If this were a six-views book, it would probably also include theonomy and Reformed Baptist covenant theology. Here’s a list of those six systems—moving from more continuity to more discontinuity:

• theonomy (e.g., Greg Bahnsen, Doug Wilson)
• covenant theology or Reformed theology (e.g., Ligon Duncan, Kevin DeYoung)
• Reformed Baptist covenant theology or 1689 Federalism (e.g., Sam Waldron, Richard Barcellos)
• progressive covenantalism (e.g., Tom Schreiner, Jason DeRouchie)
• progressive dispensationalism (e.g., Craig Blaising, Gregg Allison)
• traditional dispensationalism (e.g., Charles Ryrie, John Feinberg)

Brent Parker and Richard Lucas conclude the book with three tables that helpfully summarize how the four views differ (pp. 252–56):

* * * * * * *

Where do I land now? I affirm progressive covenantalism. In high school and college and early seminary, I affirmed traditional dispensationalism. I later warmed to progressive dispensationalism and eventually became convinced of progressive covenantalism. And my respect for covenant theology has grown.

I share some of my story in How to Understand and Apply the New Testament (pp. 285–87). I include that below but with deep respect for the esteemed Detroit professors; they are my dear friends, and we hold so much theology in common:

[Systematic theology] can enrich how you exegete a particular text, but it can distort how you exegete a particular text. …

Can you see the flip side of this strength? What if your systematic theology is not sufficiently based on exegesis? What if your systematic theology is overly speculative? Or what if your systematic theology is accurate but you wrongly impose that grid on a text without sufficiently listening to that text and reading it carefully in its literary context? The danger is that systematic theology can distort how you exegete a particular text.

After my sophomore and junior years of college, I took summer graduate courses at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, and the school’s most senior professor, Dr. Rolland McCune, taught the classes I took. One course was called Dispensationalism and the other The Kingdom of God. I also stocked up on Dr. McCune’s lengthy course syllabi, and I devoured them—about nine hundred pages on systematic theology as well as lectures on hermeneutics, apologetics, and the like. I slowly and thoroughly read through his systematic theology notes at least three times in college and early seminary. I knew his positions so well that my fellow seminarians used to call me McCune, and when we were taking theology classes together, they’d ask me during class discussions, “So what does McCune say?”

On the issue of continuity and discontinuity, McCune is a traditional dispensationalist. And I became one, too. But that changed in 2007 when I was working for Don Carson and he plopped a huge stack of loose-leaf paper on my desk. It was a draft of the massive Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament that he coedited. He asked me to proofread it, and I ended up spending about two or three hundred hours on it. For the first time I carefully thought through every time the New Testament quotes the Old and many of the times the New Testament alludes to the Old. Can you guess what happened? The exegetical data wasn’t fitting with my system of traditional dispensationalism (though traditional dispensationalists, of course, would disagree!). So I entered a phase of reassessing my view on continuity and discontinuity. I tried to start from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Of course, it’s not a one-way street. It’s never that simple. But I tried to reform my systematic theology based on sound exegesis and biblical theology—similar to the nine hermeneutical steps that Grant Osborne recommends in The Hermeneutical Spiral:

1. 1. Consciously reconstruct our preunderstanding.
   2. Inductively collect all the passages relating to the issue.
   3. Exegete all the passages in their context.
   4. Collate the passages into a biblical theology.
   5. Trace the developing contextualization of the doctrine through church history.
   6. Study competing models of the doctrine.
   7. Reformulate or recontextualize the traditional model for the contemporary culture.
   8. After individual doctrines are reformulated, begin collating them and reworking the systemic models. The final stage is to redefine the systems themselves.
   9. Work out the implications for the community of God and for the daily life of the believer.

So can systematic theology enrich how you exegete a particular text? Absolutely. But beware: it can also distort how you exegete a particular text.

For more on how I understand continuity and discontinuity, see 40 Questions about Biblical Theology.