covenant-confusion-july-august-2004

TRUST AND OBEY ❘ EDWARDS ON JUSTIFICATION ❘ WORLD MUSIC

MODERN REFORMATION

COVENANT CONFUSION

VOLUME

1 3 , N U M B E R 4 , J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 , $ 5 . 0 0

C J

U

O L

Y

/

A

U

N G

U

S

T

T 2

0

0

4

E |

V

O

L

N U

M

E

1

T 3

N

U

M

S B

E

R

4

COVENANT CONFUSION

16 The Current Challenges Historic Covenant Theology is being questioned by ministers who profess a deep love for Reformed theology and a concern to be biblical in their understanding of the faith.

Who are the players in the current controversy surrounding the doctrine of justification?

by E. Calvin Beisner Plus: An American Tragedy: Jonathan Edwards on Justification

23 Déjà Vu All Over Again?

There truly is nothing new “under the sun” when it comes to the challenges to the doctrine of justification.

The new challenges, emerging from within the Reformed camp, are built upon a common understanding of the means by which one enters a relationship with God and the means by which one stays in relationship to God.

by Michael Horton

31 Does Faith Mean Faithfulness?

What does the Bible mean when it uses the word, “faith”? The author invites us to consider a new line of thinking in the current discussions.

by Simon Gathercole Plus: Whose Obedience? Or Elementary, My Dear Christian

37 Testimony on Justification The faculty of Westminster Seminary California weighs in with a reminder of what the Reformed and Presbyterian confessions say about Scripture and justification.

COVER PHOTO BY TAXI/ART MONTES DE OCA

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Between the Times page 5 | Speaking of page 9 Preaching from the Choir page 10 | Council Counsel page 12 | Ex Auditu page 13 We Confess page 38 | Reviews page 39 | On My Mind page 44

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1

I

N

|

T

H

I

S

|

I

S

S

U

E

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Managing Editor Eric Landry

Back to Basics

“I

f there is one thing the Church needs today,” John Murray wrote, “it is the republication with faith and passion of the presuppositions of the doctrine of justification and the re-application of this, the article of a standing or falling Church.”

It is therefore ironic that some in conservative Reformed circles today would be appealing to the Westminster systematician in their articulation of views that Murray would have found deeply troubling. On one hand, there are those in our circles who are influenced by the so-called New Perspective on Paul, which is really a loose coalition of perspectives challenging the “Reformation” way of reading Paul. Not that everything that E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright, and others say is unhelpful.

Nevertheless, they wear their agenda on their sleeve: starting with a caricature of the Reformation’s “Paul,” they challenge both the importance of justification and its very definition. “Justification” is not about how someone “gets saved,” but about how gentiles can be included in the people of God without being circumcised or taking up a kosher diet.

Drawing upon this New Perspective is a small but vocal group in our circles, calling itself the “Federal Vision.” In key respects, some of these writers actually go further than the New Perspective in explicitly rejecting the theology of the Reformation. For these writers, there really is no distinction between law and gospel, faith and obedience, justification and sanctification. This group is attracted to the New Perspective’s emphasis on cultural transformation over individual salvation. The doctrine of salvation (soteriology) ends up not only being integrated into the doctrine of the church (ecclesiology); the latter swallows the former whole.

Writing for us in this issue are some gifted and thoughtful shepherds of Christ’s flock. E. Calvin Beisner from Knox Seminary in Ft. Lauderdale provides a helpful overview of the “Federal Vision” theology. Simon Gathercole, who teaches New Testament at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland takes up the nature of justifying faith.

Princeton Seminary theologian George Hunsinger offers an

2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

historical aside by comparing and contrasting Jonathan Edwards and Francis Turretin on justification, while Westminster Seminary California professor R. Scott Clark addresses Christ’s active obedience. I briefly consider some significant parallels between the Judaism of Paul’s critique, the medieval theology of the reformers’ critique, and these current deviations.

Occasionally, polemical and somewhat “in-house” issues of Modern Reformation are necessary, especially on a topic so crucial to our faith and practice. As in all past conflicts over the nature of the gospel, we will learn a lot in the process—even from those on the other side. Clarity emerges in conflict. At the same time, this debate has brought about considerable tension.

Friendships are strained, institutions and churches are increasingly asked to take a stand, and heated words are exchanged. The stakes are too high to ignore the challenges, but we must do so in prayer for the reconciliation that Christ has already won for his church.

With this issue, Modern Reformation is no longer owned by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, which has published MR since late 1996. The Alliance board has generously allowed me to relocate both MR and the White Horse Inn radio program to the west coast so that I can concentrate all of my efforts from one home base. Our ownership and contact information have changed, but we continue to stand with the Alliance in our efforts to recover the great evangelical truths of the gospel and to proclaim these truths powerfully in our contemporary context.

Please contact us to see how you might help support this important effort.

Department Editors Brian Lee, Ex Auditu, Reviews Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times William Edgar, Preaching From the Choir Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Brenda Choo, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars David Anderson Charles P. Arand Gerald Bray S. M. Baugh Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Richard Gaffin T. David Gordon W. Robert Godfrey Donald A. Hagner Gillis Harp D. G. Hart John D. Hannah Paul Helm C. E. Hill Hywel R. Jones Peter Jones Ken Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Donald G. Matzat Mickey L. Mattox John Muether John Nunes John Piper J. A. O Preus Paul Raabe Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul Rachel Stahle A. Craig Troxel David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2004 All rights reserved. For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1725 Bear Valley Pkwy.

Escondido, CA 92027 (800) 890-7556 info@modernreformation.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

Michael Horton Editor-in-Chief

US US Student Canada Europe Other

1 YR $22 1 YR $15 1 YR $25 1 YR $40 1 YR $45

2 YR $40 2 YR $45 2 YR $75 2 YR $85

L

E

T

T

The essence of the gospel is forgiveness of sin.

Profound and simple, but not without a price, the cross. And while walking in the rain this morning, the thought came to me about the so called “seeker churches” who consistently avoid mention of the cross. By doing so, they avoid a stumbling block to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek. It’s no wonder folks come, the offense of the gospel is absent. It seems to me a church that doesn’t preach Christ crucified from the pulpit to accommodate “seekers” is merely marketing religion. As Donald Matzat put it in his article “Why Should God Forgive Your Sins?”, “This is the fault of preachers … [who] preach their little principles-for-living sermons … They do not declare with John the Baptist, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” (March/April 2004).

About every issue of Modern Reformation causes me to think sort of over the horizon—the place where I can’t see. I nearly always go away thinking, “Man, why didn’t I think of that before?”

John W. Rinehold Philomath, OR

D. G. Hart’s shallow book review of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life (March/April 2004) revealed more about the reviewer than it did about the book. It’s no wonder we Reformed ministers

E

R

S

are too often labeled as whiny, petty, and beyond pleasing. Instead of rejoicing that a Christcentered book (“It’s not about you…You were planned for God’s pleasure…, etc.”) is a bestseller and being read by far more than the blasphemous DaVinci Code, Dr. Hart trivializes the book’s significance. Instead of celebrating a book that has undoubtedly witnessed to people he could never possibly influence, Hart belittles Warren’s simple, clear language—as if the book should have been an academic tome. Instead of thanking God for how the Holy Spirit has chosen to use it to revitalize tens of thousands of churches in a mighty way, Hart erroneously dismisses the book’s impact as simply a “marketing phenomena” and Warren as a “celebrity.” Dr. Hart’s review would have been more accurate if he’d talked to Rick Warren directly rather than quoting Forbes magazine extensively. What explanation for a movement of God did he expect to get from a secular business magazine? I may be misjudging (like Dr. Hart did) ,but the whole review seemed motivated by jealousy to me. Can we not thank God when he chooses to use someone outside our circle? (Mark 9:38-40; Rom. 14:4) Rev. Jonathan MacLean Christ Presbyterian Church Houston, Texas

Darryl Hart responds: Rev. MacLean may be correct in saying that my review of The Purpose-Driven Life reveals more about me than the book. But his suggestions for improving my review actually reveal less about the book’s contents than my review. The task of books reviews, as I understand it, is to summarize the author’s point and provide some assessment. Praising a book as the means God has chosen to bless his church strikes me as outside the purpose of a book review and the competency of most book reviewers (at least this one). What I tried to do was account for the amazing success of an otherwise ordinary book filled with lots of truths that border on truisms. Rev. MacLean appeals to the third person of the Trinity. I thought it useful to point out the large advertising budget of Zondervan. If Rev.

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3

MacLean is right, then God also chose to use the executives at the Grand Rapids publisher to bless his people. In which case, we’re both right.

Paul F. M. Zahl’s “The Box Canyon of Ecclesiology” (March/April 2004) was well taken but ill spoken. Although I readily agree with his assessment of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), his suggestion that a liturgical church (smells, bells, and vestments) compromises the gospel, or that the only viable “ecclesiological option” is Rome, does not square with certain facts. Many liturgical churches (some Episcopalians included) uphold the gospel. Within the world-wide Anglican Communion mainstream I can think of such men as Packer, Green, Stott, McGrath, and Crouse as just five well known and highly respected liturgical Anglicans—and there are many more. I am, myself, as a “smells and bells” priest within the Anglican Continuum, a firm believer in and upholder of biblically orthodox Christianity.

Moreover, there are many Epicopalians/Anglicans who remain faithful to Christ and his church who in no way consider Rome to be an option. Certainly, given recent events within our Communion, I can see why Rome might be a temptation. Nevertheless, unless you believe everything Cardinal Newman says, it is certainly not the only “honest finish.” I’m sure Fr. Zahl, in spite of his frustration, is aware of The Reformed Episcopal Church, The Anglican Mission in America, and The Anglican Province of Christ the King. Are these not options? Even within ECUSA such groups as FIF/NA and the American Anglican Council exist.

My respect for Fr. Zahl remains intact. He is in a tough place, a place of firey baptism. Might I respectfully urge him, however, not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”?

The Very Rev. Dr. Donald P. Richmond Missionary Society of St. Jude (Anglican) Apple Valley, CA.

The March/April 2004 issue of Modern Reformation contains Mark Talbot’s response to the question “Is God angry with Christians when they knowingly sin?” (“Council Counsel”). Dr. Talbot concludes that God is. The teaching of Scripture is that we can grieve God by our sin (Eph. 4:30), not make him angry. The reason for this is we are now at peace with God (Rom. 5:1ff). To assert, as Dr. Talbot does, that God can still be angry with us, one would have to conclude that Christ’s work was inadequate and God still needs to be appeased at some level. We need not fear (Rom. 8:1ff; 1 John 4:18) but rather confess and trust the mercy of God (1 John 1:9). When he disciplines it is out of love not anger (Heb. 12:6). Preaching a gospel of grace will always lead people to object that it gives a license to sin (Rom. 6:1ff). However, the answer is not to fear God’s anger, but rather to believe the gospel, to flee to Jesus and his finished work on our behalf (1 John 1:9). Jesus is the one who frees us from the power and the consequences of sin, not our fear of God’s anger.

J. William Goodman Via Email

Mark Talbot responds: Thanks, Mr. Goodman, for your careful attempt to show that God is never angry with Christians. Unfortunately, your argument turns on the assumption that there is only one kind of anger, condemning anger. It was that assumption that my piece was meant to defeat. Here is another way to make my case: Old Testament believers, like New Testament believers, only stand righteous before God because of Christ’s work. Consequently, by your argument, God is never angry with them. But God is sometimes angry with Old Testament believers (see Ps. 30:4-5). Therefore, God can be angry with any believer, although not in a condemning, wrathful way.

Join the Conversation!

Modern Reformation

Paul Zahl responds: Donald Richmond is right, in that there are several incarnations of the Anglican tradition in this country which exist outside of ECUSA. I wish ECUSA were disciplined, in fact, by the Eames Commission in such a way as to relegate it to a place other than the main line of Anglican tradition. This would put its very blinkered form of “liberal Catholicism” in the right category, of short-term exotica. Certainly, the old-style Anglo-Catholics considered themselves emphatically non-Roman, even when they took the “full privileges” – the classic phrase – of rite and ceremony. More power to Donald Richmond!

4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

Letters to the Editor 1725 Bear Valley Parkway Escondido CA 92027 760.480.0252 fax Letters@modernreformation.org Letters under 200 words are more likely to be printed than longer letters. Letters may be edited for content and length.

B E T W E E N | T H E | T I M E S

Christian Schooling and the Culture Wars Wondering which issues evangelicals consider really important? Try this party trick: Announce that you are increasingly unsure about whether Luther got Galatians right, and that you’ve therefore concluded that Protestants are simply wrong about justification—and watch half the guests yawn and another third run for more guacamole.

Then ten minutes later, declare that Christians must (or must not) send their children to public schools—and stand back as the fireworks start to fly.

For those readers who have somehow managed to avoid all such shouting matches to date, we devote this edition of BTT to a replay of a typical (albeit slightly caricatured) version of the fiery and usually fruitless debate. [And in the event that we haven’t been conspicuous enough: we hope you’ll agree with us that the three major positions in this debate all leave more than a little to be desired.]

Mora List: What is going on with the gays taking over this country?

Theo: The Bible tells us to take every thought captive to the obedience to Christ. To be fully faithful, we must break free of all un-Christian philosophies. That’s why the curriculum at MR: What? We thought this King’s is built entirely on the debate was about education.

Scriptures. Every subject is considered from a Christian Enrollment growth Mora: Exactly. I’m thinking perspective.

We affirm about pulling my kids out of in conservative Christian “antithesis,” recognizing that all these politically correct the Christian worldview schools in the last decade, provides the only lens through schools. I heard Dobson say the other day [actually, March which God’s creation can be according to the Council for and July of 2002] that if he accurately comprehended. All had children in California or a American Private Education truth is God’s truth, and all bunch of other states, he’d Christian parents who take (CAPE). What accounts for their responsibilities seriously pull them out of the schools because of all the gay rights will educate their kids in a this staggering development—which is arguably the most groups. Those liberals are classical Christian school. hijacking the schools, forcing intriguing (if under-reported) trend in American education? the teachers to take diversity Doug Gooder: But what and sensitivity training and about the poor? Are you funding after-school programs for bisexuals. advocating just abandoning the public schools? Jesus called us to be salt and light. If Christian parents aren’t caring for those Theo Nomist: You should enroll your kids in King’s people in those schools, who will?

Righteousness Academy. I recently became chairman of the board and things are going really well. We just hired a new Theo: So you are saying you will sacrifice your children—the teacher who is working on an article on the true Christian church’s covenant children—for some nebulous sense that you perspective on math. are making a difference in the secularists’ schools?

SUM + of the = TIME

MR: What? What does that mean?

46%

Mora: But the secularists will win only if all the good people

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5

B E T W E E N | T H E | T I M E S

the schools, they are only teaching youngsters how to put condoms on bananas. What we ought to be doing is learning some of the family values of these immigrants.

stop fighting. Why not reclaim the public schools for Christ?

My sister was elected to the school board in Wichita and she managed to pass a resolution banning T-shirts from heavy metal rock concerts at the junior high.

Theo: The public schools are irredeemable, with all of the educational fads flowing out of the teachers’ colleges. If we are going to recover classical education, we are going to need to build our own schools to make it happen.

MR: Can we slow down a bit? We’re lost. Weren’t you just advocating Christian content, but now somehow you’ve evolved into a discussion of method?

Theo: King’s Righteousness Academy is a classical Christian school, but saying both “classical” and “Christian” is a bit redundant because classical education in former ages always assumed Christian content. But then the humanists came along with their Enlightenment philosophies and their Deweyian pedagogy.

Doug: But older isn’t always better. What about the matter of access? In the so-called “good old days,” only the rich were educated, while the poor kids were sent to the mills and the mines. In 1870, for instance, only two percent of Americans were high school graduates. But by the start of World War II, thanks to the struggles of Christians and other progressives, that portion had climbed to more than two out of three. That’s the kind of social consciousness the church needs to recover.

Mora: And during that early twentieth century period we were also using the schools for noble, uplifting purposes like teaching the immigrants how often they should bathe, and that they should buy deodorant from Proctor & Gamble. (P&G is a Christian company, you know.) Now with the liberals running

Theo: Mora, you are pointing out yet another reason why you should be sending your kids to a Christian school— because these humanistic schools are constantly trying to supplant rather than support the authority of the parents.

MR: Clearly you are right that God has delegated the primary responsibility for stewarding covenant children not to the state—and not even to the church—but to the parents.

This is indisputably one of our highest callings. But can we stay on the definition of “classical” for a minute first?

Doug: From what I’ve been hearing, classical just means elitist and exclusive!

Theo: No, Doug. But you are right that it doesn’t mean “lowest common denominator.” Instead of bringing everyone down to the lowest level, we aspire to see everyone pulled along by the highest achievers. As Mortimer Adler once said, the best education for the best is the best education for all.

But in simplest form, “classical” schools embrace the trivium—the tried and true pedagogy of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. As our forefathers recognized, developing children progress through three major developmental stages during their schooling years. During the “poll-parrot” stage, children like to memorize and sing. This is thus the ideal time to fill their sponge-like brains with data and facts of every kind. Teach them Bible verses, Shakespearian sonnets, species, plant names, historical dates, presidents, Confederate generals, etc. Then as children become more argumentative in their pre-teen years—sometimes called the “pert” stage— they are ready to begin engaging in more logical exercises, moving around the bits of data to form arguments. Finally, in the “poetic” stage, when hormones seem to convince all of them that they are artists, they become increasingly able to think about communication strategies, and that fact that it

Baptists Reevaluate Public Schools At this year’s Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis (which was wrapping up just as this issue of MR was going to press), delegates debated the merits of a “Christian Education Resolution,” challenging SBC congregants to remove their children from the public schools.

