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John Owen's 17 Differences Between the Old and New Covenants

Simon Wartanian | 66 views | 2,758 words | 0:14:09 hours | 18 August 2025 22:02

Here is a summary of Owen’s 17 differences between the Old Covenant and New Covenant, taken from his Hebrews 8:6 commentary. Sometimes I have retained his wording, but other times I have formatted them differently. You can find an online version of the commentary at Study Light.

There is also a great collapsible outline made by Brandon Adams at http://www.1689federalism.com/owen/demo/owen.html.

Difference 1

These two covenants differ in the circumstance of time as to their promulgation, declaration, and establishment. The first covenant was made at the time that God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, and took its date from the third month after their coming up from thence, Ex 19:24. From the time of what is reported in the latter place, wherein the people give their actual consent unto the terms of it, it began its formal obligation as a covenant. The new covenant was declared and made known “in the latter days,” Heb. 1:1-2; “in the dispensation of the fullness of times,” Eph. 1:10. And it took date, as a covenant formally obliging the whole church, from the death, resurrection, ascension of Christ, and sending of the Holy Ghost.

Difference 2

They differ in the circumstance of place as to their promulgation; which the Scripture also taketh notice of. The first was declared on mount Sinai; the manner whereof, and the station of the people in receiving the law Ex 19:18. The other was declared on mount Zion, and the law of it went forth from...

Resources for studying the Christian Sabbath

Simon Wartanian | 22 views | 1,107 words | 0:05:48 hours | 18 August 2025 21:18

Written Resources

Philip S. Ross, From the Finger of God: The Biblical and Theological Basis for the Threefold Division of the Law (Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2010).
C. P. Arand, C. L. Blomberg, S. MacCarty, & J. A. Pipa, Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views, ed. C. J. Donato (Nashville: B&H Pub., 2011).
Joseph A. Pipa, Jr, The Lord’s Day (Fearn: Christian Focus, 1997).
Robert Paul Martin, The Christian Sabbath: Its Redemptive-Historical Foundation, Present Obligation, and Practical Observance (Trinity Pulpit Press, 2016).
Francis Nigel Lee, The Covenantal Sabbath (London, ILQ: Lord’s Day Observance Society, 1974). Available at http://www.the-highway.com/Covsab_TOC.html.
- This is a very extensive work on the Sabbath, which is out of print, but available online.
John Owen, A Treatise On The Sabbath (Forgotten Books, 2015). A photocopy edition, which is also available online at https://archive.org/details/treatiseonsabbat00owen.
Richard Barcellos, etc, Going Beyond The Five Points, ed. Rob Ventura (San Bernardino, CA: [CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform], 2015). pp. 53-56.
Richard Barcellos:
- Getting the Garden Right: Adam’s Work and God’s Rest in Light of Christ (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2017).
- The First Day of the Week in the New Testament. 8-part blog post, beginning with the first here https://cbtseminary.org/the-first-day-of-the-week-in-the-new-testament-part-1-of-8/.

Roger T. Bec...

An extensive compilation of Scripture canon lists: texts and spreadsheet

Simon Wartanian | 2,500 views | 611 words | 0:03:010 hours | 05 September 2023 19:34

I have tried to collect as many canon lists as possible. One crucial work in the last years is that of Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade entitled The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford, 2017). In the citations below it is mentioned as “Canon Lists”. I have tried to find as much on the web as possible, such as the translations of Schaff wherever possible. There are some citations which are not canon lists strictly but mention whether a particular collection of books was accepted or rejected.

The Spreadsheet

Link

To process this information, I made a spreadsheet where I have tried to analyze what is said and color-coded it. A word about how the spreadsheet is set up.

The first thing to be noticed is the type of a particular list. So there are, for example, list which come up from non-Christian Jewish authors, from manuscripts, individual authors, councils or documents (like a confession).
Then we have the author, which is either the person, the name of the manuscript or the name of the document.
Next up is the date of the list or if nothing specific is known about the list, the dates of its author.
Region mainly specifies whether a canon is Western or Eastern.
Claim to the Fathers/Authority is for those lists that mention that the list is received by a particular father or that “the Church” accepts or rejects some books.
In Comments are usually summaries of the list or an evaluation.

