Dispensationalism & Covenant Theology (While Playing Super Mario Bros)

I have a confession to make. I have never beaten Super Mario Brothers, the original game, and recently I had on my show The Redeemed Zoomer, and one of the things that he does on his program is he plays video games while talking about theology.

And because of his inspiration as well as the recent release of the Mario movie, I thought it was an opportunity for me to go back and give Super Mario Brothers another try, but I'm going to do it while talking about theology.

Playing Mario While Discussing Theology

So that is my plan for today. Now I'm playing this on an emulator, you can see it on your screen, so it's a little bit different than the old flat joysticks that we had back in the 80s and 90s, but I've been practicing, so I'm going to give it my best shot.

They give you 10 lives to start with, so we'll see how that works. And I'm going to be talking today about the subject of Dispensationalism, Covenant Theology, and what's called New Covenant Theology, and I'm going to differentiate that from what's also known as Progressive Covenantalism.

So that's going to be my subject while I play the original Super Mario Brothers. So, oh, by the way, in the original game you got three lives. This emulator gives me 10 lives to start with, so I'm probably going to use them all up.

I'm going to keep this video to around 10 to 12 minutes. Last night I watched my wife beat this game in less than 15 minutes, and having never beat it, it was somewhat emasculating, so I'm going to try my best to see what I can do in the next 15 minutes while doing this, talking about Covenant Theology, Dispensationalism, and New Covenant Theology.

All right, so let's begin. I'll unpause the game. There we go. All right. All right, so when we talk about Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology, what we're talking about is we're talking about hermeneutical lenses by which we look at the whole of Scripture.

Covenant Theology and the Three Major Covenants

And we'll begin with Covenant Theology. Covenant Theology is what is typically believed by Reformed folks, specifically Presbyterians, and Covenant Theology is the idea that there are covenants in Scripture, and that's how God has made his relationship with man, but that the covenants that matter, the real covenants, are the ones that aren't necessarily named in Scripture, but are implied.

And the first one that's implied in Scripture is what is known as the Covenant of Redemption. That is, before time began, God in the Trinity had a... well, I died the first time right there. I haven't even made it through part one.

So, or through level one. So anyway, the first covenant is the Covenant of Redemption, where God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, which has always existed. One in essence, three in person, has always existed, and so there's an inter-Trinitarian covenant called the Covenant of Redemption.

And so that is the first of three important covenants that is believed in by Covenant Theology, that God chose before he even created the world, that he was going to send Jesus into the world, that Jesus was going to bring redemption, and that that redemption would come through the work of Christ on the cross.

So that decision was made prior to creation, and that was a covenant that God made within himself. The second covenant, a very important covenant, is known as the Covenant of Works. This is the covenant God made with Adam in the garden, wherein God established with Adam a covenant where he said, if you do this and live, do this and die, and of course what was he supposed to do and die?

The thing that he would do and die would be eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Covenant Theology really focuses a lot on this Covenant of Works because they believe that Adam, establishing this Covenant of Works, essentially established a paradigm that would later be fulfilled in Christ, that where Adam wasn't able to fulfill the works that God commanded, Jesus was, and therefore that's why we call him the the second or the last Adam.

So the Covenant of Works made with Adam in the garden, Adam failed to keep the Covenant of Works, and by failing to keep the Covenant of Works, he not only condemned himself, but he condemned all of mankind.

And typically we bring into this conversation the conversation of federal headship, but federal headship is something that is not necessarily limited to Classic Covenant Theology, but it is essential to Classic Covenant Theology, that Adam in the garden represented all mankind in his sin and failure.

So that is an important reality there, that we understand that Adam, in the fall, in the Covenant of Works, that Adam was doing something that affected all men. All right, so that is the second covenant, the Covenant of Works.

Now the third covenant that is important in Covenant Theology is the Covenant of Grace. Now the Covenant of Grace is the covenant wherein God enters into a gracious relationship with his people that he chooses out of mankind.

It's not with all men, but it's with those whom he chooses graciously out of mankind. And so that covenant is entered into by faith. You enter into the Covenant of Grace by faith, and so the debate between Presbyterians and Baptist covenant theologians is where the Covenant of Grace is.

Where do we find it in the Scripture? Because Presbyterians would say everything that happened after the fall was grace, therefore the Covenant of Grace is everything. Everything after the fall is grace, and every covenant that we see is a re-administration of the Covenant of Grace.

All right, so they would say everything. The Abrahamic Covenant, the Noahic Covenant, all those covenants are essentially the Covenant of Grace. So, so far so good. We have we have the Covenant Theology, which says that the... oh, this is a little harder than I thought.

Oh, I'm getting killed here. Okay, gonna die. Yep, yeah, thought I was gonna die. Okay, so I died. All right, so we have the Covenant of Works, Covenant of... or Covenant of Redemption, Covenant of Works, Covenant of Grace, that is the trifle covenant, and the word Baptist differ is...

Baptists would say the Covenant of Grace is the New Covenant, and all of the previous covenants look forward to the New Covenant, but are not themselves covenants of grace. And so there's a distinction to be made there.

