Who's In, Who's Out? The Presbyterian vs. Reformed Baptist Debate on the Covenant of Grace

Good evening, everyone. Good to see you all. Praise the Lord. Welcome to the debate,

Who is Included in the Covenant of Grace? My name is

Wade Orsini, pastor of Apology at Church Utah and moderator for tonight's debate.

Before I move forward, I would like to give thanks. I'd like to thank the elders in Congregation and Mission Church for allowing us to meet here this evening.

Thank you for all those who volunteered to make this happen. I also wanna thank

Pastor Jason Wallace and Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Berean Presbyterian Church in Clearfield and Apology at Church in Mesa, Arizona.

As Christians, we ought to be people who seek out the truth. The truth is so very important to us.

I think we can all recognize God has deposited truth in the revelation of the

Holy Scriptures and in His Son, Jesus Christ. And since God has spoken truth, it is humanity's job to seek it, observe it, and even to obey it.

I pray that we all share that same sentiment. But with that said, we are not going to witness some sort of fierce debate tonight of mortal enemies, men of two religious systems, chasms apart from one another or even

Calvinists versus Molinists or something like that. We are going to witness the conversation that has played out time and time again in friendly circumstances after church discussions, around dinner tables, and in my case, breaks between speakers at ReformCon.

This conversation is between God -fearing, Christ -loving, and Scripture -honoring brothers.

And that's what it is. These are brothers. I can't emphasize that enough.

If any one of us, a single person, leaves here tonight with a shred of disunity, then we've not done what we've sought to do here.

In Utah, especially us confessional Christians, whether Paido or Credo Baptist, ought to stand firm together.

So this isn't a battle between two armies, Presbyterians and Baptists.

This is a discussion in the foxholes and trenches between brothers of the same army, while together we take ground on the enemy of this world, the prince of the power of the air.

The proverb in the word of God says, iron sharpens iron. We sharpen each other.

We refine each other. We've lost the maturity and patience to do that these days.

We often talk over one another when it comes to this subject. But both of these men have agreed to not misrepresent the beliefs that each one holds to.

And we need that. We truly need that. And some of you will leave here tonight even further affirmed in your covenantal stance, while some of you may even turn investigator.

Some pastoral advice for you though, tread slowly, listen carefully, turn to the word of God, look at your system in light of the holy scriptures, not the holy scriptures in light of your system.

But with that in mind, I'd like to introduce you to the debaters of this evening.

To your right is Eric Yeager from the 1689

Baptist Federalist View. He is a layman and member at Apology at Church in Mesa, Arizona.

Eric is husband to his wife, Summer Yeager, of the Christian podcast

Sheologians and father to five children. I almost didn't wanna bring this up because it's doubtful that any of you have heard of him.

But Eric is here also under the blessing of his father -in -law, the apologist,

Dr. James R. White. I'm sure he was hoping for a plug. So there you go,

Pastor James. When I was a deacon at Apology at Church in Arizona, it was

Eric who helped many of the advanced theological training teachers, one

I was a part of. He helped us to understand the most consistent Baptist covenant theological view, 1689

Baptist Federalism. I still have my handwritten notes from the phone calls that we've had together when we went over that.

Welcome, Eric. And to your left is

Zach Lautenschlager, arguing from a Presbyterian covenant theological view.

He is a layman and member at Berean Presbyterian Church in Clearfield, Utah. Zach is husband to his wife,

Amy, and father to his seven children. If you didn't know, Zach has played an integral part in the formation of red state reform and Action for Life, organizations connected to EAN and abortion now with Apology at Church to end the wholesale slaughter of the unborn in our country.

Now, one of the most enjoyable things that you'll ever come to find about Zach is his vast knowledge of history.

Truly, find him after the debate and hear him talk about American history. It's truly wonderful, especially the biblical principles that led the founders of our country.

You've got to hear him. Welcome, Zach. You may have already noticed, but besides the common bond that these brothers have in the

Lord Jesus Christ, they are both connected in some way to Apology at Church in some regard.

These brothers have actually sat in the same worship service, in the same Oakwood pews to hear

Jeff Durbin preach too long. They have partaken of the same supper of our

Lord as congregants. May both they and us audience members remember that.

Again, please give us a round of applause for both debaters tonight. From this moment forward,

I will ask you to hold all applause until the very end of the debate. The question each debater will be seeking to answer tonight is who is included in the covenant of grace?

Who is included in the covenant of grace? As we all have been discussing this topic for many years, we realize the debate typically moves towards baptism, mode of baptism and to household scripture passages.

We have all agreed here tonight in the formation of this debate that it should lie in the understanding of the covenants.

This is really a debate about covenants, not so much about baptism. And that's what we've come to discover tonight.

And so that is what we shall do. Real quickly, the debate format is as follows.

Each debater will have an opening statement for 20 minutes allotted. Then we will have a time of rebuttal for each debater, 10 minutes allotted.

At that point after rebuttals, we will take a 10 minute bathroom break.

Please at that point, get back to your seats quickly. And I would ask you during that time of break that you would refrain from getting into conversation with the debater so they could go use the facilities, come back real quick, but I would encourage you to talk with them after the debate.

Coming back from the break, we will have cross examination between the two for 15 minutes.

Then we will have each a closing statement, five minutes total.

At that point, we will end our debate with 20 minutes of questions from the audience.

And I will ask you in the back, right outside these double doors to the left, there is a table with paper and pens and a basket.

And if you have specific questions for the debaters tonight, I would have you write that question on that piece of paper, put it in the basket, and please do so by the end of the break.

Because at that point, I'm gonna review the questions and we're gonna try to go through as many as possible.

But as you know, if there is a lot, we might not be able to reach them all. Now, before we fully begin,

I would like to ask Pastor Jason Wallace to pray for us and ask the Lord to bless our time.

So if you would come up, brother, please. Let's pray.

Our gracious heavenly father, we rejoice at the unity that you have given us as brothers and sisters in Christ.

For the years of ministry that members of this congregation the mission and the

OPC churches have had together, standing together on the basis of truth.

We pray, Father, you would bless this evening because we long for greater unity.

We long for clarity. We long to speak with one voice to the world.

We recognize our own sinfulness, our own frailties, Lord. We do not look for perfection, but we long that your church would be one.

Help us this evening, Lord. Pray for my brother

Eric and for my brother Zach. We pray that you would give them clarity. Help us all,

Lord, to be good Bereans, to search the scriptures, to know what is true, to hold everything to the light of your word and to seek your glory and the peace, the purity and the progress of your church.

It's in Christ's holy name we pray these things. Amen. Amen. Thank you,

Pastor Jason. We will now start with Zach Lautenschlager taking the first opportunity at the opening statement.

You will have 20 minutes. Thank you all for coming tonight. My name is

Zach Lautenschlager. You can call me Zach. You're supposed to laugh. I want to express thanks to Pastor Wade for putting this together, for conceptualizing it as we were sitting around as brothers discussing these topics.

And when we got done and he couldn't answer the questions, he said, let's have a debate and Eric will be the champion.

And I said, that's a great idea because I wanna get to know Eric better and hang out with you brothers. And debating sounds like a fun way to do that.

And that's the spirit of this debate. Bible tells us that iron sharpens iron and that is a metaphor for one brother speaking with another.

Now, if you scrape two pieces of iron together hard enough to change the shape of at least one of them, that's what you're doing when you're sharpening it, there are gonna be some sparks.

If there aren't sparks, you're probably not actually changing the iron. But the scriptural admonition there is not to sharpen our iron so that we can cut one another.

It's to become sharper in our understanding of God's word. That's the point. And that's the spirit in which we do this tonight.

Our goal is to further the discussion and debates,

I think sometimes are more beneficial for the debaters than for the listeners. In the same way that when you have to get up and talk, you have to study your talking points more, you have to delve into it further, you have to study other perspectives.

And so that's very exciting, that's fun to do. But there's another thing that we hope this debate will do.

And that is lend to the discussion on how we discuss things as brothers. How many discussions have you been on a part of or watched online and you turn your phone on and scroll to that part of Facebook and it singes your eyebrows.

And these are brothers talking about baptism. Reformed brothers who probably agree on almost everything else.

And they're ready to call in, I don't know, maybe drone strikes on one another sometimes.

Keep talking, I'm triangulating your position. Well, you know what, some sparks, that's okay.

But when we're done, you know what, if we didn't know that brother or sister before this discussion, it should have been a good enough exchange to where we go and friend one another because we like each other better now.

If we're not able to do that, I'm not saying you have to friend people necessarily, but if you don't feel some kinship when you're done, maybe you need to take a step back.

So that's the goal. But that doesn't mean don't make your point, right? It doesn't mean don't sharpen the iron, quite the opposite.

It's serious, we should take these matters seriously. At the same time, we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously.

And that's the balance we want to strike. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 tell us all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Other translations say thoroughly equipped for good work. Now, Paul wrote this about the

Old Testament. It does apply to the entire canon.

It applies both to the new and the old, for that is all scripture. But when

Paul wrote it, scripture was the Old Testament. And for most people, scripture was in Greek.

It was the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. That's what

Paul was talking about. And so God gives us point blank an explanation of the importance and value of the

Old Testament. This scripture, along with a few others, is the basis for what we call hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the study of how we study the Bible. It is based, as we understand it, on the reformed principle of sola scriptura.

And it is a system of rules that tell us how the Bible requires us to interpret the

Bible. Historically, this concept has also been referred to as the analogy of faith.

And it applies the truth that the whole Bible is the word of God, all of it necessary for faith and practice.

Now, this necessary requires that all things stated in the Old Testament be applied to this day unless it is expressly changed by the

New Testament. Now, this is the core of hermeneutics. When we hear it, and sometimes theologians will throw that term out, right?

Who's hermeneutics? And why does he have such an odd name? Well, it's a Greek word, and it means how we understand the message from God.

That's what it means, hermeneutics. Now, when we say the analogy of faith, we mean it is analogous with placing faith in God.

We also place faith in the consistency of his word, that he has not given us a conflicting revelation.

That is why we must look at it and say, well, we are told that certain things have changed since the

Old Testament, but we are told point blank, expressly.

We live in a Christian world today in which some people will expressly tell you, no, none of that Old Testament stuff applies unless it's repeated in the

New Testament. That's abominable. You can't read 2

Timothy 3, 16 and 17 and come away saying, yeah, well, we definitely don't need that Old Testament stuff. All scripture, the entire

Old Testament, is what Paul was saying, is breathed out by God. And without it, you will not have the complete revelation of God.

In other words, you will not have everything you need for faith and practice, for every good work.

Now, this understanding of hermeneutics, this biblical understanding of hermeneutics, also necessarily acquires that the more clear passage be used to interpret the less clear.

What that does is that saves us from eisegeting. Now, these are two words that theologians throw around.

You've probably heard them, exegesis and eisegesis. Exegesis means coming to the scripture and letting it inform us, and then moving forward.

Eisegesis means coming to the scripture and informing it. In other words, laying our opinion over God's word.

We are made in God's image, and then we are fallen, which means it's not enough for us in our fallen sinful humanness to be in God's image.

We want to be God, and that's the ultimate problem, right? Who do we worship instead of God as fallen sinful human beings?

Ourselves. So what is our religion? The worship of me. And what is the revelation of this religion?

My opinion. That's eisegesis. And we are all prone to it every day.

We are all human. And so that is why we must use the more clear passage, something that is said very clearly when we are coming to another passage that says, well, this passage could mean that, and it could mean this.

And we'll have some examples as to what that means. All this comes down to the importance of interpreting

Scripture by Scripture. We must start every discussion, every debate right here.

The importance of interpreting Scripture by Scripture. Now, this is an established understanding across the entire

Reformed world and beyond. This is nothing new. And it is agreed to universally by Presbyterian and Baptist alike.

