Yesterday I had a very productive conversation with Michael Horton, arranged by the good folks at St. Anne’s Pub, an audio journal. The proceedings were of course taped, and will be available from them in a week or so. While you are there, please check out the other things being done by that most valuable ministry. A CD version of our discussion will be available from Canon Press.
Coincidentally, I just finished reading Alister McGrath’s The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation. That book accented one of the things that is tripping us up, centuries later, in this conversation. And that, it seems to me, is the tendency to blur uses and applications of something with the inherent nature of that something. The three uses of the law are very different from the inherent nature of the law. And when I look at a passage (“law or gospel?”), it is easy to miss the fact that this is a question of hermeneutical use, and not a statement about the inherent nature of the law (or the gospel), or the scriptural passage I am looking at for that matter.
What the text is saying, and what the text is doing to me, may be two different things entirely. At any rate, I hope the conversation shows that productive conversation on these issues is possible, and I hope that we can widen the discussion — if for no other reason to identify the places where we genuinely differ, getting rid of superficial or apparent disagreements. Anyhow, if you are at all interested in this issue, try to get this recording when it is available.