The Sinaitic Covenant of Works

While God’s mercies to the Israelites despite their disloyalty to the Sinaitic covenant are always justified on the basis of the Abrahamic promise, there are no passages that read, “Yet God remained faithful to David/the house of David for the sake of his covenant with Moses and the people at Horeb.” The covenant does not work in reverse. God never remains faithful to unfaithful national Israel on the basis of the Sinaitic covenant itself–for on that basis, as he repeatedly says, he would have scattered them long ago. And yet it is on the basis of the Sinaitic covenant that God exiles Judah and eventually, through Jesus’s prophetic ministry abolishes the theocracy and pronounces judgment upon it. This reiterates the fact that the ministry of Moses could not being about that blessedness that was the positive side of the sanctions–not because it was flawed, but because those who answered with one voice, “We will do all these things,” in fact did not.
- Michael S. Horton, God of Promise (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books) 99. 

Participating in the Theo-Drama

Without some such allegiance to confessional or creedal theology, the local church will struggle to participate fittingly in the theo-drama and will find itself speaking and acting like the other institutions (e.g., social clubs, political organizations, entertainment centers, and business conglomerates) that now hold cultural center stage.
Because there is no other gospel, however, local churches must be radically committed to the doctrines that lie at the center of the theo-drama, all the while remaining charitable with regard to doctrines that lie at the periphery.
… Local theology can, indeed must, be simultaneously creative and creedal/confessional.
- Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press), 455.