Today we received Reformation Heritage Book’s newest publication: Johannes Cocceius’s The Doctrine of the Covenant and Testament of God. Oddly, this major 17th century work on covenant theology has never been translated from Latin into English until now. I am so grateful to have had the privilege of giving this historic work a final edit.
Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669) was a prominent Bible scholar who taught at the universities of Bremen, Franeker, and Leiden. As a gifted linguist, he produced a Hebrew lexicon, commentary related to every book of the Bible, and several theological treatises.
Cocceius’s contributions to covenant theology simultaneously sparked theological controversies and further fruitful dialogue for understanding the progressive nature of salvation history. The Doctrine of the Covenant and Testament of God describes the entire biblical history as a series of events by which an original covenant of works is gradually annulled, bringing new phases in the history of the covenant of grace. He shows that God’s standard way of relating to mankind is through covenant, which, at its heart, is friendship with God.
Casey Carmichael’s translation of Cocceius’s book is monumental, providing the first English edition of a work that helped shape Reformed theology for centuries. Historical theologians have long noted Cocceius’s work as a crucial text in the development of federal theology, and now this translation will open access to a wider range of readers and is sure to spur further interest and research in Reformed expositions of covenantal thought. The twenty-four-page introduction by Willem J. van Asselt, the world’s leading scholar on Coccieus’s life and theology, provides the historical context for understanding the importance of the book and a summary of the significant contributions it made to Reformed theology.
Philip Benedict, professor emeritus of the University of Geneva’s Institute for Reformation History, writes, “Johannes Cocceius was one of the seventeenth century’s most influential and controversial Reformed theologians, yet today he is little known and less well understood. Casey Carmichael has done all interested in the thought of that era an enormous service by making Cocceius’s Summa Doctrinae de Foedere et Testamento Dei available in English for the first time.”
Those who love covenant theology will delight in this book. Students of historical Reformed theology and exegesis will find it an indispensable resource. You can order it here.
