What Is New Covenant Theology: An Introduction, by A. Blake White. New Covenant Media, 2012, xiv + 60 pages, $13.99.

New Covenant Theology (hereinafter NCT[1]) is a modified form of dispensationalism that distances itself from the excesses of pretribulation-rapture premillennialism while still denying paedobaptism. In the words of one proponent, NCT “[modifies] both traditional Covenant Theology and traditional Dispensational Theology in the areas of ecclesiology (Israel/Church) and ethics (law/grace).”[2] Author A. Blake White explains that NCT is “a developing system of theology.”[3] It selectively blends elements of covenant theology within a basically dispensationalist perspective. Despite its name, it is not a form of covenant theology.

NCT argues that the Bible does not teach something unless it is stated in a specific text of Scripture.[4] NCT cannot accept the idea of a covenant of grace because “the Bible never uses such a term” (5–6). To this the covenant theologian would reply that the concept is biblical, though the term itself is not explicitly stated in Scripture. NCT “strives to limit itself to using the language of the Bible” (6, emphasis added). The covenant theologian might ask: Why “strives”? If the Bible must use a specific term for a concept to have validity, then the exegete must consistently hold to that practice and never deviate from it. The doctrines of Scripture must be strictly limited to those which are expressed in the very words of Scripture—and no other! That “covenant of grace” is not a biblical term does not mean that the concept cannot be true, any more than “Trinity” not being a biblical term means that the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be true.

God chose to speak to man in ordinary—albeit heightened—human language. The Word was meant to be understood. The inspired, authoritative, and inerrant Word uses ordinary human words and literary forms. God enables man to think his thoughts after him.[5] Studying the Bible as literature is a profitable undertaking. It is mistaken to claim that man cannot know a truth unless the Bible has a term for it.

God created man and gave him the task of naming all the creatures; God brought the creatures to Adam; Adam studied them and gave them appropriate names (Gen. 2:19–20). Significantly, God did not name the creatures; rather, he gave man the task of naming the creatures. Man in innocence did this appropriately; the work involved recognizing categories and relationships. Adam correctly recognized the differences between the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, cattle, and the creeping things that creep upon the earth, and categorized them correctly. After the fall man retains the ability to categorize things based upon study and observation. There is a correspondence between “earthly things” and “heavenly things” (John 3:12). There is no reason to doubt that man, born again by grace, and seeking to know the mind of the Spirit, can use his God-given reasoning ability to categorize heavenly things. The Holy Scriptures, being inspired by God, have an internal consistency that enables such a task. They are like a perfect gemstone that dazzles with brilliance when viewed from any angle.

The underlying assumption of NCT and other forms of biblicism[6] is that it is illegitimate for man to observe patterns, categories, and relationships; to make observations and logical deductions; to define biblical ideas. NCT assumes that the Bible cannot be treated like other literature. Since the Bible does not use the term “covenant of grace,” there is no such thing as a covenant of grace. Since the Bible does not specifically divide God’s holy law into the categories moral, ceremonial, and judicial, such distinctions are illegitimate.

Literary analysis involves examining a text to understand its meaning by studying elements, including storyline, setting, characters, point of view, themes, symbolism, imagery, figures of speech, tone, style, and context, among others. What is the essence of the biblical storyline? Where does a particular incident fit into the storyline? Why does the narrator mention one thing and omit another, or stress one thing and not another? These are appropriate areas of inquiry.

The Bible was not given to private individuals to try to figure out its meaning on their own; it was given to the church. Jesus promised that his Holy Spirit would guide his disciples—his church—into all truth. Man must listen to the church (see Matt. 18:17). Christians are to read the Bible with the church. We must not disregard this clear command of our Lord.

