Read the whole Bible as one story
Biblical Covenants gives you the canonical framework serious students have always needed — tracing the divine promises from Genesis to Revelation so that every passage, every prophet, and every page of the New Testament finally fits together.
The covenant structure is not background information about the Bible — it is the lens through which the Bible's own authors understood everything they were writing.— Carla Paton
What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Identify and explain the major biblical covenants — Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New — within their historical and canonical contexts.
- Trace how covenant themes of promise, kingdom, land, presence, and redemption develop progressively from the Old Testament into the New.
- Interpret key passages in Genesis, the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, Paul's letters, and Hebrews through a covenant-informed lens.
- Situate biblical covenants within the ancient Near Eastern world while articulating the distinctive theological claims of Scripture.
- Evaluate major interpretive frameworks — including covenant theology and dispensationalism — fairly and critically through direct engagement with biblical texts.
- Apply a covenant framework to theological questions about Israel and the Church, law and grace, promise and fulfillment, and the unity of the two Testaments.
How it works
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The curriculum
What's inside your school
6 modules · 20 lessons
Covenant as a Biblical Category
This foundational module establishes the conceptual, historical, and literary framework students will use throughout the entire course. Before examining individual covenants, learners must understand what a covenant is, how ancient covenants were structured, and how the biblical story's earliest chapters set the stage for all that follows. No prior knowledge of covenant theology is assumed, and the module is carefully sequenced so that definitions come before context, and context before content.
- 1.1What Is a Covenant? Definitions, Structure, and StakesIncluded
- 1.2Covenants in the Ancient Near EastIncluded
- 1.3Creation, Adam, and the Pre-Patriarchal Covenant FoundationIncluded
The Noahic and Abrahamic Covenants
With the foundational framework established, this module turns to the Bible's first two formally named covenants. The Noahic covenant is examined as God's commitment to preserve creation after judgment — a universal promise that establishes the stable stage on which all redemptive history plays out. The Abrahamic covenant is treated as the decisive turning point at which God's redemptive purposes become concentrated in a particular person, family, and promise. The module also traces how the patriarchal inheritance of that covenant — through Isaac, Jacob, and the tribal identity of Israel — carries forward into later covenants. The sequencing is intentional: students must understand the Noahic covenant's universal scope before they can appreciate the Abrahamic covenant's particular focus.
- 2.1The Noahic Covenant: Creation Preserved and Promise EstablishedIncluded
- 2.2The Abrahamic Covenant: Promise, Land, Seed, and BlessingIncluded
- 2.3Priesthood, Land, and the Patriarchal Covenant InheritanceIncluded
The Mosaic Covenant: Law, Priesthood, and the National Life of Israel
This module gives extended treatment to the most structurally complex of the Old Testament covenants — the Mosaic or Sinai covenant. The module examines how God takes Abraham's descendants and constitutes them as a covenant nation, with a detailed legal and liturgical framework that governs every dimension of Israel's life. Students trace the making of the covenant at Sinai, the role of the law as covenant document, the tabernacle as the place of God's covenantal presence, and the built-in provisions for covenant failure — including the sacrificial system, covenant renewal, and the curses of Deuteronomy. The module ends with the problem of exile, which becomes the great unresolved question that drives Israel's prophetic hope forward. Prerequisites from Modules 1 and 2 (ANE treaty structure, Abrahamic promises, and patriarchal priesthood) are drawn upon throughout.
- 3.1Sinai: The Covenant That Made Israel a NationIncluded
- 3.2Law, Tabernacle, and the Presence of GodIncluded
- 3.3Covenant Renewal, Blessing, Curse, and the Problem of ExileIncluded
The Davidic Covenant: Kingdom, Kingship, and the Promise of a Son
This module examines the Davidic covenant as the Old Testament's most direct anticipation of Jesus Christ. Building on the Abrahamic promise of blessing and the Mosaic framework of covenant life in the land, the Davidic covenant introduces the specific form that God's rule over his people will take: a dynasty, a throne, a son. Students trace the covenant's establishment in 2 Samuel 7, its liturgical celebration in the Psalms, and its development and intensification in the prophets — especially as the failure of the historical Davidic kings transforms the covenant's hope from a present reality into a future promise. The module also introduces the royal priesthood theme that connects the Davidic king to the Melchizedek figure studied in Module 2 and anticipates the Hebrews discussion in Module 5.
- 4.12 Samuel 7 and the Davidic PromiseIncluded
- 4.2The Psalms and the Davidic King as Covenant LordIncluded
- 4.3The Davidic Covenant in the Prophets and Its Messianic TrajectoryIncluded
The New Covenant: Promise, Fulfillment, and Jesus Christ
This module is the theological culmination of the course, examining how all the covenant promises of the Old Testament find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ and the new covenant inaugurated through his life, death, resurrection, and heavenly mediation. Students work through the Old Testament's most explicit promise of a new covenant (Jeremiah 31), the Last Supper's covenant institution, Paul's covenant theology in Galatians and Romans, and the sustained argument of Hebrews. The module is carefully sequenced: the Old Testament promise comes first, then the Gospels' account of Jesus's institution of the covenant, then Paul's theological development of its implications, and finally Hebrews' extended exposition of the new covenant's superiority. Each lesson builds directly on the prior modules' work.
