Three quick responses to the latest at Greenbaggins.
The first is that when I denied the equal ultimacy of gospel and law, Lane responded with this:
One important point here is the relationship of law and grace in the mind of God. Wilson says that he doesn’t buy the equal ultimacy of law and grace. I would answer: is God more gracious than He is holy? Is the righteousness of God more or less important than the love of God?
The problem here is that law and holiness are not synonyms. I have no problem at all in declaring the ultimacy of God’s holiness. He was thrice holy before any creature was made, and I see the holiness of God as the sum total of all His perfections. But holiness is not the same as law. Law derives from His holiness, and is dependent on it, but it is not the same thing. For example, God gives law to His creatures, and He forgives sinful creatures. This is what His mercy, and justice, and grace, and law do when He is interacting with fallen creatures. But these unmanifested attributes (a readiness to forgive, say) were not operative at all in the timeless aeons before the first creature was spoken into existence.
Second, Lane asks (with regard to my affirmation of two covenants), “Was eternal life for Adam conditioned upon perfect and personal obedience?” I wouldn’t put it that way. I would rather say that avoidance of eternal death was conditioned upon not disobeying. The gift that Adam was receiving could be forfeited by disobedience, but did not need to be earned by continued obedience. Disobedience would wreck it, and did, but obedience wouldn’t earn it.
And last, the treatment of the FV position was a political move, and really slick, but transparently obvious. Part of the elegance of the thing lies in how obvious it is, and how the people running the play don’t care. It reminds of a baseball player who, when my dad was a boy, and there was only one umpire on the field, would do the following whenever he got on first. If a ball was hit to the outfield, the ump had to run out to see how it was handled because he was the only guy there. Our man on first would take the opportunity to run behind the ump, skipping second base, and running straight to third. Everybody in the stands saw it, of course, but the ump didn’t. And what mattered (at least to him) was the fact that he got what he wanted. He was on third after all.
Large assemblies in part must rely on their committees to do the spade work, and I am not faulting the GA for that. You can’t have high level of theological discourse within the limits that a big assembly necessarily has. That is why it is so important to get the fairness thing right before the GA — in the committee. So I am faulting those who stacked that committee like it some blonde in a tight dress, and who then try to brazen it out after the fact. “What’s this? What do you mean? Perfectly modest attire.”