The division of the b...

A Review of Perspectives on the Doctrine of God

Simon Wartanian | 3,335 views | 2,894 words | 0:14:58 hours | 14 May 2022 21:35

This book sets to explore the doctrine of God, especially of His knowledge, immutability, and sovereignty from a Christian perspective. There are four positions, which could be sub-categorized as two Calvinist positions and two free will theism positions.

The classical Calvinist position

This book is a little...bittersweet. I am a Reformed Baptist and thus I agree with the classical position as articulated by Paul Helm, but I must agree with the criticism given by the other contributors that Helm’s chapter was more about predestination than about theology proper and God’s relation to the world. Helm’s claim that his position is the historical (whether true or false) was met with a lot of snarkiness and set an unprofessional tone to the book and responses, which was disappointing. Even as a Calvinist, I acknowledge that divine determinism or unconditional election is not the mainstream or default teaching of Christianity. I believe it is absolutely biblical, but it is something else to say that it is simply the default view. But were Dr. Helm’s chapter on classical theism and God’s relation to the world, then his statement would have fully been justified. The responses made even moderate statements by Dr. Helm to be absolute and extreme. This was unhelpful. Dr. Helm even spends a lot of pages preemptively responding to various views which he thought would be represented in this book. He even discusses middle knowledge and the views of William Lane Craig on that in his...

Extensive review of Jonathan Menn's Biblical Eschatology

Simon Wartanian | 8,659 views | 12,397 words | 1:05:40 hours | 09 February 2022 21:11

Review and summary of
Biblical Eschatology by Jonathan Menn

I’ve often seen this book in my Amazon Wishlist and asked myself, “Is it worth it? I don’t know the author, but it seems that he is amillennial.” My question was answered when I came across a YouTube series from ECLEA (Equipping Church Leaders East Africa), where Dr. Jonathan Menn is the director, entitled “Biblical Eschatology.” That series is based on a book also called Biblical Eschatology which ECLEA has published and which is available for free. Upon watching the series and skimming through the ECLEA book, I was impressed how thorough the author was and how widely read he was. Then I compared the table of contents of his larger book and the ECLEA book and came to the conclusion that they dealt with the same subjects, only that his book was much larger and thorough. That motivated it me all the more to get the larger book. The summaries of his book which are also available at ThirdMill also helped in my decision.

Now that introductions are out of the way, I think that this is one of the best books on eschatology from an amillennial viewpoint. My very favorite is probably Sam Storms’ Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative because it was the first book that I read after becoming an amillennial through a YouTube video. The High King of Heaven from Dean Davis is likewise a favorite of mine because it was thorough and dealt with many Old Testament prophecies and interpreting them through the lens of ...

The Early Church Fathers on Eschatology (especially the millennial question)

Simon Wartanian | 3,803 views | 207 words | 0:01:03 hours | 02 January 2022 14:56

This work is based on Dr. Charles E. Hill’s fine work entitled Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity. In it, he surveys eschatological thought in the first three centuries of the church. One focus of the study is the interesting observation of something common in all premillennialists (except one, Methodius of Olympus [c. 270-311]) that did not believe in the immediate entry of believers into heaven. Rather, believers and unbelievers were held in some subterranean place until the resurrection and the millennium. On the other hand, those who believed in an intermediate state in heaven, gave no indications of chiliasm (belief in an earthly millennium), but rather, some of them even give explicit evidence of non-chiliasm (i.e., amillennialism). What I’ve done here, is search for the fuller statements of the authors from the early church which are freely available in the Schaff sets on CCEL, and included citations of Dr. Hill from the book itself.

I thought of sharing it on the internet for anyone interested in these issues. In reading these statements, you will find both the good and the bad of the exegesis of the ancient fathers.

(For those not able to see the IFrame, here is the link.)

Koine Greek Verb Parsing Flowchart

Simon Wartanian | 5,727 views | 87 words | 0:00:27 hours | 08 October 2020 20:50

In the past few months, I’ve been pushing myself to continue my study of Greek which I began in 2013, having finished the section on verbs in Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek, I started looking for flowcharts to help me with parsing. I came across one on which I based mine.