R .C. Sproul Sr. and John MacArthur both signed one of the major polemics of our day, the

Chicago Statement on hermeneutics, drafted by J .A. Packer. And it articulates most of the hermeneutic principle, if not all of it.

So to be clear, that's not a distinctly Presbyterian thought. Examples of failing to obey 1

Timothy 3, follow the analogy of faith and use biblical hermeneutics would be the dispensational understanding of the covenants, which no one is representing here today.

It's because we all believe it deeply violates hermeneutical principle. The dispensational understanding of God's covenants with us begins with the assumption that the

Old Testament has at least limited value and application. Now, not all dispensationalists will tell you that unless it's repeated in the

New Testament, it doesn't apply, but they're gonna act that way. They're going to come and bring assumptions that say there was a big reset when

Jesus died and that Old Testament stuff, that's passing away. They will assume that unless it's repeated in the

New Testament, it doesn't apply, in other words. And they will use less clear passages to interpret the more clear.

The result, if you're using an unbiblical hermeneutic is eisegesis. And when we're talking about a dispensational perspective, it is the false teaching that there is a different church and a different gospel between the

Old Testament and the New Testament. That is the assumption. Now, if you look at those same passages using a biblical hermeneutic, which means the

Old Testament is the word of God. And yes, we are told in the New Testament in some places that parts of the

Old Testament do not apply in the same way or at all. But we assume that everything else does.

You're gonna come away with continuity between the Old Testament and New Testament, same church, same gospel. Here's another example of bad hermeneutics.

You'll hear this sometimes thrown around in baptism debates. Well, the New Testament doesn't command that women should take communion.

Now, very few people who try to make that argument are actually proposing it as true. They're trying to make a point.

But the point is that nowhere in the New Testament does it expressly say that women should be admitted to the table for communion.

And then we have verses like 1 Corinthians 11, 27, 28, which say, therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the

Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the blood and body of the Lord. But let a man examine himself and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Now, what does that word translated man mean? Well, you will see it translated differently in the

ESV, which is my usual translation. It is translated a person.

If you look at the New King James, which is what I just read, it says a man. Why is that? Well, the Greek word is anthropos, from which we get anthropological, anthropod, anthropology meaning mankind or man.

Now, when we say in English a man, we usually mean a member of the human race who is male.

But when we say man without the definite article, we may mean a male and we may mean either gender, but a member of the human race, mankind.

The same is true in the Greek. You have to assume which one it is. The local context, you can argue that this is given to the whole church.

So obviously it means mankind in this case, but you can't argue it conclusively. And this is the blessing of 2

Timothy 3, 16 and 17 because you can go to the Old Testament for context and say, okay, this concept of eating and drinking together as a ceremonial right or sacrament is not new.

There's a lot of it going on in the Old Testament. And God in his infinite wisdom says again and again and again,

Deuteronomy 12, 18, Deuteronomy 16, 11 and 14, Leviticus 10, 14, Numbers 18, 11 and 19, your sons and your daughters shall partake of this with you.

Male and female expressly, it's not left, there's no doubt. And that includes the Passover, expressly, all the feasts.

And there were multiples at that time. This is one of the things that we're expressly told has changed. The sacraments have changed a little bit, a lot.

But one thing that hasn't changed, whether or not males and females can partake in a sacrament that involves eating and drinking.

Now we can go back to all of the New Testament passages in which it doesn't expressly say women may partake and say, guess what?

The Old Testament gives us context and it answers that question, point blank. Does anthropos mean male or mankind?

Clearly it means mankind, where women are included. Now see how easy that is?

It's a lot of fun when we actually use the entire Bible. The question we are trying to answer tonight is who is included in the covenant of grace or said another way, who is included in the covenant community?

First of all, what is the covenant of grace? This is my perspective and this is the

Presbyterian perspective. God relates to his people through covenants. Now, everybody has to agree that our names for those covenants and the ways we choose to describe them are man -made.

We can talk about the Adamic covenant. We can talk about the redemptive covenant. We can talk about the

Mosaic, the Abrahamic, the Davidic. We can talk about the new covenant, but these are observations.

Now they're legitimate observations, but it's important to recognize that they are human observations.

Scripture does tell us that God began relating to man through grace as soon as he fell into sin.

As soon as man fell into sin, God's gracious actions toward us started. That is scripturally clear.

Romans 4 tells us that God saved Abraham and David through faith. Hebrews 11 tells us of numerous other

Old Testament saints who were saved through faith, as does the Old Testament itself. Romans 4 .16

tells us that this Old Testament faith was of grace. In the same breath, the same phrasing in which

God tells us that Abraham was saved by faith, in the same way that he tells us David was saved by faith, he says that it is of grace, telling us that just as New Testament faith is now by grace, so was

Old Testament faith, confirming the eternal truth of Ephesians 2 .8. For by grace, you have been saved through faith.

This is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. It's sola fide.

It is not your own doing today. As members of the Reformed faith, we believe that God quickens all the elect, Old Testament and new, giving us faith by his grace.

It is not our work. So as humans, we observe God's overarching gracious action to all the elect,

Old Testament and new, and from the Presbyterian perspective, refer to it as God's covenant of grace.

So that is how we would say, what is the covenant of grace? That's one half of the question, right?

Who is included in the covenant of grace? Okay, so what's the covenant of grace and who is included?

The Bible refers to the elect, Old Testament, new, as the ecclesia, or the assembly. Ecclesia is the word most often translated church in the

New Testament, which was of course written in Greek. But we also understand that that word is used throughout the

Old Testament. When Jesus read or quoted, mostly quoted from the

Old Testament, when Paul quoted from it, when anyone quoted from it in the

New Testament, they quoted from it in Greek, just as we quote from it in English. And that Greek word ecclesia is throughout the

Old Testament again and again and again and again and again throughout Deuteronomy, specifically four and five and chapter 31.

And then throughout the rest of it, you can look at it in Judges, you can look at it in multiple other places. Ecclesia is the word God uses to describe the covenant community.

In Deuteronomy four and five, when God commands Moses to gather the ecclesia of the Lord, it is in order to proclaim the covenant, the

Mosaic covenant. The church in the Old Testament is the same, exactly the same word as the church in the

New Testament. People who place their faith in God, who professed faith in Him, and their children are referred to as the ecclesia of the

Lord. The end of Deuteronomy, and what does Deuteronomy mean? It means the repeating of the law. The end of Deuteronomy in chapter 31, the last thing, one of the last things we have is the song of Moses.

Now at this time, you can see the song of David, you can see the song of Deborah, you can see the song of, what's her name?

Moses' sister. Miriam, thank you. And this is an expression, it's almost a summary of, okay, here's everything that happened.

We saw the whole thing, now you wanna watch the trailer. Do you want to have all of it packaged up together in an artistic way?

It's the song. So the song of Moses recited before the entire ecclesia of Israel.

Same concept. Now one thing that we are told point blank, perfectly clearly, is that children of members of the ecclesia are included in that ecclesia.

Now that ecclesia simply means covenant community. That's what it is. And in God's gracious action, by God's grace, these children are included in that covenant or in the covenant of grace.

Now you may have a different definition of covenant of grace, and that's okay. It's just a man -made phrase.

It's an observation. But it's not an observation that children of believing parents are themselves members of the covenant community.

It's not up for debate. What we're actually arguing over is whether or not that's still the case.

Because we are told point blank. Genesis 17 and 18, Psalms 105. In Genesis 17,

God tells Abraham, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be

God to you and to your offspring after you. Genesis 18, that's Genesis 17, seven. Genesis 18, 19, for I have chosen, this is

God speaking, for I have chosen him, that's Abraham, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the

Lord by doing righteousness and justice. And Psalm 105 tells us just how long that lasts.

God remembers his covenant forever. The word that he commanded for a thousand generations.

Do you know how long a thousand generations is? We're not there yet. And in Hebrew, that word thousand is a strong poetic device saying forever.

That's why it says forever, a thousand generations. Now, what including children in the covenant does and does not mean?

It is a command or call to holiness or being set apart. This is what God says. He says, your children are holy.

Set apart to him. That means he claims our children. He says, they're mine.

In fact, he refers to them that way sometimes. It is not salvation. Never has been.

It's not a guarantee. Membership in the covenant of grace, if you want to call it that, if you're gonna use the term covenant of grace to describe general covenant membership, it can't mean salvation.

Now, this is what the Bible tells us clearly. The debate is whether or not the New Testament changed it.

That's the discussion. To claim that children are now excluded must be proven from scripture.

Anything else would deny the truth of 2 Timothy 3. It would be to assume discontinuity.

That's just another way of saying, I'm gonna assume that I can trim out parts of the

Bible without warrant, that my eisegesis, my worship of me, the religion of Zach and the revelation

Zach has given says that I don't like this part of the Old Testament. And so, boop, let's trim it out, okay?

Now, that's what I would be doing if I assumed discontinuity, or if I made an insufficient argument for removing children from the covenant under the

New Testament. Therefore, the burden of proof lies on the

Baptist perspective. The Old Testament tells us point blank, children are part of the covenant community.

If you want to make the argument that in the New Testament, that is no longer true, you may not assume. That is to deny

God's word. You must prove it. Thank you,

Zach. We will now have Eric give his opening statement, 20 minutes allotted.

There is a decided unfairness here in the height of the stools compared to the physical realities.

Zach thinks he's using it for sympathy. Perhaps, I do what I can. All right, well, thank you.

I don't have a whole lot to add. My name is Eric Yeager. I was introduced at the beginning. Thank you, everybody, for being here tonight.

This is a very, very important discussion. I am glad I'm gonna echo what

Brother Lautner said. What Brother Lautner said, this here is to prove the fact that we're united in Christ.

We've been purchased by the same blood. We are part of the same body. We will spend eternity together with one another.

And if you look around the room, you will spend eternity with the people here. This is important. This is unfortunately an issue that divides us ecclesiastically.

So we need to talk about it. But we're united in Christ. And so thank you,

Pastor Wade. Thank you to everybody who was involved. Thank you, Pastor Wallace, for letting Zach be here this evening.

And I think we will get going with that. So good evening.

Once again, it is my honor to be here tonight. The question before us is, who is included in the covenant of grace?

Membership within the covenant of grace always has been, is, and always will be reserved for the elect alone.

Let's make sure we have a basic understanding of two terms, grace and covenant. Grace is unmerited favor, but not all grace is identical.

Not every type of grace justifies sinners before a holy God. The type of grace illustrated by God in sending rain upon the just and the unjust is truly gracious.

Humanity has not earned this favor, and though they receive it, it is not the type of grace that justifies sinners before a holy

God. God condescending to make a covenant in a covenantal relationship with Adam is truly gracious.

But mere covenantal condescension does not merit Adam's eternal presence with God. Much as grace can be used in several ways, so too can the term covenant.

There's covenants between human parties, covenants between God and man, and even the covenant of redemption between the members of the

Trinity. Each of these covenants have different parties and are different types of covenants.

There are covenants between equals and covenants between a greater party and a lesser party. If covenants have different parties, they are different covenants.

Much as Solomon's covenant with wife number one was a different covenant than his covenant with wife number 700.

Different wife means different parties. Different parties, different substance, different covenants.

Some covenants grant blessing to the lesser party strictly out of a loving kindness of the greater party, while some covenants require obedience from the lesser party in order for that party to receive that blessing.

If covenants have different precepts, different rules, they are, excuse me, they are different covenants.

For example, the precept of do this and live versus the precept of live and then do this.

These are different ways of receiving covenant blessing. Different precepts means different substance, means different covenants.

Some covenants, though having the same parties and precepts, have different promises. For example,

I can have two different covenants with the same bank, one to pay X dollars for a house and one to pay the same amount over the same period for a different house.

Same parties and terms, yet different results or promises. Different promises, different substance, different covenants.

If two covenants have different covenant condition, then they have different substances. And if they have different substances, they are different covenants.