Where has the church expressed its understanding of Holy Scripture? In its creeds and confessions. These documents are not inspired, and they are subject to revision as the church’s understanding of Holy Scripture is expressed more perfectly. The creeds and confessions of the whole church express the trinitarian faith of Holy Scripture. If a sect denies the church’s understanding of the Trinity, it is no part of Christ’s church, but a cult. By the same token, if a local church makes a particular understanding of the end times (such as a pre-tribulation rapture or literal 1,000-year earthly kingdom) part of its official teaching required to be believed by all members, it is requiring something that the whole church has never required.[7] It is not reading the Bible with the church; it is not hearing the church in obedience to Christ. Dispensationalism must be rejected because its methodology has never been adopted by the church and is contrary to the historic teaching of the church.

According to White, “We believe the old covenant, as a whole, was temporary by divine design” (19). Note that adherents of NCT “believe” this. The appropriate response must be something like, “Chapter and verse, please!” No specific text of Holy Scripture teaches this; why should NCT believe this? White does not say. To believe such is inconsistent with NCT’s basic presupposition that all doctrine must be established with specific texts of Scripture.

Citing 2 Corinthians 3:5–11, White states: “Here, Paul has some strikingly negative things to say about the old covenant” (20). But the text he cites is not talking about the whole old covenant, but only the Mosaic administration of the old covenant (“the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone . . . the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face”). Covenant theology does not teach that the whole old covenant was done away with in Christ, but rather part of the Mosaic law. The Westminster Confession explains that the “ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament,” the “judicial laws . . . expired together with the State of Israel,” yet “the moral law doth forever bind all.”[8]

Citing Hebrews 8:6–13, White states: “It is clear that the new covenant will replace the old covenant” (22). What he means is that the new covenant replaces the old covenant wholesale; the old covenant has no further significance.[9] However, in the text cited, the contrast is not between the new covenant and the old covenant but between the new covenant and the Mosaic covenant (“on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt”). The Mosaic administration of the old covenant (specifically, the ceremonial law) passed away, not the entire old covenant. For if the entire old covenant passed away, then God’s solemn promise to Abraham, that he would be “a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee”—a promise that would extend to “a thousand generations” (Gen. 17:7 KJV; cf. Deut. 7:9, 1 Chron. 16:15, Ps. 105:8) and that is fulfilled in Christ (John 8:56, Rom. 4:3)—passed away as well. Since Hebrew men typically learned a trade and established themselves in business to be able to marry and support a (younger) wife, biblical generations were long—perhaps forty years;[10] thus, a thousand generations would translate into something like 35,000–40,000 years. But if the Abrahamic covenant was “an interim covenant, a parenthesis in redemptive history” (19) that passed away with the coming of Christ, then the promised thousand generations petered out after only two thousand years. What does that do to God’s reputation as one that “keepeth covenant” (Neh. 1:5 KJV)? White does not say.

White writes: “Another essential aspect of New Covenant Theology is its view that the old covenant law is a unit. It is a package deal” (25). Again, the covenant theologian would respond, “Chapter and verse, please!” Where does the Bible specifically state that this should be an “essential” view? More to the point, why adopt this idea if NCT “strives to limit itself to using the language of the Bible” (6)—and Scripture nowhere states that? Amazingly, NCT “[agrees] that some verses can safely be classified as moral, ceremonial, or civil”—a telling concession!—yet NCT theologians “find it unhelpful, and more importantly, unbiblical, to do so” (25, emphasis White’s).[11] Though the Bible does not specifically classify various commandments as moral, ceremonial, or judicial,[12] why cannot the church, carefully studying the various biblical laws and seeking to “rightly divide the Word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15 KJV, emphasis added[13]), classify them according to generally accepted, recognized categories? The Bible was written in ordinary human language and was intended to speak to the minds and hearts of men. Saints are to approach it with renewed minds (Rom. 12:2), not just quote biblical verbiage without engaging it. Preaching (exposition and application of a biblical text in the preacher’s own words, not merely quoting the inspired words) is fundamentally different from the public reading of Scripture.[14]

Why should classifying biblical laws be “unhelpful” (25)? If classifying species is helpful in biology, why is not classifying biblical laws helpful in theology? Why does NCT bind men’s consciences to a non-biblical methodology (limiting the exegete to using only the very words of Scripture, and disqualifying the use of non-biblical terms)?

