On Christ, the Christian and the Law of God: A Critique of Aspects of New Covenant Theology

Dr. P. DeVries, Assistant Professor of Biblical Theology and Hermeneutics at the Free University of Amsterdam.

New Covenant Theology (NCT) is not entirely new. Intimations of it can be found in theologies of early Christianity and during the period of the Protestant Reformation with the Anabaptists. Some claim that it was also present in nuce in the early confessions of the Particular Baptists in England (1644, 1649).

What is new is that today it has grown into a considerable movement which is being adhered to by congregations, prominent leaders and notable theologians. NCT has become increasingly present and defended by churches, denominations, and theological training centers. These facts alone merit an engagement with some of its essential tenets and teachings.

What is more, New Covenant Theology represents a dynamic and candid perspective on essential aspects of Protestant Christian theology like the covenants, the law and Christ, the Christian and the law, and the church. It situates itself between classic Dispensationalism and traditional Reformed Covenant Theology. What is positive is that it is Reformed in its convictions regarding the centrality and infallibility of Scripture, the understanding of sovereign grace and its Christo-centricity.

Its more controversial claims relate to the Torah (law) which it argues is abrogated in its totality by way of a radical transformation in light of Christ and the New Covenant dispensation. It is with respect to those issues that this book seeks to engage with some of its tenets as anchored in its particular hermeneutic. In this book, Meine Veldman challenge some of its assumptions with respect to its hermeneutic. More directly, he questions the NCT's radical eschatological understanding of the law, Christ, the New Covenant and the Christian's relation to the law of God.

At the end of the book, the author has added a postscript on the central Biblical and Protestant doctrine of justification and NCT. Within it he tries to show that the NCT, because of its hermeneutic and understanding of the abrogation of the Torah, including the Decalogue, has drifted into the direction of a historical subjectivism that tends to undermine the divine vertical and forensic elements of the law and the doctrine of justification. The needle of the law, condemning sin and the sinner, is no longer necessary to bring the repentant sinners by the thread of Gospel to a saving faith in Christ Jesus. Repentance and conversion become, in the context of NCT, primarily a matter of interiority, conscience and faith. More disconcerting is that NCT and many of its adherents deny the imputation of Christ's active obedience as an essential aspect of the doctrine of justification. Here NCT diverges from an important element of the Biblical teaching of justification and undermines an essential tenet of the Reformed doctrine of justification.

So, while there is much good to be acknowledged with respect to NCT, with this book Veldman also engages with some essential tenets of NCT which seem to deviate from fundamental teachings of the Scriptures on the Law, Christ, the Christian and the law and the doctrine of justification.

Dr. Meine Veldman is professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at la Facult? de Th?ologie ?vang?lique, Montr?al (QC), affili? a l'Universit? Acadia (N.S), Canada.