The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison Between Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist and Paedobaptist Federalism

by Pascal Denault

The Baptist understanding rested on another fundamental distinction: one between the phase in which the covenant of grace was revealed and the phase in which it was concluded. The revealed phase corresponded to the period preceding the death of Christ and the concluded phase corresponded to the time that followed. Therefore, Baptists considered that no other covenant besides the new covenant was the covenant of grace. They still recognized that the covenant of grace had been revealed under all the covenants since the fall, but distinguished between the actual substance of these covenants and the covenant of grace itself.