Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ

This is a reprint of Nehemiah Coxe, probably the co-editor of the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/89), on “A Discourse of the Covenants that God made with men before the law” and John Owen’s “An Exposition of Hebrews 8:6-13, wherein the nature and differences between the Old and New Covenants is discovered.” It contains an Introduction by James M. Renihan, “Why is this reprint important?” and an appendix by Richard C. Barcellos, “John Owen and New Covenant Theology: Owen on the Old and New Covenants and the Functions of the Decalogue in Redemptive History in Historical and Contemporary Perspective.” Coxe was a leading Particular Baptist theologian in his day. He intended to write on the Mosaic and New Covenants but when Owen’s Hebrews commentary came out, Coxe directed his readers to Owen. Coxe covers the covenant of works, the covenant with Noah, and the covenant(s) with Abraham. Owen focuses on the Mosaic (Old) and New Covenants.

Publisher: Reformed Baptist Academic Press
Type: Hardback
ISBN: 9780976003939

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Nehemiah Coxe was the son of the early Particular Baptist leader Benjamin Coxe. In 1669, he joined the Bedford church made famous by John Bunyan, and in 1673 was called to serve as pastor of the church's sub-congregation at Hitchin. Coxe was a qualified physician, skilled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and a discerning theologian. Coxe's contemporary C.M. du Veil, in his 1685 Commentary on Acts, called Coxe "that great divine, eminent for all manner of learning", and referred to the "excellent" book A Discourse of the Covenants as full of "most weighty and solid arguments." It is clear that Nehemiah Coxe was held in high regard by his brethren, and would thus have been well equipped to serve as an editor of the Confession of Faith. John Owen was born in 1616 in Stadhampton, Oxfordshire and died in Ealing, West London, in 1683. During his sixty-seven years he lived out a life full of spiritual experience, literary accomplishment, and national influence so beyond most of his peers that he continues to merit the accolade of ‘the greatest British theologian of all time.'

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In most of the material that has been reprinted over the last half-century, Covenant Theology has been presented as if it necessarily implied the doctrine and practice of infant baptism. We could fill much space here simply listing the books that have taken this position. Many of us, however, have been unconvinced of this stipulation, believing that it is an unnecessary consequence of theological reasoning. We believe that it is very possible, even requisite, to formulate an exegetically based Covenant Theology that upholds the centrality and continuity of God’s plan of redemption through the ages without falling into the deduction that infant baptism must attend that doctrine. Sadly, there have been few works available that have wrestled with these issues at a profound exegetical and theological level. The books written from a paedobaptist perspective are often dismissive of the credobaptist (i.e., believer’s baptism) point of view, and those defending believer’s baptism have often failed to give sufficient effort to presenting a full-blown covenantal system. The end result is that paedobaptists have seldom, if ever, considered the possibility of a covenantal credobaptist position, and many Baptists are simply ignorant of the centrality of the covenant and its usefulness in defending their own beliefs. This book is an attempt to begin to rectify this deficiency.' James Renihan