I pray that it is helpful to you.

Edit: There was a mistake that I corrected concerning the 2 Aorist. The tense formative σα goes with passive voice instead of the active/middle.

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Quotes from A. W. Pink's The Divine Covenants

Simon Wartanian | 5,890 views | 780 words | 0:04:06 hours | 16 June 2017 22:13

This is my organized citations from A. W. Pink’s The Divine Covenants. The whole book is available online and that is how I collected these citations and corrected some typos and other minor errors.

It has been argued by Brandon Adams that the major theses of Pink was consistent with 1689 Federalism, which teaches that only the New Covenant is the Covenant of Grace. All the other OT covenants were not “administrations” of the Covenant of Grace. You will not find in this work the model of “one covenant, multiple administrations” that is associated with Westminster Federalism. Rather, you will find that all of the OT covenants “adumbrated” the “everlasting covenant of grace”, were subservient to the divine purpose of mercy and grace and contained gracious promises.

There are some statements which could be interpreted in favor of Westminster Federalism, which I have also included under the heading “Westminster Sounding Statements”. But in reading these we must keep in mind the main theses of the work and how Pink uses certain words, for example, “administration.” I do believe that a fair interpretation can be given to these statements without doing violence to the meaning of Pink, but I’ll leave that task to the interested reader.

One difficult statement for me to interpret has to do with the idea of “renewal.” For example:

Just as the various Messianic prophecies, given by God at different times and at wide intervals, were suited to the local occasions when the...

A Review of Hell Under Fire

Simon Wartanian | 7,028 views | 1,399 words | 0:07:19 hours | 22 January 2017 20:36

Hell Under Fire:

Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment

By Christopher W. Morgan & Robert A. Peterson

Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment. Ed. by Christopher W. Morgan, Robert A. Peterson. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004).

Had this book sitting on my shelf for a while and thought that it would merely be an academic book and a dry read. I couldn't be more wrong. Surely it was academic, but never on a level that made it impossible for an average Bible student to understand.

The Book and Its Content

The authors are top-notch theologians in our day who in this book respond to Annihilationism and Universalism, while at the same time give a biblical and holistic picture of hell. The subject of hell is sobering and terrifying. As believers we know that thanks to Christ we have been saved from this awful fate, which we should recognize--we rightly deserve. We likewise believe that all those without the Gospel of Christ, do not have a hope, are under the wrath of God and will everlastingly be under the wrath of God. It is terrifying to think of that and we cannot, without sympathy, discard the emotional appeal of Universalists and Annihilationists. The Bible is the sole infallible and highest authority for the Christian and if the Bible teaches that historical view of hell, then my emotions do not matter and cannot settle the truth about hell. It is as simple as that.

This book contains 10 chapters dealing, containing am...

A Review of O. Palmer Robertson's The Israel of God

Simon Wartanian | 10,402 views | 3,313 words | 0:17:02 hours | 19 January 2017 22:25

The Israel of God:

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

By O. Palmer Robertson

O. Palmer Robertson. The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Pub. 2000)

For those who have come out of Dispensationalism or want to know what covenant theologians believe about Israel, this is the book. This is a book which deals with the place and identity of Israel in the plan of God. In six chapters Dr. Robertson discusses different topics regarding Israel from its identity to its future.

Overall, I found this to be a very helpful and edifying book. The Bible and the truths of the New Covenant were the interpreting lens for everything. We do not look to outside events and force those within the Bible.

The Occasion for the Book

In the Introduction Dr. Robertson begins with a quotation from Bill Clinton when he was the president of the USA, about Israel:

“'If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you' ... it is God's will that Israel, the biblical home of the people of Israel, continue for ever and ever.” So spoke the President of the United States in a speech delivered before the Israeli Knesset assembled in Jerusalem. He was recalling with apparent approval the words of his desperately ill pastor. He concluded the speech by saying, “Your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always.” (p. 1)

It seems that this and such mindset was the driving force behind writing this book. The book is not polemic, but rathe...