From the Antinomian’s Own Mouth: What is New Covenant Theology? Part 6; Bresson’s Gospel According to Green Grass and Dinosaurs
“The Vos hermeneutic is new, disregards the plain sense of textual content, contains pagan philosophy, and in reality, is just plain goofy.”
Bresson, while pretending to be a friend of the Creation Museum, actually has a problem with it. What would that be? In his mind, and many other proponents of NCT, the Creation Museum projects the “unfortunate” idea that Scripture contains subject matter other than “the gospel.” So, Bresson wrote an article to set the record straight. In the article, he insinuates that the designers built the Creation Museum with a predominate “Redemptive Historical” theme in mind. The administrators of the Creation Museum then unwittingly republished the article on their website.
I am going to re-post my review of the article here because it contains further information on NCT, and especially its hermeneutic, or interpretive prism. My review can be read in full here:
paul
From the Antinomian’s Own Mouth: What is New Covenant Theology? Part 1; Interpretation
From time to time, I cruise by the blog site, “Vossed World” authored by Christian mystic / antinomian Chad Bresson to obtain some conveniently packaged information for my writings on Gospel Sanctification. Bresson’s site primarily promotes Gospel Sanctification theology, though he never uses that term specifically. He is one of eight pastors “serving” Clearcreek Chapel located in Springboro, Ohio. Bresson is also a radio personality for CDR, a radio ministry of Cedarville University.
During a recent visit to the site, and after the usual progression of “huh?” And “what the heck does that mean?” I found an article where Bresson lists his 63 tenets of New Covenant Theology. This is convenient because I can address the tenets separately, and one at a time. The work is also a culmination of other NCT theologians.
But let’s first start with some background information. New Covenant Theology is new; I mean, really, really new.
If I remember correctly, Richard Barcellos, in his book, “In Defense of the Decalogue: A Critique of New Covenant Theology” places its significant emergence somewhere during the year 2000, a mere ten years ago. NCT is also intrinsically connected to Redemptive-Historical hermeneutics, Gospel Sanctification, Heart Theology, and John Piper’s Christian Hedonism. These five form a coordinated theology with RHH, HT, and CH being minor tenets, and either NCT or GS being the major tenet that encompasses the other four. The pastors at Clearcreek Chapel where Bresson functions prefer NCT as the major tenet while refusing to recognize the GS interpretive label, even though the senior pastor (Russ Kennedy) proclaimed any separation of justification and sanctification as an “abomination.”
Not only is it new, the very conception of four of five of its intrinsic tenets can be traced back to one source, Westminster Seminary. One writer notes the following:
“It [NCT] seems to have originated at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia as a reaction to the teachings of Theonomy, which over emphasizes Old Testament law. In recent decades it has achieved an increasing degree of acceptance among many Reformed Baptists. A scholarly refutation of these new [emphasis mine] ideas has long been needed” (David Marshall, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, Hamilton, New Zealand).
My point is: there was a time when these facts would cause a teaching / theology to be rejected out of hand. But no more. There can be little doubt that we are in the time the apostle Paul warned would come; it is a time where people will heap to themselves teachers with itching ears. Chad Bresson himself once said that such doctrines are what “makes Clearcreek Chapel unique.” Is it our goal to pursue niche doctrines for the sake of being unique? I think not.
Here are Bresson’s NCT tenets. I will post four or five parts according to Bresson’s catagories, Interpretation, Covenants, The Law, The Church, and Israel. My contentions are in brackets:
“ What is New Covenant Theology?
This is a repost from Christ My Covenant, which published a list I have drafted over time to answer questions put to me about New Covenant Theology. It is a work in progress [usually, that is the case with NEW doctrines], and to be honest, isn’t simply a reflection of my thought, but others…especially those in the Earth Stove Society. I’m also indebted to Gary Long, who drafted his own set of NCT tenets some time ago…. some may even see this as an expansion of his work.”
What is New Covenant Theology?
Chad Richard Bresson
Interpretation of the Bible
1. New Covenant Theology insists on the priority of Jesus Christ over all things, including history, revelation, and redemption. New Covenant Theology presumes a Christocentricity to the understanding and meaning of all reality.
