** UPDATE: Neil Jeffers has a similar take on Jeremiah 31, and Neil Robbie has a helpful summary of Prof Schreiner’s lectures. **

Tom Schreiner seems like a thoroughly nice chap, and he’s written lots of big books that I understand are pretty helpful in understanding the New Testament (not having read any of them, I can’t comment). Yesterday, he delivered four lectures at the Oak Hill School of Theology, on perseverance and assurance, that were winsome, engaging, soaked in the New Testament, and with a delightful blend of careful interaction with the text of Scripture, and thoughtful pastoral application. There was much that was good and helpful and instructive in what he said.

However, his basic thesis was, I am sad to say, wrong. And its wrongness finds its root, I think, in his misunderstanding of Jeremiah 31:31-34 and the nature of the new covenant. Schreiner argued that the warnings of the NT are addressed to believers and function as one of the means God uses to keep them believing, such that none of the elect will be lost. All of which is true and good; the problem was that he also argued that no members of the New Covenant will or can be lost. As the warnings are prospective, not retrospective, they do not indicate that some of those addressed might be lost, but merely that, hypothetically they would be lost if they failed to persevere. In so arguing, Schreiner implicitly posited a difference between OT warnings, which were addressed to people, some of whom would be lost, and NT warnings, which are addressed to people none of whom will be lost. In saying this, he failed, I think, to account adequately for the parallels between the Old Covenant people and New Covenant people in passages such as 1 Cor 10:1ff and Rom 11:17ff, and for passages like 2 Peter 2 which speaks of those who are covenant members having already apostatized (rather than of a hypothetical potential future apostasy).

And, as I have said, the root of the problem is, I think, his misunderstanding of Jeremiah 31:31-34 regarding who is a member of the New Covenant. Schreiner argued from the unbreakability of the New Covenant (in contrast to the Old), and from the universality of the knowledge of God in the New Covenant, that only the big-E-Elect are members of the New Covenant (and, presumably, had he been pushed, he would have added, the big-E-Elect who are also regenerate - in the Dortian systematic, rather than the biblical, meaning of that word).

Now this gets you in a tangle in various ways, as David Field has been demonstrating (HERE, HERE, HERE HERE, and HERE). But it also doesn’t do justice to Jeremiah 31.

I have three responses (there may, of course be more), that indicate that Jeremiah 31:31-34 doesn’t limit membership of the New Covenant only to the big-E-Elect, such that, as with the Old, the New Covenant is comprised of both Elect and non-Elect members.

First, the contrast in Jeremiah 31 is explicitly with the Mosaic covenant (v.32): the covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai when he had led them out of Egypt. It is not with all previous administrations of the covenant; thus it is not a contrast with the Abrahamic covenant. In fact, of course, the New Covenant is the fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant such that to be in Christ, the seed of Abraham, is to be the seed of Abraham. But the covenant with Abraham included Elect and non-Elect members. Therefore, prima facie, it would appear so too does the New Covenant.

Secondly, Schreiner argued from the fact that ‘all’ in the New Covenant know Yahweh (v.34), apparently assuming that this must mean all without exception (and so, since only the Regenerate Elect know Yahweh, only the Regenerate Elect can be covenant members). However, God qualifies this ‘all’ with the phrase, ‘from the least of them to the greatest’, a phrase in Jeremiah which signifies all classes of people and all ages (6:13; 8:10; 16:6; 42:1, 8; 44:12). Thus, it is more likely that the phrase means that all without distinction, all kinds of people, will know Yahweh, rather than that every single person without exception will know him.

Thirdly, Schreiner argued from the unbreakability of the New Covenant, assuming that this meant it was unbreakable at the individual level. However, it is more likely, given the contrast of v.32, that the New Covenant is unbreakable in the same way that Israel broke the Old Covenant, which is to say, corporately. Israel broke the covenant though Yahweh was their husband, but Yahweh was not the husband of individual Israelites, but rather of the nation as a whole. And at the time of the exile, not every Israelite was a covenant breaker: Yahweh had preserved a righteous remnant. They broke the covenant corporately. And so, given the parallel, it is more likely that the New Covenant is unbreakable corporately. Individual (non-Elect) covenant members will break the covenant and apostatize; but the covenant community as a whole will not do so.

Thus, contra the delightful, winsome, engaging, pastoral Professor Schreiner, Jeremiah 31:31-34 provides no evidence that it is wrong to distinguish covenant and election such that not all within the covenant are Elect. If anything, it points the other way.