Covenant And Eschatology

In this innovative work in theological method and hermeneutics, Michael S. Horton uses the motif of the covenant as a way of binding together God's "word" and God's "act." Seeking an integration of theological method with the content of Christian theology, Horton emphasizes God's covenant as God's way of working for redemption in the world. Horton maintains a substantial dialogue with important philosophical figures and Christian theologians, ultimately providing scholars and serious students a significant model for approaching and understanding Christian theology.

FollowingCovenant and EschatologyandLord and Servant, this concluding volume of a four-part series examines Christian salvation from the perspective of covenant theology. InCovenant and Salvation, Michael Horton surveys law and gospel, union with Christ, and justification and theosis, conversing with both classical and contemporary viewpoints.

Jeon’s Biblical Eschatology explores the pattern of covenant eschatology, demonstrated and revealed in the Bible throughout redemptive history. In a sense, it is a revolutionary method to freshly examine and look at the entire redemptive history from the perspective of covenant eschatology because the Bible itself is the covenantal canon. Readers will marvel at how the author unpacks the pictorial pattern of covenant eschatology progressively revealed in the Bible. As we live in the Global Mission Age under the grace of God, it is vitally important and necessary to have a proper view of eschatology. Jeon’s book will guide believers to a biblically balanced understanding of eschatology and properly equip them with a biblical, covenantal, and eschatological worldview to live their lives for the glory of God, actively participating in the Global Mission under the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we eagerly wait for the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Building on Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama, this volume is part two of a three-part project surveying essential topics of Christian theology through the lens of covenant. In Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology, Michael Horton explores the topics that are generally grouped under the doctrines of God, humanity, and Christology. Rather than attempt a general systematic theology, Horton revisits these topics at the places where covenant and eschatology offer the most promising insight and where there is the most contemporary interest and debate.

This book explains key doctrines in theology from the perspective of biblical eschatology. Eschatology first appears in Genesis rather than in Revelation, for it is about the chief end of man and God's creation. It is placed in the beginning rather than at the end of theology as the central and foundational motif. "The chief end of man" in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, for instance, is an eschatological concept in nature as well as in redemption. Eschatology precedes redemption, but "the eschatology of nature" is fulfilled through "the eschatology of redemption" in Jesus Christ. The "Golden Chain" of Ordo Salutis and the progress of redemptive history will be interpreted from the perspectives of covenant, eschatology, and Christology.

This extensive and detailed analysis compares Paul with the author of 4 Ezra against the background of Sanders's portrayal of early Judaism. 4 Ezra and Paul would seem to have one significant point in common: their common displacement from the covenantal 'pattern of religion' which was so prevalent in Early Judaism. It is from this perspective that Longenecker undertakes his comparison.

In this final volume of a four-volume series, Michael Horton explores the origin, mission, and destiny of the church through the lens of covenantal theology. Arguing that the history of Israel and the covenant of grace provide the proper context for New Testament ecclesiology, Horton then shows how the church is constituted through the ascension of Christ, the Pentecost, and the Parousia and how it continues to live by the Word and sacraments. Horton's goal is to demonstrate the potential of a covenantal model for integrating the themes of the church as people and as place, with an urgent concern for contemporary practice.

In Participation and Covenant: Contours of a Theodramatic Theology, Moes develops a theological framework that has participation in the life of God in Christ through the Spirit as its integrative center. In doing so, he enters into conversation with covenant or federal theology, particularly as it has been presented by Michael Horton, in which the integrative center is the concept of the covenant. He argues that God's fundamental relationship with humanity does not entail a covenant ontology--a fundamentally legal and ethical relationship to God, as we find in Horton's presentation--but rather an ontology of participating in God's loving presence in Christ through the Holy Spirit. For this relationship we were created, and this participation is therefore natural to us. Accordingly, a theodramatic framework that incorporates a reframed understanding of divine-human covenants and that has participation in the life of God in Christ by the Spirit as its integrative center is better able to give direction for clearly communicating the gospel in our secular culture and for properly shaping our Christian identity and practice--in the face of the secularism that affects the church, too--than Horton's framework of covenant theology.