And that's somewhat debated. There are those who would hold to differing views on that, arguing for things like the Abrahamic Covenant and things like that, whether or not the Abrahamic Covenant was completely by grace, and so there's some debate within Reformed Baptist circles about the Covenant of Grace.

All right, so let's distinguish that. Again, and that's a whole Bible hermeneutic, right? If you hold to that, you're gonna see the epics of Scripture as being Covenant of Works, Covenant of Grace, and you're going to distinguish between those two things.

And so those are important. Those are how we define the overall message of Scripture. So that's important. I keep getting killed. I'm sorry. This is, like I said, a little bit more difficult than I thought.

Dispensationalism and the Seven Dispensations

All right, so now let's move to dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is not based on a covenantal structure of Scripture, even though obviously covenants are still important in dispensationalism. But rather, dispensationalism is based on what are known as dispensations.

Dispensation means stewardship or management, and the idea is that in man's differing conditions, man managed or stewarded or dispensed his authority and or guidance in different ways. And so typically classic dispensationalism would say there are seven dispensations, beginning with the dispensation of innocence in the garden.

Of course, in the garden, Adam and Eve were in a relationship with God that changed after the Fall, and therefore the dispensationalist would say that prior to the Fall, there was a dispensation of innocence.

After the Fall, there was a dispensation of conscience, and that's typically what's referred to as the dispensation following the Fall. And then you have the dispensation of government, which comes after Noah, where Noah is given a responsibility to exercise capital punishment, and they would say that institutes world government, and you know, because all governments are based on justice, and justice is something that has to have a standard, and the standard, of course, is the law of retributive justice, which we see given after the time of Noah.

So, it makes sense so far that we're at three different ones, and then you have the dispensation of promise, which comes through Abraham, you have the dispensation of the law, which comes through Moses, and then you have the dispensation of grace, which comes through Christ, and then the dispensationalist looks forward to another dispensation, and that is the dispensation of the kingdom.

And the kingdom, of course, dispensationalists tend to be pre-millennialists, meaning they believe that when Christ returns, there's going to be a 1 ,000-year kingdom that is going to be set up on the world, this 1 ,000-year kingdom is going to be Christ ruling and reigning on this earth for a thousand years, and when he rules and reigns on this earth for a thousand years, he will, in fact, establish a kingdom here, the kingdom that is going to be for that thousand years.

So that's the dispensation of the kingdom. Now, dispensationalism and covenant theology typically make their biggest distinction when you begin to see the differences between the Church and Israel. Covenant theology would say that Israel and the Church are essentially the same.

They would say Old Testament Israel is the Church, and in fact some covenant theologians even say that, they call Old Testament Israel the Church, and then you have some who would say that the Old Testament Israel is a type of the Church, we're going to talk about that a little bit more when we get to New Covenant theology, but for now just simply say that they see a continuity between the Church and Israel in covenant theology.

Dispensationalism, however, sees a discontinuity between the Church and Israel, and one of the big distinctions of dispensationalism is making the distinction between the Church and Israel. If you believe the Church and Israel are essentially the same, or that the Church is engrafted into Israel, then you tend to be more covenantal.

Dispensationalists would say that there are promises that were made specifically and only to Israel, and those promises do not belong to the Church, they're given to ethnic Israel only, and therefore they tend to make a stronger distinction between the two.

So, you know, typically you'll see dispensationalists will talk a lot about things like the coming revival of the Jews, even though some covenant theologians like R .C. Sproul would agree that there potentially is coming a time where there's going to be a revival among the Jews.

He talked about that in his book The Last Days According to Jesus, he said it's possible that there could be a revival among the ethnic Jewish people that is coming. However, it's not necessary within the system of covenant theology, however, within the dispensational view it is, because part of the reason for the establishment of the Millennial Kingdom is that God still has promises.

According to dispensationalism, God still has promises that he has not fulfilled to the dispensationalists, and therefore—I'm sorry, to the dispensationalists—God has promises he has not fulfilled to Israel, and therefore he has to fulfill those promises, and he's going to fulfill those promises in the Kingdom, in the Messianic thousand-year reign of the Kingdom.

And that's what's interesting about that—ooh, did not want to do that—what's interesting about that is when you begin to consider what that all encompasses, right? Like, some will believe that they're going to reestablish sacrifices and temple worship during the Millennium, so Christ will be there, but there will be sacrifices.

I ran out of time, holy cow, I didn't know that that was even a thing anymore. Yeah, I ran out of time, sorry. So anyway, dispensationalism would say God is going to establish his Kingdom, and the game is over, I think.

Closing Thoughts and Future Topics

I am done with the game. I didn't get to New Covenant theology. I will talk about that next time. If you enjoyed this video, please send me a message letting me know that you liked it, and I'll do another one, and next time I'll talk about the between New Covenant theology, progressive covenantalism, and maybe even we'll look at progressive dispensationalism.

So I made a distinction between covenant theology and dispensational theology. Hopefully it made sense. If you have questions, leave them in the comments below, and I'll see if I can get to them soon.

God bless.