Retired Air Force brigadier general T.C. Pinckney, the editor of The Baptist Banner, co-sponsored the resolution, arguing that “the schools have gone down, down, down, both academically and in the principles of life or the worldview that they teach.” Pinckney called “absolutely ridiculous” the argument that young children could be “salt and light” in state schools. “I don’t see how any thinking Christian today, if they really will think about the issue, can possibly leave their children in government schools.”

A Convention committee rejected Pickney’s proposal and substituted a broader motion that warned of “the cultural drift in our nation toward secularism.

6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

A Word of (Qualified) Thanks to the Theonomist School-Builders As regular readers of this magazine know well, MR’s editors have little sympathy for the tendency of many theonomists to underappreciate common grace. For while the Bible is our sole source of knowledge about salvation, it is not the sole source of knowledge about all that it is useful to know in this world. Thus, while Christians have nothing to learn from non-Christians about the work of Christ on behalf of sinners, we can indeed learn much from non-Christians about the world that God has created. Thus our chemists need not be redeemed any more than our bakers for them to do their jobs artfully, insightfully, and effectively. Indeed, as Luther said about what is needful to be a good political ruler: Better a wise Turk [that is, Muslim], than a foolish Christian.

Nevertheless, simply affirming that there are two kingdoms, and that all people created by God with senses and reason can discern some things rightly about this creation, does not settle any debates about how and where we ought to education our children. For even though we can learn about creation and culture from non-Christians, that does not mean that our children will be able to discern what they can properly receive from non-Christian instructors (e.g., arithmetic or how to swing a golf club), and what they should not trust (e.g., the way of salvation or the meaning of sex). And so, though there are two kingdoms, our children may not be wise enough to distinguish them, and thus it may be prudent not to expose and subordinate them to far-ranging non-Christian pedagogical authorities at a young age. Put differently, there may be a strong argument for sending them to Christian schools—even though we do not need to affirm the theonomists’ argument that there is a uniquely Christian perspective on every subject.

But let’s give the theonomists credit for at least one thing: putting their time and money where their mouth is. For like few other evangelicals in generations, those inclined toward at least a mild version of theonomy have labored diligently to build some fine Christian schools. We worry that some students educated in these institutions may have fled the unhelpful relativism of many public schools only to swing too far to another error—an unhelpful absolutism in subject areas (e.g., aesthetics) where a little more nuance would be welcome. But the fact remains that theonomists have contributed far beyond their numbers in the classical Christian school movement—and for their zeal, their sacrifice, and their stimulation of debate, we applaud them.

isn’t always the best argument—but often the best-presented argument—which will carry the day.

MR: Don’t take this the wrong way, Theo, but the inconsistency in your argument is flabbergasting. First you explained that “antithesis” required us to reject all educational philosophies not arising directly from the Scriptures. And now you offer a grand dissertation on what you apparently regard as the divinely revealed theory of development—all the while failing to mention that the Scriptures have basically nothing to say about developmental biology or pedagogical method.

Again, please don’t misunderstand: Most of MR’s editors are actually persuaded that the trivium makes a good deal of sense (not that we really know much about this stuff). But we also think that reasonable Christians might disagree on the matter, and at the end of the day, pedagogical method isn’t a confessional matter. There is more than enough room for mutual respect and the toleration of some diversity. Christians might even be able to learn from non-Christians on some of these matters.

Doug: Exactly—which is yet another reason to keep our kids in public schools.

MR: That wasn’t really our point. Actually—

Theo: But it might as well have been, with all the relativism you have been espousing. There is no neutral ground. Either God is sovereign or he is not. Either a subject points to the true God or it is an idol.

Mora: That’s what I think is happening in these history textbooks today, where Christopher Columbus is being so disrespected.

MR: I feel like I’m in a Salvador Dali painting.

Doug: Dali is great.

Mora: Isn’t he the drummer for Michael W. Smith?

Theo: Dali was post-modern before we even knew the term.

He’s a perfect example of the decline of the West. Our godless culture is turning its back on reason.

MR: Can we try to find a little common ground?

Doug: I think we are all post-fundamentalists in the sense that none of us reject the study of this world. We are all interested in culture—even if Mora and Theo can only see the declines, never the improvements.

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

B E T W E E N | T H E | T I M E S

Theo: We are called to be discerning, and the fact is that our culture is more depraved than it has ever been. The schools are more destructive than ever before.

MR: These endless culture-warring arguments wear us out, and clearly some things (e.g., the disposability of marital commitments) are more troubling now than a half-century or a century ago. But discernment also requires the soberminded acknowledgement that the jeremiad—the woeful exclamation that the sky is now falling in a new way—has been a powerful American genre since the first Europeans settled on this continent. It’s become a habit, regardless of whether or not the situation warrants it.

Secondly, it strikes us that there is something borderline racist in the constant whining that everything was better in our grandparents’ age, when in fact the opportunities available to African-Americans in the culture at large and in schools in particular are now indisputably improved over the 1950s. In the “good old days,” everything wasn’t necessarily so great if you weren’t white.

Mora: Perhaps. But my taxes are still way too high.

MR: Again, it’s becoming unclear what we’re talking about here— Theo: Mora makes a good point. It is entirely immoral for the state to tax us to fund godless education—especially in a country that once honored God. Doug: Isn’t it a public good, a common good, for all of the children in our society to learn how to read? I’ll bet Jesus would support it. What’s controversial about that?

Theo: What is controversial is compulsory education laws that transform the government into a nanny state, thinking it knows better than parents what their kids need.

MR: Okay, both of you are pointing toward useful points.

Doug seems to be suggesting that Christians should care about the education of all of their neighbors, and Theo is noting that public funding need not equal public management.

But I thought we were talking about the content of education.

Focusing too narrowly on the institutional context of education—that is, schooling—seems to be distracting us from the larger questions.

After all, schools are merely tools; they are not ends in themselves. The first-order question, the question actually worthy of passion and controversy, is what parents should teach their children. Whether to utilize this school or that school, or no school, in that process of indoctrinating and shaping your children is a secondary question. It would seem that the fiery debates should surround the end or goal questions—What should a Christian kid know by, say, age 18?

But then one might expect that a good deal more caution, nuance, and “yes-and-no” spirit would animate explorations of how to accomplish the goal—that is, whether to employ public schools, private schools, a team of tutors, a ton of travel, or just mom and dad in the teaching process.

Before getting to the question of how we teach our kids, don’t we first need to come to some agreement on what we are seeking to teach them? Because without that seminal discussion, I worry that the rapid growth of Christian schooling in recent years testifies less to any real recovery of theological seriousness in Evangelicalism, than it simply highlights the evangelical conviction that America is now in a unique moral decline. Perhaps it reveals more about evangelicals’ newfound obsession with cultural critique than it does about anything else.

Mora: I want to know why the Supreme Court is saying we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in schools and courthouses anymore. I like that Judge Roy Moore in Alabama.

MR: We give up.

A Book Recommendation For one of the most enlightening essays on education ever penned, find a copy of Dorothy Sayers’ magisterial “The Lost Tools of Learning.” The best place to find it is as an appendix to Doug Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. As mentioned in the shaded box on the previous page, there are a number of places where MR differs from Rev. Wilson’s perspective on Christian education, but just as surely, the debate has been enriched because of his efforts. Sayers’ essay will intoxicate readers with the beauty of the trivium, and will inspire parents to redouble their efforts in catechesis.

Wilson’s book is in certain senses an extended reflection on Sayers’ work half a century earlier, and is well worth the read.

8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

Speaking of...

J

ustification in this setting, then, is not a matter of how someone enters the community of the one true people of God, but of how you tell who belongs to the community, not least in the period of time before the eschatological event itself, when the matter will become public knowledge… ‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of his people. In [E. P.] Sanders’ terms, it was not so much about ‘getting in,’ or indeed about ‘staying in,’ as about ‘how you could tell who was in.’ In standard Christian theological language, it wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.

— N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, 119

T

his justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything. It does not force us to reify “righteousness” into something that can be shuttled around in heavenly accounting books. Rather, because I am in the Righteous One and the Vindicated One, I am righteous and vindicated. My in-Christness makes imputation redundant. I do not need the moral content of his life of righteousness transferred to me; what I need is a share in the forensic verdict passed over him at the resurrection. Union with Christ is therefore the key.

— Rich Lusk, “A Response to ‘The Biblical Plan of Salvation,’” The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros and Cons: Debating the Federal Vision, 142

E

very Reformed theologian of any consequence has written and understood this two-fold form of the word of God—law and gospel. This is ABC Calvinism. If Steve [Schlissel] wants to disagree with that, fine, but don’t call it Lutheranism that’s he’s rejecting. He’s rejecting consensus historic Calvinism.

The gospel is good news of what God does for His people and grants them freely in Christ. He not only fulfills the law, He suffers its curse. He even by His Spirit renews us in the way of obedience. It’s grace from first to last. Not grace and then we come in. It’s all Christ, it’s all on account of Christ—justification, sanctification, both benefits.

— Cornel Venema, Christian Renewal, October 13, 2003, 11

S

o the unbelieving heart sees law and condemnation everywhere, including in the gospel. For unbelief, law is condemning law and liberating gospel is condemning law. For faith, law is gospel and gospel is gospel.

— Douglas Wilson, Credenda Agenda 15, no. 5, 10

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 9

P R E A C H I N G | F R O M | T H E | C H O I R P E R S P E C T I V E S

O N

M U S I C

I N

T H E

C H U R C H

World Music: For and Against

E

nter any large record shop. The main floor usually features rock and pop. Then,

tendency to commercialize.

Globalization often means either downstairs or in a sound-proof room, there is classical, and maybe a small area global markets, the exchange of goods across various for jazz and blues. The fastest growing section, however, is world music. What do frontiers. And so, world music has become something you find there? Just about anything that is not of an industry over the last ten years. It has its own Western classical or Euro-American pop: folk radio programs, its own fairs and record labels, all music from Scotland, Ravi Shankar, Soviet army of which puts pressure on programmers to bow to songs, West African funeral laments, and the like. this brand. If you get a good promoter, you’re a Sometimes it is really exotic: the Ivan Koukouzel world music celebrity. A second problem that Angeloglassny Ensemble of Ancient Slavonic emerges is a certain arrogance. The label world Chants from Bulgaria, or Fernando Ribeiro playing music ironically leaves out much of the world, especially the most economically and musically Portuguese accordion.

If you look hard enough you’ll also find prominent places. The result is a sort of Christian music from around the world. Here, romanticism of the exotic. If it is non-Western it is things get interesting. For example, if you were to bound to be, well, meaningful, is it not? Do we not be in the right store, you might find an album have a reverse snobbery here? At any rate, both entitled Gospelypso, featuring Trinidadian musician these results tend to sacrifice quality.

Instead, why not recognize the same standards Noel Richards and the group We Ting (CCAN 014, 1995). As the name implies, the music is a for all music, Western or not? Why not explore fusion of Christian lyrics and calypso. The distant distinctive ethnic elements both in New York and origins are in the music called kaiso, which was in Abidjan? Why not consider, for example, church music from the Baptists. Or you might find musical diasporas in Yemen and in Great Britain? a CD called The Best Praise Collection on Korean No need to abandon the principle of cultural Traditional Instruments (YBM Kukje Records KRCD- transformation. Simply we ought to respect the 5221) led by Moon Chae Suk, a specialist in rich complexity of the way change occurs. The Korean ethnomusicology. Most of the songs are fact is, there is no pure, essential local culture. from the Western (North American) praise Everything is mixed to begin with. For example, a repertoire, but are given a new color because of the purist would accuse Moon Chae Suk of succumbing to Western dominance by limiting the use of exceptional instruments.

In theory we should welcome such culturally ethnic distinctive in her music to the instruments, sensitive worship music. There is nothing not the tunes. But is that necessarily a weakness? sacrosanct about one genre of music, say, German No. The New Testament message was first spread Baroque or Victorian hymnody. The gospel does in a predominantly Greco-Roman world. The not impose alien culture, it transforms local culture. early creeds of the church used Greek terms to Therefore the music of worship ought to reflect the clarify what the Scriptures said. Is that necessarily, as Von Harnack thought, the abandonment of a principle of cultural appropriateness.

At the same time, things are not so simple. pure Hebrew culture?

The fact is, the gospel which is proclaimed is World music is a subset of globalization. Two problems emerge from the trend. First, there is a itself culturally embedded, and yet it still

1 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

transforms culture. No matter what the people group, no matter where on the planet, the “new song” of the people’s worship is never timeless, free from the imprint of its origins.

Still, it can and must live up to biblical norms. When we understand the principle, then we can discern good music, good world music from all the world, from the less good.

A Lyrical Journalist: The Works of Steve Turner

B

ritish writer Steve Turner is truly inspired. A regular writer for Rolling Stone, he has distinguished himself as a rock historian. His book Hungry for Heaven: Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Search for Redemption (revised edition, InterVarsity Press, 1995) is, for my money, the single most convincing historiography of popular music available. Simply put, the thesis holds that rock music is incomprehensible without seeing a spiritual search, sometimes healthy, sometimes not, at its heart. In many cases Turner has interviewed, even made friends with, the respective musicians. His works include a text of Conversations with Eric Clapton, one on the Who, biographies of Van Morrison, Marvin Gaye, and Cliff Richard, and a wonderful book on the great Irish band U2, called U2: Rattle and Hum. Turner is also a considerable poet. The lines are barebones, stark, but warm and penetrating. Among his anthologies is Nice and Nasty (Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1980). It includes a typical minimalist rhyme: “History repeats itself. Has to. No-one listens.” The wonderful “Lying Blues” uses the powerful black idiom to lament the distortions of truth in our world. Also the great “How to Hide Jesus,” by giving him degrees, making him a carpenter, and teaching him Latin. Recently, Turner has published Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts (InterVarsity Press, 2001). Fresh, compelling, it includes a critique of art as propaganda and a plea for art as persuasion. And finally, Steve Turner is a bestselling author. His Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song (HarperCollins, 2002) is a history of the song as a window on every kind of wider issue.

Resources: Greenbelt, Cornerstone Looking for a musical interlude this summer? Do you want to catch up on all the latest trends in Christian music and culture? Then you ought to check out two happenings. The first, held in Great Britain, is Greenbelt. It’s a festival, with hundreds of events and speakers and performances. The annual event will take place August 27 to 30 at Cheltenham Racecourse. It’s loud, but there is depth. The music groups include Polyphonic Spree, Billy Bragg, The Tribe, and Kate Rusby. The main speakers are Ched Myers from Fuller Seminary, who is presented as from “this Southern California bioregion,” and John Bell, minister in the Church of Scotland who lives in a Celtic hermitage.

Okay, it is eclectic; confusingly so. And New Age, to some extent. Yet there is an undeniable vitality there.

The second festival, an American version, is called the Cornerstone Festival. Held in Bushnell, Illinois, this is not your usual CCM road show. Three hundred bands play on eleven stages. But also covered are seminars on creation, sports, film, dance, and every other topic. Strange sights, such as pot-punk, pinkhaired spikes confronting preppies and conservative dressers give credence to the claim of ecumenism, both in dress style and in music. Someone called it Jesus’ Woodstock. Maybe so. But at the least, the festival features bands that deserve a hearing and may not make it in the overwrought commercial world of acceptable Christian music. These festivals are worth visiting—at least once.

William Edgar (Dr. Theol., Universite de Genéve) is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, PA) and an accomplished musician.

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 1

C

O

U

N A

C

F O R U M

I F O R

L

| C

Q U E S T I O N S

O A N D

U

N

S

E

L

A N S W E R S

John Hannah

What’s in a Name?

What Is the Difference between an Evangelical and a Fundamentalist?

JOHN HANNAH

Professor of Historical Theology Dallas Theological Seminary Dallas, TX

Council Counsel is a column featuring questions from our readers and answers from the Advisory Council of Modern Reformation.

If you have a question you would like answered in this space, please send it to CC@modern reformation.org

American Evangelicalism, as a movement, emerged in the nineteenth century. In the antebellum era, it was manifest in interdenominational cooperation, focused on para-ecclesiastical activities, the centrality of orthodox faith, and the suppression of denominational differences.

In the post–Civil War era, the intrusion of Liberalism caused increased discontent and fear.

Conservatives in the mainline denominations increasingly felt the impact of new views of the Bible that led to the flagrant rejection of much of the orthodox faith. Often the result was that those who embraced historic Christianity found fellowship outside their denominations in interdenominational or nondenominational settings.

The 1920s witnessed the disruption of the churches in an unprecedented manner; it is not too much to say that Liberalism gained a triumph within mainline denominationalism. Those who rejected the aggressive inroads of the liberal movement were designated by various, generally synonymous terms: conservatives, evangelicals, fundamentalists, Bible believers.

Amalgamated from diverse theological heritages, they found common focus through a commonly shared antipathy. Theological or confessional distinctives were minimized for the sake of more central issues. This caused the movement to be reductionistic in nature, emphasizing a few central tenants, such as the deity of Christ, neglecting issues of church government, worship style, and the Sacraments.