Not much ink has been spilled on this topic. And while nuances do exist on particular points, there's broad agreement on these categories amongst the reformed.

Covenants are oath -bound arrangements comprised of parties, precepts, and promises or penalties.

The oath aspect is vitally important. Prior to the binding of an oath, a covenant is not a covenant.

There may be the sure promise of a coming covenant, but until the oath, these promises remain just that.

They remain promises. Much as a marriage engagement is the promise of a coming covenant, the covenant is not enforced until the oath ceremony.

What is the covenant of grace? It is the oath -bound arrangement that Westminster Larger Catechism 30 brings the elect into a state of salvation.

With whom is the covenant made? Westminster Larger Catechism 31, with Christ as the second

Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed. And looking at this topic, we must use the same hermeneutical principles that we would use in every other area of the

Bible. We recognize the genre of literature that we're reading, and we read it accordingly. The covenant may be its own genre, or it can be set into other forms of literature.

What is the immediate context of the various historical covenants? What are the parties, the precepts, the promises that are contained within each covenant?

After identifying the immediate context, we then look at how the covenant fits into the larger narratives.

Finally, we can analyze the typological usage of these texts by the apostles, and then form our covenantal system.

If we use our conclusion to interpret our initial analysis, or if we use a metaphysic different than the apostles, we have erred.

This is the result, not of exegesis, but of tradition. In analyzing the historical covenants, two terms are vital to a proper understanding.

With a new historical, when a new historical covenant is established, we read that a covenant is keroth, it is cut.

When an existing covenant is being affirmed, we typically see the term hechem, and I don't speak

Hebrew, so I hope I pronounced it right. In bringing to pass his unchanging eternal plan in history,

God condescended to make a covenant of works with Adam. Adam broke this covenant, and as the federal representative of humanity, he and his posterity received the penalties of the broken covenant.

In Genesis 3 .15, God promised to bring about the seed of the woman to reverse the curse.

And then with Noah, God promised to maintain order. And finally, we get to Abraham.

In Abraham, we see three specific promises. He received the promises of a lineage, a land, and a

Lord, culminating initially in the land of Canaan and ultimately finding its fulfillment in Christ.

In Genesis 12, God promises that he will make Abraham a great nation. He will bless him and make his name great.

In him, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. This was a sure promise, but if you look at the text, these promises were not at that time sealed by an oath.

No oath, no formal covenant. At that time, it was only a promise. That oath comes in Genesis 15.

Yahweh comes to Abraham again, reiterates his previous promise. Abraham believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness, and then a covenant is cut.

A covenant is keroth. Abraham brought animals, split them in half. A deep sleep fell upon him.

Yahweh alone passed through the animals and accepted the full responsibility of its fulfillment. And then in verse 18, it says, on that day,

Yahweh cut a covenant with Abraham. We see here the parties, Yahweh and Abraham and his descendants.

The precepts, they're all on God. I will bless you and you will be blessed. The promises are a lineage, a land and a

Lord. We see later that while these promises are guaranteed corporately, they are not guaranteed individually.

In Genesis 17, when Abraham was 99 years old, we read this, quote, walk before me and be perfect, that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly.

God expands his blessing from one nation to many nations. And then in verse seven says,

I will establish my covenant. Now notice the term here is not keroth. It's not the cutting of a new covenant.

It's the expansion of an existing covenant. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be

God to you and to your offspring after you. And God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.

This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised.

You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

So the covenant blessing sealed by an oath in chapter 15 indicates that those corporate blessings will surely be accomplished by God.

Yet here in 17, we see the same covenant has temporal expansion blessings that are to come to pass by obedience.

And therefore not every individual will partake in that blessing. They could be cut off, especially by way of neglecting the sign of circumcision.

We cannot simply read the Abrahamic covenant through a predetermined lens. Broadly speaking, the idea of conditional or unconditional covenants is a useful category, but it's not that black and white.

The text must govern our interpretation. The Abrahamic covenant has dual aspects.

One, God will certainly bring the blessings to pass corporately. Two, those corporate blessings, while guaranteed, do not go to every individual and are to come to pass by obedience.

We can get into that more later. Who are the covenant parties? Yahweh, Abraham, his offspring.

What are the covenant precepts? God will unilaterally bless Abraham corporately, yet not every individual will be blessed.

Individuals must be obedient to gain certain blessings and may be cut off. Abraham will not be cut off.

Notice the dual nature of the covenant precepts. What are the covenant promises or penalties?

Abraham has promised a lineage, offsprings in an offspring, a land, Canaan in a heavenly country, and lords, many kings will come from him and the king of kings will come from him.

Notice the dual aspects of the covenant promises. Disobedience will lead to them being cut off.

Abraham has a covenant with two aspects. It is gracious. God will accomplish his promises and he will do so through those who keep the terms of the covenant.

Those who do not keep the terms are cut off. The Abrahamic covenant is cut with Abraham and confirmed with Isaac and Jacob.

This is not the only divine human covenant that God cut off. The next time we see God cut a different covenant is during the time of Moses.

In fulfillment of Genesis 15, 13 to 14, remembering his covenant with the patriarchs, God rescues

Abraham's offspring out of bondage. After their escape, they come to the mountain and we read these words in Exodus 19.

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.

Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, assumed then, then you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

This is built upon the previous covenant with the fathers. These offspring of Abraham are still under the

Abrahamic covenant. But in Exodus 34, 10, in Deuteronomy 5, verses two and three, we read this from Deuteronomy.

The Lord our God cut off a covenant with us in Horeb, not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us here alive today.

Who are the fathers referenced here in Deuteronomy 5? The previous chapter indicates in 431 that the fathers being referenced are the patriarchs.

Therefore, not only is Israel under the Abrahamic covenant, but a different covenant with different precepts and different promises is cut with them after they escaped from Egypt.

They are under multiple covenants simultaneously. Here in Deuteronomy 5, a covenant is cut and they receive the covenantal precepts in the form of the 10 commandments.

In chapter six, we see the explicitly stated purpose of the precepts. And the

Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that he might preserve us alive as we are this day.

And it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before Yahweh our

God, as he has commanded us. Joshua 23, 14 to 16 says that God fulfilled all of his good promises and not one of them has failed.

He then also says that if you transgress the covenant and go serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the

Lord will be kindled and you shall perish from the land. They would fail to do as commanded.

Deuteronomy 27 gave the same warning and in chapter 29, we read, you have seen all of Yahweh's works and wonders yet to this day,

Yahweh has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to keep the words of this covenant and do them that you may prosper.

Apparently, Yahweh expected a temporal obedience that even an unregenerate heart could accomplish.

Then he warns them against turning to foreign gods lest he judged them. And in verse 24 to 26,

Yahweh says, all the nations will say, why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?

Then people will say it is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt and went to serve foreign gods.

They will be cursed not because they broke the Abrahamic covenant, but because they broke the Mosaic covenant and polluted their worship.

Certainly a new heart would have allowed them to keep the statutes. Yet Yahweh did not give them a new heart and that covenant did not promise to give it.

This is evident in the covenant lawsuits that were brought against the Southern and the Northern kingdoms. In first Kings 12, a false priesthood and a sacrificial system was set up.

We see the resulting covenant lawsuit against the Northern kingdom and Amos, not for failure to have a circumcised heart, but for false worship.

Jeremiah 2 and 730, we see the same reason for a covenant lawsuit against the Southern kingdom, not because of an uncircumcised heart, but because of polluted worship.

They bowed down to and served other gods. Should they have had circumcised hearts? Yes, that's commanded of all image bearers.

But when we allow the text to speak for itself, that is not the reason for their covenantal judgment. The Abrahamic covenant has dual aspects.

The Mosaic covenant does not. Both covenants have the same parties, but they have different promises and penalties.

Therefore, they have different substances and are not administrations of the same covenant. You will find the same categories present in the covenant that was

Keroth with David. The parties are Yahweh, David, his obedient son, the precept is obedience, 2

Chronicles 6 .16. The promise is that David will not lack a son to sit on his throne. Different promises from Abraham and Moses, therefore a different substance and different covenants.

The Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenant are all established by the cutting of a covenant, not by the affirmation of a previously existing covenant.

Therefore, if we allow scripture to set the terms of our interpretations, these covenants must be seen as related, yet independent covenants, which all find their fulfillment in Christ.

The covenants themselves determine their content. Now, in technical terms, the content of a covenant, its core conditions is the substance of that covenant.

Quoting Ursinus, the 2016 OPC report on republication recognizes this definition as well.

Therefore, we would agree in principle that different core conditions make for a different substance and different covenants.

The claim is made by my Westminster friends that all of these covenants are different administrations of the very same covenant of grace and that the primary substance of the covenants is the same.

This has been demonstrated to be false, and it continues to be false with the New Covenant. Different core conditions, different substance, different covenants.

The only way to say that the various covenants have the same primary substance and are all administrations of the same covenant is to start with that conclusion and read it into the text.

This brings us to the New Covenant. Just as we analyze the other covenants according to their covenantal markers, we must approach our analysis here in the same fashion.

Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will coroth the

New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I corothed with their fathers on the day when

I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the

Lord, for this is the covenant that I will coroth with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them.

I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the

Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for, because I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Who are the covenantal parties? Yahweh, Abraham's offspring, Israel, and Judah. What are the precepts?

God will write his law on their hearts. What are the covenantal promises? They will all know

Yahweh. He will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. Abraham, Moses, David, all had mixed covenants, where elect and non -elect were included in the historical covenants.

This is not so with the new covenant. Must a new covenant member be obedient?

Yes, of course. If you love Christ, you will obey his commandments. In the new covenant, all of the requirements to receive the fullness of the covenantal blessing were accomplished by God himself, even the heart necessary to believe and know

God. This is a free gift too, provided to the covenant member. The parties are the same, from Abraham to Moses.

There's one olive tree, David to Christ. God is dealing with Israel, but the precepts are different.

Abraham, Moses, David, all pointed forward to Christ, but they each had their own substance and covenantal terms for temporal blessing, which must not be ignored.

Want to remain in the Abrahamic covenant? Practice circumcision. Want to remain in the

Mosaic covenant? Do not bow down to other gods or worship them, Deuteronomy 6. Want to obtain the

Davidic throne? His son must walk in God's law, 2 Chronicles 6 .16. Want to obtain new covenant, eternal forgiveness of sin?

Receive a circumcised heart. God fulfills the covenant precepts in Christ. I will write my laws on their hearts.

I will remember their sins no more. Where there is remembrance of sin, there is no covenant of grace.

Adam believed God and named his wife according to the promise, mother of the living. Abraham believed

God. It was credited to him as righteousness. Moses had faith in Yahweh, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.

But did the covenant with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, or David provide the new heart needed for this faith?

No. They all pointed to the coming seed, the offspring of Abraham, the high priest of heaven, and the covenant that he would cut in history.

All of these Old Testament saints were saved by grace alone through faith alone, yet none of their covenantal precepts or promises actually provided that faith.

As gracious as they were, the terms of those covenants were not able to justify sinners before the unchanging and holy

God. They pointed above and beyond themselves typologically to a different covenant, a new covenant with better and different promises.

Hebrews 8, 6. Different promises, different substance, different covenant.

Nothing within the Old Testament covenant terms forgave sin or cleansed the dirty conscience in the heavenly tabernacle.

On the contrary, the fact that sacrifices had to be repeated showed that the Old Covenant was unable on its own to cleanse anything but the flesh.

Hebrews 10, 1 -4. Yet the Old Testament historical covenants did promise the Savior who would accomplish that eternal cleansing.

And saints received the benefit of that coming covenant by looking away from the shadows and towards the coming

Messiah with a God -given new covenant heart. Old Testament saints believed

God and it was credited to them as righteousness. Now, after the cross, it is debited to you as righteousness fulfilled.

Only the new covenant provides the type of grace and faith that justifies sinners before God. Therefore, only the new covenant is the covenant of grace.

Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. Romans 8, 9. Who was included in the covenant of grace?

Every person given to the Son in eternity past and granted the new heart provided by the new covenant, no one else.

Every person in the covenant of grace was elected by God. Thank you.

Thank you, Eric. We will now have a statement of rebuttal by Zach, 10 minutes allotted.

The challenge with eisegesis as human beings is that we mix it with our exegesis.

It is so very easy to do. It is not a malady limited to my

Baptist brethren. We all suffer under it. However, we all suffer under it.

And the eisegesis mixed into the Baptist perspective, which was very well laid out by Eric, cannot be missed.

Now I have to love my brother and point out where I believe he's mistaken in the same way that you are with me.

There are multiple different ways to do this, but let's take it this way. Examples of ways in which the covenants have changed.

Eric said, if you want to live under the Abrahamic covenant, get circumcised, practice it.

If you want to live under the Mosaic covenant, he basically said, live under the ceremonial law.

If you want to live under the Davidic covenant, he said, recognize the Davidic throne.

But I don't have to assume based on a series of very unclear passages in which we say that because this word appeared here and it didn't appear there, therefore we're going to build an entire structure with the core assumption that these covenants really aren't connected.

And when it says forever, it doesn't mean forever. And the reason that's true is because, well, we don't practice circumcision.

We don't practice ceremonial law. We don't acknowledge David and his sons as king. Here's the problem.

We don't have to have assumptions to know those things are true. We are told point blank, circumcision is nothing.

We are told point blank. For example, you may eat any meat.

For example, you no longer have to burn your clothing under certain circumstances, et cetera, et cetera.

We are told point blank, which ceremonial laws no longer apply. We don't have to assume. We don't need an elaborate and highly isogetical, highly assumptive system in which to know that we don't owe allegiance to a son of David who isn't

Jesus, politically. It's not hard.

It's very simple. Now, a structured system is always attractive because it is necessary.

Systematized theology is necessary. You must have a system in order to understand

God's word because God's word is a system. He gives it to us. And you have a binary choice.

No transtheology. Your binary choice is assume it applies to you any part of scripture or assume it does not.

You must start with one assumption or the other. And we are given the assumption to start with.

All scripture is breathed by God, point blank. You don't get to go into God's word and say, well, because Korath appears here, but not there.

Therefore, I can assume that when it says in the Abrahamic covenant forever, it doesn't actually mean forever.

When it says physical descendants, it doesn't actually mean physical descendants in that specific way. Ladies and gentlemen, with respect to my brother, nothing has been presented, demonstrating yet.

Yeah, we're not done yet. But nothing has been demonstrated yet that when

God said, I will be God to you and to your children, that he didn't mean that for us. Certainly haven't borne that burden yet.

Now, what about Hebrews 8? Basically, we were told that because Hebrews 8 tells us that God will write his law on our hearts and on the hearts and minds of his people under the new covenant.

And because it tells us that the house of Israel doesn't, will not teach brother, neighbor, know the

Lord. Therefore, all covenant members have to make a credible profession of faith, that it's only the elect.

And I may have misheard, and Eric, you can correct me in your rebuttal, but I think you said that it has always been this way,

Old Testament and new, that only those who are elect, in other words, the invisible church, are members of the covenant of grace.

Okay, you know what? If we're gonna define covenant of grace as invisible church, all right, that's a covenant of grace is man -made term.

But the problem is that when we say covenant of grace, we kind of sound like we're saying the actual church, the people that God is gracious to.

So it's a bit of a stumbling block. The question before us is, are our children claimed by God or not?

Are they members of the covenant community? Are they members of the ecclesia? You can define covenant of grace however you want.

And I acquiesced to my Baptist brethren to frame the debate this way. I said, who is in the covenant community?

And they said, let's say covenant of grace. I said, that's fine. We both use that term, we mean different things by it, but don't stumble on it.

You can't say because the covenant of grace only includes the elect, well, you can define covenant of grace however you want. It's not a biblical term, go for it.

But that doesn't kick children out, sorry. You're told point blank, I am

God to your children. So let me ask a question. If Hebrews 8 means that only people who are elect are in the covenant because it says,

I will write my laws on their hearts and minds and the house of Israel shall not teach brothers and neighbors for all shall know the

Lord. Then what is the point of evangelism? It says neighbor. The definition of neighbor is clear.

It is a highly defined biblical term and it doesn't even mean covenant member.

By my definition of covenant member sure doesn't mean covenant member by your definition. Why is God telling us here that you don't have to teach your neighbor?

That means evangelism is an absurd instruction. I submit to you that it doesn't mean no the way you are defining it, that word gnosis.

And when it's repeated in the New Testament, the word in the Septuagint gnosis each time.

In the New Testament, when it's re -quoted in Hebrews 8, because they're quoting Jeremiah 31, but in New Testament Hebrews 8, the word gnosis and idu are both used.

In both cases, it can mean broad knowledge and it can mean specific knowledge. You are forcing, you are isogeting a narrow definition of those words without warrant.

And you are using a less clear passage to hack out part of the Bible. If our brothers already fully know the

Lord, then what is the point of preaching the word on Sunday? You are making that command absurd.

Now you can say, well, we're still commanded to do it, so we're gonna do it. Hey, that's great, you don't have a system. And when you don't have a system, when it starts to fall apart like that, it's fraying at the seams, you're probably isogeting.

You are taking apart the analogy of faith. Your genes are fraying at the edges and they're gonna fall apart.

And the danger is you're going to kick little ones out of the covenant. You're gonna start treating your children as outsiders.

That's very serious. If you're wrong about that, it's millstone and into the ocean time.

Okay, now I'm not saying that all my Baptist brothers need to be thrown in the ocean, that's not the point. Please don't misquote me.

Now, Eric, if we threw into the ocean with a millstone, I mean, maybe Eric, but no, that's not my point.

But my point is there's a very serious sanction to putting a stumbling block in the way of a little one.

And if you're gonna do it by saying, well, clearly everyone already knows the Lord, brother and neighbor.

And I know I got this problem over here with both evangelism and the preaching of the word, which are commanded, and I can't explain that.

I mean, we have a problem. It also unnecessary places the passage in direct conflict with Genesis 17 and 18 and Psalm 105, among others.

You have to approach it with the assumption that these covenants don't fit together.

Okay, we can talk about that. But then you're making this huge non -sequitur leap.

A non -sequitur is to say, I am standing on this stage and therefore I'm outside. Or I am standing on this stage and therefore

I have a million dollars. One does not follow the other. Sometimes it means they can't.

Sometimes it just means, just because I'm standing here, you can't assume how much money I have. That's a non -sequitur.

It is a non -sequitur to say that the covenants are not, there's no arching, they replace one another.

Okay, that's all right. But you still agree that the 10 commandments given under the

Mosaic law applies today. Thank you, sir. The analogy of faith requires interpreting less clear by more clear.

You can't trump a more clear passage with a collection of less clear passages. That is eisegesis.

Using our own ideas to trump the word of God. Thank you. Thank you,

Zach. We will now have Eric come to the podium and give us 10 minutes on his rebuttal.

My friends, if what I am doing tonight is eisegesis, then the

Westminster Larger Catechism is eisegesis. I quoted to you Westminster Larger Catechism, his catechism.

Questions 30, questions 40. The topic of tonight's debate is not, as my brother said, who is, are the children included in the covenant or not?

That wasn't the topic. The topic tonight, let's not shift the goalposts. The topic tonight is who's included in the covenant of grace.

Westminster Larger Catechism 30. Westminster Larger Catechism 31. It says it was made with Christ and in him the elect.

That's eisegesis. Okay. I agree with those questions.

Now they will go on. Let's not pretend we're in total agreement here. They go on and they clarify about substance and administration and we would see that differently.

But yeah, the definition covenant of grace, the elect. He says it's a non sequitur for me to make the argument that I made.

Listen, I used once again, the OPC report on republication from 2016 to say, here's what they said the substance of a covenant is.

They defined it by quoting Ursinus. They defined it by quoting John Ball. They're the ones that said, hey, here's what the substance of the covenant is.

That's what I told you. I said, here's these categories and there's been broad agreement on that throughout the last 500 years.

Here's what the covenants are. Okay. And then I took you point by point by point through each one of those.

And I said, hey, let's look at Abraham. What's the substance here using the definition that was provided by the

OPC republication report? What's according to their own standard? What's the definition of the

Abrahamic covenant? What's the substance of that covenant? Let's look at Moses. What's the substance of that covenant?

And then I read you scripture. I quoted scripture to you and I said, here's what it says.

Here's the promises. Here's the precepts. Here's the parties. This is the substance of these covenants.

I would agree with Zach's opening so much of it. There wasn't a whole lot I agreed with in the first half of what he had to say.

Hermeneutics obviously is an important topic here tonight. It's what I'm talking about. It's what my brother has been speaking about.

I would also agree that all things old apply and less abrogated, but there's a difference here that I think we're using that's fundamentally different in the way that we apply the

Old Testament. We see all throughout the New Testament, the way that the apostles are using these

Old Testament scriptures and it is in a typological fashion. Of course, God's moral law is eternal. God is unchanging.

His law is unchanging. We can see the 10 commandments written before Sinai. We can see them obviously during the economy of Old Testament Israel and they're applicable today and the apostles quote them and they hold you to those standards.

We agree on this. Great, nothing to rebut there. He says that more clear scriptures need to be used to interpret the less clear scriptures.

I would also add onto that that we should use the New Covenant and the apostles to interpret the

Old Testament, but the question that always comes up in these types of debates, you get to the end of it, this isn't a baptism debate, but this is underneath it.

This is the foundation that we build that upon. You get to the end of the debate and Presbyterians will nod their head in agreement with the

Presbyterians and the Baptists go, ha ha, all right, got them. Read the book of Acts, look at that.

But then at the end, right, we shake hands, we love each other as we should and the Baptists claim victory and they go, ha, see, we used the

New Testament here as the way to interpret the old and the Presbyterians go, yeah, but those categories have been established in the old.

17 of my 20 minutes was all Old Testament. If that's the criticism that's made of Baptists, okay,

I just gave you the Old Testament and I walked through those points, point by point by point.

We're gonna say more clear scriptures need to interpret the less clear? Absolutely, I agree with that 100 % and I'm sure when we get into the cross -examination that we will see that played out a little bit better.

He speaks about the examples of some failures, dispensationalists and others assume that if it's not repeated in the

New Testament, it's not valid. We're in the same team on that one. Covenant meals, eating and drinking,

Deuteronomy 12, 18, Leviticus 10, 14, this happened with all members in the feast, et cetera, but you see what's sitting underneath all of this is that my brother is guilty.

I love you, Zach, but my brother's guilty of the very thing that he's accusing me of. He didn't present to you what the covenant of grace was.

He didn't go to the scriptures and say, here's what Abraham is, here's what Moses is, here's what David is, here's what

Jeremiah says. We didn't have time to get to Noah and Adam, but he didn't do that. He started by saying covenant community, why do we kick the kids out?

That's already assuming what he needs to come here to prove. Who's in the covenant of grace?

We have to define, and he did, what the covenant of grace is, but he didn't take you to the scriptures to show you what the covenant of grace is.

He said, hey, there's continuity, and I agree there's continuity, and I agree that there's discontinuity.

Where we disagree is on the levels and what that looks like exactly and how that plays out and how the apostles are using the

Old Testament texts. You know, I think, just briefly here, the covenant theology that we're talking about tonight, the covenant theology of my brother, it wasn't present before.

A lot of people will say Calvin. I would actually go before that. I'd say to Bollinger, real closely related, but that covenant theology,

I would say, came from Bollinger. We can look up his resources. I can send you the links if you want. They're free online.

It's the best way to get material. And what was going on there when he created this covenant theology, when he went to the scriptures, was there were radical, radical

Anabaptists destroying Europe. They were destroying it. 1517, we all know what happened there.

