The Role of Covenant Theology in Early Reformed Orthodoxy

Abstract

THE ROLE OF COVENANT THEOLOGY in early Reformed orthodoxy has for most of last century and a half rarely been disputed. Ever since revival of interest in history of covenant theology in mid-nineteenth century, historians of doctrine have viewed development of Reformed covenant thought as, in Otto Weber's words, the of retaining history in view in opposition to a priori and absolutistic thinking of doctrine of decrees as first developed by Beza. There has been no consensus on whether origins of this conceptual means are to be found in Coccelus, in New England Puritans, in early German Reformed tradition, or as far back as Bullinger, but nearly everyone has agreed that covenant theology developed as an anodyne to abrasive double predestinarianism that was emerging in Calvinist circles in late