White states: “The New Testament clearly teaches that we are no longer bound to the Sabbath Commandment” (29). Does it? Where? Again, chapter and verse, please! White quotes Colossians 2:16–17 (ESV): “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” He fails to point out that “Sabbath” in the original Greek is actually plural (cf. NKJV: “let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths,” emphasis added). He further cites Galatians 4:8–11, which speaks of observing “days[15] and months and seasons and years”—clearly references to the ceremonial sabbaths, not the weekly Sabbath.[16] White fails to prove that “the New Testament clearly teaches that we are no longer bound to the Sabbath Commandment;” he states it; he would like it to be true; but he does not prove it.[17] The NCT view of the Sabbath is antinomian, and appeals to fallen man’s desire to not be bound by the law of God.

White claims that NCT “ratchets up the call for righteous living”[18] (30). Actually, it is Christ who does this, not NCT. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows that it was God’s intent all along that the moral law must be obeyed from the heart, not just outwardly.

The author needs to prove—not just assume—that the New Testament believer is under Christ’s law alone. It is reading too much into the expression “subject to the law of Christ” (ἔννομος Χριστοῦ, ennomos Christou[19]) (31) to conclude that “we are not under the Mosaic law” (31). Christ emphatically stated: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law” (Matt. 5:17 KJV). His ethics are precisely those of the Old Testament moral law. He, the Lawgiver incarnate,[20] gave that law at the beginning, and it is perfect (Ps. 19:7); he is pleased with it; it needs no updating. It is “straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matt. 23:24) to think that the believer should refrain from lying only on the basis that the New Testament says, “lie not one to another” (Col. 3:9 KJV, emphasis added), rather than on the basis that the Old Testament says, “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another” (Lev. 19:11 KJV). God’s moral law has not changed; the ethical and moral requirements of both Old Testament and New Testaments are exactly the same.

White contends that “the new covenant community consists only of those who are indwelt by the Spirit. The church is to be a believer’s church” (43, emphasis White’s). Responding to this line of thinking, Gregg Strawbridge says: “If it can be proved that there are people under new covenant obligations (i.e., ‘in the covenant’) who become apostates, then the claim that only regenerate people are in the new covenant will be shown to be false.”[21] In support of this premise he cites Hebrews 10:29–31,

How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “vengeance is mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (NASB)

He points out that

only ten verses before the above passage, the writer cites the preeminent new covenant passage (Jer. 31:33–34) [where] the writer argues that some individuals who have been ‘sanctified’ (hagiazō, ‘set apart’ or ‘consecrated’) in ‘His people’ (the visible people of God) may commit apostasy.[22]

He also cites Hebrews 10:39; 12:15–17; 6:4–6; 4:7, 11; 10:35; John 15:2, 6; Romans 11:13–21; and 1 Peter 4:17, then observes that “these statements are quite meaningless if no one in the covenant can be broken off or judged.”[23] It is quite evident to all but Anabaptists that the visible church contains both wheat and tares (Matt. 13:30).

According to White, “It is not that Israel equals the church, as Covenant Theology teaches, but that Jesus is the climax and fulfillment of Israel and the church is the end-time Israel because it is united to Jesus Christ, her covenant head” (45, emphasis White’s).[24] White does not explain why he needs to coin the term “end-time Israel” when the Bible does not use that term. Were not Old Testament saints saved by the Christ who was to come (John 8:56, Rom. 4:3)? Were they not united to Christ, the covenant head? Is he asserting that Christ was absent during the Old Testament? Were the Old Testament saints saved apart from Christ? That is unthinkable! The apostle Peter courageously declared before a hostile Sanhedrin: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12 KJV).