[All cults and isms distort the Trinity by overemphasizing one member over the other. The Jehovah Witnesses overemphasize the Father – Charismatics overemphasize the Holy Spirit, etc. Furthermore, Scripture does not say that all reality is seen through Christ. This statement is an invitation to unbridled mysticism, especially the idea that some sort of Christocentric prism (focusing on His personhood, rather than what He says) takes priority over revelation. Therefore, the plain sense of Scripture will often be replaced with a tortured attempt to see the gospel/Christ/redemption in every verse of the Bible, or the exclusion of Scripture altogether where a Chrstocentric context cannot be discovered.]
2. Christ in heaven has not only reached the goal of history and its reality, he Himself is the goal of history and reality, giving meaning to all that has occurred in human history and will occur in human history. Since it is Christ who gives meaning to human history, he is the One who interprets all of the deeds and acts of God in history.
[Though partly, and gloriously true, it contradicts the idea that we also look for other things in history besides Christ. Other than rewards, Peter said we “look (wait) for new heavens and new earth.” Christ came preaching the “good news of the kingdom.” The above statement is extreme and paves the way to interpret truth through a Christocentric prism devised by someone’s own imagination.]
3. Special revelation, comprised of the 66 books that we call the Sacred Scriptures, not only informs us about God, but redeems us and makes God present to us, focusing on the person and work of Jesus.
[It’s not “special” revelation, the Scriptures are “specific” revelation. Bresson carefully calls it “special” because NCT (the RHH part) holds that the Scriptures are only sacred when used for redemptive purposes. Hence, when Bressen says the Scriptures “redeem us,” us doesn’t mean mankind in general, but “us” as Christians. This reflects the GS belief that Chrsitians are continually re-saved / justified by focusing on the “person and work of Christ” in the Scriptures, and that only. His careful word crafting also reflects the GS belief that Christ obeys for us, using “work[s]” of Christ in the present tense. Bresson calls this “the imputed active obedience of Christ.”]
4. New Covenant Theology interprets Scripture after the manner of Christ’s and the New Testament writers’ use of the Old Testament. Jesus and the inspired New Testament writers, by their use of the Old Testament Scriptures, have left us a pattern by which to interpret not only the Old Testament prophecies, but its history and poetry.
[Yes, this is known as the often touted “apostles hermeneutic.” Per the usual, it is Bresson’s M.O. To exclude interpretive labels that could be used in a search engine. Many articles have been written for the purpose of asking the following question about the apostles hermeneutic: where is it? Matt Waymeyer presents the question this way: “What exactly is the ‘apostles hermeneutic’? What exactly is this pattern that modern-day interpreters are to follow? What specific hermeneutical principles are modeled by the NT writers that should guide contemporary interpretation? Can they be stated propositionally? If so, what are they? If not, why not? Should these hermeneutical principles be applied consistently to all of Scripture, or only certain parts of it? If only certain parts, which parts, and why only those parts?” These questions have not yet been answered by anybody.]
5. The way that Jesus, the Apostles, and the prophets used the Old Testament is normative for this age.
[ Normative? Nobody has defined the hermeneutic!]
6. The entire Old Testament, the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, point forward to and anticipate the WORD Incarnate, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2). New Covenant Theology presumes that Jesus Christ, in his person and his saving acts, is the hermeneutic center of the Bible.
[Not according to Jesus. His “person[hood]” is not a “hermeneutic[al] center” of the Bible. Jesus didn’t emphasize his personhood as a matter of interpretation, but rather, “do what I say.” Neither did Jesus strongly emphasize his own “saving acts” when you compare it to His strong emphasis on obeying what He said, as opposed to looking deeper and deeper into His actions and personality. One is subjective; the other objective. Jesus’ mandate to the church was to “observe all that I have commanded,” NOT, all that I am and what I have done.]
