Covenant theology has great promise: it highlights the fact that redemption takes place in the real world, that redemption involves the creation of a new community, and that the community is necessarily marked out by signs, rites, words, conduct. But the language of covenant theology sometimes leaves the impression that the whole institutional apparatus of Israelite polity and worship was established to bolster and support individual personal faith. NO! The institutional apparatus was the OC (Adamic) organization of human life under Yahweh. Covenant community and structure do not exist simply for the sake of individual faith, nor is individual faith swallowed up. Community and structure are part of the communal life of faith.
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