Explore the vast range of titles available.

\"Hundreds of years ago, the Selkies made a deal with the sea witch: they would have the sea for as long as she allowed it, and when the time came, she would call in all their debts at once. Many assumed that day would never come. Those people were wrong.\"-- From publisher's description.

How does the canon of Scripture fit together? For evangelical Christians, there is no question about the authority of Scripture and its testimony to the centrality of Jesus Christ in God's salvation plan. But several questions remain: How do the Old Testament and New Testament relate to each other? What is the relationship among the biblical covenants? How should Christians read and interpret Scripture in order to do justice to both its individual parts and its whole message? How does Israel relate to the church? In this Spectrum Multiview volume, readers will find four contributors who explore these complex questions. The contributors each make a case for their own view—representing two versions of covenantal theology and two versions of dispensational theology—and then respond to the others' views to offer an animated yet irenic discussion on the continuity of Scripture. Views and Contributors: * Covenant Theology: Michael S. Horton, Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California * Progressive Covenantalism: Stephen J. Wellum, professor of Christian theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary * Progressive Dispensationalism: Darrell L. Bock, Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary * Traditional Dispensationalism: Mark A. Snoeberger, professor of systematic theology and apologetics, Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary Spectrum Multiview Books offer a range of viewpoints on contested topics within Christianity, giving contributors the opportunity to present their position and also respond to others in this dynamic publishing format.

The struggle to read Jeremiah 31:31–34 as Christian Scripture has a long and divided history, cutting across nearly every major locus of Christian theology. Yet little has been done either to examine closely the varieties of interpretation in the Christian tradition from the post-Nicene period to the modern era, or to make use of such interpretations as helpful interlocutors. This work begins with Augustine's interpretation of Jer 31:31–34 as an absolute contrast between unbelief and faith, rather than the now-standard reading (found in Jerome) of a contrast between two successive religio-historical eras—one that governed Israel (the \"old covenant\") and a new era and its covenant inaugurated in the coming of Christ. Augustine's absolute contrast loosened the strict temporal concern, so that the faithful of any era were members of the \"new covenant.\" The study traces Augustine's reading of an absolute contrast in a few key moments of Christian interpretation: Thomas Aquinas and high medieval theology, then the 16th and 17th century Reformed tradition. The thesis aims at a constructive reading of Jer 31:31–34, and so the struggle identified in these moments in the Christian tradition is brought into dialogue with modern critical discussions from Bernhard Duhm to the present. Finally, the author turns to an exegetical argument for an 'Augustinian' reading of the contrast of the covenants.

This article analyses how private agreements that burden land respond to environmental and social change. It argues that, where there is a public environmental purpose, this should be reflected in the legal rules governing the agreement. It explores the alteration of conservation covenants by judicial process in English law, focusing on the public dimensions of justice. How could private law recognize better the responsibilities that covenants generate to human and non-human publics? Doctrinal changes to the Environment Act 2021 are suggested, including the introduction of a presumption against judicial alteration of a conservation covenant where there are ongoing conservation purposes, complemented by changes to how judicial discretion is exercised. The hybrid public-private nature of conservation covenants also demands new procedural forms. Further opportunities for human publics to participate, perhaps modelled on those found in land-use planning law, as well as exploration of new means of engaging with non-human publics, are needed.

This article concerns the role of covenant in early rabbinic literature in relation to biblical and especially Second Temple-era predecessors. The first part establishes that the Qumran sectarians and earlier circles were drawn to the concept of covenant because it represented, especially through the mechanism of covenant renewal, a powerful tool for defining and supporting group identity. The second part shows that for the rabbis, the importance of covenant lay chiefly, instead, in its capacity to conceptualize the notion of Israel as a collective body defined by corporate responsibility. The third part suggests that this novel deployment of covenant arose in part to counter the individuating force of halakah as law, another innovation of the rabbis.

