The next chapter by Scott Clark begins oddly, but the latter part is just a standard discussion of the law/gospel issues. First the oddity. We have heard a great deal about how the gospel itself is under attack in this controversy. This is because certain settled Reformed shibboleths have been pronounced funny, and anyone who has been paying attention knows that the sibbolethians have been represented as a grave threat to the gospel as it is in Christ Jesus. But what then shall we do with all those Christians who lived before these formulations came to be? Guys like Augustine? And this is where Scott Clark says some truly odd things.
“The fathers in the postapostolic church spoke frequently about the gospel, but there is disagreement over the degree to which one can find a clear, developed expression of what confessional Protestants would recognize as the gospel” (p. 333).
I dare say. Clark tends to side with Torrance, who says “that what one tends to find in the fathers is confusion of law and gospel” (p. 334). All this is to be expected, and follows necessarily from Clark’s premises. But here comes the odd part. In an inexplicable lurch into catholicity, Clark says this:
“This is not an indictment of the fathers. To criticize the fathers for failing to use Luther’s (or Calvin’s) language is rather like criticizing Aquinas for not using Einstein’s physics” (p. 334).
Putting all this together, to confound law and gospel is to confound the issues of salvation and damnation itself, with the eternal destiny of eternal millions at stake. But if you do this before 1517, that’s really okay because it is simply a theological development that has not yet happened, like the discovery of relativity theory. But if you do it after 2002, then you are a threat to the gospel. Paul could understand the gospel, but we don’t have that expectation for anyone else until we get to the first Protestants. Huh. I didn’t know that faithfulness to the gospel could be anachronistic.
And now to the issues themselves. Having read Clark’s summary of the theological development of this idea of law and gospel, I want to say that I have no reason to doubt what he says. But then I remember how he has in the past represented my views, and so I will reserve to myself a little wiggle room. But assuming his representation of the pre-Reformation fathers is correct, not to mention his take on the Reformed fathers themselves, I can happily say that, once again, I turn up as a robust Protestant, cheerfully grinning.
There is a difference between how I talk about law and gospel and some of the quotations that Clark assembles here. But this difference does not touch any issue of substance, as I hope to show in a moment.
Clark speaks of a law/gospel hermeneutic, and some of the men he quotes speak the same way. In other words, the categories of law and gospel represent different sections of Scripture, which must be identified. They are not to be equated with Old and New Testaments respectively, because, as Clark points out, the quintessential law statement, “Do this and live,” comes from the lips of the Lord Jesus, and the preamble of the Ten Commandments can be seen as gospel. So the Old Testament has both law and gospel in it, and the New Testament has both law and gospel in it. Thus a law/gospel hermeneutic is necessary for the one who comes to the Bible, hoping to understand it.
Instead of this, 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 as 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.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).
Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? (2 Cor. 2:14-16).
In other words, to the unregenerate soul, law and gospel are repulsive in exactly the same way — they both smell like the holiness of God. To the one whose heart has been transformed, he sees and understands the intent of the law, and he sees and understands the intent of the gospel, and it is all the same intent.
If the law drives me to Christ, then how is the law not servant to the gospel and part of it? And if the gospel repells a sinner with the aroma of death, then how is it not part of the law? I don’t want to say that law is gospel or that gospel is law, but rather that they are used as such. What the law is, and how the law is used are two separate issues. What the gospel is, and how the gospel is used are two separate issues.
One other point is important to mention here. It is plain to me that anticipation of this division among men is clear in Scripture itself. Put another way, the Bible knows that some men will run away from the law and the gospel, declaring their hatred of God openly. Some men will take just the law and try to use it as a ladder to climb into heaven with. These men Paul identifies as Ishmaelites, sons of Hagar, men who have bound themselves in a covenant to break covenant. Then there are others, unfortunately not rare, who take just the gospel and try to turn that into a ladder which they can use to climb to heaven. This Marcionite approach is also to be rejected.
God is not at odds with Himself. If we personify law (as Bunyan wonderfully does in Pilgrim’s Progress), we have a Moses who really knows how to beat us up. But a man under conviction of sin can be just as worked over by the Sermon on the Mount as by the Ten Commandments. That doesn’t make it appropriate to state as a hermeneutical principle that Christ now has to be Moses. This is why I prefer to speak of use, rather than hermeneutic.
Now I can understand how there would be room to discuss or debate this kind of thing. But for the life of me, I cannot see how any essential feature of the standard law/gospel distinction is lost. But if it is lost, then lost it must be. And if that is the case, then I would just ask Clark to imagine my position surfacing, oh, circa 1300, in the writings of some monkish scribbler somewhere. Then he could praise it as a remarkable instance of prescience with regard to the coming orthodoxy, instead of the heresy it is currently being.