Martin Luther nailing the theses to this door, right? Within five years, the

Reformation was up and running with Bollinger. It was in full blast. And we saw that the

Anabaptists were coming their way as well. And what happened there is that Bollinger, who was the successor to, partner with Zwingli, successor to Zwingli, he started looking at a way to justify infant baptism.

And I think that without going into a brand new argument, because I'm responding to my brother, my brother is leaning on that.

He's going, hey, we have a way that we need to justify infant baptism. We can't have what's going on over here with the

Anabaptists. That's radical, and we would agree on that. That was radical. But what my brother needs to do, what we need to do, what all of us in this room need to do, is we need to first go to the scriptures.

We need to go to the Old Testament. We need to look at what the covenants themselves say of themselves. And then we apply that.

And we already start with those categories when we look at the covenants in the New Testament.

He said in Ephesians 2, 8, we're saved by grace alone through faith alone. Once again, I agree with this 100%.

Saved by grace alone through faith alone. And then what this ultimately ended up coming back to was, as I mentioned up front, that the question that Zach said was, here's the question.

Have the children been kicked out of the covenant? We haven't established what the covenant of grace is. What do you mean, have the children been kicked out of the covenant?

First, we need to establish what the covenant of grace is. And when we look at the definition from the

Westminster Larger Catechism, it tells us. I see the rest of my time. Thank you, brother.

We will now have a 10 minute break. Go ahead and use the restroom and talk amongst yourselves.

And we will get started back in 10 minutes for cross -examination, closing statements, and questions from the audience.

Again, if you have a question, there's papers out there with pens. Put it in the basket. If you would, direct your question to either one of them or both.

We will be giving each person a chance to respond to the question. So go ahead, fill out your questions, and we'll get to it.

Thank you, guys. All right, why don't you all take your seats? Take your seats.

Come back in. Let's finish our debate.

Again, to remind you, we are going to have cross -examination at this point. We're gonna have closing statements and questions from the audience.

For now, we're gonna have Zach cross -examine

Eric and direct his questions toward Eric. He'll be allotted 15 minutes.

Brother, you quoted from Presbyterian standards to define the covenant of grace as only the elect.

Are you claiming that the Westminster standards and other standards that you mentioned go on to exclude children from the covenant community?

No, I'm not. I'm simply trying to point out the fact that the discussion here needs to go a little bit deeper.

We can have some very surface -level discussions at a time where we're talking about covenant of grace, and you touched on that, but we really need to give a definition to what we mean when we use the word covenant of grace.

Broadly speaking, as you said, the Westminster standards do say, hey, with the elect, but I also mentioned there that they go on to clarify that through their use of substance and administration, that they would talk about an outer connection in this covenant, an outer experience, and also the true inward experience.

Thank you. So you would agree that it is the Presbyterian perspective that children of believing parents should be baptized?

Oh, absolutely. And that the Westminster standards do not disprove that? No, my - In no way. My point is that the

Westminster standards are not being consistent on that point, that of course, Presbyterians believe that children are members of the covenant, just as they, but the question is, what is the covenant?

And when we're saying, a lot of times we'll say excluded from the covenant, right? Well, what covenant?

What covenant are my Presbyterian brothers say we exclude children from? My argument is that the

Westminster standards say this is the covenant of grace, and then I would argue there's an inconsistency, which obviously you wouldn't, and the way that they apply that through substance and administration.

Thank you for that clarification, that's excellent. You pointed to Calvin and his immediate influences as the first time the

Presbyterian perspective on covenants was articulated. I pointed to Bollinger. Correct.

But it's the same time frame. Now, you could go to the earlier church, like Irenaeus, through,

I think it's called the apostolic preaching uses a covenantal structure as well, but some of these particular points of substance and administration and the way that that's articulated, unless you can correct me, which you may very well,

I have found nowhere in any of my reading that prior to Bollinger, that we have that type of expression of substance and administration regarding covenant membership.

Thank you. I'll restrict myself to questions during this period, to be fair, and I appreciate that, a brotherly extension.

So my question is in light of that understanding, when was the

Baptist perspective on covenants first articulated? Well, I could be a little jokey and say with Paul, right?

But I would say 1644 is the first time that we see a written document of the

Baptist perspective being expressed. And I think, just to be fair,

I'll break the rule I articulated a little bit, just a little bit, I guess. I think you can go a little bit earlier, even into the early 1600s, you go to John Bunyan.

So there are definitely some, so we agree there that just to be sure that I'm understanding what you're saying, we agree that both perspectives were articulated, especially from our perspective in history about the same time.

Yes, correct. Was that a question or a clarifying? It's a clarifying question, yes.

Question mark at the end, please. Yes, so with the question mark on that, yes, at about the same time. Now, a lot of times what happens when we're looking in history is, and you're not making this claim,

I'm not saying you're making this claim, but many folks will wanna say, well, Reformed Baptists or particular

Baptists, they are descendants of the Anabaptists. I know you haven't made that claim here tonight. Others will say that they're descendants of the general

Baptists. I think the history shows that we're descendants of the same

Puritan tradition as yourself, and that really where we have this distinctive, because there is so much that we agree on.

We're talking about a part we disagree tonight. It's on the nature of the covenants itself that we went back and we said, hey, here in chapter seven, we don't hold the same exact view.

There were examples, Hardcastle, for example, is a Baptist who did have a view very similar to your own, but the vast majority who were involved in penning the

Second Latin Baptist Confession, they looked at this point and they went, this is where we disagree, and they wanted to clarify that for your predecessors.

Right, thank you, that's a great clarification. If the Ecclesia in the

Old Testament wasn't part of the covenant of grace, why is there still an

Ecclesia today? Yeah, this is a very important question, thank you. When we look at,

I think first of all, we have to recognize that God is the one, and you would recognize this, that God is the one who gets to define the terms of the covenants.

Man does not get to define the terms of the covenants. And we look at God's word and we look at Romans 11, which may come up here in a minute, and we go, hey, look, there's one olive tree.

And God has always been working with this one olive tree. But here's the conditions that God has given for inclusion into this olive tree, and this was at a time of transition, right?

So your question, if you could rephrase it for me, in particular. Sure, if the Ecclesia in the

Old Testament wasn't part of the covenant of grace, why is there still an Ecclesia? Yeah, so God is defining, we don't deny, it might sound like I deny an external or an internal distinction with the church, don't deny that.

There is an external church, there is the invisible church. That's not a denial here.

The question is, who is in the covenant of grace? And as I said at the beginning, the covenant of grace includes these people, but we have to make the appropriate distinctions for what is it that's defining the olive tree?

And when God says, hey, here's what defines the olive tree, there was a physical promise to Abraham that him and his physical children would be part of this covenant.

And we see in Romans 11 that it's no longer the genealogy to Abraham that keeps them connected to the covenant, it is by faith and by faith alone, that second promise, that the one that is unconditional here, that's what connects us to the olive tree.

God's the one that does the pruning. So if we wanna talk about there being a community, okay, but we need to recognize the typological nature that one was pointing forward to what we have now today.

The other was a type or a shadow that was waiting for Christ to come and fulfill. Okay, so we agree then that the

Old Testament Ecclesia, and this is a question. Yes. Do we agree that the

Old Testament Ecclesia is part of the covenant of grace? No, we do not agree on that.

As I said beforehand, this is an important thing to talk about. We're talking about what is the covenant of grace.

And I will reverse this on you here in about eight minutes. I would not say they're the covenant of grace because the covenant of grace is the covenant that was cut with the blood of Christ.

And Christ is the better mediator with the better promises intercedes. Part of his job as the mediator is to intercede for his people.

And then we look at the promises I mentioned from Jeremiah or Hebrews eight. Here's the covenant of grace is the covenant that grants a circumcised heart.

The covenant of grace is the covenant that reconciles sinners with God in the heavenly tabernacle.

These other covenants, while gracious, as I mentioned up front, it's a different type of grace.

Therefore, it's not the same type of grace that would be covenant of grace grace, if that makes sense. Well, I think

I understand what you're saying. Sure. It does not make sense. Sure. To me. We'll get there brother.

So trying to make sure I phrase this to drill down because we're making good.

This is a good progress. That's good. Yep. And hopefully we can, your questions. Where does the

Bible define covenant of grace? It does not. You were absolutely correct. These are observational.

Yes. I would categorize it once again, my own terms. And we agree, as I said, with so much the first 10 minutes of your opening,

I agreed with almost all of it. So we can say there's these different covenants that I would call historical covenants,

Noah, Abraham, Moses, et cetera. And covenant of grace is that conclusion at the end that we go, okay, how do we understand all of these in light of tota scriptura, in light of the entire revelation of God that was all

God breathed? How do we understand that? And that's what we would call the covenant of grace. Okay.

So to sum up then, and then ask you a question, we see God establishing a covenant forever, which includes the physical children, not simply spiritual.

Do you agree? We do see the term everlasting covenant. We see it used several times throughout scripture.

And we need to look at each one of those things to say, okay, what's the context?

Did I miss any in my intro? Oh, I've got a few here. I may have missed a couple. Well, we've got a few, but we could look at, for example, and I'm sure you're aware of this is coming, that we're talking about the

Sabbath is an everlasting, the sign of the Sabbath is an everlasting covenant. Oh, no, I mean specifically everlasting covenant as regards to children.

Did I miss any? With, oh, you know, I don't know, maybe, but I don't think that we can just isolate that term.

If we're gonna look at the term everlasting covenant, then let's look at the term everlasting covenant. That's not the term.

That's not the term though, because we're told that God made this covenant for a thousand generations, right?

Yeah, let me answer this though, is that I recognize you would say that's not the term.

Are you asking about everlasting? Are you asking about a thousand generations? Because that's different. If we're going to talk about everlasting, then let's look at everlasting.

And we can see several examples throughout the scripture of this term everlasting, meaning we can see it used of the

Aaronic priesthood, but we see typologically that this promise is fulfilled.

And that's part of what the book of Hebrews is about. God did not fail in keeping his promises, but do we have the

Aaronic priesthood? No, because we have the better, the greater thing. God kept it, but it was not everlasting in that we have the

Aaronic priesthood or the temple gates. We have a better one. I am familiar with where the

New Testament tells us that the Aaronic priesthood has ended. I am not familiar with where the

New Testament tells us that inclusion as children of believers has ended. Can you show me where the

New Testament says the latter? Well, no, and here's why. Because once again, you're assuming what the covenant of grace is.

You're saying excluded from, let me respond. You're saying excluded, excluded from what?

You didn't go to show, here's what the covenant of grace is. Once again, by your own admission, well, we're using this term in a certain way and we're using it differently.

Okay, well, what is the covenant of grace? You defined it. You didn't show me the scripture. So when you say, show me something that says the kids are excluded,

I'm gonna say excluded from what? From which covenant? The covenant of grace that Westminster says is with the elect?

No, it's not there because we're, what I think you're failing to do, we recognize all of scripture points to Christ.

We both recognize that. We both agree on the solas. What I think you're failing to do in your exegesis is

I think you're failing to see that the Old Testament was not strictly pointing to Christ.

There was a real temporal historical reality that had real meaning. And we don't get to just flatten that out and get rid of the historical context of those other various historical covenants.

They said what they said. They're different things. So did

I hear you say that the New Testament does not tell us that children are not included under the new covenant?

Well, you're using different terms. Now, that would be my definition. I don't think that there's anything that says.

Okay, let me ask a previous question. Let me finish that. Sure, no, that's fine. And I'll be brief.

I wanna respect your time. John the Baptist slept in the womb.

David was saved in the womb. We don't deny God's grace and his sovereignty in saving people. The question that you're wanting to get at is who receives the signs of the new covenant.

That's the question you're wanting to get at. But the question tonight is the question underneath that is who's in the covenant of grace determines who receives those signs.

