reformed blogging.

I was able to have a substantial conversation with a fellow student on campus today. He considered himself ’spiritual’ rather than religious. In addition, he made sure that I knew that he was familiar with Christianity, having spent most of his life in a Lutheran Church.  Throughout our conversation I began to wonder more and more whether he even understood the gospel. When I finally posed the question he was indignant. Rather than offer any reply he went off about how it was wrong for me to question his beliefs, that it was wrong for me to judge him and that Jesus’ one command (that he happened to accept) was not to judge others. After I reassured him that I had no ill-intentions but was asking an honest question he finally replied. In a significantly less assertive tone he answered that Christianity was a set of moral teachings given by Jesus. After a few more minutes of talking he went on to deny Christ’s resurrection, and considered the existence of Christ a matter of interpretation. At the end of our conversation he, in essence, denied the ability to have certainty in any matter (except those matters that were convenient to him). The discussion was obviously going nowhere so we decided to stop.

I walked away from that conversation with a lot on my mind. What got me more than anything is the fact that this guy has no clue what the gospel was despite his life spent in Church. Maybe he had bad ears or maybe the gospel wasn’t coming from the pulpit, hopefully it was the former. His ‘gospel’ is no gospel at all, in fact, it sounds more like Gnosticism.

The Gnostic doctrine was set forth as a timeless message in which reference was made not to past events as the basis of salvation but to certain general religious ideas, presented in mythological form.
- Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House), 410.

 

The Law tells us what we are to do, under the threat of punishment. The Gospel, on the other hand, promises and provides the forgiveness of sin. Just as one must differentiate between the righteousness which is acceptable before men and that which is acceptable before God, so one must also distinguish between the preaching of the Law and that of the Gospel. One task of the Law is to compel men to act, to promote the good and prevent the evil. As such it therefore includes all public order and activity on the different levels of life. Luther called this the civil use of the Law (usus legis civilis). But when it comes to a man’s relation to God–his righteousness in a higher sense–the task of the Law is completely different. The Law cannot produce a single good work, and man is here referred to the Word of the Gospel, which offers him forgiveness of sin for the sake of Christ. In this context the function of the Law is simply to reveal sin and to make the threat of wrath real–the wrath under which man stands because of his sinful nature. Luther called this the theological or spiritual use of the Law (usus theologicus seu spiritualis).
Law and Gospel characterize two kinds of preaching which simultaneously exert their effect: the Law accuses and judges, while the Gospel awakens faith in the heart and thereby raises man up and re-creates him so that he can begin to love God and his neighbor–i.e., so that he can live in the frame of mind which the command of love demands.
…With respect to justification itself, good works must be as clearly distinguished from faith as possible. For this has to do with faith alone. As Luther expressed it, the Law must not be permitted to force its way up in the conscience. The man who has been crushed by the Law, and recognizes himself to be a sinner, can be raised up only by faith. He must look only to the cross of Christ, and not to the Law or to his own works, as though they could make satisfaction for his misdeeds. On this point, therefore, faith and works are mutually exclusive.
- Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House), 224-28. 

A lot of good books have come out recently. A guide to the Institutes here. If you have not read or do not own, or if you own the Battles’ translation you might want to check out this recently republished volume which is below $20 bucks. 

Two festschrifts that look pretty intense here and here.

Finally, a not so recent book, if you have not yet read it I highly recommend this compilation of essays from the WSC faculty. Even apart from the whole FV controversy there is much to gain from this volume as a clear doctrine of justification by faith alone is expounded in connection to the covenant of works. Scott Clark’s chapter entitled “Letter and Spirit” on the Law and Gospel distinction alone makes the book worth getting. Buy it and read it!

Tolle lege!

The early church fathers considered Marcion to be the most difficult of heretics. Among the heresies that he propagated was his radical separation of Law and Gospel. As sad as it is Marcion’s theology is not too different from what many Evangelicals believe today:

The basic point of departure in Marcion’s theology is to be found in the distinction he made between Law and Gospel, between the Old Covenant and the New. Paul spoke of the Christian’s freedom from the Law, and Marcion interpreted that to mean that the Law had been vanquished and that the Gospel was to be preached without any reference to the Law. The Law, he said, had been replaced by a new order. The Gospel, to him, was a new, previously unknown message, which not only replaced the Law but stood in opposition to it. Tertullian characterized this attitude in the following words: “The separation of the Law and the Gospel is the characteristic and principal work of Marcion.” (Contra Marcionem, 1, 19)
…The Most High God, as Marcion conceived of Him, was not so much an abstract spiritual essence, an infinitely transcendent God; He was rather the unknown God who revealed Himself to the world in Christ. Marcion thought of Him as the God of grace and mercy, the God of pure love. This God, said Marcion, fought against and conquered the God of law and justice and, out of pure grace, saved those who had faith in Him. This facet of Marcion’s theology was a biased (or one-sided) and therefore distorted interpretation of Paul’s concept of justification. According to Marcion, the God of love had nothing at all to do with the Law. He made a radical distinction between justice and mercy, between wrath and grace.
- Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House), 40-41.

