Covenant Theology
Covenant theology reads the whole Bible through three theological covenants: redemption, works, and grace. Here it is stated fairly from its own sources, traced to its roots, and weighed against the covenants God actually made in Scripture, with gratitude for what it gets right.
Recommended Order
Study in any order. This path builds each topic on the one before it.
Covenant theology is the Reformed framework that reads the whole Bible as God's work of redeeming one people, organized under three theological covenants it believes Scripture implies: a covenant of redemption, a covenant of works, and a covenant of grace.
Covenant theology took shape after the Reformation, from Zwingli's defense of infant baptism against the Anabaptists in 1520s Zurich, through Bullinger, Heidelberg, Westminster, Cocceius, and Witsius, while the free churches and later the Baptists answered it from the New Testament.
Covenant theology teaches that before creation the Father and the Son covenanted together to redeem a people; Scripture plainly reveals God's eternal plan of redemption, but calling it a covenant is an inference, and its classic form assumes a redemption limited to the elect.
The covenant of works is the Reformed teaching that before the fall God promised Adam and his descendants eternal life for perfect obedience; Scripture plainly teaches Adam's probation and headship, but it never calls Eden a covenant, so we hold those truths without the inferred covenant.
The covenant of grace is the Reformed teaching that after the fall God made one saving covenant, administered through every biblical covenant from Genesis 3 to the New Covenant; we gladly agree that salvation has always been by grace through faith in Christ, but the covenants God actually made have different parties and terms and cannot be folded into one.
Presbyterian and other Reformed churches baptize the infants of believers as a sign of the one covenant of grace, as Israel circumcised its sons; we baptize believers only, because the New Covenant is made with those who know the Lord and, in the New Testament, baptism always follows repentance and faith.
Covenant theology reads God's promises to Israel as fulfilled in Christ and His church; we answer that Gentile believers are grafted in to share Israel's blessings without taking them away, and that God will keep every promise to Israel as He gave it.
Covenant theologians and dispensationalists stand on the same Scripture, preach the same Christ, and teach one way of salvation; we differ over covenants Scripture does not state, how to read God's promises, Israel, and baptism, and we hold our convictions as brothers under Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant.