I am afraid I have some more bad news for the defenders of the faith over at Heidelhoneyhut. The rot of heresy is spreading. The FV leprosy was not addressed promptly enough, and has begun to spread retroactively through the body of all church history. And you know it is a really bad factory that can send its pollutants upstream.
This, just in, from Turretin’s Institutes:
“The Mosaic covenant may be viewed in two aspects: either according to the intention and design of God and in order to Christ; or separately and abstracted from him. In the latter way, it is really distinct from the covenant of grace because it coincides with the covenant of works and in this sense is called the letter that killeth and the ministration of condemnation, when its nature is spoken of (2 Cor. 3:6, 7). But it is unwarrantably abstracted here because it must always be considered with the intention of God, which was, not that man might have life from the law or as a sinner might be simply condemned, but that from a sense of his own misery and weakness he might fly for refuge to Christ…The law is said “to be not of faith” (Gal. 3:12), not as taken broadly and denoting the Mosaic economy, but strictly as taken for the moral law abstractly and apart from the promises of grace (as the legalists regarded it who sought life from it)” (2:267-68).
“The law is not administered without the gospel, nor the gospel without the law. So that it is as it were a legal-gospel and an evangelical-law; a gospel full of obedience and a law full of faith” (2: 268).
So, then, in a more serious vein than my first paragraph, with regard to justification, nuda lex does nothing except condemn a sinner. When this use of the law is under discussion, we have to guard the fundamental distinction between law and grace. But when saving faith comes, we then realize that we are distinguishing things that cannot be separated — provided we are considering them in Christ, and not in abstraction. This lack of separation is not as dangerous as it sounds — height, breadth, and depth cannot be separated but a child can distinguish them.
So once saving faith comes, with regard to the broad intention and design of God, the believer principally rests in Christ alone, as He is offered in the gospel. But saving faith also understands the parts and relations of law to gospel, and sees God’s overarching gracious intent. He sees totus lex. This is why he can now tremble at the threatenings without that trembling being an example of unbelief. This is why he can render obedience to the laws without that obedience being a form of works-righteousness. In order to have the pedagogical use of the law and the didactic use of the law functioning at all, it is necessary that a man be able to transition between them. That transition is called getting saved.
Now join with me in a little thought experiment. Imagine that second quote above had appeared without attribution on the blog of Peter Leithart or Jeff Meyers. Right, that quote about a gospel full of obedience, and a law full of faith. That one. Do you think that we could get a couple dozen men who do not understand their own theological tradition to write a stern letter to the appropriate presbytery demanding that immediate steps be taken?
Lane over at Greenbaggins has said that I deny sola fide (which I emphatically affirm), and he has made this claim on the basis of his own failure to make the most basic distinctions that someone with a Reformed theological education should be able to make. If the Reformed tradition were the Mississippi River, these river boat pilots have managed to get their vessel grounded just south of Wichita. As I put it in a recent comment elsewhere, I really don’t understand why the C students think they get to grade everybody else’s papers.
But stumbling over a right understanding of the law is not a new problem. Let the apostle remind us of a few things.
“Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully” (1 Tim. 1:5-8).