1. Law and gospel do not denote absolutely separate parts of Scripture. Moses and Jesus both preached law and gospel. This is why Reformed theologians consistently quoted Jesus’s response to the lawyer in Luke 10:28–”do this and live”–as the prototypical example of law. One could just as easily cite the prologue to the Decalogue (Exod 20:2) as the prototypical example of the gospel word: “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The question is not so much where these words occur in the canon, but the mood (imperative or indicative) with which they speak and the conditions attached to their promises.
2. As Wollebius noted, both the law and the gospel urge obedience using promises and curses. They differ in their “proper material” (propria material). That is, the stuff of gospel is not stuff of law. The law is about our “doing” (facienda), and the gospel is about our “believing” (credenda).
3. It is not that the law is strict and the gospel is lax. Rather both law and gospel require “perfect obedience.” The law demands it of us, and the gospel announces that Christ has accomplished it.
4. Both words are directed at sinners, but, again, with different consequences and conditions or instruments.
5. Both moods glorify God, and both seek to foster Christian virtue in believers. The law, however, is powerless to justify or sanctify; only the gospel achieves those ends. For the unregenerate, law and gospel are antithetical. To believers, however, for whom Christ has satisfied the righteous requirements of the law, the law is “subordinate” to the gospel. In other words, the gospel is the power of life and sanctity, and the law serves to structure Christian sanctity.
   - R. Scott Clark, “Letter and Spirit,” in Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry (ed. R. Scott Clark, Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company), 349-50. 

The true biblical doctrine of justification by faith has to be formulated with great precision and care to teach both the glorious free justification that we have in Christ and its fruit in holiness. True doctrine is like walking a tight rope. One can fall off the tight rope of justification in two directions: the antinomian direction and the neonomian direction. Both the antinomian and the neonomian miss the biblical doctrine of justification.
… Paul declared that Christians should enjoy a sense of peace with God through faith in Christ. Any claim to teach or preach the gospel that does not lead to such peace is no gospel at all. So Luther was right in understanding Paul: “A man is justified, not by the works of the law, but by faith alone.” 
- W. Robert Godfrey, “Faith Formed by Love or Faith Alone?,” in Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry (ed. R. Scott Clark, Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company), 280-84. 

Rome, too, affirmed the need for forgiveness and grace, with its own provisions for sin through sacrifices and penance. Furthermore, the Reformers never argued that Paul’s opponents had no place for grace, forgiveness, and sacrifice. Rather, they were convinced that, like the medieval church, the Jewish believers in Galatia had confused law and gospel, grace and works, promise and conditionality, Abraham and Sinai. Justification is either by works or by grace, but it cannot be both.
…Monocovenantalism old and new attempts to combine merit and grace, and the result is that both concepts are weakened… both the justice of God in upholding his righteous law and his mercy in satisfying its conditions himself are eclipsed–or, better, both his justice and his mercy are relativized by each other instead of being held together simultaneously in their integrity. The end product is a relaxed law and a demanding gospel.
- Michael S. Horton, “Which Covenant Theology,” in Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry (ed. R. Scott Clark, Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company), 199-201.

The prosperity of the wicked is a mere illusion and in any case temporary, while the righteous, even in their deepest suffering, still enjoy the love and grace of God. (Ps. 73; Job). The suffering of the faithful is frequently rooted not in their personal sin but in the sin of humankind, and has its goal in the salvation of humankind and the glory of God.
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, 618.

The acceptance or rejection of a degree of reprobation, therefore, should not be explained in terms of a person’s capacity for love and compassion. The difference between Augustine and Pelagius, Calvin or Castellio, Gomarus and Arminius is not that the latter were that much more gentle, loving, and tenderhearted than the former. On the contrary, it arises from the fact that the former accepted Scripture in its entirety, also including this doctrine; that they were and always wanted to be theistic and recognize the will and hand of the Lord also in these disturbing facts of life; that they were not afraid to look reality in the eye even when it was appalling. Pelagianism scatters flowers over graves, turns death into an angel, regards sin as mere weakness, lectures on the uses of adversity, and considers this the best possible world. Calvinism has no use for such drivel. It refuses to be hoodwinked. It tolerates no such delusion, takes full account of the seriousness of life, champions the rights of the Lord of lords, and humbly bows in adoration before the inexplicable sovereign will of God Almighty. As a result it proves to be fundamentally more merciful than Pelagianism. How deeply Calvin felt the gravity of what he said is evident from his use of the expression “dreadful decree.” Totally without warrant, this expression has been held against him. in fact, it is to his credit, not to his discredit. The decree, as Calvin’s teaching, is not dreadful, but dreadful indeed is the reality that is the revelation of that decree of God, a reality that comes through both in Scripture and in history. To all thinking humans, whether they are followers of Pelagius or Augustine, that reality remains completely the same. It is not something that can in any way be undone by illusory notions of it
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, 394-5.

Holy is that which has been chosen and set apart by YHWH; divested of its common character by special ceremonies, it has received a character of its own and now lives in this new condition in accordance with the laws prescribed for it. Israel is a holy people because God has chosen it and set it apart; it has been incorporated in a covenant and must now live in conformity to all his laws, including the ceremonial. Holy is that which in all things conforms to the special laws God has ordained for it. Holiness is perfection, not only in a moral sense, but in the comprehensive sense in which the unique legislation of Israel conceives it: a religious, ethical, ceremonial, internal, and external sense.
…The holiness by which YHWH put himself in a special relation to Israel and which totally claims Israel for the service of YHWH is finally supremely manifest in that in Christ God gives himself to the church, which he redeems and cleanses from all its iniquities.
- Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, 219-21.