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Stephen Wellum

Covenantal and Dispensational Theologies: Four Views on the Continuity of Scripture

December 22, 2021 by Andy Naselli

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. 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.

Filed Under: Systematic Theology Tagged With: Darrell Bock, dispensationalism, Mark Snoeberger, Stephen Wellum

God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ

January 10, 2017 by Andy Naselli

wellum“If you only have time for one Christology,” says Jonathan Leeman, “start here. I commend it without reservation.”

Stephen J. Wellum. God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ. Foundations of Evangelical Theology. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016.

Here’s what Don Carson says about it: [Read more…] about God the Son Incarnate: The Doctrine of Christ

Filed Under: Systematic Theology Tagged With: Stephen Wellum

Progressive Covenantalism: Charting a Course between Dispensational and Covenant Theologies

April 19, 2016 by Andy Naselli

WellumThis book just released:

Stephen J. Wellum and Brent E. Parker, eds. Progressive Covenantalism: Charting a Course between Dispensational and Covenant Theologies. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2016.

My endorsement:

These ten essays exegetically and theologically support the argument that Steve Wellum and Peter Gentry present in Kingdom through Covenant (2012). Unlike covenant theology, progressive covenantalism argues that the genealogical principle (a basis for infant baptism) significantly changes across redemptive history. Unlike dispensationalism, progressive covenantalism understands the land not ultimately as Canaan but as a type of the new creation. This book is now required reading for my biblical theology courses.

7-minute interview with Steve Wellum:

Related: Fred Zaspel interviews Steve Wellum about this book.

Filed Under: Biblical Theology Tagged With: Stephen Wellum

Progressive Covenantalism: A Via Media between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism

August 24, 2012 by Andy Naselli

gentry-wellumLast week I finished plowing through this ambitious 848-page book:

Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum. Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants. Wheaton: Crossway, 2012.

The book argues for a via media between covenant theology and dispensationalism that the authors call progressive covenantalism (similar to new covenant theology).

Wellum and Gentry routinely distinguish their view from each of the two major systems in a distinctive way: [Read more…] about Progressive Covenantalism: A Via Media between Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism

Filed Under: Biblical Theology Tagged With: baptism, dispensationalism, hermeneutics, OT in the NT, Stephen Wellum

A Test Case for How to Put the Bible Together: Baptism

March 7, 2009 by Andy Naselli

Christians disagree—sometimes sharply—on how themes unfold in the OT and NT. Here are a few examples:

  1. the old covenant and new covenant
  2. law and grace
  3. Israel and the church
  4. promise and fulfillment
  5. type and antitype
  6. the Sabbath and Lord’s day
  7. circumcision and baptism

People cannot study such issues in an isolated way without raising larger biblical and theological structural issues. The hermeneutical spiral is complicated, and the way people approach such issues reveals how they put the Bible together. That’s why, upon the recent recommendations of some friends, I spent several hours this afternoon carefully reading the following essay:

BaptismStephen J. Wellum. “Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants.” Pages 97–161 in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ. Edited by Thomas R. Schreiner and Shawn D. Wright. NAC Studies in Bible and Theology. Broadman & Holman: Nashville, 2006.

(Note the free PDF.)

This essay by Wellum, who is “neither Dispensational nor Covenantal (in the paedobaptist sense of the term)” (p. 123n44), is a fine example of what it looks like to approach an issue like baptism responsibly in light of Bible’s storyline.

What follows is an outline of Wellum’s essay with quotations from the introduction and conclusion. (I’ve added the numbering.) [Read more…] about A Test Case for How to Put the Bible Together: Baptism

Filed Under: Biblical Theology Tagged With: baptism, hermeneutics, Stephen Wellum

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