7. A careful study of the way Jesus and the New Testament writers understand and write about the Old Testament shows that the Old Testament’s anticipated Messiah (and His work) is revealed in the types and shadows of the revelation of the Old Testament, both in God’s speech-revelation and God’s acts. The Old Testament provides the salvation context for the person and work of Jesus.
[Again, a “careful study” has not yet produced an articulation of the “apostles hermeneutic.” Also, note Bresson’s fetish with continually writing about Christ’s works in the singular “work.” This satisfies his obsession with the idea that Christ continues to work in our place, and that sanctification is His work alone, totally apart from us. The “work” of Christ has more of a present emphasis than the “works” of Christ. Also, Bresson doesn’t like the idea that the many “works” of Christ had other emphasis apart from redemption. Yet, the Scriptures are pregnant with a strong emphasis on His “many works.” In fact, one would be hard pressed to find “work” in the singular when referring to Jesus in the Bible. One example would be John 21:25. Bresson wants us to believe that every one of Jesus’ works that John was talking about (according to John, the world would not be able to hold all of the books needed to record them) had redemptive context. As we shall see, Bresson’s teaching is continually fraught with extra-biblical, and other than Biblical terminology.]
8. The Old Covenant scriptures, what we call The Old Testament, are to be interpreted in the light of their new covenant fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Jesus is not only the interpretive key to understanding the Old Testament, the terminology of the Old Testament must be understood through and defined in light of Christ’s fulfillment.
[ If “Old Covenant scriptures” is a more accurate reference, why would the church traditionally refer to it as the “ Old Testament”? Again, Bresson’s intent is to use theological sounding, but unorthodox terminology to spoon feed erroneous concepts. This is an attempt by Bresson to get Christians to see the whole Bible as a redemptive, Christocentric document only, divided by the older version verses the newer version. Also, if the new interprets the old, this gives the supposed ability to reinterpret covenants in the OT that aren’t redemptive, like God’s promises to Israel concerning land etc. Furthermore, the New Testament does not interpret the OT in every case; they interpret each other. The New Testament writers quote the OT extensively to make their points about many issues other than redemption. Regarding eschatology, OT revelation is critical to understanding end time events. But in many cases other than eschatology, the OT interprets the NT.]
9. New Covenant Theology is based upon a redemptive-historical approach to interpreting the Bible, understanding the fulfillment of all of God’s promises in Jesus Christ as they are progressively unfolding from Genesis to Revelation.
[The equation here is simple: making everything about who Jesus is and what He did redemptively, excludes the weighty issue of what Jesus commands us to do. The end game is the exclusion of the Law, or Antinomianism.]
10. New Covenant Theology presumes that the “now-not yet” principle of interpretation is essential to understand the teaching of the NT.
[No comment.]
11. The organic historical connection, and the Christocentric unity that exists between the Old and New Covenants, guarantees the usefulness of the Old Testament for the church.
[But for “showing forth the gospel” only, and not instruction for sanctified, kingdom living.]
12. In the term New Covenant Theology we declare that God, for his own delight, has revealed himself and manifested his glory ultimately in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and his complete and perfect work on the Cross through which he has established a New Covenant in his blood. (Heb. 7:22; 8:6; 9:11; 10:14)
[Though this statement sounds good, why is it necessary to add, “the Person of…”? We all know Christ is a person. This is continually emphasized (the “personhood” of Christ) by NCT advocates for the purpose of promoting a nebulous “intimate relationship” with Christ as opposed to a supposedly imperative based relationship from “mere duty.”]
13. The pinnacle of God’s unfolding revelation comes to us in the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ himself, by the New Testament Scriptures.
[In other words, “the word of God is a person, not an imperative.” “The word of God is a person, not a program to follow.” The word of God is a person, not a cognitive concept,” etc., etc. But when you get people sold on that jingle (the nebulous concept of Jesus’ personhood, rather than an emphasis on what He expects), you can lead people anywhere, and believe me, Bresson does.]
14. The two testaments proclaim the same Christocentric message, but from differing standpoints.
[Where would I even begin to make the case that the Bible does not share Bresson’s comprehensive, unmitigated, Christocentric view? Of course, soteriology is a major part of the Scriptures, but Christ himself presented the Scriptures as His instruction for sanctified living ( Matthew 4:4, 7:24-27).]
