Review Roundup: Covenant Theology (Part 1)

by on February 20, 2025 | Comment

Antonio Coppola, Faithful God: An Introduction to Covenant Theology (Pretoria, South Africa: Lig in Duisternis Uitgewers, 2023).1

Antonio Coppola’s Faithful God: An Introduction to Covenant Theology is a pastoral treatment of covenant theology meant to equip ordinary Christians to see the categories of law and gospel and to understand how Christ is at the center of redemptive history. Antonio Coppola is a Reformed pastor in South Africa, and the publisher is a South African publishing house (an Afrikaans edition is also available). We should be glad that clear resources on Reformed theology are becoming available where the American publishing market often does not reach easily. A homegrown treatment of covenant theology for the Presbyterian and Reformed Church of South Africa (PARCSA) is a notable contribution.

This book is impressive for how succinctly and clearly it addresses important categories. The discussions about the law-gospel distinction and how the moral law still obligates believers to faithfulness in the covenant of grace is as crystal clear as one could ask. The chapters are also short. While some readers may want to pursue more in-depth explanation, this book has many ideal sections to introduce each topic. Further, the explanation of each historical covenant maintains a clear focus on how it progresses redemptive history toward Christ.

I did have some questions about his explanation of the Mosaic sacrifices: “Instead of Israel having to bear the penalty of death for their sins, God allowed animals to be sacrificed for the sins of the people instead” (57). He does explicitly claim these sacrifices were ineffective and pointed forward to Christ’s definitive satisfaction. I would prefer that he had also said these sacrifices did not themselves do anything about sin, but sacramentally applied Christ’s work in advance to believers. My inclination from what he has written is to think that Coppola would agree with this additional point. It would have been worth stating outright though. Nevertheless, so many other big aspects are decisively clear and amount to a great resource.

This book is excellent in many ways, but because it does cover the same ground that many other books on covenant theology have explained, I am not sure that readers well immersed in other books on covenant need to add this one to their library. That said, its purpose does not seem to be to add to a market already rich with resources on this topic. Its primary objective seems to be to communicate that wealth for Reformed churches in South Africa, where the market needs more such resources available. In that respect, it is a monumental success.

Ryan McGraw, What is Covenant Theology?: Tracing God’s Promises through the Son, the Seed, and the Sacraments (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024).

If I had titled this book, I would have named it, Why is Covenant Theology Significant?: Tracing God’s Promises through the Son, the Seed, and the Sacraments. In a short space, Ryan McGraw offers reflections on key factors of importance for covenant theology. This book is less of a full-orbed explanation of Reformed covenant theology in all its categories than it is a primer for why Christians should find covenant theology valuable.

The best feature of this book is its last chapter on questions and answers about covenant theology. The strength here is its clarity and balance. McGraw shows his pastoral care for the issues addressed; he never leads with heated rhetoric but helps people navigate questions toward a better understanding of why they should land on particular positions. One stand-out instance is his defense of the Sabbath as a creation ordinance. Another example is his treatment of the question, “Did God ‘Republish’ the Covenant of Works in the Mosaic Covenant?” Although McGraw and I might land in slightly different places on this question overall, his answer provided considerations that should easily be affirmed by all parties in this discussion. It leaves room to nuance positions in either direction while providing guidelines for understanding and navigating the issue.

It might be worth mentioning a few topics where I differ from McGraw’s answers. This is not about debating his answers but just raising awareness. Under the issue of the Holy Spirit’s work in the Old and New Testaments, I concur wholeheartedly that the Spirit applied Christ’s benefits to believers during the Old Testament period. In difference to McGraw’s statements though, I would want to affirm in a full-throated way that those believers were united to Christ by faith, even before the Son came in the incarnation, and I would want to say explicitly that Old Testament believers did have the Spirit indwelling them. On another point, in contrast to McGraw, I am skeptical about the felicity of applying the term “grace” to the covenant of works. That said, he himself concedes explicitly that this is mostly a semantic issue, and I agree with him entirely in the substance of what he affirms.

McGraw’s book is another excellent first book to consider for exploring Reformed covenant theology. Others will complement it well. This book is a pastorally tuned discussion of why and how covenant theology will help you know God better.

Peter Golding, Covenant Theology: The Key of Theology in Reformed Thought and Tradition (Fearn, Ross-shire, United Kingdom: Christian Focus Publications, 2008).

I admit, I was way more impressed with this book than I expected to be. It is a scholarly work exploring issues in covenant theology. Clearly, the author wrote from a place of refining his own understanding of the Reformed use of covenant. That investigation has real value for everyone else though.

This book looks at historical issues in the tradition and modern debates raised in the secondary literature. It has the strength of dealing with primary and secondary sources in original languages, at least Latin and German. It is attuned to the major issues of the law-gospel distinction and the development of redemptive history. It shows a lot of balanced insight in weighing up many of the more recent debates around covenant theology.

In some places, this book is somewhat dated. Although I am just now getting to review it, the work was originally published in 2004. Its datedness now does not reflect its contribution when it first appeared, however. Nor is this datedness necessarily a shortcoming, as if it has major errors. As is inevitable, scholarship has simply developed since that time. When it first appeared, it would have had an astonishingly good grasp of the major issues.

Even with that datedness, this book maintains a lot of value, at least for those pursuing more academic studies of covenant theology. Although some of the issues in Golding’s book have been further explored, I found myself underlining lots of material to chase later. In other words, this book will present good material that can still be developed in further study. I will be keeping it close at hand as a resource for ideas that I know need to be expanded in future research.

Note

  1. For those living in South Africa, Faithful God: An Introduction to Covenant Theology is distributed in English through Christian Book Discounters and in Afrikaans through Lig in Duisternis Uitgewers.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

Part Two

RESOURCES

Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Subscribe to the Heidelblog today!


Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments are welcome but must observe the moral law. Comments that are profane, deny the gospel, advance positions contrary to the Reformed confession, or that irritate the management are subject to deletion. Anonymous comments, posted without permission, are forbidden. Please use a working email address so we can contact you, if necessary, about content or corrections.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.