Paul's Passing Thoughts

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