15. The New Covenant documents, interpretive of and informed by the Old Covenant documents, are binding for the new people of God until the end of this age.
[This is a disingenuous statement, and one needs to quickly ask: “binding in what way?” Trust me, Bresson doesn’t mean that it is binding for the practice of Godly living. This is indicative of his deceptive double speak.]
paul
Jerry Bridges Proffers Gospel-Driven Bondage
“….they’re going to show pastors how to *see justification only* throughout the whole Bible. If they were forthright, that’s how they would state it.”
“’Jesus / gospel‘ replaces ‘justification,’ and masks the real intent: to make every verse in the Bible about justification and thereby eradicating the use of the Law in sanctification.”
Let me begin with some groundwork. As John MacArthur said in his book “Truth War,” to fight error in our day takes determination, perseverance, and tenacity. This is because today’s propagators of false doctrine are masters of nuance. In regard to those who propagate the antinomian doctrine of Gospel Sanctification, the goal is to eliminate application of biblical imperatives by referring to such a use of God’s word as “living by lists,” “reducing the Bible to a book of rules,” etc. Of course, they don’t mention that the Bible has “rules” that are often stated in list form. Therefore, they carefully word their presentation so you will assume they are talking about people who use the Bible in a legalistic way. Meanwhile, they ignore practical application of the Scriptures while heavily emphasizing grace. Soon our particular efforts in sanctification will be buried and forgotten (out of sight, out of mind) while subtle / negative references to the application of biblical imperatives slowly throws one more shovel-full of dirt on the hole that obedience is buried in.
This method is also accompanied by synthesizing justification and sanctification. Obviously, if we are sanctified by the same monergistic gospel that saved us, we can’t do anymore with the Law in sanctification than we did with it in justification. After all, one of the Gospel Sanctification mantras is “the same gospel that saved you also sanctifies you.” D.A. Carson, in an interview with Tim Keller concerning the T4G 2011 conference, shared that the main thrust of that conference will be to teach pastors how to “drive toward Christ and the gospel” and to show what “Biblical Theology [ie., Geerhardus Vos hermeneutics] looks like” in order to “read the Bible in such a way that you [always] get to Jesus.” Let me rephrase that. What D.A. Carson really means is they’re going to show pastors how to *see justification only* throughout the whole Bible. If they were forthright, that’s how they would state it. If the “same” gospel that saved us also sanctifies us, then sanctification is monergistic. If it’s not monergistic, then it’s not the same gospel that saved us. They can only have it both ways until people start asking questions. Later in the interview, D.A. Carson disingenuously notes that several perspectives on preaching will be presented at the same conference; supposedly, unlike other conferences (who only present the Grammatical Historical perspective). In saying this, he assumes the listeners will not associate the term “Biblical Theology” with hermeneutics. Let me also add that it’s not really about always getting to Jesus; it’s about always getting to “what Jesus has done, not what we have done” (another GS mantra often used by Micheal Horton). “Jesus / gospel” replaces “justification,” and masks the real intent: to make every verse in the Bible about justification and thereby eradicating the use of the Law in sanctification.
This now brings me to the significance of an excerpt from the Jerry Bridges book, “Transformed by Grace.” Jerry Bridges (who coined the phrase, “we must preach the gospel to ourselves everyday”) is not any different from most GS advocates; it’s difficult to find definitive grounds for argument in their nuanced approach. Most of the time you will have to read several pages in order to find clear statements that reflect what they really believe. In this case, another blogger supplied the following excerpt from the above mentioned book. My comments are in brackets:
“Paul’s call to stand firm in our freedom in Christ and not let ourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery is just as valid today with our rules as it was in the Galatians’ day with the Mosaic law… God gave us our spiritual Magna Charta.