The attempt of evangelicals/fundamentalists to prevent a liberal takeover of denominational leadership was clearly a lost cause as the Depression era gripped the nation. Consequently, the era through the Great War witnessed the emergence of new, conservative denominations and independent churches; conservatives developed new infrastructures from denominational machinery, educational institutions, mission boards, and publishing agencies.

As evangelicals/fundamentalists of noncon-

1 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

fessional heritages emerged in the 1940s, particularly as witnessed in the establishment of the American Council of Christian Churches and the National Association of Evangelicals, a wedge developed that sundered the movement. This coalition of co-belligerents, those who found their identity in the struggles against Liberalism, discovered deep differences that had been submerged by the chaos of the 1920s.

Evangelicals such as Carl Henry and Billy Graham sought to eschew the separationistic rhetoric, verbal stridency, and intellectual narrowness frequently characteristic of the 1920s conflict. As a movement, it was quite successful until the 1980s when its minimalistic approach to theological consensus and accommodative, often concessive tendency fragmented.

Fundamentalists emerged in reaction to both Liberalism and Evangelicalism. Whereas generally orthodox in the essentials of the faith, fundamentalists continued the stridency against Liberalism manifested in the 1920s and were critical of the concessive spirit of their evangelical counterparts causing them to be cautious of higher education, fearful of the leavening influence of secular contact.

The difference between the two is that of attitudes relative to Liberalism and culture. Both are part of the nondenominational orthodoxy that emerged out of the revivalist tradition of the nineteenth century.

Fundamentalists are evangelical/conservative in theological perspective (though they tend to legalistic approaches to morality and strident separatism); evangelicals are generally fundamentalistic in theology though not as narrow in religious practice, nor as preoccupied with the fear of secular contamination.

With the demise of Liberalism as a movement in America, evangelicals and fundamentalists share another characteristic. Both are in an identity crisis: Evangelicalism because its desire to reduce Christianity to a core set of beliefs has robbed it of its rich, fully orbed confessional heritage and Fundamentalism because its separatism has caused it to be culturally marginalized.

E E

|

X X

A

M

P

L

E

S

A O

F

C

U H

R

I

S

T

D -

C

E

N

I T

E

R

E

T D

S

E

R

U M

O

N

S

Exodus 25:22, John 20:11–12

The Final Sacrifice

I

t is one of the ironies of the age in which we live that many, if not most, people’s

and utterly.

But there is also a sense in knowledge of the biblical Ark of the Covenant is derived not from the Bible, but from which we can speak of God’s special revelatory presence.

Steven Spielberg’s famous movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. The premise of the movie is that It is the knowledge of God’s presence in a fuller, deeper, the Ark taps into an unseen spiritual power that will and specific manner. This is the knowledge of God permit those who possess it to wield that power for that comes from his specific their own evil purposes. They seek to grasp the self-disclosure. power of God himself. This idea is as old as The Ark of the Covenant From humanity itself. It is the pagan premise: if I possess is an expression of the unique REV. MARK D. certain spiritually powerful items, perform specific revelation of God’s person, ATKINSON spiritually meaningful acts, or say spiritually potent purpose, and character to his words, then I can command and control the deity I people. The Ark was a call upon. symbolic, visual expression This is the pagan premise. It is not the biblical of God’s nature and Pastor character.

The heavens teaching. The power of the Ark of the Covenant Union Church declare God’s glory. The Ark was never the Ark itself, but rather the one to Lima, Peru of the Covenant reflects his whom the Ark pointed: the one who stood behind nature and person. the ark and its symbolism.

The Ark of the Covenant itself was a box with a golden lid. Rings were attached on its sides, It declared God’s presence in the midst through which poles could be inserted, permitting of his people. the Ark to be carried on the shoulders of the What is it that made the Israelite people unique priests. At either end of the golden lid were out of all the ancient peoples of the world? In representations of angelic beings, their wings many ways there is nothing unique or special sweeping up and over the golden top, creating the regarding them: other peoples had kings, prophets, image of a throne-like covering. priests, laws, and sacrificial systems. They were The imagery and meaning of the Ark of quite small, insignificant, and ordinary. There was Covenant declared four important messages to the nothing distinctive in themselves. Rather, what people of Israel. was distinctive and made them special among the peoples of their day was the fact that God had It declared God’s presence. revealed himself to them and had chosen, We speak about God’s presence in two ways. condescended, to dwell in their midst in a special way.

On one hand, God the creator is always present, What made them unique was the presence of God everywhere. As the Psalmist says, there is no place among them. we can go to flee or avoid God’s presence. God has At their campsites the Israelites would pitch the created this world and he continues to sustain it portable temple, called the Tabernacle, in the and he knows it, and us, intimately, completely, center of the camp. The Tabernacle itself was

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 3

enclosed in a courtyard. It was divided into two parts: the Holy Place and the Holiest of Holies.

The Ark of the Covenant, God’s throne, was placed in the Holiest of Holies. It was there that God’s presence dwelt among his people most palpably.

Other ancient people had their pagan gods. But only the Israelites had the presence of the one true God, creator of the universe, dwelling in their midst in this special way.

On the one hand, the box segment of the Ark was a symbol of God’s law, justice, righteousness, and holiness. Inside the ark were three objects. A bowl, in which was preserved some of the miraculous manna that fed the people of Israel during their forty year wander in the wilderness of Sinai. A staff that had miraculously flowered, providing the sign that Aaron’s clan had been chosen to provide the lineage of the temple priesthood. And, the two tablets of the Ten The Ark was also a reminder of the spiritual Commandments that Moses had received from the gulf between God and his people. hand of God himself.

If the president were to announce that he was to These three items symbolized in shorthand the come and visit you in your home, you would nature of God’s relationship to his Chosen People. embark upon a myriad of preparations for his visit: He would meet their physical needs and sustain the more important the visitor, the more elaborate them. He had established the proper manner and way in which his people were to worship him. And the preparations. he had given them his law which they were to obey. ther ancient people had their pagan gods. But only the Israelites But the law’s presence did not justify God’s people, for they had the presence of the one true God, creator of the universe, failed to keep it and to live by its requirements. dwelling in their midst in this special way.

On the other hand, the top part of the Ark was called the ‘mercy seat.’ Its function In this way, the presence of God in their midst was to remind God’s people that the law was not imposed special duties, expectations, and the final word. A way of approach to God would requirements upon the ancient Israelites. Central be made available, not based upon obedience to among them was the recognition and the law, but upon God’s mercy and kindness. accommodation necessary to protect God’s sinful There were many impediments and barriers people from God’s consuming holiness. God dwelt between God and his people, but the way was not in the midst of his people, but God dwelt behind a closed off entirely. A way was still provided based variety of walls and barriers. The barriers were not upon our fulfillment of the requirements of the present for the people’s protection. A common law, but one based upon God’s graciousness: not by person might approach the entrance to the what we would do, but by what God would do.

Tabernacle to confer with a priest and offer a The way that God would provide was sacrifice, but the Tabernacle compound was accomplished by Jesus Christ on the cross. accessible only to priests themselves. The Holy Place was entered daily, but only by priests assigned Jesus’ last words on the cross were “it is specific tasks of service. The Holiest of Holies was finished!”

Note that Jesus words tell us that with his death entered only once per year, after elaborate ritual, by the High Priest alone. In these restrictions the something has been completed. In his death, Jesus’ message was proclaimed that the closer one came to work is now ended, his mission accomplished. the special presence of God, the more that was This tells us that the Christian message is not to be required in separation, preparation, sacrifice, and understood as something cyclical, recurring, or purity. These barriers communicated an important repetitive. The Christian’s message of the spiritual truth: because of human sinfulness, the Resurrection is not the annual renewal of nature approach to God was limited, costly, and occasional. that happens in springtime. The Resurrection has nothing to do with the circle of life – birth, growth, The Ark was a symbol of God’s character. death and rebirth. Rather, the Resurrection is an This separation between God and his chosen event in history. It happened in time and space, like people was not intended by God to be the final Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. God is at work in word. The Ark was constructed in two parts; each history and God was at work in Christ’s crucifixion.

At the moment Jesus dies, the Gospels tell us part reflecting a key aspect of God’s nature and that the veil in the Temple is torn in two, from top character.

O

1 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

to bottom. The veil was the dividing curtain between the Holiest of Holies (where the Ark had been kept) and the Holy Place. The tearing of the veil indicates that at the moment of Jesus’ death one age has come to a close and another has begun.

There has been a change in the nature of God’s administration of the world. The old covenant is ended. The new is begun. Until this moment, the Holiest of Holies had been understood as the place on earth where God’s presence dwelt most fully and completely. The Ark of the Covenant was God’s throne. It was the place where God’s presence was most clearly to be seen.

The tearing of the veil also indicates the ending of the Jewish sacrificial system. The sacrificial system had many layers of meaning, but in the end, its primary purpose was to teach the spiritual truth that sacrifice and the shedding of blood was required to enable the continuing presence of God in the midst of his people. With Jesus’ death the final sacrifice has been offered. It fulfills all that had been pointed to in the sacrificial system. It is significant that wherever the Christian gospel has gone and taken root throughout the world, the practice of animal sacrifice ends. It dies a natural death as people come to comprehend the greatness of what has been accomplished by Jesus Christ.

In the tearing of the veil we are told symbolically that the barriers that separated God from his people have been finally and fully breeched. God is no longer far off, inaccessible.

The Holiest of Holies has been revealed. Now, instead of just one person, once per year, after elaborate preparation, God’s people have immediate access to him and can boldly come into his presence. He who had been hidden has been revealed.

In the tearing of the veil we are told that a new age has begun. The period of the Old Testament, the old covenant, was the age of promise. But now, through Christ’s sacrifice, we have entered the period of the New Testament, the new covenant, the age of fulfillment.

Each facet of the Old Testament covenant finds its counterpoint, fulfillment, and completion in the person and work of Jesus Christ. How is the fulfillment of the Ark of the Covenant seen in Jesus Christ? What did it point to? Where is its counterpoint in the story of Christ?

The answer is found in that moment when Mary Magdalene looks into the empty tomb of Jesus a second time. The tomb itself was a place of death. It spoke of the convicting power of the law of God. Human disobedience had brought sin and death into our world. Mary looks in and she sees there two angels. She sees two angels, one at the

foot and the other at the head of a stone slab.

These two angels are seated where they are at that moment to tell us that here, in the tomb of Jesus, is the fulfillment of the all that was intended and pointed to in the Ark of the Covenant. Here is the perfect melding of God’s law and God’s love. In the sacrifice and death of Jesus Christ is the perfect expression of the mercy seat. The box portion of the Ark of the Covenant contained three things: Aaron’s staff, the Manna from the wilderness, and the Ten Commandments. In Jesus Christ we find the perfect High Priest. In Jesus Christ we find the bread of eternal life. In Jesus Christ we find the new Adam who fulfilled the law. In Jesus Christ, God is revealed to us most fully; in Jesus Christ, God dwells in the midst of his people; in Jesus Christ, the gulf between mankind and God is bridged; and in Jesus Christ, we find God’s character, both his righteousness and mercy, expressed perfectly. Everything symbolized by the Ark, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ He is the true Ark of the Covenant.

Mark D. Atkinson (M.Div., Princeton Seminary) is the pastor of the Union Church of Lima, Peru.

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 5

COVENANT CONFUSION

The

Current Challenges y family and I have been reading through Jeremiah lately in our family worship. The morning I began writing this article, we read Jeremiah 22, which begins with God’s telling Zedekiah, king of Judah, that if he would do justice and righteousness in obedience to his Word, “then there [would] enter the gates of [that] house kings who sit on the throne of David,” and warning, “But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself . . . that this house shall become a desolation.” The chapter progresses with more warnings of God’s judgment on Judah and the royal house of David, and ends with chilling words to Coniah (Jehoiachin), one of the last of the Davidic kings: “As I live, declares the Lord, though [you] were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would tear you off and give you into the hand of those who seek your life….

M

Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days, for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.”

B Y E . C A LV I N B E I S N E R J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 7

As I finished reading, I found myself asking, How are Christians, living under and through the Covenant of Grace, to understand and apply passages like this? An obedience/blessing and disobedience/curse principle is obvious here, and that fits with what we read last night from James 1:25: “the one who looks into the perfect law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.” But how, if in the Covenant of Grace we are justified before God by faith apart from the works of the law (Rom. 3:28), can we apply these things to ourselves? I explained to my wife and children that here we have the continuation of the Covenant of Works, with its requirement of law obedience, not as a means of justification but to reveal our sin to us, that we might be led to Christ and, having come to him, be reminded over and over how great debtors we are to the grace bestowed on us in him; to guide us in right ways; and to tell us that God does, still,

bless obedience and curse disobedience in this life.

Imagine what would have happened had God simply never spoken his law again after the Fall.

After all, the Fall had made it impossible to attain eternal life by law keeping. After he promised the Seed that would crush the Serpent’s head, why didn’t he just proclaim the gospel from then on?

“Believe! Believe! Just believe in the Redeemer, and you will be saved!” Surely it wouldn’t have taken long—not even Adam’s lifetime, let alone the thousands of years from then to the Incarnation—for the whole world to forget the requirements of the law, the impossibility of fulfilling them, and the awful punishment for sin. Thus people would have heard the gospel with complete bewilderment.

“Saved? From what?” Had God ceased setting forth obedience to the law as the condition of life under the Covenant of Works, and had he ceased enacting the sowing-and-reaping principle of blessing on obedience and curse on disobedience, the glori-

An American Tragedy: Jonat

I

t is impossible to read Jonathan Edwards’s long 1734/1738 treatise on justification by faith alone without realizing that one is in the presence of a very great mind. The treatise is as rigorous in argument and subtle in its distinctions as any of his other writings. At the same time, however, it seems fair to say that the virtues of Edwards’s treatise are also in some sense its liabilities. One serious liability is the brief section where he tries to defend himself against the perception that his doctrine of justification implicates him in a doctrine of congruent merit.

Congruent merit is the idea that God bestows a reward not out of strict obligation but out of pure benevolence. Although none has been promised, a reward is nonetheless bestowed in proportion to the quality of the human virtue or performance that is pleasing in God’s sight. Depending on the conception, the pleasing human excellence can be seen as at once grounded entirely in divine grace, and yet also as somehow relatively independent of the grace that makes it possible. The proportionality between the pleasing human excellence and the benevolent divine reward might be compared, in some sense, to a matching grant. The measure of excellence is somehow matched, proportionately if not necessarily equivalently, by the measure of reward. The reward is fitting though not obligatory.

Edwards has to face the question of a “fitting” divine reward— “fitting” and “reward” are his own words—primarily because, in

1 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

some sense, he makes justification rest on a double ground, the one primary, the other “secondary and derivative” (p. 215). The primary ground, as Edwards states, is Christ alone; it results in the actual though virtual justification—again “virtual” is Edwards’s word—that the believer enjoys “in Christ.” A dependent and secondary ground is also posited at the same time, however, because faith is that condition “in us” which makes it fitting for us to be justified. Edwards is quite explicit. Faith, along with all that it entails, is described as “that in us by which we are justified” (pp.

222, 153). In short, justification finds its primary ground “in Christ,” in his negative and positive righteousness, and its secondary or derivative ground “in us,” that is, in faith, defined as a disposition, as a “habit and principle in the heart” (p. 204).

Edwards wants to maintain two essential points at the same time. First, faith is that human excellence or virtue which, in some sense, makes it fitting for God to reward it with eternal life.

Second, this idea of fitting reward avoids the pitfalls of congruent merit, because the virtue of faith is grounded entirely in the righteousness of Christ.

Faith is a virtue. It has, in some sense, its own “fitness and beauty” (p. 154). It is that in us “by which we are rendered approvable” to God (p. 154). It is that principle in us that makes it fitting for God to accept us, not because of any excellence it has in itself, but purely from the relation that it bears to Christ (p. 155). But by virtue of that relation, faith is “a very excellent qualification” (p.

ous message of the Covenant of Grace, that eternal life is a gift of God’s grace to be received by faith, would have fallen on deaf ears.

I thought of these things as I set about introducing this issue of Modern Reformation, which focuses on an ongoing controversy in Reformed circles about justification, faith, and covenant theology.

How we understand and apply passages such as Jeremiah 22 and James 1:25 (and thousands like them), which clearly reveal that in this life God rewards obedience to his laws and punishes disobedience, depends in large measure on how we understand covenant theology and its implications for the great Reformation truths of justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Historic Reformed federalism, which received its classic confessional expression in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (1647–48), affirms that God has made two great covenants: (1) the Covenant of Works, “wherein life was promised to

Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience” (WCF 7.2; cf.

19.1, 6), and (2) the Covenant of Grace, “wherein He freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe” (WCF 7.3).

With various nuances, Reformed thinkers of the late-sixteenth through twentieth centuries have taught the following: • The Covenant of Works embodies a meritorious works-inheritance principle, while the Covenant of Grace embodies a gracious faith-inheritance principle.

• Under the former, works are the meritorious condition of life in communion with God, while under the latter faith is the graceassigned and -given instrument for receiving

han Edwards on Justification 154). It is even “one chief part of the inherent holiness of a Christian”—Edwards does not hesitate, as we will see more fully, to use the term “inherent holiness”—that is pleasing to God (p. 154).

Faith is a rewardable excellence only because it is grounded in Christ; but by virtue of being grounded in Christ, it is also, in a secondary and derivative sense, excellent and rewardable in itself. It is the thing in a person “on account of which God looks on it as meet that he should have Christ’s merits belonging to him” (p. 156).

