The Meaning of History According to the Covenant

Abstract This essay describes a problem for covenant theology and proposes a solution. The problem is that the suffering of a covenanted people exists and is not always deserved, and that such suffering would also seem to constitute falsifying evidence against any and every claim that a covenant between God and a people is in force. The solution is for the covenant theologian to write differently, to be self-consciously fallibilist when representing the content of the covenant between God and a people. That attempt aims to produce a consensus that simply is a utopian view of a covenanted community. Instead, covenant theologians should accept disagreement, that members of communities fight to verify their senses of what a covenant with God entails. In those conflicts, a community that sees itself in relationship to God sees itself in and through the relationships between its members, and covenant theology takes concrete shape in the human order in which, and through which, the content of the covenant with God is mediated.