Covenant Foundations by Alec Motyer, published by Christian Focus Publications (2024)

This is well written, and in as simple language as it can get when the topic is Covenant Theology! It gives some truly enlightening explanations of Bible passages. It traces the backbone of God’s covenants running through the whole Bible, and thus it confirms the unity of the Old and New Testaments in a way that is timely and helpful in the face of dispensationalist interpretations.

So far, so good. But care needs to be taken with the idea of the ‘straight line’ drawn between the covenants with Noah, Abraham and Moses and terminating in the New Covenant. Motyer doesn’t state it, but it seems to me that he maps all the covenants onto one another and takes them as forms or administrations of the same Covenant of Grace. Thus the the natural children are the covenant seed. This reflects Motyer’s Anglican persuasion, and is approved in the foreword by Sinclair Ferguson – a Presbyterian. Hence, for them, a clear case for infant baptism in the New Testament church! But I understand the Covenant of Grace as one which was made with Christ and not man, for his elect alone and not a mixed people. While this was revealed in the Old Testament to Noah and Abraham, the Mosaic national covenant (the Law) was not a part of it, and Paul makes clear its antithesis to Grace in Galatians 3:17. The Covenant of Grace is enacted in the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, and believers alone comprise the church.

In summary, whilst demonstrating the continuity of the promises of God, I believe Motyer fails to deal sufficiently with the discontinuity between Old and New Testament. I would have liked to see this theme followed up within his study of the covenants.

Jeremy