“This is very wide from a merit of congruity,” states Edwards, “or indeed any moral congruity at all” (p. 159). If the idea of congruent merit could be restricted only to the case of independent moral effort, Edwards would be correct. His idea that it is fitting, relatively and indirectly, that God should reward the virtue of faith with eternal life would indeed have nothing to do with the idea of congruous merit, for faith is not a matter of independent moral effort. But the Reformation had insisted that our justification depended entirely on Christ, and not in any sense on some virtue in ourselves—not before faith, but also not after faith; not absolutely, but also not relatively or indirectly. Justification did not rest on any such virtue qua virtue in us, even if that virtue were faith. Faith was simply not a virtue in that sense.

Edwards knew about the Council of Trent, against whose view of justification he polemicized, but he apparently did not know about any more sophisticated forms of Thomism. He did not know of the proposal that virtues can be grounded entirely in

grace and still be so pleasing to God that by sheer benevolence they merit the reward of eternal life, and that this reward need not necessarily be obligatory but only fitting or congruous. He did not know, apparently, that by defining faith as a meritorious virtue, regardless of how secondary and derivative, he had moved closer to Thomas than to the Reformation.

Three basic tenets of the Reformation would seem to be contradicted by the aspects of Edwards’s doctrine that we have examined.

First, as stated succinctly by Francis Turretin in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, “what is inherent is opposed to what is imputed” (2:652). In other words, inherent righteousness is excluded by imputed righteousness from being, in any sense, a ground of justification or of acceptance to salvation by God. Following Calvin (Comm. 2 Cor. 5:21), Turretin observed that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us in the same sense as our sin was imputed to him.

Now Christ was made sin for us, not inherently or subjectively (because he knew no sin), but imputatively (because God imputed to him our sins and made the iniquities of us all to meet on him, Isa. 53:6). Therefore, we also are made righteousness, not by infusion, but by imputation. (p. 652)

by GEORGE HUNSINGER [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 0 ]

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1 9

the gift of righteousness that is necessary for that life.

• Though its administration has differed under its various dispensations (e.g., the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants; WCF 7.6), the Covenant of Grace is the same in substance from its initiation immediately after the Fall in the promise that God would send the Seed of the woman to crush the Serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15) through its fulfillment in Christ’s incarnation, life of perfect obedience, sacrificial death, resurrection, and ascension, and to its consummation at the end of history.

• The moral law expresses the conditions of the Covenant of Works, conditions impossible for the sin-corrupted descendants of Adam to fulfill (and so abrogated as a means of justification [Rom. 10:4]) but useful under the Covenant of Grace to (a) convict of sin and lead sinners to Christ, (b) restrain sin by means of its threats of punishment, and (c)

Since we are righteous in Christ alone, Turretin concluded (in opposition to the Catholic Bellarmine), Christ’s righteousness as imputed to us excludes, as a ground of justification, our being righteous in ourselves. Imputed righteousness necessarily entails the corollaries that our righteousness (in any saving sense) is alien and passive. We never have any other righteousness in ourselves, with respect to salvation, than the righteousness imputed to us in Christ, and we never receive that righteousness in any other way than though faith. The righteousness that saves us is “alien” and not inherent, explained Turretin, “because if it is inherent it is no longer another’s” (p. 655); and it is “passive,” because “what justifies as an instrument [i.e., faith] does not justify meritoriously” (p. 674).

While Edwards had a strong doctrine of imputation, he finally qualified it so as to admit inherent, active righteousness as a secondary and derivative ground of our being accepted by God, which if not directly “meritorious” was still “fittingly” patient of reward.

Second, as stressed particularly by Luther, “the whole procedure of justification is passive.” Justification is not just passive at the outset. As Paul Althaus explained: “This means that passive righteousness is not more and more replaced and limited by an active righteousness, and that alien righteousness is not more and more replaced by one’s own.” Christians remain sinners throughout their whole lives. They cannot live and be pleasing to God except by Christ’s righteousness alone, where “alone” is not to be qualified as meaning “primarily.” “We live continually under the remission of sins,” wrote Luther (p. 164). Christ’s righteousness is not a ground that needs to be supplemented by a lesser and derivative ground

2 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

instruct the people of God in the path of righteousness.

• God made the Covenant of Works with Adam and all in him (“descending from him by ordinary generation,” WSC 16) as their federal head, and the Covenant of Grace “with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed” (WLC 31), so that election is the basis for the covenant, not vice versa (WSC 20).

• Christ by his perfect obedience fulfilled the requirements of and by his atoning death paid the penalty for the violation of the Covenant of Works on behalf of all his elect, thus securing for them justification (by the double imputation of his righteousness and the value of his atoning death to them, and of their guilt to him), adoption, and sanctification, which they enjoy by union with him through faith worked in them by the effectual call of the Holy Spirit (WLC 39, 57–59, 64–76; WSC 20–21, 29–32).

within ourselves. It is rather the solely sufficient ground by which we receive mercy each day. Throughout our whole lives, stated Luther, “we are justified daily by the unmerited forgiveness of sins and by the justification of God’s mercy” (p. 167).

Finally, as emphasized powerfully by Calvin, we do not participate in Christ’s righteousness without participating in fellowship with his person (3.11.10). There are two points here. First, our union with Christ, according to Calvin, is a mystical union. It is a joining together of head and members, so that Christ dwells in us eternally and we in him. Second, and closely related, as Calvin affirmed, “the Lord Jesus never gives anyone the enjoyment of his benefits except by giving himself” (3.16.1). Christ does not give his benefits without giving himself, nor give himself without giving his benefits. Speaking of our union with Christ, Edwards confessed: “I don’t know how to determine what sort this union is” (p.

155). He finally resorted to describing it as a “legal union”—a union whereby one person is, because of a legal relationship, accepted for another, in the judgment of God (p. 156).

It is striking that in his treatise Edwards often writes of “something” really in believers that justifies them (p. 158), at precisely those points where Calvin or Luther would more typically have spoken of “someone.” By casting participatio Christi in more nearly legal than personalist terms, Edwards finally ends up separating Christ’s benefits, in some sense, from Christ himself. To be sure, Christ’s righteousness is the source and ground of the believer’s righteousness, but Christ himself as a person is not, as in Luther and Calvin, the exclusive object and content of that righteousness

• The principle that God blesses obedience and curses disobedience, central to the Covenant of Works, continues throughout Scripture (e.g., Ps. 1; Jam 1:25), not as a principle of justification (Rom. 10:4; cf. 3:19–28) but to typify the reward God gives to Christ for his obedience (Ps. 2:8) and lead us to him for justification by grace alone through faith alone (Gal. 3:19–25).

In the last half century, some Reformed thinkers have challenged this general understanding of federal theology, particularly the reality and role of the Covenant of Works. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) professor John Murray opposed the name and concept of the Covenant of Works. His successor at Westminster (until his dismissal in 1981), Norman Shepherd, followed his lead and went farther, insisting that there has been only one covenant, the Covenant of Grace, from creation on; rejecting merit entirely (even applied to

Christ’s obedience and death) on the grounds that the concept is rooted in an unbiblical nature/grace distinction carried over from medieval Roman Catholic scholasticism; and challenging the law/gospel distinction. He has been criticized for promoting covenant nomism, expanding the concept of justifying faith to include works. Shepherd’s paradigm has gained a following in several Reformed denominations. Some Shepherd followers have linked his paradigm to the New Perspective on Paul (NPP), promoted by E. P. Sanders, James D. G. Dunn, and, most popularly, N. T. Wright, who have challenged the Reformation understanding of Paul’s critique of Jewish legalism, insisting that what Paul opposed was the view not that obedience to the moral law was necessary to remain in covenant but that Gentiles must be circumcised to enter the covenant. The NPP has contributed to a growing movement that makes law keeping a condition of final justification, thus calling into question the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the materi-

at the same time. If Edwards had seen union with Christ more nearly in terms of the mystery of personal communion or mutual indwelling, he might have concluded that the believer’s righteousness in Christ was not just virtual but real, so that the believer’s actual or inherent righteousness did not have to bear any weight in making the believer acceptable before God. Rather than the virtue or principle of faith, he might have seen Christ himself—the person in and with his righteousness, and the righteousness in and with his person—as that in us which (by imputation and exchange) makes it fitting for us to be accepted by God. To sum up: Edwards clearly understood the intention of the standard Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. At the opening of his treatise he stated that “the act of justification has no regard to anything in the person justified, as godliness, or any goodness in him; but nextly or immediately before this act, God beholds him only as an ungodly or wicked creature; so that godliness in the person to be justified is not so antecedent to his justification as to be the ground of it” (p. 147). As suggested by this very remark, however, he made a distinction between what obtained for a person before and after the event of justification, which coincided with the awakening of faith in the believer. Before the awakening of faith, the person had nothing in him—no suitable disposition—by which he could be justified before God. This situation changed, however, after the awakening of faith. Although Christ’s righteousness as imputed to the believer was the only true ground of the believer’s righteousness, it nonetheless entailed faith as the act of reception. Faith as a subjective act and disposition was then

interpreted by Edwards as a secondary derivative reason why the believer was pleasing to God and rewarded by God. The idea of faith as a pleasing disposition that God would reward then opened the door to themes that the Reformation had excluded. Inherent as opposed to alien holiness, active as opposed to passive righteousness, and Christ’s righteousness as a benefit decoupled from his person all entered into Edwards’s doctrine in a way that, to some degree, undermined his basic Reformation intentions.

George Hunsinger (Ph.D., Yale University) is the Hazel Thompson McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ. Professor Hunsinger’s in-text page notations are from Jonathan Edwards, “Justification by Faith Alone,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards: Vol. 19, Sermons and Discourses 1734–1738 (ed. M. X. Lesser; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). He also quotes from Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (ed. James T. Dennison, Jr.; trans. George Musgrave Giger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1994); John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries (ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964); Martin Luther, Comm. on Ps. 51:8, in Luther’s Works (ed. Jaroslav Pelikan; St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955); Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966); and John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960).

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 1

al principle of the Reformation.

In January 2002, the speakers (host pastor Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson of Christ Church [Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals] in Moscow, Idaho, Steve Schlissel of Messiah’s Congregation [independent] in Brooklyn, New York, and John Barach of Trinity Reformed Church [United Reformed Church] in Lethbridge, Ontario [now of Covenant URC, Grande Prairie, Alberta]) at the annual pastors’ conference at Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church (AAPC) in Monroe, Louisiana, all set forth views of covenant theology that closely reflected those of Shepherd and the NPP. The talks stirred controversy in the audience and, through tapes and transcripts, more widely.

Covenant Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States issued “A Call to Repentance” June 22, 2002, charging the AAPC speakers with “a fundamental denial of the essence of the Christian Gospel in the denial of justification by faith alone” and, among other things, “destroying the Reformed Faith through the introduction of false hermeneutic principles; the infusion of sacerdotalism; and the redefinition of the doctrines of: the church, the sacraments, election, effectual calling, perseverance, regeneration, justification, union with Christ, and the nature and instrumentality of faith.” The AAPC speakers denied the charges and complained of being condemned for heresy without trial.

In January 2003, the four speakers presented their views again at the AAPC, at which four critics (Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary President Joseph Pipa and Professor Morton H. Smith, both members of the Presbyterian Church in America; Carl Robbins of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church [PCA] in Simpsonville, South Carolina; and R. C. Sproul, Jr., of St. Peter Presbyterian Church [RPCGA] in Bristol, Tennessee) gave responses. Although a few misunderstandings might have been clarified, serious disagreement continued, with critics charging that at least some of the “Monroe Four” were teaching contrary to their denominations’ confessional standards, putting sola fide at risk, and leaning toward sacerdotalism and Roman Catholicism.

Hoping to clear away misunderstandings, identify substantive disagreements, and give the sides an opportunity to persuade each other in a private setting, Knox Theological Seminary hosted a private colloquium in August 2003. The Monroe Four were joined by Peter Leithart of New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho; Tom Trouwborst of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in Schenectady, New York; and Rich Lusk of Auburn Avenue PCA, while the critics (minus Sproul) were

2 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

joined by PCA teaching elders Chris Hutchinson of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Statesboro, Georgia; Rick Phillips of First Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Margate, Florida; George W. Knight III of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary; and R. Fowler White of Knox. I moderated the discussions, after which the participants agreed to publish their twenty-two papers together. Since then, some colloquium participants continue in frequent correspondence to persuade or better understand each other.

Meanwhile, controversy continues. John Armstrong’s Reformation and Revival Ministries hosted a conference in March 2004 titled “Trust and Obey: An Examination of Gospel and Law in Covenantal Perspective,” with Schlissel, AAT supporter Andrew Sandlin of the Center for Cultural Leadership, NPP supporter Don Garlington, Catholic priest Thomas Baima, and Eastern Orthodox priest Patrick Henry Reardon, joining Armstrong as speakers. Westminster Seminary, California hosted a conference titled “The Foolishness of the Gospel: Covenant and Justification Under Attack,” specifically to respond to AAT, Shepherd’s teachings, and the New Perspective April 30 to May 1 of this year. And Reformed periodicals and websites bristle with items debating the issue.

This issue of Modern Reformation carries on the debate. Read, ponder, and pray. ■ E. Calvin Beisner (Ph.D., University of St. Andrews) is associate professor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. In the preceding article, Professor Beisner has quoted from his The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros & Cons: Debating the Federal Vision (Ft. Lauderdale: Knox Theological Seminary, 2004), Covenant Presbytery's "A Call to Repentance" which can be found online at www.rpcus.com/ Resolutions.pdf; and Christ Church's response which can be found online at www.christkirk.com/images/ RPCUS%20Response.html.

COVENANT CONFUSION

Déjà Vu All Over Again ince t h e vario u s versions of the New Perspective on Paul, as well as the “Federal Vision” perspective in our own circles, have been so helpfully defined, I will simply lay out the following argument: Despite significant variations, there does seem to be what E. P. Sanders would call a “pattern of religion” that pretty fairly captures what first-century Judaism, medieval Rome, and some contemporary challenges to the Reformation’s reading of Paul share in common. The label Sanders uses to describe the Judaism of Paul’s day—“covenantal nomism”—will be the term that we will use for this wider trajectory.

This is admittedly a sweeping generalization

S

and by it I do not intend to suggest for one moment that the New Perspective on Paul (hereafter NPP) or the Federal Vision (hereafter FV) theologies are nothing more than Trent redivivus, but that there are strong parallels that must not be overlooked. What’s at stake?

Nothing less than our definition of the gospel itself. I would like to offer three propositions shared across the board by all these versions of covenantal nomism, defend the parallels, and argue that a distinction between law and promise, which in Reformed theology is expressed in terms of bicovenantalism (i.e., covenant of works and covenant of grace), is essential for a sound understanding of the gospel.

by M I C H A E L H O RT O N J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 3

To Make Obedience a Condition of Justification Is Not the Same As “Earning” Salvation he classic Reformation view is that Christ as the Second Adam merited everlasting life for his people (taking Rom. 5 is a major, though by no means sole, lodestar for this position).

On the Reformed side, this meant that in this status Christ fulfilled the original covenant of works with humanity in Adam on behalf of the elect. E. P. Sanders attempts to demonstrate that the Jews of Paul’s day did not believe in merit, strictly speaking, and so were not trying to justify themselves by legalistic works. And yet, his own magisterial study shows just how crucial the concept of merit was, although since for Sanders “merit” can only mean strict merit (i.e., apart from any divine assistance), he tries (unsuccessfully) to exonerate Second Temple Judaism from that charge.

Norman Shepherd and others within our circles share the view of NPP advocates that merit—a crucial category in Reformation theology (particularly with respect to Christ’s) is a category we can do without. Not surprisingly, the crucial doctrine of

T

Trinitarian. Jesus is regarded as a dutiful servant who has to earn favor.” (There is a prominent Servant theme in the Old Testament, isn’t there?)

He appeals to Philippians 2:9, of all places, to say that “Paul writes the Father graced him with such a name as a gift.” But that passage actually says that “Christ became obedient even to death, even the death of the cross. Therefore [on the basis of that obedience] God also has highly exalted him and given him the name above every name.”

The covenant of works, Christ’s meritorious obedience, and imputation stand or fall together in Reformed theology, Lusk rightly recognizes.

Those who advocate a meritorious covenant of works put a great deal of weight on the socalled “active obedience” of Christ. I remember hearing sermons in which I was told “Jesus’ thirty-three years of law-keeping are your righteousness. They were credited to you! He kept the law, the covenant of works, on your behalf!” … But the notion of his thirty-three years of Torah-keeping being imputed to me is problematic. After all, as a Gentile, I was never under Torah and therefore never Whatever it means to say that Christ was raised on the basis of his flawless under obligation to keep many of the commands obedience, it surely cannot be grace; "otherwise grace is no longer grace" Jesus performed. … The active obedience itself, (Rom. 11:6). then, is not saving in itself. Rather, it’s the precondition of his saving the imputation of Christ’s active obedience— work in his death and resurrection….The indeed, imputation of Christ’s righteousness at all, problem with the “active obedience” model is denied. The reformers and their heirs simply is that it de-eschatologizes the work of failed to eliminate “merit” from their medieval Christ. The new age is not brought him by vocabulary, we are told. Typical of the caricatures, his fulfillment of the old law; it is inauguratFV advocate Rich Lusk summarizes the classic ed in his resurrection. The gospel, in other Reformed position as follows: words, is thoroughly eschatological….