- 5.1Jeremiah 31 and the Promise of a New CovenantIncluded
- 5.2The Last Supper and the New Covenant in Jesus's BloodIncluded
- 5.3Paul, Abraham, and the Law: The New Covenant in Galatians and RomansIncluded
- 5.4Hebrews: The New Covenant's Better Mediator, Priesthood, and SacrificeIncluded
Covenant Across the Canon: Frameworks, Unity, and the Church
The final module steps back from the individual covenants to examine the big-picture questions they raise: How should Christians interpret the relationship between the two Testaments? What are the major theological frameworks for understanding covenants, and how should they be evaluated? Who are the people of God — Israel, the Church, or both? How does covenant relate to eschatology and the new creation? And practically, how do students apply what they have learned to ongoing theological questions? The module is deliberately placed last, because students can only evaluate interpretive frameworks responsibly after they have done the foundational exegetical work of the preceding modules. The four lessons are carefully sequenced: first the frameworks are explained (before being evaluated), then the ecclesiological question is examined, then the eschatological horizon is opened, and finally the course closes with a synthetic application lesson.
- 6.1Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism: Understanding the FrameworksIncluded
- 6.2Israel, the Church, and the People of GodIncluded
- 6.3New Covenant, New Creation: Covenant and Eschatology in RevelationIncluded
- 6.4Applying the Covenant Framework: Law, Grace, Promise, and FulfillmentIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
Seminary-prep students
You want to arrive at seminary with a working hermeneutical framework already in place, not scrambling to catch up from day one.
Lay theologians
You read widely, think carefully about Scripture, and want a rigorous canonical framework to match the seriousness you already bring to the text.
Pastors & preachers
You need an integrated hermeneutical foundation that strengthens every sermon you prepare, especially when preaching through the Old Testament.
Bible study leaders
You lead others through Scripture regularly and want the covenant framework that lets you answer the hard questions with confidence and clarity.
Theology students
You're working through questions about Israel and the Church, law and grace, or the unity of the Testaments and need the exegetical tools to engage them honestly.
Devoted independent learners
You take your Bible study seriously, learn on your own terms, and have always sensed the whole story fits together — you just need someone to show you how.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
Carla Paton
If you have spent time reading the Bible seriously, you have probably felt it — that sense that something is holding the whole thing together, that the story running from Genesis through Revelation is not accidental, but that you have never quite been handed the key to see it whole. You can feel the weight of the promises God makes to Abraham. You sense that something decisive is happening at Sinai. You notice that the language Jesus uses at the Last Supper is doing more than instituting a ritual. But the framework that would let all of those moments speak to each other coherently — that has remained just out of reach.
That gap is exactly what this school exists to close. I built this curriculum because I believe the covenant thread is not one theme among many in Scripture — it is the architectonic structure of the whole. When you understand what a covenant is, how its ancient forms work, what its components demand, and how each major covenant in the canon builds on, fulfates, and transforms what came before, you stop reading the Bible as a collection of episodes and start reading it as a unified redemptive story. That shift changes everything: how you read a psalm, how you understand Paul's argument in Galatians, how you hear Jeremiah 31, how you interpret the book of Revelation.
I also know that serious learners deserve to be treated as adults. You do not need me to simplify the hard questions or pretend that covenant theology and dispensationalism are obviously the same thing. You need to sit with the primary texts, understand the strongest arguments on each side, and develop the exegetical confidence to form your own well-grounded convictions. That is what this curriculum asks of you, and what it is designed to produce.
The sessions here are not lectures about the Bible at arm's length. We work through the actual texts — Genesis 15, 2 Samuel 7, Jeremiah 31, Hebrews 8–10, Romans 4 — with the kind of close attention they deserve. Ancient Near Eastern background illuminates the form and stakes of the covenants without displacing the distinctively theological claims Scripture is making. And at every stage, the canonical connections are made explicit: how the Davidic covenant fulfills the Abrahamic, how the New Covenant addresses what the Mosaic could not, how the imagery of Revelation draws every covenant thread to its eschatological conclusion.
Whether you are preparing for seminary and want a rigorous theological foundation before you arrive, leading a Bible study and looking for a framework that will serve your whole teaching ministry, or simply a determined reader of Scripture who wants to see the whole — I would be honored to work through this material with you. The Bible is a bigger, more unified, more carefully constructed book than most of us were taught. Come and see.
— Carla Paton
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- 6 modules, 20 lessons
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