But that's not the question tonight. Did you acknowledge from this podium that this is the underlying discussion?

The covenant of grace? This discussion tonight about who is included in the covenant of grace is the underlying discussion on baptism.

Right, okay, thank you. Would you agree that your definition of the covenant of grace is the same thing in the new covenant as your definition of the covenant community or the ecclesia?

Are those the same thing? Could you rephrase that, please? Would you agree that members of the covenant of grace under the new covenant

Yes. means the same thing as members of the covenant community or the ecclesia?

Do these two things mean the same thing in the new testament? Yes and no. And here's the distinctions there because distinctions are important when we're having these discussions.

Once again, as I said, we don't deny that there's some sort of outward connection or an outward church or visible and invisible.

We don't deny that. The question is, those who receive the promises of the covenant, the new covenant, are those who are in the covenant.

God defined the membership. God defined the promises. And so who is in the covenant that justifies sinners before a holy

God? Who's in the covenant that's mentioned in Jeremiah 31? It's those to whom God has given a circumcised heart, those whom he has written their law on their heart.

These are the ones that are in that covenant. Now, does that mean that we don't have a connection?

No, I'm sure we'll look at the book of, we might not have time, but if we look at the book of Hebrews, apostasy is real.

I'm not the Baptist that's gonna get up here and say, there's no such thing as apostasy. The question that we'd have to do is define what we mean, once again, when we use that term.

And hopefully we have the time to do that tonight. But so did that answer your question?

Time? Time. Thank you, brother. Thank you. We will now have cross examination from Eric directing his questions to Zach for 15 minutes.

Let me get my timer set. 15 minutes starting now.

Maybe to cool this down just a little bit, right? Because we, once again, we want to be on the same -

I love you, brother. I love you too, brother. And I'm thankful for you. You know, I'm sorry, can you pause your timer?

Pause your timer. I'm okay with it, go for it. No, seriously, pause the timer. One of the marks of brotherly love is an intense discussion.

Sure. And I think you would agree. I would agree. And so just to take a pause in the minute as we discuss this, because cross examination is always where the sparks are gonna fly.

That's the point, right? And a brotherly relationship is one in which the sparks can fly.

And it isn't that it doesn't change our love for one other. It doesn't diminish it. It should increase it.

And so please don't hold back. No, I'm gonna give you the easy question here up front. I've read many

Presbyterian books on covenant theology. Could you recommend a Baptist book that a

Baptist covenant theologian has written? Not that you would say, I agree with it. Sure. But maybe you could say to people, hey, here's a good book if you want to understand the

Baptist position. So I wanna make sure I get Samuel Renahan's book correctly titled.

The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant and His Kingdom. Good. It's certainly, if I had to ask for a summary of that book,

I can't think of a better one than what you just gave. Have you had a chance to read it? I brought you a copy, so I'll give it to someone if they want it.

All right, so now on to other stuff. What is the - I'm well into that Baptist propaganda. Awesome, I love it, man.

What is the substance of the covenant of grace? Can you define substance?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. What do you mean, what would you mean if you're talking about substance and administration?

What is the substance that is administered? The substance that is administered, for by grace you are saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

Old Testament and new, as Romans 4 tells us. Which historical covenants are administrations of that overarching covenant of grace?

Under your definition, none of them. Under your definition. Under my definition, all of them have a gracious element, and this is something that you have acknowledged.

You have acknowledged that God's gracious act toward us starts in the garden.

You have acknowledged that it runs through all of them. There are gracious elements, I believe is what you said. You also said that they are all mixed covenants, which when other

Baptists say that, you have not defined that, but I'm assuming you're using the term as Renahan would use it, to mean the fact that there is grace mixed throughout.

These are not all just covenants of works as you term them as such. The problem with hanging the hat as it were, or with hanging everything on defining covenant of grace is that it is a euphemism for two different things.

And that is why we kind of agreed to use it in this debate, because we could agree, because I proposed who is in the covenant community.

And that's not something that a Baptist automatically wraps their mind around.

But we can say the word who's in the covenant of grace, mean two different things by covenant of grace, and then debate it.

So defining covenant of grace, yes, it's important. But in earlier when I asked you, so does covenant of grace mean same thing as covenant community in Ecclesia in the

New Testament? You said, well, yes and no, but I only heard yes. There was lots and lots of yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

But there wasn't no. And that's the problem. If by covenant of grace, you want to, and there's a little bit of a semantic word game going on here to say, well, we have to define it first.

Well, I have defined it. It's the covenant community, Old Testament and New, very simple. But if we're going to get down to that question, say, how does this all work?

Well, we have to recognize that reality. So you mentioned just a minute ago that all of these covenants administered some sort of grace, is that correct?

No, that's not what I said. That is Baptist terminology from your Baptist propaganda. What I said is that God's gracious acts toward us started in the garden.

And if we're going to say the word covenant of grace, well, you can use a narrow definition to say, well, there's not enough grace in the

Old Testament. There's not enough grace to call it the covenant of grace. Is it the same type of grace that sends rain on the just and the unjust that justifies you before God?

No, no. Are there different types of grace then? It's the same kind of grace that Romans 4 says.

It was given to Abraham and David for their faith. But those are different types of grace. Sure, if you're talking about the difference between common grace in which

I can walk out this door and drive home among a majority of people who deny the deity of Christ and therefore deny his word and not be afraid that they're going to mob up on me like zombies and kill me because they don't ultimately believe that Jesus Christ's commands, thou shalt not kill, come from God, right?

So it's common grace that preserves our lives. Is that the same thing as grace that gives us a saving faith?

No, of course not. Looking at, we'll go to priesthood here. Looking at Leviticus 4 and 5, you can turn there if you want, but I will give you the references.

We see several mentions of atonement and forgiveness of sins. Leviticus 4, 26, 431, 435, and Leviticus 5, 10.

What does it mean that they were forgiven of their sin? And you know what?

I'm probably too distracted looking it up to actually hear the question, and I apologize. That's okay,

I can give you one example and we'll narrow it down. It'll be the same thing. Can you restate your question, please? Yeah, so in Leviticus 4, verse 26, for example, it says, starting in verse 25, then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger, put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and pour out the rest of its blood at the base of the altar of burnt offering, and all its fat shall burn on the altar like the fat of the sacrifice of peace offering.

So the priest shall make atonement for him, for his sin, and he shall be forgiven. What does it mean that he's forgiven of his sin?

So are you asking, were they immediately forgiven? I'm asking you what it means there, that he's forgiven of his sin.

What does the word forgiven mean? Well, I'm asking the questions. What does it mean that he's forgiven of sin?

Well, that's where we're going to go. And he shall be forgiven of his sin.

That is the Hebrew word salach, to forgive, pardon, spare.

So they were forgiven of their sin. Would that be the same type of forgiveness that we have today? Are you asking me, were they saved?

Are you asking me, was it immediate? Are you asking me, did Christ have to come first before it was fully done?

I'm asking it when we read that they will be forgiven of their sin. Is that the same thing as you being forgiven of your sin?

Through all of history and time? There in chapter 426. You can debate that.

You can debate whether it meant the same thing immediately. Does it mean the same thing when that person who is forgiven of his sin stands before the throne of grace?

I pray next to me. So in which sense do you mean?

Did you say there's a sense that it means yes, that he's forgiven of his sin before God? That's what the passage says.

In Leviticus - But hang on. It's qualified. Go ahead.

In Leviticus 16, this is a long setup because I think it's important for -

After making, in Leviticus 16, after making offerings for themselves, for the altar, the sanctuary, et cetera, we read in Leviticus 16, 33 to 34, the following, and I'm just gonna quote it for you.

He shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly.

And this shall be a statute forever to you, that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all their sins.

And Aaron did as the Lord commanded Moses. So, who was meant here when

Moses says, he shall make atonement for all the people of the assembly? Again, are you talking about immediately or in all time?

I'm asking what the text there means when it says all the people of the assembly. Well, let's look it up, since you apparently don't have a strong concordance.

What's the reference? Leviticus 16, that part will be in 34. All right, 16, 34.

Okay, 32, and the priest whom he shall anoint and who shall consecrate to minister in the priest's office in his father's stead shall make the atonement and shall put on the linen clothes, even the holy garments, and he shall make an atonement for the holy sanctuary.

All right, it is reasonable. Down in 34, though, is one of my questions.

That is, what's meant when Moses says, he shall make atonement for all the people of the assembly? He shall make an atonement for the tabernacle of the congregation, for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests and for all the people of the congregation.

And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year, and he did as the

Lord commanded Moses. Okay, what's the question? Who was meant when it says he shall make atonement for all the people of the assembly?

Who are all the people of the assembly? I can't find the he you're referring to in 34.

And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year, and he did as the

Lord commanded Moses. You're asking who's the - It says you have the children of Israel there, right?

Correct. That final change as well. And who's making atonement? Who's the children of Israel there? The ecclesia.

All of them. Yes, in that, well, okay. So visible church or invisible church?

That's your question? No, my question is what is meant there by the term?

Well, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be invasive. I'm trying to understand the question. I want to understand what you would understand it to mean, whether you're using your translation or my own here, where it's saying all the people of the assembly or the children of Israel.

Who is that group? Oh, you're not asking who's making the atonement. You're asking who is the group.

It is the ecclesia. I'm sorry, I misunderstood your question. That's okay. No problem, brother.

That's my bad. What do you make of Hebrews 9, 9 that says that the old covenant was not able to cleanse the conscience?

Which was a figure for the time then present in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience.

And that's in the King James because I've got strong, no problem. Yeah, what do you make of Hebrew?

It says there that the old covenant was not able to cleanse the conscience. Right. Clearly part of God's gracious act, which to be clear, just to make it abundantly clear,

Romans tells us point blank that it was by grace that both

Abraham and David had faith. Now, is their faith of a different kind than ours because they did not see the promises that we see?

No, it's not of a different kind. It is stronger, but is faith in the same thing?

The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not have full understanding, but we are told that they looked ahead.

Did they have a clear conscience? Not Abraham and not those examples, the full assembly, the full ecclesia, the ones for whom the high priest made sacrifice every year and their sins were forgiven.

Did they have a clean conscience before God? From God's perspective or from their perspective?

Which is this talking about? I'm asking you. Right, so the text doesn't directly tell us whether this is a clear conscience before God or a clear conscience in their own minds.

I'm not sure that we can draw a conclusion one way or the other. My last question here, and we'll be out of time, is in light of all this, everything we've talked about here, the priesthood, the sacrifices that being made for the ecclesia, as you're acknowledging, and then

Hebrews 9, 9, where you'll say we're not sure, saying that that was not able to cleanse the conscience.

In light of all that, is it not reasonable to conclude that the work of the Old Testament priests was for the cleansing of the flesh in the earthly tabernacle, whereas the work of Christ can actually cleanse the conscience in the heavenly tabernacle,

Hebrews 9, 14? Okay, that's a great question. We are told multiple times throughout

Scripture, and especially in the New Testament, that the kingdom of heaven at Christ's, while Christ was walking near, is both come, the kingdom of heaven is among you, it is in you, so to speak, and we're also told that when

Jesus approached Jerusalem, lest they think the kingdom of heaven had fully come, he told them the parable of the tenants, in which the king was there and left and came back, okay?

I'm speaking about Hebrews, though, in particular. Correct, in the context of the whole Scriptures, or are you ripping it out by itself?

Well, that was a question, but I'm asking about Hebrews in the context of Hebrews, where it says that the Old Testament was unable to cleanse you from your sin, and Christ's cleansed you from the sin.

In the context of the entire Bible. Is it not right to see Hebrews 9, 14? Hang on, are you gonna let me answer?

I am, but I'm restating the question, because you drifted that, and this will, I'm done, but Hebrews 9, 14 says the

Old Testament did this, the New Testament does that, and I think you absolutely have time to answer that question.