God’s righteousness is his own righteousness, In other words, Jesus is the successful not something imputed or infused.… Paul is Pelagian, the One Guy in the history of the not identifying the gospel with the doctrine world who succeeded in pulling off the works of imputed righteousness. righteousness plan. Jesus covered our demerits by dying on the cross and provides all the Yet, again there is a contradiction: “He was raised merits we need by keeping the legal terms of up on the basis of his flawless obedience to the the covenant of works perfectly. Those merFather,” Lusk says. But “on the basis of” equals its are then imputed to us by faith alone…. ground. He doesn’t even refer to this flawless obeSuch is the view of bi-covenantal federalism. dience as a means, but as the ground, yet he has told us that the ground was grace. What is the difLusk affirms Jesus’ sinlessness, substitutionary ference between saying that Jesus was raised atonement, and “the infinite value of his obedi- because he had merited everlasting life by his obeence,” but denies that his own obedience is in any dience and saying that he was raised on the basis of way a meritorious feat that is then imputed to us. his flawless obedience to the Father? If his flawless In this system, “the covenant is not intrinsically obedience is the basis, then, it is clearly a matter of

2 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

deserts. Whatever it means to say that Christ was raised on the basis of his flawless obedience, it surely cannot be grace; “otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Rom. 11:6).

Lusk himself says, again contradicting his statements above, “Christ ‘deserved’ to be rewarded after he suffered and died, not because of some abstract justice (or ‘merit’), but because the Father had freely promised him such (cf. Isa. 53:10–11; Phil. 2:9).” Although he puts it in scare quotes, even Lusk concedes some notion of Christ’s “deserving” to be rewarded. And who says that it’s “because of some abstract justice” as opposed to “the Father’s promise”? Certainly not Reformed theology. Further, Lusk’s claim that gentiles were never under Torah is refuted by Paul’s argument in Romans 1 to 3, that “all the world” is swept into Israel, condemned by the law, whether written on the conscience (Gentiles) or on tablets (Jews).

At this point Lusk appeals to Shepherd’s contrast between a works/merit principle and a covenantal approach. Yet Rome had a covenantal paradigm—very much like the covenantal nomism already described. Identified especially with the school of “nominalism,” the slogan of this medieval covenant theology was this: “God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within them.”

Strictly speaking, no one merits salvation (condign merit). Rather, God accepts the imperfect obedience of those who belong to the church as if it were satisfactory for final justification (congruent merit). Grace was provided through the sacraments, just as it had been through the sacrifices of the old covenant. By cooperating with grace (faith formed by love—i.e., faith as obedience), transgressors could hope for divine favor. The “new law” as the gospel was called is a kinder, gentler form of conditionality than in the old covenant.

Jesus is a new Moses, but a milder one (evidently, the Sermon on the Mount, with its far more demanding interpretation of Torah, was not determinative). While Shepherd and company do not embrace the “merit” aspect of that system, they do insist that faith and obedience (or faith as obedience) are the instruments of final justification, which amounts to the congruent merit advocated by late medieval theology. Furthermore, they collapse law and gospel, covenant of works and covenant of grace, into one divine way of dealing with sinners—one covenant of basically relaxed law; in other words, covenantal nomism.

Lusk confidently declares, Calvin “clearly repudiated the notion that Christ merited God’s favor in any strict sense,” citing Alister McGrath. But both Lusk and McGrath are wrong. If Lusk had gone to the primary sources, he would have seen very clear

statements by Calvin on the subject of Christ’s meritorious obedience, without which (says the reformer) there could have been no salvation.[see especially Institutes 2.17, 1,3] “Merit” is the category for Christ’s saving work that one finds in the Reformed confessions (see especially Belgic Confession, Articles 22–24; the Heidelberg Catechism, Questions 62 and 64; and the Canons of Dort, Second Head, Rejections 3 and 4). Christ not only merited our salvation in a congruent sense—that is, in the sense that God graciously accepted his work as satisfactory, but in the condign sense: it actually fulfilled the obedience that God required of us all in Adam.

Finally, says Lusk, the covenant of works and its category of Christ’s meritorious obedience leads inevitably to antinomianism—a charge, it is worth remembering, that was made concerning Paul’s message as well. In a sweeping indictment of the entire Reformed tradition (including the Puritans who framed the Westminster Standards), Lusk writes, Talk about obedience is always suspect because it smells of merit…The entire federalist theological construction creates massive dichotomies that make it virtually impossible to tie together faith and works, justification and Christian growth, grace and new obedience, and so on, in any organic, covenantal whole….Sanctification comes to fit only very awkwardly into our theological system and the pressures towards (theoretical, if not practical) antinomianism becomes greater and greater.

Such a comment reveals a remarkable ignorance of the most representative writings of the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition; second, despite protestations to the contrary, Lusk cannot sustain his claim that he is still Reformed if he thinks that “the entire federalist theological construction” is this flawed, since that construction just is the system of doctrine found in all of the Reformed and Presbyterian symbols.

The most pressing problem, however, is that when Christ’s fulfillment of meritorious obedience of the covenant of works/law on our behalf is categorically denied, it is not that the category of merit disappears, but only the term. “Thus, in Christ, our faith-wrought good works have value before God, but not merit,” Lusk says. Just what is that “value” that is not “merit”? And is that value in reference to justification? According to Rome, the category of final justification answers that question. Although believers “get in by grace”—even grace alone, through a regenerative baptism, they are justified on the last day according to their works. Not only

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 5

FV advocates such as Lusk endorse something close to baptismal regeneration (emphasizing that this is by grace alone), we find in these writers comments such as the following from Lusk:

one who brought the tension between law and gospel (already present in Jesus’ own ministry— Mark 7:1–23; Matt. 15:1–20) to its sharpest and indeed antithetical expression.” “Wherever Paul poses the antithesis in his writings (explicitly or Biblically, judgment according to works implicitly), he does so within the context of and as comes at the end of history, not the beginpart of what amounts to a redefinition of the peoning. Only after we have had time to mature ple of God.” Similarly, even Wright makes a disinto fruit bearers does God give a full evalutinction between commands and promises. In fact, ation of our covenant fidelity. Judgment although he would not wish to be seen aiding and according to works is eschatological, not abetting a confessional dogmatic system, throughprotological. But the proponents of the out Climax of the Covenant especially, Wright repeatcovenant of works put this mature judgment edly strengthens the exegetical case for the Mosaic at the beginning! The New Covenant sacratheocracy as a law-covenant distinguished from the mental system reveals this basic progression Abrahamic promise-covenant.

On Romans [toward a judgment according to works at 7:7–12, Wright states the argument: “the law is not sin, but its arrival, in Sinai as in Eden, was sin’s opportuniThe dominant view of the older covenant theology was never that the old ty to kill its recipients.”

Many of these representacovenant was a republication of the covenant of works simpliciter, tives of the NPP are far more careful in their exegesis and but that it contained a works-principle alongside the promise-principle of less radical in their repudiation of Reformation theology than those of the FV. the Abrahamic covenant.

Wright’s own exegesis aids Reformed theology’s classic insistence on the covenant of works and the end]. God, not man, makes the water even the more controversial but widely held claim used in baptism. The one baptized has no that in some sense the Mosaic economy was a recaworks to offer. He is completely passive. pitulation of that law covenant. But then we are But do to the Lord’s Supper man must “make“ introduced again to a false choice: “In [Gal. 3] vv. bread and wine out of the raw materials of 15–18, then, Paul is not merely contrasting ‘law’ creation. The elements of the Supper repreand ‘promise’ as mutually incompatible types of sent human labor and are offered to God as religious systems.” Fine, not merely that, but he is a sacrifice of praise and thanks. Man is active doing that, isn’t he? The dominant view of the in eating and drinking at the table, and God older covenant theology was never that the old judges us according to our “works“ therein covenant was a republication of the covenant of (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:17ff). So baptism, as works simpliciter, but that it contained a works-printhe sacrament of initiation, grants initial jusciple alongside the promise-principle of the tification apart from works. But the Supper, as the sacrament of nourishment and maturaAbrahamic covenant. On election in Galatians 3, tion, includes an evaluation of our works.

Wright’s view seems to be that Paul modifies the single Jewish doctrine of election and covenant.

This is a classic statement of the unfortunate con- Ours is that there are two covenants in view (as sensus at the Council of Trent. And in some impor- Paul says explicitly): national (Sinai) and individtant respects, once different sacraments are substi- ual-global (Abrahamic). This is already an Old tuted, it fits Sanders’s definition of covenantal Testament concept that Paul simply draws out and nomism in Second Temple Judaism. expands. They are not just two successive covenants, but two covenants that coexist side-by-side, one There Is No Qualitative Distinction between earthly (type) and the other heavenly (reality).

“Law” and “Gospel” or a “Covenant of Neither Paul nor the reformers thought that the Works” and a “Covenant of Grace” law was itself the problem. According to Paul, the ven such a seminal architect of the NPP as law is good, but we are not (Rom. 7:12). This is why Dunn recognizes, “The more obvious line of “law”—any imperative, cannot bring life. If any law reasoning is that Paul was so remembered [as could have, then Torah surely would have done it chief heretic of Judaism] because he was in fact the (Gal. 3:21). Justification and new life depend on a

E

2 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

divine indicative, and not just any such indicative, but God’s deed in Christ as offered in the covenant of grace. In fact, Paul’s own use of the phrase principle of law versus principle of faith (as in Rom. 3:27 and 9:30–32) is not inimical lexically to substituting the term “covenant,” where “principle” is used to refer to a regime, order, or economy. But Steve Schlissel simply rejects the validity of such a distinction: God has peppered his Word with a lot of “orelses,“ so many that no one could miss them.

But while the or-elses couldn’t be missed, they could be mis-assigned, as if they belonged to the Law and not to the Gospel. This is a false division, of course. It is a division, however, famously rejected by Calvinists! … Of course Christ has become a new Moses!

At this point, the FV writers are simply confused.

On the one hand, they repeatedly reject Reformed bi-covenantalism (works and grace), realizing that it rests on the law-gospel distinction. And yet on the other hand, by calling it “Lutheran,” they think that they can create a new “Reformed” doctrine out of whole cloth.

This was also Shepherd’s argument: we need a distinctly Reformed (covenantal) doctrine of justification, not the “Lutheran” one that we find in the Reformed confessions! But whatever results, it cannot be called Reformed. Echoing the NPP, but simplifying to the point of making the position sound worse than it actually is, Schlissel claims, “Paul’s point, therefore, was not to prove justification by faith, but rather to prove justification for Gentiles. … Obedience and faith are the same thing, biblically speaking.” Again the FV asks us to make a false choice: either a faith divorced from obedience or a faith that is obedience, the same false choice demanded by the Counter-Reformation, and, we would argue, by Paul’s antagonists. In Rome’s construction, faith itself is mere assent to church teaching. Therefore, in order for faith to be “fully formed” it must become a work: fides forma caritatis, “faith formed by love.” So, too, for the FV, not only does genuine faith yield obedience; faith is not justifying except as it obeys.

Further, all of these challenges ignore the careful way in which Reformed theology has dealt with the obvious conditionality in Scripture, including Paul. We have never said that there are no conditions in the covenant—or even in justification.

Rather, we have argued that the condition of justification is faith and the conditions of salvation as a whole process are many: life-long repentance and faith, sanctification, and glorification. But we have emphasized that these conditions are fulfilled by

the gifts that come to us through union with Christ. Thus, God promises to give faith and perseverance, justification and sanctification, throughout the course of our life. The new covenant is a covenant of promise or gospel—that is, of what God will do for us, not only the promise to forgive all sins but to give a new heart (Jer. 31:30–1). Yet even here, while inseparable, regeneration and sanctification are distinct from justification. Only those who are being sanctified have been justified and will be glorified, and yet justification itself is not conditioned on sanctification. God’s gift of new obedience can in no way serve as a second instrument of justification, nor can faith be defined as obedience (faith formed by love) in the act of justifying sinners. Certainly not on every point, but where justification is concerned, faith and works are absolutely antithetical (Rom. 3:20–28; 4:4–5, 13–17; 10:1–13; 11:6; Gal. 2:16–21; 3:2–14, 21–4:31; Eph. 2:8–9; 2 Tim. 1:9).

Commenting on Luke 10:25ff, Schlissel writes, “It is effrontery, an insult, to suggest that Jesus’ answer, ‘Do this and you will live,’ was anything other than plain truth…. [I]t was Christ teaching that obedience to the law was something very doable and that such obedience, which includes repentance and faith, does save.” Yet Schlissel so overstates his case that not even Wright would concur. The FV is so reactionary in its rejection of the so-called “Lutheran” paradigm that its own systematic-theological prejudices render responsible exegesis of Jesus as well as Paul an impossible quest.

And as for the Reformed confessions, Hutchinson is absolutely right when he concludes, “The assertion that the law-gospel formula is a ‘Lutheran’ scheme is discredited just three questions into the 1563 Heidelberg Catechism: ‘Q. 3. How do you come to know your misery? A. The law of God tells me.’”

Lusk seems to be a little more open to exegetical nuance than Schlissel, who sees no significant discontinuity between the old and new covenants.

There is some need to distinguish the Mosaic and Abrahamic covenants, says Lusk. Yet “the fundamental requirement of the Mosaic covenant was not any different from the basic requirements of the Abrahamic or Christic covenants: the obedience of faith.” Further, “the law did not require perfect obedience” and “the sacrificial system clearly offered a remedy for sin.” Thus, “the law was a preChristian revelation of the gospel.” Lusk then cites passages from Paul and Hebrews indicating what we have called the redemptive-historical use of law and gospel, but as if this were the only use these apostolic writers made of those categories, and as if there were no contrast at all. So the sweep from Moses to Christ is continuum, not contrast. Paul’s

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 7

argument about the differences between the Abrahamic covenant of promise and the Mosaic covenant of law is simply lost in the fog of a onesided emphasis on redemptive-historical progress of a single covenant. At the end of the day, Christ is simply a new Moses. But then why did Paul say in Galatians that the Mosaic covenant could not annul the Abrahamic? Why would that question even arise unless there was some contrast and tension? Whatever differences there might be between the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, they do not seem to be principal, says Lusk. “Or to put it another way, the New Covenant is just the Old Covenant in mature, glorified form.” But does this come close to the contrasts that are drawn by Paul and the writer to the Hebrews? Is it not the case that Paul employs both redemptive-historical and systematic categories—on one hand, treating the law and the gospel as Old Testament promise and New Testament fulfillment (e.g., Rom. 3:21) and on the other, as the covenant/principle of promise and the covenant/principle of law/works?

tendency of human nature to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” will lead unbelievers to turn even the gospel into law. But should the hermeneutic of unbelief be used as a guide for our own hermeneutical reflections? Ironically, having correctly rejected Bultmann’s existentialist hermeneutics, the NPP and some of its FV supporters return to it at just this point. Is there really no such thing as indicative and imperative moods encoded into the text?

Does it all depend on reader response? The systematic-theological grid seems to impose itself over even obvious rules of Greek grammar.

We Get In by Grace, But Stay In by Obedience; That Is, Justification (or Election) Is by Grace, but Judgment Is by Works gain, this position is identical to the covenant theology of the late Middle Ages.

Unlike the strict justice of the old covenant, the new covenant reflects a relaxation in God’s demands. As the NPP and FV advocates have told us, God’s law is very “do-able” (Schlissel above). It’s easy: get in by grace, stay in by cooperating with God’s grace—doing Is there really no such thing as indicative and imperative moods encoded into whatever lies within you. If this is the view of NPP and FV, then it is the height of the text? Does it all depend on reader response? arrogance to criticize the medieval church for its version of covenantal nomism.

Luther’s problem is that he took the law and According to the Council of Trent, one “got in” by gospel as contrast instead of continuum; abstract baptism, which could hardly be regarded as a instead of redemptive-historical, according to human work of the infant. This is the “first justifiLusk. “Law and gospel actually perform the same cation.” But one’s subsequent status (“second justi(rather than contradictory) functions … [and] are fication”) depended on cooperation with infused simply two phases in the same redemptive pro- grace. “Final justification” referred to the last judggram.” Once again, this simply does not accord ment, which involves a divine weighing of good with the facts, either with respect to Luther or Paul. works against transgressions.

The reformers challenged this entire paradigm And because this distinction is confused in the NPP and FV, there is no longer any acknowledgment by insisting that one not only gets in but stays in by that there is even a difference between imperatives grace alone. They realized that the law, which we and indicatives. The law does not equal condem- could not fulfill, nevertheless had to be fulfilled.

Clearly, this involves some notion of merit: either nation, says Lusk.

Christ’s or our own personal obedience. Paul’s contrast between “the righteousness which is by the The flip side, though, is that the gospel is not law” and “the righteousness which is by faith” a pure unconditional message of grace and (Rom. 10:5–6, passim) is that of the reformers as blessing, as the law/gospel dichotomy seems well. Of course, there is a final vindication of God’s to imply. The gospel can condemn every bit elect on Judgment Day, but the point of the docas much as the law…. Thus, whether or not trine of justification is to say that this eschatologia particular piece of God’s revelation is comcal verdict has already been rendered in the presforting (“gospel”) or condemning (“law”) ent. There are not two verdicts: one dependent on depends on the state of the person’s heart to Christ’s obedience, the other on ours—getting in which it comes. by grace, staying in by obedience. Like Paul’s critThere certainly is an existential aspect: the sinful ics, medieval Rome, “being ignorant of God’s right-

2 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

A

eousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, [has] not submitted to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (vv. 3–4).

