Covenant

Covenant is a central concept in both Judaism and Christianity, and has been a key issue throughout the history of Jewish–Christian relations. The word itself derives from the Bible and has been reinterpreted many times in both traditions, mainly in opposition to each other. In both, two characteristics recur: God initiates a covenant with a community of people, and that community accepts certain obligations and responsibilities as covenant partners.
            The word appears 287 times in the Hebrew Bible, and is usually understood as a solemn and sacred agreement. Most exegetes, however, hold to the view that the Hebrew word berith should be translated not by ‘covenant’ but by ‘obligation’. Berith expresses the sovereign power of God, who imposeshis will on his vassal Israel: God promises in a solemn oath to fulfil his word to his people Israel,who have only to be faithful and obey.
In the writings that formthe New Testament the concept of the covenant is reinterpreted through the experiences of the early Christian community. The Church accepted the story of Jesus as a new phase in the covenant-story of Israel. The change in emphasis marked by the translation of berith into the Greek diathèkè (‘decree’) in the Septuagint was developed still further in the New Testament, where the concept acquired the meaning of a definitive‘last will and testament’ on the part of God. The Vulgateused the word testamentum, which became the official designation of both parts of the Christian Bible – the Old Testament and the New Testament – with its inescapable implication of supersessionism.
In Jewish thinking the term ‘covenant’ has been constantly reinterpreted, in the first centuries in strong resistance to the Christian proclamationof the ‘new covenant’. In Tanhuma.B., Ki Tissa 58b, for example, the reason is explained for God’s gift of the Mishnah in writing: ‘Moses said: “Lord, do you write it for them?” God said: “I did indeed desire to give it all to them in writing, but it was revealed that the Gentiles in the future will have dominion over them, and will claim the Torah as theirs; then would my children be like the Gentiles. Therefore give them the Scriptures in writing, and the Mishnah, Agada and Talmud orally, for it is they which separate Israel and the Gentiles”.’
Early in its history the Church regarded the ‘old covenant of Israel’ as definitely abrogated; the text on the ‘new covenant’ in Jeremiah 31 was explained as pointing to fulfilment in Christ. Meanwhile, there was a growing emphasis in rabbinic Judaism on the mutuality of the covenantal relationship between God and His People. This was summarised in a well-known Midrash, in which God was depicted as travelling around the world asking various peoples to accept His Torah. None was willing to accept its yoke until God came to Israel and the Israelites answered in one voice: ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient’ (in Exodus 24.7, after Mechilta BaChodesh 5.74a). In Christianity, by contrast, the one-sided initiative of God in the ‘new covenant in Christ’ was strongly emphasised. Much medieval Christian polemic against Jews was concerned with this issue.
The term covenant plays a less prominentrole in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox tradition than in Protestantism, although there has in recent decades been a change discernible in the thinking of Catholic scholars like Erich Zenger and John Pawlikowski . Among the Reformers Calvin, together with Heinrich Bullinger (1504–75), was the leading exponent of the covenant concept, which is central to Calvinist theology. For Calvin the salvation revealed in the New Testament is the same salvation as in the Old, only in a new phase and a fuller light. He writes on dispensations of the one and eternal covenant, of which the basis is always the same, namely Jesus Christ. Calvin’s high esteem for the Old Testament permeates the later Calvinist tradition, where it is often regarded as the ‘proper Bible’. This may explain why soon after the Second World War Reformed Churches took the lead in new statements on Jewish–Christian understanding, in the Netherlands as early as 1949 and 1959.
It is much debated in the Jewish–Christiandialogue whether the concept of covenant, in its one-covenant version or in its two-covenants version, could function as a bridge between the two traditions. In the last decades of the 20th century, numerous official ecclesiastical statements declared that the covenant of God with His People was never abrogated.Covenant theology often assisted in the renewal of relations between the Church and the Jewish People. The famous declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) of Vatican II follows the concept of the two covenants: ‘The Church, therefore, cannot forget that she received the revelation of the Old Testament through the People with whom God in his inexpressible mercy deigned to establish the ancient covenant.’ Pawlikowski elaborates on this line of thinking for him the double covenant perspective helps to underline the distinctiveness of the revelation experienced in and through Christ. The German Rhineland Synod, in Towards a Renewal of the Relationship between Christians and Jews (1980), follows the one covenant perspective in its declaration: ‘We believe the permanent election of the Jewish People as the People of God and realize that through Jesus Christ the Church is taken into the covenant of God with His People.’
The covenant concept is thus of great importance in Jewish–Christian dialogue. In the North American context Paul van Buren (1924–98) has most thoroughly integrated the theme intohis theology. In what he terms ‘the Jewish–Christian reality’ Israel received the calling to be faithful in the covenant to the Torah because of the creation, and the Church received the calling to be faithful to Jesus Christ because of the same creation. Through the Jew Jesus the Christian community receives this calling to participate by faith in the covenant of Abraham. In Germany Friedrich-Wilhelm Marquardt (1928–2002) is Europe’s most influential thinker on the theological consequences of the renewal of the relationship between the Church and the Jewish People. In his view the term ‘covenant’ is the most constructive biblical concept to describe both Christian identity and the Jewish–Christian relationship in our time. His conviction is that churches as representatives of the peoples of the earth can only hopeto become partners in a covenantal relationship with the People of Israel if they are willing to accept the burden of Israel in sanctifying the Name of God in the world, if they join in the calling of Israel to restore the world, and if they are ready to embark with Israel on its journey to the ‘new covenant’ with God which lies ahead.
The American–Jewish scholar Irving Greenberg (b.1933) has defended the thesis that the covenant of God with Israel has undergone many renewals in the course of history. It was God’s purpose from the very beginning to open up the covenant of Israel to a wider group of humanity. The shock of the Shoah and the empowerment of the Jewish People in the State of Israel have led to a new phase in the history of the covenant and of the Jewish–Christian relationship. The Israeli scholar David Hartman  also regards the covenant concept as central to his thinking. In his view Judaism is grounded in a covenant between people and God that is predicated on a belief in human adequacy and dignity. Also other religions, especially Christianity and Islam, have their own covenants with God and are called to celebrate their dignity and particularity.
     
See also exclusivism; Romans 9–11