Dispensationalism vs covenant theology

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Charliesj

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I’m a convert to Catholicism from evangelical Protestantism. While having a conversation with an evangelical friend (he’s been exploring the early church and I’ve been gently guiding him and praying he’ll see the light like I did) he said he’s starting to question dispensationalism and wanted to know if the Catholic position was dispensationalism or “covenant theology”.
I told him that it’s definitely not dispensationalism, but I’m not sure about covenant theology.

So my question is this; what exactly is covenant Theology, and is that the position of the Catholic Church?
 
Charliesj said:
…he said he’s starting to question dispensationalism and wanted to know if the Catholic position was dispensationalism or “covenant theology”.
I told him that it’s definitely not dispensationalism, but I’m not sure about covenant theology.

So my question is this; what exactly is covenant Theology, and is that the position of the Catholic Church?
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I don’t know if you’d call covenant theology the “Catholic position” or not. The Church definitely teaches that one of the ways God interacted with humanity was through covenants. See this section in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

As to your question about “what exactly is covenant Theology”, I was unable to locate any brief definition (from a Catholic source). Here is Dr. Hahn’s instruction regarding covenants as contained in his free online Bible study titled “Genesis to Jesus”. In length it’s probably only 2 pages, big print. 🙂 I think you’d find it very interesting and helpful.
(Dr. Scott Hahn is a professor of Biblical Theology at the Franciscan University in Steubenville, OH.)
 
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From your Wikipedia link:
Covenentalists call these three covenants “theological” because, though not explicitly presented as such in the Bible, they are thought of as theologically implicit, describing and summarizing a wealth of scriptural data.

To my untutored ear the whole thing sounds thoroughly unBiblical. As far as I’m aware, the Catholic Church recognizes two covenants, the first with Abraham and the Jewish people, the second with the Christian Church through Christ the Redeemer.
 
BartholomewB said:
From your Wikipedia link:
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Just for the record, it wasn’t my Wikipedia link; it is the Wikipedia link. Wiki isn’t the final word on anything, but it is a good starting point, and the footnotes usually provide a springboard for further research. As for me, I am a Catholic convert. I ran across Covenant Theology when I was a Protestant (pentecostal, then Baptist), but I never got into it, and at my age, I don’t have the time to do a deep study.

D
 
I do not know all of the Protestant theological work in Covenant Theology. I know Catholic convert Dr. Scott Hahn has some done work as a Catholic on the subject, so I don’t believe it is, in general, in contradiction with Catholicism, and I don’t think it’s something rejected by the Church. I don’t think the Church has a one or the other position on covenant theology.
 
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Here is the link to the wiki “Covenantal Theology (Catholic Church)” article. As you can see in the opening paragraph below (I underlined), the revival is fairly recent.
Covenantal theology is a distinctive approach to Catholic biblical theology stemming from the mid-twentieth century recovery of Patristic methods of interpreting Scripture by scholars such as Henri de Lubac. This recovery was given further impetus by Dei verbum, the Second Vatican Council’s “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation”, and consolidated in the section on Scripture Catechism of the Catholic Church (nos. 101–41). These developments gave rise to an approach that emphasizes the “four senses” of Scripture within a framework that structures salvation history via the biblical covenants, in combination with the techniques of modern biblical scholarship.
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(DaveBj’s link connects you to the Protestant, Reformed perspective. It does contain a link to the above Catholic entry.)
 
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So the right answer, it turns out, is neither two covenants – which I thought was the Catholic view – nor three covenants, which Wikipedia gives as the Calvinist view (the covenants of redemption, works, and grace), but no fewer than seven covenants:

The biblical covenants (Edenic, Adamic, Noahite, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New or Messianic) are taken to be the chief structural framework for salvation history.

Who’d a thunk it.

 
Right, but that’s just one optional way of interpreting salvation history. There are other ways of doing Catholic theology that are different.
 
BartholomewB said:
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Agathon:
Doesn’t the Church hold to Supersessionism though?
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Some Catholic theologians do, but I think they’re a minority.
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Why? It was the dominant position in the early days of the Church going back to Paul.
 
Agathon said:
Why? It was the dominant position in the early days of the Church going back to Paul.
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I saw something on another website recently about Justin Martyr and the “two Israels”. The question is whether the “new Israel” replaces the old one or whether it is added to the old one. I’ll see if I can find it. From memory, the view that they are added is the one that prevailed.
 
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