Archives

Was There a Creation Covenant?

Peter Ditzel

Was there a Creation Covenant? Closeup showing God's and Adam's hands from Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.
Did God need to make a covenant with Adam at Creation? Does the biblical evidence show that He did? Closeup from Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. Photo image by janeb13 from Pixabay

Did God make a Creation Covenant with Adam? Reformed or Covenant theologians have for centuries taught that He did. More recently, some New Covenant theologians have also said that God made a covenant with Adam at Creation. Everyone agrees that the Bible doesn’t explicitly state that God made a Creation Covenant. Theologians who teach a Creation Covenant, then, have the burden to present compelling, biblical evidence to support it. If, however, we find that they’re merely asserting what they haven’t proven, then they have diverged from sound biblical exegesis into the labyrinth of personal interpretation. Therein lies the danger. If we allow that kind of thinking to go unchecked, we open the door to a Pandora’s box of subjectivism and relativism. So, let’s look at the evidence from the Bible. Was there a Creation Covenant?

Read more… →

Is the Old Testament Wrong?

by Peter Ditzel

A picture of a woman tearing at her Bible with the overlaid words, Should we rip the Old Testament out of our Bibles?
If the Old Testament tells us “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” and Jesus says, “But I tell you, don’t resist him who is evil,” does that mean the Old Testament is wrong? If Christians are under the New Covenant and not the Old, does that mean that we should rip the Old Testament out of our Bibles?

I want to warn you against neo-Marcionism. Some preachers and writers either now promote or are just on the verge of blindly rushing into this dangerous belief. Around the middle of the second century AD, Marcion of Sinope began spreading his belief system that came to be known as Marcionism. One of his central teachings was the claim that the God of the Old Testament couldn’t be the God of the New Testament. The God of the New Testament sent His Son Jesus to be our Savior. The Old Testament God was a legalistic God of retribution. Marcion’s solution to this seeming contradiction was to reject the Old Testament from the Christian canon.

Read more… →

Announcement: I Have Changed My Understanding of “New Law”

Peter Ditzel

January 2019: I recently revisited some articles I wrote several years ago and made some necessary changes to my understanding of the “new law” of the New Covenant. These center on what Jesus was doing when He gave His “But I say unto you” statements in Matthew 5. Or, to put it another way, these changes concern whether Jesus was giving Christians a new law to obey.  

Read more… →

Setting the Record Straight About Dr. George Ella

I want to start this article by saying that I am publishing it to set the record straight about my dealings with Dr. George Ella and his dealings with me. To do this, I am fully disclosing our correspondence. The reason I am doing this is because Dr. Ella has made untrue accusations about me and what I believe. I want to be clear, however, that I am not publishing this article out of personal vendetta or hurt feelings. Dr. Ella’s remarks are not only defamatory to me personally but are potentially damaging to this ministry. They are thus divisive and stumbling blocks or snares (what the King James Version means by “offences”) to those who are seeking the truth. I have nothing against theological discourse where someone accurately represents what I believe and then gives a reasoned response as to why he disagrees. He may even be passionate as long as he sticks to the facts. A reader can then weigh the facts and make his or her own decision. But Dr. Ella has not taken such an approach.

Read more… →

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5

Q. In what way did Jesus fulfill the law?

A. Jesus’ last words on the Cross were, “It is finished” (see John 19:30). He had done everything His Father had sent Him to do (see John 17:4). One of things He had come to do is found in Matthew: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (Matthew 5:17). So, one of the things Jesus had come to do was to fulfill—not destroy, but fulfill—the law. Obviously, then, by the time He said, “It is finished,” He had done this. But the question is, in what way did He “fulfill” the law? What did He mean by “fulfill”?

Read more… →
Pages: 1 2 3

New Covenant Theology–When Did the Old Covenant End and the New Covenant Begin?

There has been much confusion concerning the New Covenant. Some might think that when the New Covenant began and when the Old Covenant ended is not important. I will show you that it is. Covenant theologians believe that the New Covenant is merely a new administration of the same covenant that is also called the Old Covenant. Thus, believing it all to be one covenant, they don’t accept that there was an ending of the Old Covenant and a beginning of a truly fresh, New Covenant.

Read more… →

Pages: 1 2

New Covenant Theology–The Superiority of Jesus Christ and His New Testament Revelation

Christians rightly believe that the written Word of God consists of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. And, in theory, many Christians would also say that Jesus Christ is the most important figure in the Bible. In practice, however, many of those same Christians elevate Moses above Christ by stressing Old Testament law. But Jesus is not only superior to Moses, He is the pinnacle and goal of the entire revelation of the Bible; He is, in fact, what is revealed. The New Testament, being His New Covenant (“covenant” and “testament” are translated from the same Greek word) in His blood (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25) is, thus, the culmination of Biblical revelation and is the superior testament. This is completely supported by the Bible.

Read more… →

Part 2–New Covenant Theology–The New Covenant and the Decalogue

[This article was revised in January 2019: Further information.]

In part 1, we saw that Catholic and Reformed theologians (as well as others) divide the Mosaic Law into three parts—civil, ceremonial, and moral. They then assert that, while what they call the civil and ceremonial laws are not binding on Christians, the moral laws are still binding. But the Bible reveals the Mosaic Law as a unified whole that cannot be divided. It is either all still binding—and we should be offering sacrifices, not wearing mixed fabric clothing, putting fringes on our garments, not letting bastards into our assemblies, etc.—or none of it is.

Read more… →

Part 1–New Covenant Theology–The New Covenant and the Decalogue

[This article was revised in January 2019: Further information.]

I want to set the record straight concerning the New Covenant and the law. Several times, in just the past couple of weeks alone, I have had it made clear to me that many people simply do not grasp the relationship of the New Covenant to the laws of the Old Covenant, specifically the Ten Commandments. Even prominent theologians, who should know the distinctions of each system of theology, get this relationship wrong. Possibly because of this weak understanding, there has now been a move to try to reach a compromise between New Covenant Theology and Reformed Theology.

Read more… →

New Covenant Theology–Must We Obey a New Law?

[This article was revised in January 2019: Further information.]

New Covenant Theology teaches that Jesus Christ fulfilled the law, and that by fulfilling it, He ended it. But some within New Covenant Theology have also taught that Jesus instituted a new law that we must obey. Is there a new law with new commands that Jesus has given us under the New Covenant? If so, must we obey these commands?

Read more… →