[Paul’s call to freedom in Christ regards freedom from being justified by the Law. Here, Bridges extrapolates that idea into the realm of sanctification. As I mentioned above in my introduction, we see Bridges slight the idea of applying biblical rules to life, but doing so subtly by calling them “our” rules. But since the Mosaic Law is part of scripture, and he makes that comparison, he is really talking about the application of the Mosaic Law (where applicable, ie., Ephesians 6:1) to life. Also, though Jesus’ yoke is light, we, in fact, are His slaves and were “bought with a price.” ]
Through Paul, He called us to be free: ‘You, my brothers, were called to be free.’ In fact, God doesn’t just call us to freedom, he actually exhorts us to stand firm in our freedom – to resist all efforts to abridge or destroy it.
[Yes, in regard to justification, BUT as Christians, we actually find our freedom in aligning our lives with God’s law:
James 1:25
“But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”
James 2:12
“Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom….”
Furthermore, Jesus said that the “truth will set you free,” and “thy word is truth.” Freedom comes from applying God’s word to life. We are set free by being slaves to Christ’ lordship, that isn’t the same as being in bondage to the Law in an attempt to be justified by it.]
Despite God’s call to be free and His earnest admonition to resist all efforts to curtail it, there is very little emphasis in Christian circles today on the importance of Christian freedom. Just the opposite seems to be true.
[But we are called to freedom on two fronts: freedom from the Law for justification, and freedom from the bondage of sin by obeying the perfect Law of liberty. Bridges only refers to the one. Why? Because in his mind, they are both the same, that’s why. However, in our day, the freedom that is not being emphasized is freedom for the believer by PROPERLY aligning his or hers life with the word of God.]
Instead of promoting freedom, we stress our rules of conformity.
[They’re not OUR rules, they are the Lord’s rules. Please note that a “lord” usually has rules he wants you to follow.]
Instead of preaching living by grace, we preach living by performance. Instead of encouraging new believers to be conformed to Christ, we subtly insist that they be conformed to our particular style of Christian culture. Yet, that’s the bottom line effect of most of our emphases in Christian circles today.
[ Living to love Christ by keeping His Law and striving to please Him accordingly is not “living by performance,” that is a typical GS red herring. Paul said whether in the body or apart, “we make it our goal to please Him,” and obviously, the word of God is the standard for that. Also, notice the *us against them* mentality in the suggestion that supposed graceless living is a “Christian culture” in most “Christian circles today.” This is indicative of the GS mentality that believes they are on a mission from God to save the church from the Dark Ages of synergistic sanctification.]
For example, many people would react negatively to my quoting only part of Galatians 5:12, ‘You, my brothers, were called to be free.’ Despite the fact that this statement is a complete sentence, they would say, ‘But that’s not all of the verse. Go on to quote the remainder: ‘But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love.’…
[Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, the Galatians were being tempted to go back to a system that taught you had to keep the Law to maintain your salvation, NOT the idea that you keep the Law to love Christ and to please Him. We believe that we are kept by the power of God, but that does not negate our call to uphold the Law of God!]
The person who reacts this way has made my point. We are much more concerned about someone abusing his freedom than we are about his guarding it. We are more afraid of indulging the sinful nature than we are of falling into legalism.
[Here, Bridges makes the shocking suggestion that being concerned with keeping the Law is not “guarding” our freedom, and that being more afraid of indulging in the sinful nature than guarding our “freedom” is legalism. This troubling assertion should speak for itself.]
Yet legalism does indulge the sinful nature because it fosters self-righteousness and religious pride. It also diverts us from the real issues of the Christian life by focusing on external and sometimes trivial rules.” – Jerry Bridges, Transforming Grace, pp. 121-122
[ In this last statement, Bridges notes another GS staple often propagated by Paul Tripp and David Powlison; namely, our efforts as Christians to uphold the Law leads to self-righteousness and religious pride, and to make such an effort is “focusing on external and sometimes trivial rules.” Instead, we should supposedly only focus on “what Jesus has DONE rather than our OWN efforts,” which supposedly leads to an automatic kind of obedience earmarked by a willing and joyful spirit / attitude.]