In summary, White inconsistently follows NCT’s stated hermeneutic (to “limit itself to using the language of the Bible” [6]), following it when it suits him, ignoring it at other times. He fails to prove that the old covenant was temporary; that the law is a unit and cannot be divided into the categories moral, ceremonial, and judicial; that Christians are not under the law of Moses but only under the law of Christ; that all members of the new covenant community have the Holy Spirit and cannot apostatize; and that the church is not the continuation of Old Testament Israel but the “eschatological Israel.”[25] NCT is not the historic teaching of the Christian church but an adaptation of nineteenth-century dispensationalism. It does not read the Bible as an organic whole; it does not acknowledge the essential unity of Scripture but regards the old covenant as obsolete and no longer applicable. It is not based on careful exegesis but on wishful thinking. It must be rejected.

As I was writing this review, I listened to a sermon by John Reisinger, a proponent of NCT and an endorser of White’s book. As he closed his sermon, Reisinger said:

Israel did not inherit the blessings of the covenant because she never kept the covenant. Why do we inherit the blessings? Because One kept the covenant in our place. The glory of the new covenant is that God has given One in our place to live under the law and die under its awful curse, after he had fulfilled every one of its demands.

That is the gospel!—but it applies also to saints under the old covenant. If it does not, then God has two ways of salvation. But what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Rom. 4:3 KJV). Abraham was justified by faith “in the Lord” (יהוה YHWH, Gen. 15:6). This is precisely the same way that saints under the new covenant are saved: Our sins are laid upon our sinless substitute, the Lord Jesus—Yahweh incarnate—and his perfect righteousness is credited to us by faith. There is one way of salvation: through Christ. There is one church. That church has always included believers and their children. The New Testament nowhere teaches that the children of believers, which for two thousand years since the time of Abraham had been included in the covenant people, are now, under the new covenant, excluded. If the saved of Israel and the saved of the church are not the same body, then Christ has two peoples. That is latent dispensationalism. This was never the teaching of the church, but a novel doctrine introduced by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s and popularized by C. I. Scofield in his reference Bible, first published in 1909.[26]

As he closed his message, Reisinger said (to laughter!): “Every time those Jews whip those Arabs, I get out my Charles Larkins charts and go over them one more time.” That is very telling! That is where Reisinger’s heart really lies—with Christ-hating Jews; with the civil government of the modern nation-state of Israel. Reisinger is a closet dispensationalist. He does not think covenantally, sufficiently appreciating the overarching unity of Scripture, but dispensationally. At the outset I stated that NCT is a modified form of dispensationalism. Reisinger’s comments corroborate this.

How were Old Testament saints saved? By Christ! “Neither is there salvation in any other” (Acts 4:12)! Israel according to the flesh (Rom. 9:3) perished; Israel according to the election of grace (Rom. 11:15, cf. Heb. 11) was saved by grace, through faith in the Christ who was to come. At the present time, elect sinners who were given to the Son in eternity past, and regenerated by the Spirit in time, are saved by the Christ who has come; though they fall, they will not be utterly cast down, but will be restored, like the apostle Peter, by our merciful Savior. Not one of them will perish eternally; all will infallibly be brought to the court of heaven to worship the Lamb forever and ever. Christ will unfailingly “give eternal life to all whom you have given him” by the Father in eternity past (John 17:2).

There are not two ways of salvation. There are not two peoples of God, one that includes the children of believers and the other excluding them. God requires faith, a gift given by his sovereign Spirit. Salvation is all of grace. The unbelieving branches are broken off, and the branches that are wild by nature are grafted in. God is able to graft the believing natural branches back into his olive tree.[27] There is a single olive tree, including both Jew and Gentile: one church, saved eternally by Christ the Son, through the Spirit, to the glory of the Father. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Now apparently renamed “progressive covenantalism”; see https://thoughtsinthelight.com/2025/06/02/a-god-who-gives-grace-a-refutation-of-progressive-covenantalism/ (accessed 8-15-25).