“This only I want to learn from you,” Paul demands of the Galatians: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit [getting in by grace], are you now being made perfect by the flesh [stay in by obedience]? … For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.” But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.“ Yet the law is not of faith, but “the man who does them shall live by them.“ Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. (Gal. 3:2–3, 10–12) To revert to the argument in Romans 4, Paul says, “Now to the one who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt” (v. 4). Here it is clearly any and all works, not just those prescribed by the ceremonial law. The contrast is all-encompassing: works create a debt, grace is free remission of sins and justification. It is the principle of worksas-wages that Paul opposes to the principle of faith-as-gift. The NPP argues that the category “works of the law” refers to Jewish distinctives (i.e., the ceremonial laws) that would keep Gentiles out.

But again in Romans 9:11, we encounter the sweeping contrast between works of any kind (“nor having done anything good or bad”) and gracious election. Here, as elsewhere, the contrast is: “to him who does not work but believes.” (Rom. 4:5). In Philippians 3 Paul draws two columns—assets and liabilities, and places his former life as “a Pharisee of Pharisees” in the latter: But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord … and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. (Phil. 3:5–9) Consequently, those who seek to be justified by works are not children of Abraham (the father of

faith). In fact, they are slaves, not sons, heirs of Hagar the slave rather than of Sarah the free woman. Or, to change the metaphor, he says that the Jerusalem below is in bondage, while the Jerusalem above is free. There are two covenants, not one: a covenant of law (Sinai) and a covenant of promise (Abraham and his Seed) (Gal. 4:21–31).

All of this is consistent with the prophets, especially Jeremiah 31, where God reissues the unilateral promise that the new covenant “will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers” at Sinai, “my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord” (v. 32). Paul does not invent the gospel; he is simply reminding them that the covenant of promise (Abrahamic) cannot be annulled by the later covenant at Sinai (Gal. 3:15–18).

Covenant theology, whether “covenantal nomism” or the Reformed variety, is inherently communal. It resists reduction to “me and my personal relationship with God”—or to the question, “How can I be saved?” At the same time, the Reformed variety at least resists the opposite reduction to the question covenant membership. All of this comes down to the question, What is the “gospel”? For many today, Wright complains, it is “a description of how people get saved.” Wright doesn’t have a problem with those things being true. “I simply wouldn’t use the word ‘gospel’ to denote those things,” since it is, properly, “the return of Israel from exile” (emphasis original). Again, we do not doubt that this redemptive-historical (biblicaltheological) aspect is crucial, nor has it been lacking in Reformed covenant theology. But does this narrow definition exclude equally important elements in the prophets: forgiveness of sins, a new heart, among others, all of which were both issues of individual salvation and the fulfillment of God’s promise to restore Israel? It certainly marginalizes the host of passages in which the gospel announcement consists of personal benefits: eternal life, justification, rebirth, the resurrection of the body (presumably the bodies of individual people), reconciliation, adoption, sanctification, glorification, and so forth.

“What must I do to be saved?” was clearly a question that Jesus and the apostles were asked in the New Testament. Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the publican—where the former is clearly portrayed as self-righteous and the latter as casting himself wholly on God’s mercy, and only the latter “went down to his house justified rather than the other” (Luke 18:14). It is not surprising that Luke places this just before the story of the rich young ruler who demanded to know, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 18). To be sure,

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 9

the parables are not like Aesop’s fables, with a purely individual application. They typically refer to Israel (the elder brother, the employees who had clocked more hours, etc.) and the nations (the younger brother who squandered his inheritance, the Johnny-come-lately workers, etc.). This does not exclude but rather intensifies the question, “How can I be saved?” Especially since not only Paul but Jesus says, “None of you keeps the law” (John 7:19), this becomes a paramount personal crisis. Even if revivalism has sacrificed ecclesiology to the quest for personal salvation, the fact is that “How can I be saved?” is not the question of Luther’s tortured subjectivity, but is asked and answered in the Gospels (Matt. 19:25) and Acts (2:40; 16:30). In fact, says Paul, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Tim. 1:15).

The Gentile mission would hardly have made sense if the gospel were simply the announcement of Israel’s return from exile. And the Jewish mission would not have had any better success with the “good news” reduced to the imperative to relax the entrance requirements. As Kim notes, no more dietary laws or circumcision: “Would anybody— Paul or any of his gentile hearers—have considered this announcement a ‘gospel’? Is there any evidence that Paul’s initial gospel was only this?”

What of all those places where Paul explicitly articulates the gospel in terms of an atonement for sin (1 Cor. 2:2; 15:1–5; Gal. 1:4; 3:1; 1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9–10)?

Conclusion he NPP has raised a host of important themes and made some important contributions to our understanding of Paul and Israel. Furthermore, even the FV circle has raised crucial questions that face us, especially in the contemporary Reformed and Presbyterian community, when so much of our faith and practice has been influenced by alien movements (especially revivalism). It is not the Reformed confessions and forms that need to be revised, but the current Reformed practice where it has been distorted by an Evangelicalism that ignores the objectivity of Christ’s visible church and means of grace, its covenantal ways, and its eschatological, cosmic, and redemptive-historical horizon. That we are always reforming according to God’s Word is not to be denied, but what we find in our classic Reformed resources is far more reflective of the “whole counsel of God” than the reactionary tendencies of our day. ■

T

3 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and the University of Coventry) is professor of apologetics and theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

In the preceding article, Professor Horton has cited E. P. Sanders's Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortres, 1977); Heiko Oberman's Harvest of Medeival Theology (Durham: Labyrinth Press, 1983); E. Calvin Beisner's The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros & Cons: Debating the Federal Vision (Ft. Lauderdale: Knox Theological Seminary, 2004); Norman Shepherd's The Call of Grace (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Press, 2000); N. T. Wright's Climax of the Covenant (Minneapolis, Fortress, 1994); N. T. Wright's What St. Paul Really Said (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); and Seyoon Kim's Paul and the New Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

COVENANT CONFUSION

Does Faith Mean Faithfulness?

W

ith all the controversy that has raged about justification in the past generation, it is surprising that for some time the question of what faith is has remained more marginal. However, this issue has recently come into the foreground of both the church’s and the academy’s attention. The present essay aims to do justice both to Paul and James, and to clarify that faith is not itself righteousness but should be regarded as trust in Christ, which also has specific verbal content.

It is also not an entity, however, which can ever be isolated in the Christian life from obedience, even though faith and obedience are not to be confused.

“Faith Reckoned as Righteousness” in Paul s far as the interpretation of Paul is concerned, it is vital to recognize that God does not reckon righteousness to us on the basis of anything that we do in and of ourselves. One of the chief transformations that took place in Paul’s conversion was in his understanding of sin: he came to see the true depravity of the human condition, that “the mind of the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to the Law of God, nor can it do so” (Rom. 8:7). This is in stark contrast to the understanding that he would probably have had as a Pharisee: that despite the internal struggle of the good impulse against the evil impulse, it was both necessary and possible to choose the good. After his conversion, he realized (we do not know exactly how and when) that only by Christ’s atoning work and the power of the Spirit are new life and true obedience possible.

A

b y S I M O N G AT H E R C O L E J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 1

Much of our attention here will be focused on Romans 4, which is one of the key chapters in the Bible on faith. The chapter is also taken up with a discussion of Abraham, and how Paul brings the patriarch as a key witness to his doctrine of justification by faith. Here the apostle is battling against the Jewish tradition of explaining Abraham as a model of piety and (in some cases) law-observance even before the law was given. The trials of Abraham, such as the offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah, are seen in Jewish exegesis as the basis for his justification: Abraham was a great father of many nations, and no-one was found like him in glory, who kept the Law of the Most High, and entered into covenant with Him, and established the covenant in his flesh, and was found faithful in testing. (Sirach 44:19–20) This is the tenth trial with which Abraham was tried, and he was found faithful, controlled of spir-

it. [He begged for a place for burial in the land] because he was found faithful and he was recorded as a friend of the Lord in the heavenly tablets. (Jubilees 19:8–9; cf. 23:9–10) Abraham did not walk in it (sc. evil), and he was reckoned a friend of God because he kept the commandments of God and did not choose his own will. (Damascus Document 3:2–4) Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?

(1 Maccabees 2:52) The clearest statement, then, of what Paul is opposing comes in this final statement from 1 Maccabees, although the language of being “reckoned as a friend of God” or “recorded as a friend of God” in the other two examples is very similar to that of being “reckoned as righteous.” In short, in this Jewish tradition, Genesis 15:6 (“he believed the Lord and it was credited to him

Whose Obedience? Or Elem

I

am frequently amazed when I walk into unattended, understaffed, and poorly run businesses. In such cases I wonder how they stay in business. Often they do not. In today’s global capitalism, other things being equal, there is a correlation between performance and prosperity.

Employers demand performance from their employees and clients demand performance from the firms they use.

Similarly, the magistrate not only requires that I avoid breaking the law but also that I positively obey it, and that requirement carries sanctions. When the authorities capture a criminal we rightly expect justice, not grace. Economics and civil life illustrate a fundamental principle of human existence. Paul refers to such principles as stoicheia or elemental principles (Gal. 4:3, 9; Col. 2:8).

The stoicheia are ruthless taskmasters requiring performance.

The relentless demands of the magistrate and marketplace are, however, only faint shadows of the perfect and personal performance required of us by God’s law. From the very beginning of relations between God and humanity, even before the first sin, the Creator and law-giver demanded that we not only hear the law, but also that we perform it.

When God made a covenant of works with Adam, he required performance. The demands were unequivocal and the standard unforgiving: “You may eat from any tree in the garden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day you

3 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

eat of it, you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:17). In this case, the formal “doing” required by the law was abstinence, but the material obedience was loving God and obeying his covenant.

Adam broke covenant, and after the Fall our ability to keep the law was lost, but the demands of law did not abate. God says, “Cursed is anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them” (Deut. 27:26 ESV). Again, in Deuteronomy 28:58 God’s law requires the people to “be careful to do all the words of this law.” Deuteronomy 30:10 requires us to “obey” the law and to “keep his commandments.” The older Reformed theologians regarded this language as a restatement of the covenant of works with Adam. Anyone who sought to present himself to God on the basis of law keeping (even Spirit-wrought sanctity) was under this standard. Like Adam, God’s adopted son Israel also failed.

Jesus was just as emphatic about the demands of the law. In his dialogue with the self-righteous lawyer, he did not say, “Do your best,” but rather, after the lawyer summarized the law, Jesus said, “do this and live” (Luke 10:25–28). According to Jesus, the law must be “accomplished” and “fulfilled” (Matt. 5:18), it must be “done.” What the law requires must be performed (Matt. 5:19).

He repeatedly described his own mission in terms of performance. “My food is that I should do the will of him who has sent me and that I might fulfill his work” (John 4:34). He became incarnate for the single purpose of performing that which he

as righteousness”) is fused together with Genesis 26:4b–5: “And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws.” Thus, Abraham is reckoned righteous because of his obedience to the commandments of God: here faith clearly is faithfulness.

Paul, on the other hand, considers that no one is righteous, not even Abraham: For if Abraham was justified by works, then he has a boast. But not before God! For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4:2–3) Abraham, then, was not reckoned righteous in the same way that the Jewish expository tradition promoted. It is highly instructive that Paul explains the term “justify” by the phrase “reckon as righteous.” In itself, this language is standard enough. But it is Paul’s

new understanding of this latter phrase which makes all the difference and sets him apart from the traditional Jewish understanding of Abraham.

“Righteousness,” in biblical terms, refers to “that which God requires,” or “doing what God requires.” On the view of Paul’s opponents, God’s justification of, or reckoning of righteousness to, Abraham was an entirely appropriate response to Abraham’s faithful activity: Justification was effectively a comment on Abraham’s behavior—that he had carried out what God had required of him. On Paul’s view, however, God’s word of justification is in opposition to what Abraham had actually done and been. For Paul, reckoning righteousness takes place when that righteousness is not there, rather than when it is there. Even though Abraham had not done what God required, it was reckoned to him as though he had. This is the thought underlying the two alternatives in Romans 4:4–5. There are two possible definitions of the term “reckon”: reckoning as an obligation (as per the Jewish tradition) and reckoning as a gift, by which Paul clear-

mentary, My Dear Christian agreed to do from eternity (John 6:38–40; 17:3–6) and he testified to his performance of that law when he cried, “It is finished!”

(John 19:30).

The apostles also understood that God’s law requires performance. James notes three times that the law requires “doing,” not just “hearing” (James 1:22–27; 4:11). Paul likewise wrote, “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified” (Rom. 2:13). This “doing” rather than just “hearing” is essential to understanding the perfect performance of his law which God expects of his imagebearers. The demand is not only for the absence of sin, but for positive performance of all requirements. This is how Paul interprets Deuteronomy 27:26 (in Gal. 3:10): “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything which is written in the book of the law.’” Paul knew that because, in Adam, all have fallen (Rom. 5:12) and are “dead in sins and trespasses” (Eph. 2:1) we are no longer capable of making this performance. This is why he says, it is “evident that no one is justified before God” by law keeping (Gal. 3:11). The law is “holy, just and good” (Rom. 7:12) and it demands perfect compliance, but none of Adam’s children are able to meet that standard. Our inability to meet the standard does not, however, ease the standard.

This is exactly why Jesus did not simply appear in history as

an adult and promptly die. Nor did Jesus obey the law only as preparation for his passion on the cross. Rather, we should say with the Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 37) that he suffered “all the time he lived on earth,” and that he accomplished all the obedience I owed (Q. 60). Christ was born “under the law” (Gal. 4:4), to redeem those under the stoicheia (Gal. 4:3), that is, those under the law.

The slogan “just as if I never sinned.” says too little. Our justification requires not only that he take away our sins, but that he provide for us a perfect performance of the law in our place. The gospel is not just that we are forgiven, but that believers are reckoned as law keepers because of Christ’s law keeping credited to us. Whoever trusts in Jesus and rests in his finished work alone is righteous before God. It is as if the Christian has performed all that the law requires.

Will this teaching lead to lawlessness? “Never!” (Rom. 6:1).

“We are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). This is why we are Christians. We know the terrible and righteous demands of the law. It does not say “try,” but “do.” All thanks to Christ who has done for us.

R. Scott Clark (D.Phil., Oxford University) is associate professor of church history at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, CA).

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 3

ly refers to his own view. It is not that Judaism was devoid of grace. But what does concern Paul is that justification is the gift of righteousness despite the fact that we have not done what he requires, rather than God’s appropriate response to obedience. This comes about through Christ’s death on the cross, although unfortunately there is not space to expound this here.

What is clear, however, is that Paul views “believing God” in Romans 4:2 as different from Abraham’s faithfulness in any trials he may have gone through.

various different religions. There is no universal religious trust into which Allah, or Jesus, or the fairies at the bottom of the garden can be slotted.

Paul makes it clear that the structure of faith itself is determined by who God is and how he has acted in Christ. Although “BC,” Abraham is the classic exemplar here. The essence of faith for Paul is that it is “resurrection faith.” The reason Abraham is a type of Christian faith is because he realizes that he has no capacity in himself to bring about God’s will; such a result can only come about by God’s unilateral action of resurrection:

When God reckons a person righteous, it is despite what they are— it is not because faith is righteousness.

A crucial question emerges, however. Is it not simply the case that “faith” is actually righteousness?

This has been suggested recently by Robert Gundry, and has provoked a certain amount of controversy.

The problem with this view seems to me to be that it does not take account of Paul’s subsequent arguments in Romans 4: the experience of David and the nature of God’s action. The example of David again clarifies the fact that God’s act of justification is a justification despite who David is. Furthermore, particularly important are the statements throughout chapter 4 about who God is. In each case, Paul makes it clear that it is part of who God is that he does not interact with the world on a tit-for-tat basis. The examples that Paul provides are of new creation and resurrection: giving life to the dead, and creating the things that are from that which is not (4:17). This kind of activity finds its climax in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead (4:24). But Paul has also included justification by faith as the first item in this sequence, in 4:5. Each of these statements in chapter 4 has a kind of “definition” of God: “the one who justifies the ungodly” (4:5); “the one who gives life to the dead and calls non-beings into being” (4:17); “the one who raised Jesus from the dead” (4:24). To return to the original question, then: Is the “reckoning” a reckoning of what is there, or a reckoning of what is not there? The answer seems clear on the basis of Romans 4. When God reckons a person righteous, it is despite what they are—it is not because faith is righteousness.

Faith Determined by God’s Action f faith is not righteousness, then what is it?

Crucial here is that “faith” cannot be taken simply to be a generalized religious attitude or action which is simply given specific content in

I

3 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

He (Abraham), against hope, in hope believed that he would become the father of many nations, as was said, “So shall your offspring be.” And he did not weaken in faith, but observed that his body was dead— as it was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was dead. He did not doubt the promise of God in unbelief, but was strengthened in his faith, giving glory to God, and was fully convinced that He was able to do what he had promised. (4:18–21) The key aspect of Abraham’s faith here is that it responds to divine action and anticipates divine action. As I have argued elsewhere, Abraham’s faith has two components. The first is observation of reality, namely that Abraham must observe that his own body was as good as dead. The second is emphatically not the observation of Abraham’s surroundings, but consists in his acknowledgement that God has the power to do what he has promised, despite the appearance of his circumstances. As a result, the nature of faith clearly mirrors the nature of the way God acts in the world. Although Abraham’s faith is a type of Christian faith, and thus not identical with it, the continuity lies in the fact that the structure— as we have outlined it above—remains the same: it acknowledges that we are dead, and yet trusts in God to give life. The fact that Abraham’s faith is an Old Testament witness to Christian faith, however, means that there is a further element to be explicated—that it is faith in Christ.

