---
title: 'Geerhardus Vos on the Development of Covenant Theology'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-07-21
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-geerhardus-vos-on-the-development-of-covenant-theology
---

# Geerhardus Vos on the Development of Covenant Theology

“The development of the doctrine of the covenant in English theology deserves special attention. It indicates that federalism is a truly universal phenomenon, emerging everywhere where theology is done on the basis of the Reformed principle. It used to be thought rather generally that British theologians had followed the Dutch on this score. Closer research has speedily shown that it is not a matter of imitation but of independent development. Mitchell, in his work, The Westminster Assembly (Baird Lecture, 1882), says on page 377: ‘With respect to the doctrine of the Covenants, which some assert to have been derived from Holland, I think myself now, after careful investigation, entitled to maintain that there is nothing taught in the Confession which had not been long before in substance been taught by Rollock and Howie in Scotland, and by Cartwright, Preston, Perkins, Ames and Ball in his two catechisms in England.’ This is indeed the case. The Westminster Confession is the first Reformed confession in which the doctrine of the covenant is not merely brought in from the side, but is placed in the foreground and has been able to permeate at almost every point.” — [**Geerhardus Vos**](/authors/geerhardus-vos), *The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology* (1891, 2011)