[2] Richard C. Barcellos, In Defense of the Decalogue (Winepress Publishing, 2001), electronic edition, no page numbers.

[3] A. Blake White, What Is New Covenant Theology: An Introduction (New Covenant Media, 2012), 1.

[4] “The basic presuppositions of any system of theology must be established with specific texts of Scripture and not with theological terms.” John G. Reisinger, Abraham’s Four Seeds: A Biblical Examination of the Presuppositions of Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism (New Covenant Media, 1998), ii.

[5] There are limits, for God is infinite, and man is finite. While man cannot know the infinite God comprehensively, the regenerate, taught by the Holy Spirit, can know God truly (John 3:3, 17:3).

[6] Strict adherence to the letter of the Bible, along with a refusal to hear the church (cf. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biblicism, accessed 8-15-25).

[7] The church has legitimate executive and judicial authority, but not lawmaking authority. Its task is to teach the whole counsel of God: everything that is in the Bible and nothing that is not in the Bible.

[8] WCF 19.3–5 ff., with Scripture proofs, emphasis added.

[9] The old covenant ought not to be cited then (or preached from) at all, if his position is true.

[10] After Job’s troubles, he lived 140 years and saw four generations of descendants—each approximately thirty-five years (Job 42:16).

[11] White fails to explain how, according to his hermeneutic, one can “safely” make classifications that are “unbiblical” (25).

[12] Westminster Confession of Faith 19:4.

[13] Ὀρθοτομέω (orthotomeō), literally cut straight, thus handle aright. Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon (Logos Bible Software).

[14] Ezra read the book of the law before the assembled congregation; the Levites “gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading,” using their own (uninspired) words (Neh. 8:1–8, esp. v. 8, NKJV).

[15] Plural, not “the [Sabbath] day” (singular), emphasis added.

[16] Cf. Lev. 23 NKJV, which not only speaks of “a Sabbath” and “the Sabbath” (in reference to the weekly Sabbath) but also uses “Sabbath” or “Sabbaths” to refer to the feasts of firstfruits (v. 11), weeks (v. 15), trumpets (v. 24), and the day of atonement (v. 32), and also speaks of “the Sabbaths of the LORD” (plural, v. 38). Clearly this is the language the apostle Paul had in mind when he spoke of “Sabbaths” (plural) in Col. 2 and Gal. 4; in the New Testament there is a clear difference between “the Sabbath” (the weekly Sabbath) and “the Sabbaths” (the ceremonial Sabbaths). White fails to take this into account.

[17] Jesus’s declaration that he is Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. 12:8, Mark 2:28, Luke 6:5) makes no sense if the Sabbath is abolished; Christ is not the Lord of a non-entity.

[18] It is unclear if White sees the irony of stating that NCT “ratchets up the call for righteous living” immediately after arguing for an antinomian view of the Sabbath.

[19] “Under the law of Christ” or “subject to the law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21, NASB, ESV), William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (University of Chicago Press, 1957, 1975), 266.

[20] Gen. 49:10.

[21] Gregg Strawbridge, The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism (P&R Publishing, 2003), 280.

[22] Strawbridge, The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, 281.

[23] Strawbridge, The Case for Covenantal Infant Baptism, 282.

[24] White fails to cite where covenant theologians or the Reformed creeds teach that “Israel equals the church”; to make such an assertion without documentation is to bear false witness against Christian brethren, a violation of the Fifth Commandment.

[25] White needs to be reminded that “eschatological Israel” is not a biblical term, and thus an invalid category according to his hermeneutic.

[26] C. I. Scofield, ed., The Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford University Press, 1909, 1917, 1937, 1945).

[27] Rom. 11:17, 23–24.

Stephen A. Pribble is pastor of Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Lansing, Michigan. Ordained Servant Online, January, 2026