Tom Wells (1)

This book by Wells and Zaspel is indeed an excellent book on the growing New Covenant Theology paradigm. It outlines and attempts to show from Scripture the rightness of its position, which is claimed to be the natural teaching of the text of Scripture when interpreted in context.

Upon examining the arguments for New Covenant Theology as outlined here (and also in Reisinger's book Tablets of Stone), NCT appears to be the child of Biblical Theology with its idea of progressive revelation, and depends on it for its substance. While Biblical Theology is indeed important, the over-reliance on Biblical Theology at the expense of Systematic Theology creates theological problems and logical contradictions within the system. One such example of a logical contradiction is the teaching of OT believers being not part of the Church (p. 52), yet part of the Church (p. 63). A theological problem found in NCT is that OT believers are not saved by the Gospel (p. 31), but if so then they cannot be saved by God's grace through Christ's atonement for all believers either (Rom. 1: 16), not to mention that this explicitly contradicts Gal. 3:8

Since the topic of study is that of the biblical metanarrative and transcendental truth, the revelation of biblical truth in history (Biblical Theology) cannot be used to derive transcendental biblical truth (Systematic Theology). The outworking of God's truth in time is definitely important, but such cannot be used to infer anything about transcendental truths of God. NCT oversteps the boundary of Biblical Theology by making Biblical Theology the framework for understanding metanarrative truths when it is not designed to do so. Rather, metanarrative truths are to be attained through Systematic Theology done through logical inference from all of Scripture (Tota Scriptura), with the role of Biblical Theology limited to the HOW of its outworking in redemptive history. It must be said here that is is regrettable that this overemphasis on Biblical Theology with its teaching of the logical priority of Jesus' teaching, while true, is unwittingly used to undermine the authority of Scriptures by pitting the physically uttered teachings of the Incarnate logos (λογος) against the revelatory logos (λογος) or the entirety of Scripture, and thus make the "red letters" in the Bible to be of much higher authority and "more inspired" than the normal black letters of the rest of Scripture.… (mere)