How can bridges talk so strongly about one freedom without at least mentioning the other? Because that’s the freedom (through the Law in sanctification) he doesn’t want to emphasize even though his audience is Christian. Therefore, what Bridges is actually teaching is a gospel-driven bondage that averts Christians away from an effort to apply God’s word to life. Not only that, we now have conferences that are teaching leaders to propagate this approach wholesale throughout the church; true freedom as bondage. Buyer beware.
paul
Ted Black: “Covenantal Historical” is a Much Better Argument Than Redemptive Historical
As previously discussed on this blog, New Covenant Theology, Heart Theology, Redemptive Historical Hermeneutics, and Christian Hedonism are the four pillars of the antinomian doctrine sometimes referred to as Gospel Sanctification. This doctrine is gaining rapid, widespread acceptance among evangelicals, and is so subtle that many teachers propagate its elements unawares.
New Covenant Theology argues that the new covenant replaced the Law with a new “higher Law of love” (or other such references like “higher law of Christ”). Heart Theology is the practical application of Gospel Sanctification’s narrow role in regard to our participation in the sanctification process. Christian Hedonism attempts to explain how Gospel Sanctification is experienced. But Redemptive Historical Hermeneutics is an interpretive prism that makes Gospel Sanctification plausible.
Gospel Sanctification, in a nutshell, synthesizes justification with sanctification and extrapolates the same means of monergistic justification into sanctification, reducing the role of the believer in sanctification to almost nothing, except for the same role we would have in justification. Heart Theology then attempts to answer the question: “So what are believers supposed to do in the sanctification process?” But all in all, the four pillars work together to eliminate an upholding of the Law *by believers* in the sanctification process.
Redemptive Historical Hermeneutics was developed by Geerhardus Vos and coined “Biblical Theology” sometime between 1894 and 1932 while he was a professor at Princeton. Most of what I have learned about this hermeneutic is from Ted Black’s “The Biblical Hermeneutics of Geerhardus Vos: an Analysis, Critique, and Reconstruction.” Black wrote the paper as a requirement for a project while at Covenant College located in Georgia. Two things should bring Vos’s approach into immediate suspicion: First, the complexity of it. Blacks Critique, though a masterpiece, is 150 pages of mind-numbing theology. Certainly, especially when one considers the Sermon on the Mount, the expectation of such a complex prerequisite to understanding God’s word does not seem likely. Secondly, it’s new, with similar theories nowhere to be found before the eighteenth century.
As I said, this theory of interpretation is extremely complex, but it primarily teaches that the Bible is a historical account of redemption. Hence, the name: “Redemptive Historical.” It goes without saying that not many Christians would argue with that, but what they don’t understand is that this theory of interpretation teaches that the Bible is exclusively a redemptive narrative concerning the works of Christ and nothing else. Therefore, as one example, what seems to be commands directed towards us in the Bible can now become commands that God knows we cannot obey with the intention of driving us to the one who fulfilled the Law on our behalf: Christ. In other words, when you look at Scripture through a Christocentric prism, the purpose of commands are to drive us to the knowledge that we are unable to uphold the Law, as apposed to the idea that obedience is our part in a covenant between us and God (but as a way of loving God and submitting to the Lordship of Christ, not as works for salvation) So then, when Paul the apostle referred to the Law as a schoolmaster that leads us to Christ, this can also apply to sanctification as well (supposedly).
This now sets the table for Black’s contention. He proposes on pages 53-62 of the above cited paper that covenants are a much more pronounced theme in the Scriptures than the works of Christ. He does this in a string of brilliant arguments, but I will only enunciate the ones I can best get my mind around. On page 59, he says the following: “As I argued above, the particular purpose of Gen. 1-2 is not redemptive, but covenantal—its purpose is the presentation of the covenant.” This brings to my mind (and I will use it to make my first point) the assertion by John Piper in his message at the the 2010 T4G conference that the theme of the gospels is redemptive because of how each gospel ends. This is also a continuing mantra heard among proponents of GS, that the end determines the theme. No wonder, because at the beginning of the Bible you have God as creator, and the God who makes a covenant with man, not redemption. Also, let me add that in a grand display of weak discernment in our time, nobody at the T4G blinked at what Piper said, regardless of the fact that the gospels do not even end with redemption as well, but rather Christ announcing that He had been given all authority by the Father and His mandate for the church. In fact, the Bible as a whole doesn’t even end with redemption, but rather the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth and the apparent restoration of God’s covenant with man.
