Today I started teaching a module, a Masters level course, at Baptist Bible Seminary on covenant theology.  Since I am a traditional dispensationalist, the analysis and critique will certainly be from outside the system of covenant theology.  All of the required books in the course are by covenant theologians.  I figured my students may not have read the covenant guys on their terms.  I am having them read Michael Horton’s book Introducing Covenant Theology, G. I. Williamson’s book The Westminster Confession of Faith for Study Classes, a few sections in Berkhof’s Systematic Theology and some in Calvin’s Institutes.  Of course, all of my personal notes and lectures are from the dispensational side of the debate.

On the opening day, I started by sharing the areas of agreement between the two camps and by trying to get my students to look fairly at the issues and, most of all, to look in detail in the Word of God itself and not just the theology books.  Those of us in systematics sometimes spend too much time reading outside the Bible instead of the Bible itself.  Hopefully, when the module is over, my students will have a biblical understanding that allows them to critique covenant theology fairly and accurately.  Of course, I hope all my students come out of my class dispensationalists.