Key words: grace, gift, old covenant, new covenant, biblical theology, John Barclay, perfections, efficacy, superabundance (Proquest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) John M. G. Barclay's 2015 monograph, Paul and the G ft, has proposed an illuminating taxonomy of the \"perfections\" of gift/grace in the Greco-Roman and first-century Jewish world.1 Barclay applies his taxonomy to Paul's theology of grace in Romans and Galatians, but in this article I employ the same taxonomy to compare and contrast the graces of the old and new covenants.2 The added precision that this analysis brings to the discussion of grace in old and new covenants is a needed contribution to a relationship that is often vaguely understood. [...]the book of Deuteronomy is structured like an ancient Near Eastern suzerain-vassal treaty.9 These treaty documents contain specific elements in a fixed order, including a prologue telling the history of the parties' relationship,10 stipulations that specify what loyalty will look like, and blessings and curses.11 Such treaties formalize relationships that are inherently reciprocal, where the greater party promises protection and grants a measure of authority to a lesser party who promises complete fealty to the suzerain. The very structure of Deuteronomy emphasizes that Yahweh's incredible covenant gift to Israel necessitates ncproci'y-it certainly does not perfect non-circularity.12 Second, the book is peppered with explicit and repeated calls for faithful loyalty and devotion to Yahweh, and righteousness and justice toward fellow humans. Moses emphasizes the demand for reciprocity in his final speech (in keeping with its placement at the end of the covenant document).13 The wonderful promises of blessing in the land, economic and agricultural prosperity, and victory over enemies-and most importantly, of Yahweh's presence-are contingent upon the people's complete faithfulness and obedience (28:1-14).

This thesis investigates how Covenanting in Scotland was understood at local and grassroots level from the inception of the 1638 National Covenant to the suppression of Covenanting in the 1660s and 1670s. It explores the complexity of Covenanting ideas and the relationship between Covenanting, Royalism, Presbyterianism, and Episcopacy and assesses how local communities experienced Covenanting and acted on their beliefs from 1638 to 1679. At the heart of the analysis is an examination of extant kirk session and presbytery records at significant moments in the early and later Covenanting periods. This thesis advocates a departure from viewing Covenanting as a coherent movement. Rather moments, national and personal, corporate and individual, dictated the ways in which people interpreted their Covenants. The Covenant subscriptions of 1638 and 1643, the implementation of the Directory for Public Worship in 1645, the Engagement crisis of 1647–49, the Cromwellian invasion of 1650–52, and the Glencairn rising of 1653–55 are all assessed in the first part of this thesis as moments in which Covenanting ideas at grassroots level are evident. A broad spectrum of Covenanting emerged as what it meant to be a Covenanter was re-evaluated during these moments. People in the localities had an obligation to pursue the aims of the Covenants and the battle for ideological conformity saw wide social engagement, including individuals of low social status and women, in this national venture. After the overturning of Covenanting legislation in 1662 individual moments, such as choosing whether or not to attend communion administered by a conformist minister, or choosing where to have a child baptised, brought Covenanting commitments to the fore. This is the main focus of the second part of this thesis. Those unwilling to participate in the most subversive aspects of Covenanting, attending conventicles in house and field, but unable to denounce their oaths by accepting the legality of the 1662 settlement found ways of negotiating their Covenanting commitments with the practicalities of living and worshiping in Restoration Scotland. This research concludes that Covenanting engendered a wide range of responses from 1638 to 1679 and was not the sole property of conventiclers after the Restoration of Charles II. Crucially, ordinary groups of people, including women, were engaged in Covenanting controversy from the outset through the imposition of oaths, fasts, and celebrations and took action independent of their social superiors when faced with an explicitly anti-Covenanting regime, thus marking a significant watershed in the history of political activism in Scotland.

Coordination failure among owners of heterogeneous debt types increases distress costs. Covenants reduce expected distress costs by lowering the probability of liquidity shortages, increasing liquidation values, and incentivizing creditor monitoring. We predict and find that new debt contracts include more covenants when borrowers’ existing debt structures are more heterogeneous. Our findings suggest that covenants are not only used to address creditor–shareholder conflicts but also to reduce the expected costs of coordination failure among creditors. Furthermore, our results indicate a dynamic component missing from static debt structure models: Debt heterogeneity entails additional covenants (i.e., constraints) when raising future debt. This paper was accepted by Lauren Cohen, finance.