So, in the context of the entire Bible, which is where we started with hermeneutics, and it is important.

Old Testament saints only looked ahead and could see what was revealed to them, which was a lot less than what we can see and what is revealed to us in Hebrews looking back.

And it is a common point of difference between Baptist and Presbyterian thought.

Presbyterians or Baptists approach Hebrews, and it appears, it is from the perspective of, it's done, the kingdom of heaven is fully here.

It's all here. When it says that each brother shall know the Lord, it means they all know him.

And in fact, it means that if they can't profess faith, then they aren't actually in the covenant.

They have to profess faith first. When it says, your brother shall not, you shall not teach your brother and your neighbor, the

Baptist assumes, well, that means that, again, we don't have to teach members of the covenant.

They have to profess faith first. Now they've been taught, now we can accept them in. We're doing the same thing here.

We're trying to say that because in the old covenant, the people did not have a full understanding, and because Hebrews now gives us the understanding that they wish they'd had, which is what

Hebrews is about, again and again and again and again and again, these people had greater faith, according to Hebrews 11.

The people who did not, could not see what we see. But nowhere are we told that that is a different kind of faith or that it was a different kind of grace back then.

In fact, it is an assault on Sola Fide. To suggest or to insist that faith and grace in the old covenant meant something different in kind, which is,

I think, what you're driving at. So what did it mean? Well, I'm not sure we're told in the

Bible exactly what the Old Testament mind could see. Thank you, brother.

Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, we will now have our closing statements.

We will first start with brother Zach. You will have five minutes to close your argument.

You know why I use this computer? Because it looks cool when you flip it over like that. No, it's because if I write something down,

I immediately lose it. I stand in awe of people who can hang on to pieces of paper, seriously.

Ephesians verses one, I'm sorry, Ephesians chapter one, verses one through 14.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he protested us for the adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

In him, we have redemption through his blood and the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be to the praise of his glory.

In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promise of the

Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

We rightfully long for the uniting of all things, as Paul says, the possession of our inheritance in the fullness of time.

Now, these are Paul's terms. These are biblical terms. This is not an observation. And the more you study it, the more it grabs you by the throat, gets your heart, because you begin to see the greatness of God.

We humans get glimpses of it, and often we don't associate it with God. We are surprised by joy.

We begin to see the opportunity to participate in greatness, whether that is art, or business, or politics, the dominion mandate, and we groan inwardly.

When we look around at how broken human existence is now, and we read the glorious run -on sentences of Paul, which we have trouble wrapping our heads around, and we long for the fullness, but we are told it's an inheritance, not the current reality.

We enjoy a large portion of these blessings now, much more than Old Testament saints did. Old Testament saints, we are told, point blank, had faith.

We are told, point blank, by grace. But they could not understand what we understand.

Now, does that mean that we fully know? No, in fact, we are told that we do not fully know. We shall know, even as we are fully known.

It is an inheritance. If we use imprecise thought to assume that because some parts of covenants are done away with, therefore, we can assume other parts are done away with.

Every single example of a part of an Old Testament covenant that we believe no longer applies, that has been given tonight, except one, is specifically done away with in the

New Covenant, under the New Testament. We don't have to scratch around and try to dig into Old Testament history in order to figure out which parts of these apply and which parts don't.

In fact, we're told not to. We are told that it all applies, unless we're specifically told otherwise.

So you want to take circumcision, the Aaronic priesthood, the Davidic throne as a geopolitical entity, et cetera, et cetera.

The ceremonial law, those things we are told. We don't have to try to figure it out. It's clear.

There is only one assumption, and this is why, in the Reformed world, Reformed Baptists and Reformed Presbyterians really only disagree about one thing.

It's the assumptions the Baptists make. Now, tonight, I propose to you and prove to you that good hermeneutics places the burden of proof on the

Baptist side. That was not challenged. It was simply accepted, and we moved on.

Now, if we want to challenge that, that's fine, but it's cheating to do it at the end. That has not happened tonight.

The burden of proof has not been borne. What you've received is, well, because you are misdefining my man -made word, covenant of grace, therefore, children aren't included.

Ta -da! I'm sorry, brothers. That's where we are. Now, I will dial it down a little bit.

I was a born smart aleck. You'll have to forgive me. I received many spankings for it.

Obviously, not enough. Revelations 22, 18 and 19 warns us not to add to or remove from scripture.

Penalties include apocalyptic plagues and eternal death. Now, that is why we have this debate, because we each argue that the other is either adding to or removing from scripture.

I argue that the Baptist perspective does both. It adds to so that it may remove.

It adds to scripture so that it may remove. Loving brothers and sisters means pointing out when you're doing that, because the penalties are serious.

And in this case, there's another penalty. If you keep a young, a little one, from coming before the throne of grace, you cause them to stumble, is the biblical term.

You had better have a millstone tied around your neck. That's a big rock that weighs two or three tons and be thrown into the depths of the sea.

These are serious consequences. Now, I recognize that the same charge can be leveled at me. And you know what the reality is?

I'm a human and I like to cheat too. But we have proven tonight, beyond any shadow of a doubt and by admission, that children of believers were included in the old covenant.

And you can call it covenant of grace. You can play the semantic games all day long, but we have not demonstrated that they are no longer part of the new covenant.

We've had oblique references to things like people knowing and people being taught, but it is a patently absurd application of that passage, as we've demonstrated.

Booting children from the covenant community requires adding to and then removing from the word of God.

Woefully insufficient evidence is presented. And this is not an attack on my brother.

It's attack on all of you Baptists. Woefully insufficient evidence has been presented to abrogate

God's claim, I will be God to your children. You can't play semantic games with that.

You can't say that because of my definitions, that no longer applies. So brothers and sisters, kicking children out of the covenant bears very serious consequences if we're wrong, don't do it.

Thank you, Zach. Let's go ahead and have Eric finish with his closing statement.

Pick that up for a minute. Look at how they're brothers, wow. Thanks for dropping that for me.

It's such a great, I need a little help

I can get. All right, well, five minutes is going to go very quickly.

I do wanna once again, just say thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. And I'm tempted to really just drill in on my brother here, but I'm staying at his house tonight.

So I might find myself on the main streets of Salt Lake City and it's snowy.

I'm a desert boy, so. Note my previous comment about go hard. I love it, bring it. Let's usually go home or go hard and I won't be going home if I go too hard.

Go hard so you can go home. So really this comes down to a couple of things.

And we were revolving around a lot of the same topics tonight. And once again, we agree on a lot.

My brother mentioned that it seemed as if I'm insisting that there's a different faith in grace in the

Old Testament. Well, I need to be really clear. If I wasn't clear, we're all saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, period.

Old Testament saints, New Testament saints. The question is not are we saved by grace alone through faith alone?

The question is, which covenant provides that faith?

I'm gonna, he might object. I'm gonna do my best to quote, to summarize you here.

Mentioned that he said something along the lines of we're told not to dig into,

I know he would agree we need to dig into the scriptures, but to dig into and figure out the Old Testament, I know it's a rough quote, brother, but that we're told to simply accept them as it's abrogated.

I mean - I do object, but I won't go for it. That's okay, brother. Yeah, and I would be willing to hear that objection afterwards, but I don't wanna be unfair to you, honestly.

Okay, well, he didn't answer my categories at all, the ones that were established by the 2016

OPC report on republication. I was using the categories that the OPC acknowledged by Ursinus and John Ball.

I used their categories, and I said, here's what the substance is. The whole argument tonight on who is included in the covenant of grace comes back to the same question.

What is the substance of the covenant of grace? What is it that makes the covenant of grace gracious?

And if we're gonna look at Abraham, or we're gonna look at Moses, and we're gonna look at David, and we're gonna look at the new covenant, we're gonna look at all these conditions, the promises, the precepts, the parties, one olive tree, but we look at these other ones, and we go, those are different.

According to John Ball, according to Ursinus, according to the 2016 OPC report on republication, different substance.

So if Abraham has a different substance from Moses, different covenant. They cannot both have the substance of the covenant of grace if they have different substances.

That's what the question is tonight. I walked you through these covenants using those standards, saying here's what the substance of these covenants are.

My brother, I love your brother, didn't do that. He did what I said in my opening, you need to read your conclusion into your exegesis.

Although I didn't hear him touch a whole lot on the actual exegetical points of what the covenants are in the

Old Testament. He didn't mention and stuff, I won't be fair to him. He didn't touch on that.

He didn't answer these questions. I presented it to you. Here's the substance of these covenants, and they're different.

Now, is there a different faith and a different grace? Once again, in my opening statement, I said not all grace is the same.

Okay, we can agree with that. Common grace, saving grace, different graces. Is the faith that it took to smear the blood over the doorposts before the exodus the same type of faith that justifies sinners before a holy

God? No, otherwise they wouldn't have all been punished and died in the wilderness. There are different types of faith as well.

The type of faith that justifies sinners before a holy God is the type of faith that comes through the new and better covenant, the new and better high priest, the one that Christ purchased and applied to his people perfectly.

That's the type of grace. That's the type of faith that justifies sinners before a holy God. And once again, acknowledging that there's a substance administration, which

I think is where this comes back to. Acknowledging that, yes, Westminster says children are in the covenant of grace.

We baptize children in the New Testament. Acknowledging that, they need to define, here's what the covenant of grace is.

And they need to go back and we need to actually understand who it is that's in the covenant of grace.

I established that for you tonight. And then when I pressed him in Hebrews nine and showing that there's a difference between Moses and the new covenant, showing that there's a difference between the old and the new.

After his long answer, he said, we're not told what it means. Thank you.

Thank you, brother. We will now have our time where we address questions from the audience.

Brother, may I say something really quick? Sure. Has nothing to do with the debate. It's for those who are watching this later, and you may or may not wanna dig into the questions.

If you do, please stay. And for those of you who are here tonight, you don't know that tomorrow morning, we're gonna get up at my house and we're gonna sit next to my fireplace and we're gonna do another hour of just free -flowing discussion.

After rumination and thinking about each other's arguments. And here's where you got me, and this was a good point. And to do so in brotherly love and to enjoy it.

If I'm not sleeping on the streets of Salt Lake City tonight. Well, to be clear, this is why you can't.

Because if you did, then we wouldn't be able to do this tomorrow. Now, if we weren't gonna do this tomorrow, I probably would just kick you out in Temple Square.

I concede the point. Just leave you there for those Mormon girls to come and kick off their property.

To be clear, you all are taking this way too seriously. That was a joke. The Baptists are all like, man, that guy's mean.

And the Presbyterians are like, get him off the stage. We need grape juice for everybody.

Ha ha. So I just wanted to put that out for you guys who are here tonight.

Watch for the release of the debate. You'll have seen the debate, but you won't have seen the after party, the discussion afterward, in which we get to go back and forth on a good free -flowing discussion.

It's gonna be a ton of fun. For those of you who are watching here, keep watching. Episode two is gonna be lit.

There's gonna be baseball bats and all kinds of fun. Thank you, brother. Yes. Thank you.

I was going to mention that, but. Presbyterians have to have the final word,

I guess. Well, if you handle your notes as carefully as you handle the covenants, we have reason to be concerned.

Just use a Westminster's definition, brother. All right.

Is there a dagger in one of these questions? I think that should be a flag, right?

For roughing the ref. I'll take it.

You owe me a drink later. Deal. All right. The first question is for Eric.

And the way this is gonna work, and I'm gonna be pretty strict on this, I'm gonna give the person who's addressed with the question is gonna get two minutes, and then we're gonna give the other debater one minute to respond.

So please respect our time and make it quick. First question is for Eric.

You seem to be saying the covenant of grace is only the invisible church.

Is there a visible church that can actually be said to be in the covenant of grace?

I seem to be saying that the covenant, this is kind of similar to what Zach asked me in the cross -examination.