Faith in Christ iscussion of faith as “faith in Christ,” however, immediately plunges us into one of the most hotly debated points in New Testament scholarship: the question of whether the phrase conventionally translated as “faith in Christ” (in Greek, pistis Christou) should actually be translat-

D

ed as “the faithfulness of Christ.” The cash value of this is that some of the crucial Pauline texts on justification end up having a very different feel to them.

“We know that a person is justified not by works of the Law, but only by faith in Christ” (Gal. 2:16) instead would become “We know that a person is justified not by works of the Law but only by the faithfulness of Christ.” The focus shifts from trust in Christ to the actual activity of the earthly Jesus, whereby he lived the perfect life of conformity with God’s will, which eventually culminated in his death.

Linguistically, the translation could go either way, and so the position has to be decided on the basis of context and theology. It is a strange debate, however, because it does not divide down conventional “party lines.” True, traditional scholars tend to be suspicious of the new translation. But key supporters of the “new perspective” on Paul, such as James D. G. Dunn, also resist it. And some champion the new translation of “faithfulness of Christ” on the grounds that the traditional option makes salvation dependent on the human action of faith, while the alternative grounds it in God’s action in Christ. As a result, the new reading has been favored by those influenced by Barth, such as T. F. Torrance, Richard Hays, and Douglas Campbell.

I will simply select three examples of arguments made in support. One which has been particularly influential is J. W. van Henten’s argument for seeing “the faith of Christ” against a Jewish martyrdom background. He argues that the combination of “faith,” “blood,” and “atonement” found in Romans 3:25 is most prominent in three passages in Jewish literature where a martyr is faithful to death, hence the reference in Romans to the faithfulness of Jesus.

On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that in fact none of the three places contain the word for faith or faithfulness!

Those who espouse the “faith of Christ” translation also often argue that it makes sense of passages which otherwise are peculiar. However, there are many more difficulties with interpreting passages where the new translation is adopted. For example, according to Richard Hays, “those of faith” (Gal. 3:7) refers to “those who are given life on the basis of [Christ’s] faith.” But the phrase is “capable of sustaining several interpretations,” and Hays would not want to exclude the meaning of “those who believe” either. Hays grounds this in Paul’s poetic way of using language, and the “multivalent and metaphorical” character of that language. The argument here becomes rather vague, in my view: while it is, of course, possible that Paul uses such a phrase in an ambiguous way, one is tempted to apply Occam’s razor when there is no exegetical benefit.

The argument made by others that “justification

by [human] faith” makes faith into a work has little force, especially if one considers faith as also a gift of God, as per Ephesians 2:8. In any case, it is not that God makes the Christian fit for justification by the gift of faith, since the gifts of faith and justification are simultaneous, rather than chronologically sequential.

None of these arguments, then, should be regarded as an obstacle to the view that faith is “faith in Christ,” rather than simply a generic trust in God that is common to Abraham, Christ, and ourselves.

“Faith Made Perfect by Works” (James 2:22) s Paul and numerous theologians after him recognized, to define justification as coming by faith has its dangers. Definitions are, of course, no less true for being dangerous. In this respect, the epistle of James has often functioned as a foil to prevent an extreme reading of Paul. This is not only true at the canonical level: it is also an historical probability that James is in fact in dialogue with an interlocutor who reflects reallife extremist Paulines. Just as we know of Hymenaeus and Philetus who apparently took Paul’s realized resurrection-eschatology (in, e.g., Eph. 2:4–7) to an extreme, and thus “departed from the truth” (2 Tim. 2:18), so also it is likely that there are those who took Paul’s soteriology in an antinomian direction. Certainly some of Paul’s Jewish opponents understood Paul this way (Rom. 3:8).

In this respect, James’s statement that “faith works together with works” (James 2:12) is a vital pastoral demand. In fact, the Paul-James contrast is misconceived at this point, since Paul himself has an extremely strong emphasis on obedience. He talks of his goal as not merely bringing the gentiles to come to faith in Christ, but actually to bring about “the obedience of (i.e., that stems from) faith“ among the nations (Rom. 1:5; cf. 16:26). Paul and James both stress the necessity of obedience, without ever confusing “faith” and “obedience”: even in James, the two are not identified with one another.

Nevertheless, James’s argument is distinctive and gives us a helpful perspective alongside that of Paul. (One could also have included discussion of Hebrews and the Gospels, but this must be omitted for the sake of brevity.) James’s argument about faith begins in 2:14, at least as far as the specific term for “faith“ (pistis) is concerned. That this is no idle theologizing is evident from the fact that final salvation is at stake: the immediately preceding context is that of judgment (2:12–13), and James’s questions are precisely “what is the use of such faith (without works)?” and “can such faith save?” (2:14).

The contrast between the Pauline language and that of James is very striking. The commentators conventionally set out the parallel statements as follows:

A

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 5

James 2:24:

A person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

Romans 3:28: A person is justified by faith and not by works of the Law.

Here, then, there is a pointed contrast, a contrast that is even more striking if one compares James with Paul as translated by Luther: where justification is “only by faith“. By contrast to Luther’s exacerbation of the contrast, some modern commentators on Paul have attempted more of a rapprochement.

J. Jeremias attempted this not least by contrasting the understandings of works in Paul and James. For Jeremias, Paul was referring to works done in obedience to the law in a legalistic fashion, whereas James means visiting the sick, caring for orphans, and such. Moo, picking up on another element of Jeremias’s argument, focuses on the way in which “justification” in Paul refers to initial acceptance by God, and in James to final vindication at the Judgment.

Our concern here, however, is merely with the question of “faith.” The key here is that faith does, of course, have specific content. Abraham believes “according to what was said,” that “so shall your offspring be“ (Rom. 4:18). Nevertheless, this content never means that faith is simply possessed, as if faith were merely an inert entity which could be regarded in isolation. In Paul’s argument it has an immediate corollary in Abraham’s action. Abraham is not merely a passive recipient of faith; rather, as divine action embraces human action, Abraham is strengthened in his faith and gives glory to God (Rom. 4:20). The main danger that James sees is that to talk of “faith alone” is in danger of encouraging a focus on faith itself. The fact that Paul and James have different emphases means that our talk of faith must always be bounded by the whole of the New Testament (which has a fundamental unity and harmony), and not simply follow Pauline categories.

That “faith is made perfect by works,” is not, of course, Paul’s principal concern. As we noted, his concern is to decouple “faith“ from obedience to the law, from obedience in one’s own power. Paul’s emphasis is on the fact that obedience to the law did not lead to God’s deliverance of Israel; rather, the history of the Old Testament was characterized by the repeated cycle of disobedience and judgment.

James, on the other hand, is concerned with the fact that faith is something exercised. James would not dispute that this takes place in the Christian context of the new age: God gave Christians new birth by the Word, and so the church is the first fruits of the new creation (1:18; cf. esp. 1:21). But faith must be exercised in sharing with the needy (2:15–16), otherwise it is dead (2:17). It can be demonstrated by

3 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

works (2:18); otherwise it merely resembles the faith of demons (2:19). Scripture itself makes the point very clearly that “faith without works doesn’t work” (2:20). From the fact that Abraham offered Isaac on the “altar,” it is clear that “faith works together with works and faith is perfected by works” (2:21–22).

The story of Rahab also makes the same point.

James was concerned to reject a concept of naked intellectual faith, as would Paul have been had he come across such a problem. For Paul, faith is always shaped by the divine promise which calls forth the human action of trust. Although James does not actually define what he understands by “faith,” he is clear that it must always be followed by the reflex of obedience.

Conclusion e have seen several key aspects, then, of the New Testament’s conception of faith.

First, the content of faith is the identity of God and his action in Christ. In the three definitions of God we noted in Romans 4, each is prefaced by reference to believing in that God: “believing in the one who justifies the ungodly“ (4:5), “believing in the one who gives life to the dead and calls non-beings into being“ (4:17), and “believing in the God who raised Jesus from the dead” (4:24). This content determines the structure of faith—faith is recognizing one’s ungodliness, death and nonbeing, and trusting God to bring about the opposite in the future, just as he has demonstrated this supremely in the Resurrection of Jesus.

This faith, as Paul expounds it, is in radical contrast to the portrait of faith in Jewish exegesis: it is not to be fused with obedience to the law in the flesh, such as characterized the old age before Christ. Second, however, the contribution of James is that faith, although a gift, is not a kind of inert possession which can be regarded in itself. It must be exercised, and the content of faith must never be the sole aspect; it must give rise to action, as Paul also recognized. What God has joined together, let not man put asunder. ■

W

Simon Gathercole (Ph.D., Durham University) is lecturer in New Testament at the University of Aberdeen.

In the preceding article, Professor Gathercole refers to J. W. van Henten's “The TraditionHistorical Background of Rom. 3:25: A Search for Pagan and Jewish Parallels” in M. C. De Boer's From Jesus to John (JSNTSS; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), pp. 101–128; D. J. Moo's The Letter of James (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 140; J. Jeremias's “Paul and James” in ExpT 66 (1954–55), pp. 368–371; and Richard Hays's The Faith of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 172, 297.

Our Testimony on Justification A Summary of The Statement from the Faculty of Westminster Seminary California This testimony is directed primarily at those who claim to be Reformed yet suggest that too many Reformed people have a Lutheran view of justification and need to develop a distinctively Reformed view of justification. The confusion that these individuals have sown in our confessional Reformed churches has reached an alarming level. This confusion may be due, in part, to a lack of familiarity with our confessions. Therefore, we hope that by highlighting certain of their statements and commenting on them we will encourage the Reformed churches to uphold the biblical truth presented in them. We recognize that the confessions are standards subordinate to the Holy Scripture. Nevertheless it is our conviction that in them, the Reformed churches have summarized the correct understanding of Scripture.

The seriousness of our lost condition shows us that we need a righteousness that only God can provide.

Heidelberg Catechism, 5, 8; Belgic Confession, Article 14; Canons of Dort, III-IV, 3; Westminster Confession of Faith, 6:6

The righteousness that sinners need must be the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of both his sacrificial suffering (passive obedience) and his perfect life (active obedience).

Heidelberg Catechism, 56, 60; Belgic Confession, Article 22; Westminster Confession of Faith, 8:5, 11:1, 11:3; Westminster Larger Catechism, 55, 70

Our confessions repeatedly speak of the work of Christ as meritorious in the sight of God. Heidelberg Catechism, 21, 84; Belgic Confession, Articles 22, 24, 35; Canons of Dort, Rejections I:3, II:1, II:3, II:4; Westminster Confession of Faith, 17:2; Westminster Larger Catechism, 55, 174

The righteousness of Christ is reckoned or imputed to sinners, not infused or worked in them, for their justification.

Heidelberg Catechism, 60; Belgic Confession, Article 22; Westminster Confession of Faith, 11:1; Westminster Larger Catechism, 71; Westminster Shorter Catechism, 33

Faith and faith alone is the instrument that looks away from self to Jesus and receives the imputation of his perfect righteousness.

Our confessions show how justification and sanctification are present together in the redeemed, but are clearly distinct from one another.

Heidelberg Catechism, 86; Belgic Confession, Article 24; Westminster Confession of Faith, 11:2; Westminster Larger Catechism, 77

Sanctification is a work of God’s renewing grace by which Christians become more holy over the course of their lives while still confronting real sin in their lives — making it impossible for even our best works to stand in the face of perfect judgment.

Heidelberg Catechism, 62, 86, 114; Belgic Confession, Article 24; Westminster Confession of Faith, 13:1, 13:2, 16:2, 16:5; Westminster Shorter Catechism, 35; Westminster Larger Catechism, 78

Justification occurs when one comes to true faith, giving peace of conscience and assurance of eternal life in the present.

God’s final judgment is not the justification of his own, but their vindication and perfection.

Heidelberg Catechism, 59; Belgic Confession, Article 37; Westminster Confession of Faith, 33:2; Westminster Larger Catechism, 77, 90

Heidelberg Catechism, 61; Belgic Confession, Article 22; Westminster Confession of Faith, 7:3, 11:2, 14:2; Westminster Shorter Catechism, 30

The doctrine of justification taught in the Reformed confessions is a faithful summary of the biblical teaching, is necessary for the faithful preaching of the gospel in the churches, and is foundational to all Christian assurance and holy living.

For the complete statement visit www.wscal.edu

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 7

We Confess…

B

ut God, who is rich in mercy, according to His unchangeable purpose of election, does not wholly withdraw the Holy Spirit from His own people even in their grievous falls; nor suffers them to proceed so far as to lose the grace of adoption and forfeit the state of justification, or to commit the sin unto death or against the Holy Spirit; nor does He permit them to be totally deserted, and to plunge themselves into everlasting destruction.

For in the first place, in these falls He preserves in them the incorruptible seed of regeneration from perishing or being totally lost; and again, by His Word and Spirit He certainly and effectually renews them to repentance, to a sincere and godly sorrow for their sins, that they may seek and obtain remission in the blood of the Mediator, may again experience the favor of a reconciled God, through faith adore His mercies, and henceforward more diligently work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.

Thus it is not in consequence of their own merits or strength, but of God’s free mercy, that they neither totally fall from faith and grace nor continue and perish finally in their backslidings; which, with respect to themselves is not only possible, but would undoubtedly happen; but with respect to God, it is utterly impossible, since His counsel cannot be changed nor His promise fail; neither can the call according to His purpose be revoked, nor the merit, intercession, and preservation of Christ be rendered ineffectual, nor the sealing of the Holy Spirit be frustrated or obliterated.

— Fifth Head, Articles 6-8, The Canons of Dort (1619), “The Perseverance of the Saints”

T

he distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.

The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.

Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation

by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.

— Chapter VIII, The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), “Of God’s Covenant With Man”

3 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

R

E

V

I

E

W

S

BOOKS | On Being Black and Reformed

Grace Over Race

A

nthony J. Carter is a personal friend of mine, and the thesis of this book has been a

troubling gulf between Reformed theology and the major part of our discussion over the years. I therefore review this book as one familiar black church.

Carter takes a serious look not only with its contents, but also with the thought from which it has evolved. at the issues that constitute this gulf as he addresses the Chapter one raises a question that racial divide in America in general and American some may view as a problem: Do we need Evangelicalism in particular. This is never a a black theology? Both the question and pleasant task, but Carter does it with grace and Carter’s answer—an emphatic yes!— theological integrity. While criticizing American might give the impression that this book Christianity’s support of the institution of slavery as is another example of postmodern unbiblical, he nevertheless commends and perspectivalism and tribalism, which acknowledges the theological soundness of some renders theology relative and not of the perpetrators. Carter’s analysis of American absolute. But consider the two reasons slavery is presented in the light of an understanding offered by Carter for his affirmation. of divine providence that neither excuses human First, he says, “We need a sound, responsibility nor ignores divine sovereignty. On biblical black theological perspective Being Black and Reformed is not about white guilt and because an unsound, unbiblical black black victimology. Carter thoughtfully includes in theological perspective is the alternative.” the appendix statements from three major One could argue that this is not so much denominations (Southern Baptist, PCA, Assembly an argument for a black theology as much as it is of God) that address their church’s participation in for a sound, biblical theological perspective in the racism in the past and their desire for true On Being Black context of the black church, and indeed, such a reconciliation.

As sensitive as the subjects of slavery and racism and Reformed need is prevalent throughout Evangelicalism

by Anthony J. Carter regardless of race or ethnicity. The second reason among Christians may be, I think the biggest Presbyterian & Reformed 2003 offered is “because theology in a cultural context challenge and perhaps the most controversial 153 pages (paperback), $9.99 not only has been permissible but has become aspect of this book is the implicit challenge for normative.” I hope that readers are not so turned black Christians to consciously embrace a system off by the semantics of culturally contextualizing of theology that was once used to keep us in theology that they miss the main point. In spite of subjugation. In other words, as Carter examines his statements that advocate a distinct “black the efforts of white evangelicals to bridge the “gulf” theological perspective,” Carter’s premise from their side, he also urges the black church to throughout this work is that the black church use the doctrines of grace to bridge the gulf from should look to Reformed theology as a solid and its side. In order to do this, black Christians will sound theological foundation. On Being Black and need to critique the entity of the black church Reformed is about the need for Reformational theologically and allow the historic Protestant faith theology to be intentionally integrated into the life to shape both their worship and their walk. Black of the black church; in other words, there is a Christians, like all adherents of Evangelicalism,

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3 9

need to reexamine what they believe and why they believe it in light of God’s Word. Black Christians cannot allow the sin of racism to keep them from the rich theological fruit of brothers who also were sinners saved by grace. Dispensationalism, Pentecostalism, Pietism, theological Liberalism, and Health and Wealthism have all been given a place in the black church. Carter is asking that Reformational theology be given an opportunity to shed its light in the black church experience as well.

Is this a book worth reading? Yes, but I would also say it is only a step in the right direction.

There is more that can and needs to be said. I pray that Carter’s lead will be followed by more voices from within the black church continuing to call for reformation and theological reflection.

