1689 Federalism Recommended Reading List

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brandonadams

brandonadams

Puritan Board Sophomore
If anyone is interested in studying 1689 Federalism, here is a recommended reading list.

You should start at the top and work your way through the list.
  1. The Divine Covenants, A. W. Pink
  2. An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, Abraham Booth (note that one reprint adds an essay by a later author against the Covenant of Works – that is not by Booth and not recommended)
  3. The Covenant of Works: Its Confessional and Scriptural Basis, Richard C. Barcellos
  4. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapters 10-11, John Calvin (representative of the Westminster view)
  5. The Distinctiveness of 17th Century Particular Baptist Covenant Theology, Pascal Denault
  6. The Fatal Flaw of the Theology Behind Infant Baptism, Jeffery Johnson
  7. Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ, Nehemiah Coxe & John Owen
  8. Recovering a Covenantal Heritage, various

Pink provides a very helpful beginning to end overview of Scripture’s teaching on the various covenants. He mostly avoids polemics. Booth’s relatively short essay really clarifies the difference between the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Christ. Barcellos provides a very helpful explanation of the Covenant of Works, a necessary foundation for understanding 1689 Federalism. Calvin provides a short, but foundational explanation of the Westminster position (it is recommended to read more widely in that tradition as well). Denault’s survey helps introduce precise distinctions and contrasts it with Westminster’s view. Johnson then pinpoints the root error of this position and provides a helpful discussion of various attempts to deal with it. Coxe and Owen then provide a mature, detailed exegetical defense of 1689 Federalism. Finally, Recovering a Covenantal Heritage includes essays from a variety of authors touching on numerous related subjects.

http://www.1689federalism.com/recommended-reading-list/
 
reaganmarsh said:
Someone here on PB recently posted a helpful article on 1689 federalism: http://www.metropolitantabernacle.org/Articles/God-s-Parallel-Covenants
Click to expand...

Note: I personally have not come across anyone else making Master's argument that Deut 29-30 refers to a second Mosaic Covenant. That is not a standard 1689 Federalism view, for what it's worth. Rather, most would recognize Deut 30 as a prophecy of the New Covenant. But Masters' comments about his encounters with American 20th Century RB view is quite interesting.
 
brandonadams said:
Note: I personally have not come across anyone else making Master's argument that Deut 29-30 refers to a second Mosaic Covenant. That is not a standard 1689 Federalism view, for what it's worth. Rather, most would recognize Deut 30 as a prophecy of the New Covenant.
Click to expand...

Yes, I meant to mention that, but was writing quickly. Thanks, brother. I haven't found anyone else making that argument either.
 
That is a dispensationalist assertion for a "Palestinian Covenant" (whatever that meant). But that is more of the classical dispieism.
 
brandonadams said:
If anyone is interested in studying 1689 Federalism, here is a recommended reading list.

You should start at the top and work your way through the list.
  1. The Divine Covenants, A. W. Pink
  2. An Essay on the Kingdom of Christ, Abraham Booth (note that one reprint adds an essay by a later author against the Covenant of Works – that is not by Booth and not recommended)
  3. The Covenant of Works: Its Confessional and Scriptural Basis, Richard C. Barcellos
  4. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapters 10-11, John Calvin (representative of the Westminster view)
  5. The Distinctiveness of 17th Century Particular Baptist Covenant Theology, Pascal Denault
  6. The Fatal Flaw of the Theology Behind Infant Baptism, Jeffery Johnson
  7. Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ, Nehemiah Coxe & John Owen
  8. Recovering a Covenantal Heritage, various

Pink provides a very helpful beginning to end overview of Scripture’s teaching on the various covenants. He mostly avoids polemics. Booth’s relatively short essay really clarifies the difference between the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Christ. Barcellos provides a very helpful explanation of the Covenant of Works, a necessary foundation for understanding 1689 Federalism. Calvin provides a short, but foundational explanation of the Westminster position (it is recommended to read more widely in that tradition as well). Denault’s survey helps introduce precise distinctions and contrasts it with Westminster’s view. Johnson then pinpoints the root error of this position and provides a helpful discussion of various attempts to deal with it. Coxe and Owen then provide a mature, detailed exegetical defense of 1689 Federalism. Finally, Recovering a Covenantal Heritage includes essays from a variety of authors touching on numerous related subjects.

http://www.1689federalism.com/recommended-reading-list/
Click to expand...
Where would you put J. Johnson's other book on CT in this list: his Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant and Biblical Theology?
 
I don't recommend Johnson's book because he is a little confused about the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants, in my opinion. He thinks that they offered eternal life and that Christ earned eternal life by obeying them. He's picking up on Samuel Petto's (Congregationalist) view, but I think it is very problematic. There are other helpful aspects of the book, but that main one stands out and can really confuse people trying to get a grasp of the position.

See http://www.1689federalism.com/republication-the-mosaic-covenant-and-eternal-life/
 
I don't recommend it as a means of understanding 1689 Federalism. The book reads more like sitting on the back porch with Griffiths as he reflects on everything he's read. Might be worth reading if you're still interested after reading everything else. My two cents.
 
I am about half way through the book by Griffiths. As of right now, I really like it. In my opinion, he takes a complex topic and starts at the very beginning. He does not assume that you have a certain baseline level of understanding of Covenant Theology like some other books do. I would suggest it as a good intro book.
 
reaganmarsh said:
Someone here on PB recently posted a helpful article on 1689 federalism: http://www.metropolitantabernacle.org/Articles/God-s-Parallel-Covenants
Click to expand...
With apologies for thread drift, it is with the following statements of Masters that I differ:

"The second problem is a whole group of errors that the wrong view of Sinai brings into churches, because if you make the law covenant a dispensation of the covenant of grace, you make the New Testament church a continuation of the Old Testament church, making the two almost identical. You say that baptism is the equivalent of circumcision, and admit people into Christ’s church without professing faith; you make New Testament church government hierarchical in some form, similar to the government of the Old Testament. Also, you set aside the goal of a regenerate church membership, because that was not a feature of the typical church of old."

That was on Pg. 2, halfway down. I do not understand why he claims that if the NT church is a continuation of the OT church, you must necessarily say that circumcision and baptism are identical. They are not. They are different signs for different epochs, administered differently. We vanilla RBs claim that the NT church is indeed a continuation of the OT church, but that does NOT mean that we must baptize infants. I don't even see how people see that as a logical conclusion, given that the NT is the Church (same church) under a different administration (different administration).

I also disagree that seeing covenant continuity automatically leads to hierarchical church government--that's plainly specious, given that it's our crowd of VRBs (tm) who refuse to associate officially with ARBCA and others.
 
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