The visible church are those who make a profession. It's not, we don't have, I didn't start my timer,

I'm sorry. We don't have regeneration goggles. None of us, Presbyterian, Baptist alike have regeneration goggles.

We don't know who ultimately is regenerated. We don't know ultimately who the elect are.

But we are given tools to understand, hey, here's who you admit into the church.

Here's the people to whom you administer the sacraments or the ordinances. I'm fine with either term.

And so when we allow the covenants themselves to define the context, the new covenant defines who is in the new covenant.

It's those to whom God has written the law in their hearts, those who are forgiven of their sins in the heavenly tabernacle.

Those are the people that are in the new covenant. When we look at a visible church, the visible church is defined by our fallible knowledge.

Something that both myself and the Presbyterians have to deal with is that we don't know, and both of us will be admitting people into membership in a local fellowship that aren't elect and that ultimately do not have the forgiveness of Christ.

Yes, the difference is in our knowledge. We don't know perfectly.

God knows perfectly. We are told how to operate. We are told who to give these ordinances to.

And he says, when we look at the book of Acts, once it's something we would disagree on, he'd probably wanna take households and an

Old Testament understanding of households, bring that into Acts. I'm assuming, I'm gonna go, okay, well, we gotta read from chapter one all the way to the end, and we see who it is that is baptized.

It's those who believe. But as a brief note, just to throw it in at the end, the sign of the new covenant is not baptism, it's regeneration.

You were doing so well until that last little bit. We actually agreed. Okay. Zach, do you have a response?

I do. So, Eric, I think that you actually summarized that all so very well.

Paul commands us, do not go beyond what is written. We can ask all kinds of questions.

We can take any passage, we can cherry pick a chunk of Hebrews nine and say,

I want an answer from this. And one correct answer, which is an answer that you just gave, on the same topic is, well, the

Bible doesn't tell us that. The Bible does not tell us who is in the invisible church.

That is the secret knowledge that God will have. The Bible does tell us how to determine who is in the visible church.

That is the knowledge that is given to us. And we can say, and first of all,

I didn't make the argument tonight that somehow the use of the word household in Acts -

You did not. Requires, and you acknowledge that, but I'm emphasizing it. I'm not accusing you. I'm emphasizing that because it doesn't tell us and it doesn't need to.

Time. 15 seconds. Go ahead. Ultimately, when we say that, but Acts does tell us who is to be baptized.

No, it tells us that when the apostles were speaking to adult believers who had not acknowledged

Christ, they needed to do so before they were baptized. Thank you. To Zach, who has better potlucks.

No, I'm just kidding. No. Well, first of all, because to quote my online friend,

Keith Foskey, because we have superior theology, all right.

We have pot providences, brother. Touche.

I can't beat that. Zach, we're both Isaac and Ishmael in the covenant of grace.

What about Jacob and Esau? Those are great questions. Thank you for those questions.

So because we are told point blank that Jacob, I have loved,

Esau, I have hated. We know because of God's revelation that one ultimately did obey.

As you pointed out, this is what children, this is what believers need to do is obey, and one did not.

We are also told that Isaac is the son of the promise while Ishmael is the son of the flesh.

And so we can infer from that, perhaps, that Ishmael was not saved. I don't think we're told.

So those are two different things. In the second question, which I answered first about Jacob and Esau, we are told.

In the first, which I addressed second, just to be confusing, we're not told directly, although we're given indication.

Does this somehow mean that when God said, I will be

God to your children, that he didn't actually mean that, even in the

Old Testament? Well, that would be absurd. He clearly said, I will be God to you and to your children.

And as we've already acknowledged, that does not mean all children will be saved. That's what both of those are demonstrating.

Children of the ecclesia who are not elect are not elect.

And the secret knowledge of God is, he knows who all of those are. Now, Baptists do the same thing, while acutely saying that, well, we're commanded to baptize everyone who professes faith, even though we already know for sure that some of them aren't elect.

Okay, well, why do you do that? Well, because we're commanded. Great, okay, why don't we baptize children?

Why don't we, let's take it back to the terms of this debate. Why don't we acknowledge that they are covenant members? Well, because my definition of the covenant of grace doesn't allow that.

And because Hebrews eight says no, and they don't know. So even though that would abrogate preaching the word, we're gonna ignore that.

Do you see what I'm saying? Now, I'm being a little bit of a smart aleck again, and I apologize. Sometimes I have to dial it back.

But of course, some people who are born into the covenant are not saved.

Those two passages are telling us that point blank. Thanks. Eric. So he said, of course, some people that are born into the covenant are not saved.

What covenant? That's the question. That's the question we've been drilling at all night. The question up front was, and I've only got a minute, was

Jacob and Esau, are they both in the covenant of grace? No.

The covenant of grace is the covenant that is made with Christ and in him all the elect as his seed, his seed,

Christ's seed. Esau was hated by God. Esau was not in the covenant of grace.

But here's the problem. If you're going to say that the Abrahamic covenant was an administration of the covenant of grace and the way that you're cut off from that covenant is by failing to circumcise that member, if you're going to say that Abrahamic covenant is the covenant of grace,

Esau, are we thinking that he wasn't circumcised? Of course he was. By his standard, he would be in the covenant of,

I would argue that that would be, that would necessitate the conclusion that he's in the covenant of grace under the

Presbyterian scheme. Thank you. Next question for Eric.

In what sense is the Abrahamic covenant eternal?

Yeah, so I think when we look at the Abrahamic covenant, we see that it finds its telos, if you will.

It finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And we're also told that those who have faith in Christ are children of Abraham by faith.

Great, how so? Because Christ is the fulfillment of all of those promises.

Christ is the one that it was ultimately pointing to. It wasn't pointing to itself in guaranteeing a new heart.

Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant didn't provide that. The Abrahamic covenant is eternal because it finds its fulfillment, type and antitype, it finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the true son of Abraham.

And if we're in Christ, then we are in Abraham. Not because we're in Abraham, not because we have a genealogical connection to him, although some do.

That's not the connection point. The connection is faith in Jesus Christ, the promised seed, the promised offspring, the promised king.

He's the one that came and fulfilled all those promises. And if we're in him, we are his offspring.

And let's say who receives the covenant sign? The offspring. What is the covenant sign? The covenant sign is circumcision of the heart.

Only those who are Christ's offspring receive circumcision of the heart.

This is the, I mean, the fact that Christ is the fulfillment of Abraham is the way that that is the case.

Thank you. Zach, one minute. The statement that forever or a thousand generations or God to you and to your children as an everlasting covenant means only partially is the classic example of taking less clear passages, assembling them into a system.

And then and only then using them to trump more clear passages. We can look at other places the word everlasting is used.

And that was brought up tonight. And every one of those places, if everlasting does not mean forever, then we are told so explicitly.

We are told so explicitly regarding Aaron. And I challenge anyone to come up with another example of everlasting that doesn't mean everlasting, just because we cannot say that children are now excluded because they might not be members of the invisible church.

On that argument, the command to baptize professing believers is absurd because it is exactly the same act.

And it is not fair, it is not biblical to resort to what we're commanded to do it. Well, yes, we're commanded to include children.

Thank you. Fortunately, I think we're gonna have time for only two more questions, but we will address hopefully the rest of these tomorrow morning.

For Zach, what role does typology play in your theology of the covenants?

Well, I can't ask the questioner what the definition of typology is.

I'm going to assume that you are using it the same way specifically Samuel Rennihan uses it in his

Baptist polemic. And in that case, it fills the same place that other eisegesis fill.

Thank you. Okay. Eric. We can call it eisegesis, we can call it a popsicle, we can call it whatever we wanna call it.

It's not eisegesis when the inspired authors of scripture explicitly are using type and anti -type.

When they're saying that Christ is the true bread from heaven. This isn't eisegesis, this is just reading the text.

Asking about what role does typology play in our understanding of the covenants is a very important question.

All of us must recognize typology. And I would just recommend to some people, you can read

Klein on this, you can read Voss on this, you can read Clowney on this. There's different ways of understanding different texts.

And they're not all the same. Hebrews isn't gonna be understood the same way as Roman. But what we need to understand ultimately is that all of that Old Testament shadows were finally fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Thank you. Question is regarding Romans 11, verses 17 through 24 if you wanna have that at the ready.

Romans 11. This is for Eric. Eric, in your opening, you said there's one olive tree equating it with the covenant of grace.

How then can a member be broken off for unbelief? Two minutes?

Yes. I did not equate it with the covenant of grace. I equated it with Israel.

A common, when we look at Romans, especially 11, and we don't have time to get into all the context of what

Romans is about. Hopefully, as Reformed people, you understand the book of Romans. I didn't say it's the covenant of grace.

The question here that really is a pun intended, the root of the matter is what is the root? Is the root of this olive tree

Jesus Christ? Or is the root of this olive tree, the patriarchs and the promises to the patriarchs?

Once again, an assumption, but I would assume that my brother would say the root is

Christ. He might not and he'll have a minute, but most Presbyterians would say the root of that is

Jesus Christ. The root of that is the patriarchs that these promises came out of.

So, I mean, I don't know that I need a whole bunch more time. I didn't say that it's the covenant of grace. It's the

Israel of God. Thank you. Zach.

We are told, now we can debate. I'm not sure whether the root and branches analogy really gets there.

So, to me, I'm not. We'll touch on it tomorrow. Yeah, well,

I would put it this way. We can define that one way or the other.

Ultimately, if we are going to say that an assembly of assumptions, such as assuming that because typology is used in the

Bible, it is therefore determinative regarding covenant.

That's the type of eisegesis we're addressing. To assume that, well, because we can make the argument that the root is the patriarchs and not

Christ, even though we are told in other places in the New Testament that the root is

Christ from which the branches grow, it's not going to work.

And so, this is where these assumptions fall apart.

To give each of you equal amount of questions, we do have one more since Eric was first.

Last one, Zach. In what sense is the new covenant a new covenant?

Ah, that's a great question. So, we have to look at all of Scripture to define that word new.

It's called context. Just in the same way as we have to look at all of Scripture to define the word no in Hebrews 8, or to define the word ecclesia in the entire

Bible. The word new itself has two major connotations.

It can mean something that does away with. When I buy a new pair of shoes,

I often mean that I'm not wearing my old ones because they're worn out. When I say

I have a new baby, it doesn't mean I've disowned my other kids. It means

I haven't met this one yet. Those are two very clear uses of the word new.

And you hear it again and again and again from the Reformed Baptist perspective with love and respect to my

Baptist brothers. Well, new automatically means replacing.

No, it doesn't. And you can't say that, well, because it says new, therefore, it replaces, which is usually the argument.

And I know it would drive me nuts if I was a Baptist and I saw the types of things that are thrown at Presbyterians online.

Well, you just believe it because it's new. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that the word new does not define it for you.

You have to look elsewhere. You have to look at the rest of Scripture. It's better. Some things are replaced because we're told they are.

But we cannot and must not say that because I handed them a broken record, but it keeps coming back up because we have this assemblage of other passages, each one of them, such as Hebrews 8, which there is nothing in Hebrews 8 that requires us to believe that that knowledge must be professable.

Time. Nothing. But that is a key point. So we require that to be a professable knowledge.

We require that to be enough teaching to be able to profess faith. And then we say, therefore, children aren't included because, and then we've got all these supporting

Scriptures. Well, it's simply not true. It is a violation of hermeneutics. Thank you.

Eric, finish it up. The question was, in what way is the new covenant a better covenant?

Is that a question or a new covenant? In what sense is the new covenant a new covenant? A new covenant, gotcha.

Better priest, established on better promises, brand new covenant.

As I established in my opening, and as we talked about over and over and over again, OPC reports, definition, different promises, different covenant.

You have to do some real gymnastics to say new covenant doesn't mean new covenant. Real quick, just going to read

Hebrews 9. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent typology, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of a defiled person with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit hath offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living

God. We have purified consciences. Amen.