Ken Jones Greater Union Baptist Church Lynwood, CA

Occupy Till I Come: A. T. Pierson and the Evangelization of the World

by Dana L. Robert Eerdmans, 2003 322 pages (paperback), $32.00 In a 1970 article, historian George M. Marsden provocatively argued that twentieth-century American Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism owed as much to the previous century’s New School Presbyterianism as to the Old School stream represented by Princeton theologians Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield. With their activist brand of piety and evangelistic-oriented vision of ministry, many New School Presbyterians who revered Charles Finney eventually found their way into nascent Fundamentalism. Perhaps the poster child for this movement was A. T. Pierson (1837–1911), whose life is insightfully chronicled

by Dana Robert in Occupy Till I Come.

Robert has skillfully located Pierson in the hurly-burly world of antebellum New School Presbyterianism. Pierson grew up in churches associated with the progressive Third Presbytery of New York City, which emphasized revivalism, reform, and anti-pew rents. After graduating from New School bastions Hamilton College and Union Theological Seminary (New York), he pastored churches in Binghamton and Waterford, New York, before moving to the ministry that would make his reputation and shape his view of ministry, Fort Street Presbyterian Church in Detroit, Michigan. While at Fort Street, Pierson

4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

became involved in networks for urban and foreign missions. The developing interest in foreign missions would eventually lead Pierson to become a promoter of “the evangelization of the world in this generation,” a motto which he first articulated.

Pierson would spend the last twenty years of ministry primarily as an itinerant promoter of missions in his role as editor of the Missionary Review.

Pierson was a striking embodiment of many traits that historians have come to associate with American Evangelicalism. Strongly committed to the plenary inspiration of Scripture, long before the Princetonian formulation of inerrancy, Pierson’s inductive Bible study approach led him in often surprising directions: the denigration of ordination, the promotion of women in preaching ministries (especially on the mission field), a movement from the optimistic postmillennialism of his youth to a contradictory premillennialism of his later years, and finally, a decision to be “rebaptized” by immersion though he did not disbelieve infant baptism. Pierson also promoted holiness theology.

Although he did not move as far as Finney and the Oberlin theology’s commitment to “entire sanctification,” Pierson was involved in the Keswick movement and played an important role in the decisive 1905 Keswick Convention. Several times at key points in his ministry, Pierson experienced “deeper works of sanctification,” which he believed deepened his relationship with Christ. Because he loved Scripture and sought the Spirit, Pierson was a promoter of ecumenical cooperation based on shared theological commitments instead of denominational activity.

After his “rebaptism” and removal from the roles of the Philadelphia presbytery, Pierson’s work typified the independent, nondenominational, parachurch ministry characteristic of later evangelicals.

Above all, Pierson was an important representative of later Evangelicalism in the way he privileged evangelism over all other religious priorities. His Detroit and Philadelphia pastorates made him an early promoter of urban evangelism and moved him in directions that foreshadowed twentieth-century social Christianity. He regularly castigated his wealthy Detroit congregation for failing to abandon the pew rent system, which kept the poor from worshiping and hearing the gospel.

When the church building of Fort Street Church burned down, Pierson immediately rented an opera house and experienced a sixteen-month revival modeled on the ministry of Finney; almost three hundred people professed conversion during that time. With the assistance of retail tycoon John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, Pierson led Bethany

Church as one of the nation’s first “institutional churches,” that met physical needs through a multitude of mercy ministries which provided bridges to the working classes for the gospel. At both churches, Pierson’s most important ministry was the interdenominational inductive Bible studies that he taught to equip Sunday school teachers and lay leaders to evangelize their neighborhoods.

However, it was particularly as a promoter of foreign missions evangelism that Pierson achieved his greatest notoriety. From his first book on missions, The Crisis of Missions (1886), Pierson was an important linchpin in the engine of missions that made the nineteenth century “the Great Century” of missions. With mission promoters George Muller, J. Hudson Taylor, A. J. Gordon, John Mott, William Blackstone, and especially D. L. Moody, Pierson advanced the cause of foreign missions throughout transatlantic Evangelicalism. He played a role in the establishment or continuation of nearly every major “faith” mission in the world— African Inland Mission, China Inland Mission, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Oriental Missionary Society. A visit to speak at Princeton University led one freshman football player, Robert Speer, to commit himself to missions; eventually, Speer would head the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions for a generation.

Even in his transition from postmillennialist to premillennialist, Pierson typified evangelical trajectories. Profoundly affected by the Civil War, he believed that the soldiers’ blood was shed in a cosmic battle for freedom and morality that provided an atonement for the sins of the United States. Once the country was freed from the sin of slavery through armed conflict, Pierson moved to a different kind of warfare—a cultural war against moral sin and vice that typified his Detroit ministry. However, by 1878, as it was apparent that the United States was not moving to a higher plane of morality, he became discouraged and convinced that the movement of history was degenerative, not progressive. Eventually, Pierson became known as a leading dispensational premillennialist, and at the end of his life served as one of the original associate editors for C. I. Scofield’s Reference Bible. Yet, even with his commitment to dispensationalism, Pierson never got beyond his original optimism. He earnestly hoped, until the end of his life, that the evangelization of the world could and would occur in his generation, making the kingdoms of the world into the Kingdom of Christ.

Dana Robert’s biography, then, serves not only as a perceptive introduction to the life of A. T.

Pierson. Rather, its larger significance can be found in the window it provides on late nineteenthcentury Evangelicalism. Out of that still murky milieu, the forces that continue to shape the American way of evangelical faith were formed.

Only if we understand that time can we understand our own. For her compelling book that casts light on both the past and present, we are extremely grateful.

Sean Michael Lucas Community Presbyterian Church Louisville, KY

Post-Reformation Reformed Orthodoxy: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725

by Richard A. Muller Baker Academic, 2003 4 vols., 2,176 pages (hardcover), $175.00 “Trickle-down economics” is the idea that tax cuts benefit all parties by increasing the size of the whole economic pie, thereby increasing the size of each of the slices; that is, “A rising tide lifts all boats.” In a day when serious theological reflection is no longer à la mode—found more often by the crumb than the slice—perhaps we should begin thinking in terms of trickle-down theology.” Perhaps what is needed is not more semiliterate attempts at “doing theology,” but a stimulus package that liberates long-dormant theological capital from the red tape of dusty volumes and makes its serious study less taxing. The theological supply-sider who agrees with this prescription can rejoice at the completion of Richard A. Muller’s Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics (PRRD), a multidecade project that promises to send out ripples for decades to come.

Muller’s subject matter is the academic study of theology (Reformed Dogmatics) as it took shape in the period immediately after the Reformation (Post-Reformation). Muller has long argued that twentieth-century interpreters of the Reformation—orthodox, neo-orthodox, and liberal—have failed to learn from its first interpreters, those contemporaries and followers who sought to codify and capitalize on its insights.

Indeed, this following generation of theologians has long been caricatured as “scholastic, speculative, and unbiblical,” a verdict Muller’s work demonstrates to be false. PRRD does not present an entire dogmatic system, but it does give one volume each to the formative topics of

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 1

Prolegomena, Scripture, God, and the Trinity. In each case Muller puts the thought of Reformed Orthodox thinkers in the broad sweep of dogmatic development, beginning in the Middle Ages, passing through the Reformation, and terminating with early Enlightenment thought. Thus, the discussion of inspiration in the Scripture volume gives you a nicely contextualized overview of its development over a vast period of centuries, a pattern repeated at key topics throughout.

I realize it is unlikely that many readers of Modern Reformation will settle down with one of Muller’s volumes and a cup of tea for edification on the Lord’s Day, yet this shouldn’t lead us to think that they won’t nonetheless be edified by his labors, albeit indirectly. The first volume of this series appeared in 1987 and the second in 1992, yet these first two volumes have been revised and are found here for the first time fully indexed. Together with the bibliography appended at the end of volume four (125 pages worth!), this apparatus turns Muller’s work into an accessible reference for the thoughtful elder, pastor, or seminary student. I have already used the work as a reference in preparing adult Sunday school classes, and have found that twenty or thirty minutes of browsing can solidly ground a popularly oriented lesson on key aspects of Reformed thought by establishing the outlines of its historical development. Of course, the more serious use of this resource by professional students in theology also promises to bear untold fruit, as the clear waters from the source of the Reformed tradition reach ever more readers. Waters which I hope may rise, and lift all boats.

Brian J. Lee Book Reviews Editor Alexandria, VA

SHORT NOTICES The Jewish Study Bible Jewish Publication Society TANAKH translation Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 2,304 pages (hardcover), $40.00 At the very heart of Jewish tradition is the quest for knowledge. “O how I love your teaching. It is my study all day long” (Ps. 119:97). According to the editors, these words correctly reflect centuries of Jewish dedication to the rigorous study of the Bible (i.e., Tanakh). This is a new and very

4 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

important study Bible with annotated notes flanking the biblical text throughout.

The goals seem to be executed well: Represent the very best in academic university scholarship of the Bible and portray the broad range of Jewish engagement with the Bible over the past two and a half millennia. Some of the most able scholars in the field contributed to this volume (Adele Berlin, Steven E. Fassberg, Michael V. Fox, Peter Machinist, Ziony Zevit, just to mention a few), and for that reason alone, among others, this new study Bible is an important addition to the library of a discerning reader. In addition to introductory essays placed at the beginning of each book of the Bible, twenty-four important auxiliary essays supplement the work. In order to whet the appetite, the reader should turn first to Benjamin Sommer’s essay on “Inner-biblical Interpretation.” Pastors and seminary students should definitely examine Steven Fassberg’s essay, “Languages of the Bible.”

The translation of the Jewish Publication Society is used. Those working on this knew Hebrew very well, and the translation is given in beautiful idiomatic English. A helpful system of footnotes is incorporated in small print, one the best features of which is the admission of places where the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain.

Bryan Estelle Westminster Seminary California Escondido, CA

Preaching Christ in All of Scripture

by Edmund P. Clowney Crossway, 2003 192 pages (paperback), $15.99 I dare say that everyone who has heard Ed Clowney preach remembers the experience.

Although they may, perhaps, have forgotten his name, they cannot have forgotten how he knit a story from the words of Scripture; how that story seemed to envelop them into the biblical story.

Finally, this wonderfully textured story was at the same time the simplest one they had ever heard— connected and supported at each and every point to the saving virtue of Christ. No one who has heard Ed Clowney preach would turn up his nose at a book of his sermons, and those who haven’t should take the opportunity to hear him in its pages.

While the best of sermon collections can be laborious reading, Clowney’s latest outperforms the genre on two counts. The first is a simple, twochapter introduction to redemptive historical

preaching—perhaps the best in print. With a minimum of jargon, Clowney makes the case that Christ is the center of the Scriptures and practically shows how to prepare a sermon that faithfully presents him as such. All preachers should read these fifty pages to learn how it is done. The second surprise is Clowney’s sermons themselves, which translate to print better than most and serve as an invaluable appendix to the opening primer.

They are deceptively easy reading, widely accessible and plainly understood, yet somehow manage to stir both heart and mind in surprisingly deep ways. One thinks of a painting by Rembrandt; there is a glow of Christ throughout which has been produced by a master whose skill and learning leave no trace.

Clowney’s book is a clarion call for those called to preach, presenting in both indicative and imperative voices the glory of our Lord’s speech in Christ. His final sermon concludes fittingly: The Word of the Lord is still growing and multiplying…. And it must be heard from the lips of one who has been called and sent.

Yes, the preaching of one called to that task is the preaching in which the words of the Lord are heard. Through your lips Jesus Christ speaks. As the Belgic Confession declares, the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Brian J. Lee Book Review Editor Alexandria, VA

lurking in the songs, shows, and films kids continually return to for solace and meaning.” In doing so Detweiler and Taylor celebrate the phenomenon of pop culture as “among the most profound, provocative, exciting expressions of legitimate spiritual yearning in at least a hundred years.” Thus, postmoderns—both acknowledged and those in self-denial—are called not to the arcane means of Word, Sacrament, and corpus Christi, but rather the movements and minutia of pop culture in order “to understand God and to recognize the twenty-first-century face of Jesus.”

To be sure, A Matrix of Meanings rightly notes the importance of observing pop culture in order to understand key issues that clearly affect and shape our society culturally, politically, and spiritually.

Indeed, the authors’ introduction to the substantial conversation about God in pop culture is welcomed for those of us who either do not have the time to extensively engage pop culture or lack the knowhow for navigating its byways. In the spirit of Francis Schaeffer, Detweiler and Taylor underscore a neglected truth in Evangelicalism, namely that God cares about the whole of creation, including present patterns of human culture. However, the authors go one step further. Pop culture, they insist, presents God’s conversation about himself. And this is a step too far, much too far.

[See the extended version of this review at www.modernreformation.org.]

John J. Bombaro Dickinson College Carlisle, PA

A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture

by Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor Baker Academic, 2003 351 pages (paperback), $17.99 In this installment from Baker Academic’s Engaging Culture Series, Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor’s A Matrix of Meanings sets out to “flip the script” on our understanding of pop culture. The authors’ stated goals are three: first, to show their readers that “God shines through even the most debased pop cultural products”; second, to “inspire the person of faith struggling with too much information as well as artists and culture watchers who dig God but can’t stomach religion”; and, third, to liberate “Jesus from the [ecclesiological] chains that have bound him.” Their methodology consists of closely examining “where God might be

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 4 3

O

N

R U M I N A T I O N S

|

M F R O M

Y F R I E N D S

| O F

M M O D E R N

I

N

D

R E F O R M A T I O N

John Arthur Nunes

Come to the Mercy Feet

M JOHN ARTHUR NUNES

Senior Pastor St. Paul Lutheran Church Dallas, TX

y feet were tired. My connecting flight delayed. Maybe it’s the clerical

blurted.

Before I could answer, she launched into collar, but I’m amazed at how quickly people open up to strangers like me. “her truth,” with both feet firmly planted in mid-air: It’s as if everyone has drunk a truth serum. Except they really don’t want the “For me, life is like totally all about getting to know Truth, and they seem happy carrying around the people.” (That’s verbatim. I jotted it down. Later, baggage of unhealthy lives.

I wondered how life’s essence could be I guess it’s vogue in our culture. Confession simultaneously like and totally). “Knowing people, Lite: spilling peccadilloes all over people whom we that’s it,” she sighed. don’t really care about, or hope to ever see again: She, and we, are nothing like the penitent of “I’m gay,” “I’m cheating,” “Church isn’t my thing.” Luke 7:36-50. This world-worn biblical woman Raw confession without refreshing absolution— knew people, especially lascivious men, better than the serum—that only comes after spiritual she should. She knew herself too well. Her authenticity (2 Cor. 7:10). bloodied reputation was proof of how sin had kicked Knowing sin will drive you to your knees— her in the face. When life knocks you to your knees, from birth we are plagued with an expansive and you’re in a praying position. She is on a mission, on corrosive plague. In the Lutheran tradition, we use her knees, at Jesus’ feet. Without words, her love phrases like miserable sinner… heartily sorry, and speaks volumes. All her dirt is brought to the dusty sincerely repent to describe this reality. Then words feet of Jesus. With her best oil, and her brokenness, like boundless mercy describe the Conqueror who she “goes for broke.” Years of fears, flaws, tears, and traveled here to stomp all over the head of sin, failures are absorbed into these feet of mercy. Jesus knows it all. Now, as God, he forgives it all. death, and the devil for us.

What can we know?

Finally, both the Not knowing me from Adam did not stop this Miami-bound eighteen year-old from demanding transcendent dignity of the human person, and the her answers, short and pat, with e-mail efficiency. depths of our fallen depravity are beyond our Online is where you can see and hear this intellectual capacity. Outside of Christ, we are more confession trend gaining real (or virtual!) sin-wrecked than what’s imaginable. At the feet of momentum. Though Jesus’ forgiveness is rarely Christ, our faith receives more purifying forgiveness seen or heard there. In some www.communities than can be comprehended. C. S. Lewis once you can say everything and anything, without the quipped that the Holy Eucharist is the only thing burden of admitting guilt or exercising moral more sacred to behold than people. We daily confess. discipline. It’s naked chatter all the time, self- Christ eternally forgives. Faith totally knows this. exposure, 24/7, behind the screen (not screen like I’m not expecting to have my feet kissed or oiled those pre-Vatican II confession booth screens, but with a woman’s hair while traveling, or anytime computer screens, and the “screen” of electronic really. But what a raw and refreshing example this pseudonyms). Knowing and being known becomes unnamed sinner sets! Come to the mercy feet: scrape the noble excuse for venting the idiosyncratic dung up your misery, dig deeply, confess it viscerally. that floats inevitably to the surface (Rom. 1:20).

Then hear Jesus: “Your faith has saved you; go in “What is the meaning of life to you?” she peace” (Luke 7:50). That will give meaning to life!

4 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

The White Horse Inn Equipping You to Better Understand What You Believe and Why You Believe It.

whitehorseinn.org Our weekly programs are available to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

UPCOMING PROGRAM TOPICS: July 4

What The Bible Says about Justification

July 11

What The Church Has Said About Justification

July 18

What They’re Saying Today About Justification

July 25

Why You Should Care About Justification

August 1

What Is Covenant Theology?

August 8

One Covenant or Two?

August 15

Christ’s Covenant of Works

August 22

The Covenant Corrective You won't want to miss these programs.