Secondly, Black makes the point that the Old and New Testaments are structured / organized around the covenants. Each phase of Biblical history begins or encompasses a covenant. Also, he mentions the progressive nature of the Abrahamic covenant from Genesis 12 to the end of the Bible. When you follow Blacks reasoning as he unfolds his thesis in detail, you begin to see the dominant theme of God’s covenants with man throughout Scripture.
Thirdly, Black makes the point on page 57 that viewing covenants as a major theme in the Bible presents the Trinity in a more balanced, and biblical light: “Further, it appears that Scripture is not centered around Christ but rather around the Triune God, including Christ.” The propensity to present unbalanced views of the Trinity by GS proponents is an ongoing concern of great import. Obviously, if the Bible is primarily about the redemptive works of Christ, rather than His part in effecting the covenants between God and man, this is bound to happen, and for the worse. Black says the following on page 60: “The clear implication of this is that redemption, although a key theme of Scripture, and the distinguishing characteristic of any and all covenants of grace, is not the primary element of our present covenant in either its historical or inscripturated presentation, and neither was it primary in the past.”
But more importantly, Black, unlike proponents of GS, is suggesting covenants as a primary theme, not a single prism in which to interpret all of Scripture. I think he says the following on page 61 in sarcasm: “As such, and in different terms, we should understand that Scripture is not first and foremost based on the ‘history of redemption,’ but on the ‘history of the covenant’ I propose therefore, that we do not refer to our method of interpreting Scripture as ‘Redemptive Historical,’ but rather ‘Covenantal Historical.’”
By any measure, GS has a weak argument in regard to redemption being the *only* major theme of Scripture, and a far lesser argument for it being a single prism in which to interpret all of Scripture. Not only that, its unreasonably complex, and like its illegitimate child, NCT, which is thought by some to be only thirty years old, its way too new, implying that God’s children have been without a sufficient hermeneutic for 1900 years.
paul
What Michael Horton and John Piper et al., Really Believe About the Scriptures, as Articulated by Robert Brinsmead
“That’s just gospel—perfectly timed, perfectly applied, perfectly suited to my need. That’s why the Bible is so thick—because there are so many different needs that you have. And there are suitable places where the gospel is unfolded for you, so that if you immerse yourself in the whole book, always with an eye for what Christ has wrought for you and purchased for you in this thick, glorious history of God’s interaction with people, he will give you what you need.”
~ John Piper
“If not only the unregenerate but the regenerate are always dependent at every moment on the free grace of God disclosed in the gospel, then nothing can raise those who are spiritually dead or continually give life to Christ’s flock
but the Spirit working through the gospel.”
~ Michael Horton
“That which makes the Bible the Bible is the gospel. That which makes the Bible the Word of God is its witness to Christ. When the Spirit bears witness to our hearts of the truth of the Bible, this is an internal witness concerning the truth of the gospel. We need to be apprehended by the Spirit, who lives in the gospel, and then judge all things by that Spirit even the letter of Scripture.”
~ Robert Brinsmead
“This means that unless we are caught up in the Spirit of the gospel, we cannot understand or use the Bible correctly. Apart from the gospel the Bible is letter (gramma), not Spirit (pneuma). “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
~ Robert Brinsmead
“Furthermore, for all practical purposes, the author is saying that using the Bible for instruction, as well as all other uses Paul communicated to Timothy, is a use of Scripture apart from the working of the Holy Spirit.”
Note: Quotations by Brinsmead in this article seem to indicate that he is saying that the Scriptures are not inerrant, but that is not what he is saying; he is saying that the Bible is completely inerrant and trustworthy when it speaks of the gospel, which is its sole purpose anyway.
The article can be seen in full here
Paul's Passing Thoughts 
1 comment