We “also speak in numerous places, of a decretal election, settled and sealed before all worlds, in which the elect of God are named and numbered, and with a number that cannot be increased or diminished. But there no sense bring that up here—it would only serve to confuse people who have settled into the warm bubble bath of orthodoxy and wish to have no pounding on the bathroom door.”
Where the Law/Gospel Divide Actually Is
“I prefer to speak of a law/gospel use, rather than hermeneutic. Just as the law is one, but there are three uses of the law, so with this. Instead of assuming that the Scriptures come in two categories, I prefer to speak of the human race coming in two categories—the regenerate and unregenerate. For the regenerate, the entire Bible is gospel, good news. The gospel is obviously gospel, and the law falls under the third use of the law. The regenerate believer looks to Scripture and finds Christ everywhere. Christ in the manna, Christ in the water, Christ in the sacrifices, Christ in the law. He finds Christ in the promises and Christ in the law. To the unregenerate, the law is simply condemnation. For the elect who are unregenerate, this condemnation drives them to Christ and therefore functions asa servant to the gospel. For the unregenerate who are not elect, this condemnation drives them away. All this is simply standard for Reformed believers. But we have to note that for the unregenerate who are not elect, the gospel does exactly the same thing that the law does—it is the aroma of death (2 Cor. 2:14-16).”
The Chariots of Recapitulation
“Those who want the Mosaic law to recapitulate the covenant of works from the Garden need to be aware that works will always drive out grace. To mix the covenant of works into the Mosaic administration of grace will ensure that the grace of the law will be entirely supplanted. It is astonishing that through this book, the recapitulated sense of law and condemnation has almost entirely effaced the Westminsterian understanding of the graciousness manifested at Sinai . . . God had brought the Jews out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, but apparently the hosts of recapitulation had not been drowned like Pharaoh, but chased them out into the wilderness, caught up with them, and subjected them again to a yoke of slavery.”
Thanks Would Have Been in Order
“As I have pointed out in many places, if Adam had withstood the tempter, it would have been necessary for him to thank God afterwards. This means that the covenant was fundamentally a gracious one.”
Merit Not Fungible
“We simply deny that merit can be extracted from a virtuous act and stored on shelves.”
The Westminster Standards, That Is
“He tries to justify this by some kind of discussion of Galatians, but I don’t know why he is messing around with that when we have the Standards.”
Did Jesus Trust God or Not?
“Was Christ’s obedience faithless or not? Now I agree that Christ’s obedience was imputed to us, but where did this obedience come from? Did Jesus gut it out for us on a works principle, or was His obedience grounded in His absolute trust in His Father? The answer is simple. It was perfect obedience, right? That meant that it was not grounded in the actions of the first successful Pelagian.”
Obedience, Not Merit
“When Christ came into the world, He came to do the will of His Father. He obeyed. He was promised the nations of men, and He gloriously fulfilled the conditions attached to that promise. So in discussing this, words like promise, blessing, obedience, submission are straight out of the Bible, and we should stick to them. Merit isn’t one of those words, and the sooner we get this gum off our Reformed shoe the better.”
No, No, That Was My Point
“In this kind of debate, unless everybody involved watches his step closely, things can get pretty stupid—like a couple of dogs, neither of them very smart, debating quantum physics. ‘No! Arf, arf.’”
So Why Call It That?
“This is probably the central complaint I have about the prelapsarian covenant of works. I believe there was such a covenant but why call it by that name? The name throws just about everybody off, including Estelle. In the Pauline vocabulary works and grace are antithetical. So when you say works, you don’t think Adamic probation, you think of your standard issue Pharisees. And when you think of them, you think of their distortions of the Old Testament grace into their Ishmaelite system of works. And then you their distortions of Synaptic grace back into the Old Testament, and then read that back into the Garden. How else could Galatians 3:10 get applied so easily to the pre-fall Adam?”