Engaging Westminster Calvinism The Composition of Redemptions Song by Mark W. Karlberg

Author:Mark W. Karlberg [Karlberg, Mark W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621896647
Publisher: Wipf and Stock
Published: 2013-04-24T07:00:00+00:00

Reviews—Section Two

Bryan D. Estelle, J. V. Fesko, and David VanDrunen, editors, The Law Is Not of Faith: Essays on Works and Grace in the Mosaic Covenant

(Phillipsburg: P & R, 2009)

This collection of essays is an exceedingly welcome addition to the literature on Paul and the law, and related topics. It comes on the heels of more than three decades of discussion and dispute originating on the campus of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. Debate centered upon the teachings of systematics professor Norman Shepherd (who began as my doctoral advisor in 1977). The topic of the Mosaic Covenant would become the focus of my own academic studies—from the mid-70s to the present. The Law Is Not of Faith stands as a compelling answer to many of the questions left unresolved in contemporary evangelical Reformed discussion concerning the Mosaic law, especially as that bears on the doctrine of justification and the covenants of God spanning the history of redemptive revelation. All of the contributors are graduates of the Westminster seminaries, some currently teaching at Westminster West. Each of the three editors is a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a denomination torn apart by the theological controversy. The dispute is by no means limited to the Westminster/OPC community, however. Reference in the book is made to the Presbyterian Church in America (other denominations might well have been mentioned). More broadly, the subject of this book directly addresses ongoing differences among covenant and dispensational theologians (notably, among the progressive dispensationalists).

The editors’ Introduction begins with a lengthy fictional account of a seminarian’s examination in a court of the church on the subject that for many long years has occupied the minds of presbyters and members of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. That subject is the doctrine of the republication of the original covenant of works under Moses. Contributors to this collected writing are understood to have reached a consensus in interpretation, at least in its main outline. They share “a general sympathy with the republication idea and a general desire to recover serious theological reflection on issues related to it.” At the same time they acknowledge a measure of diversity in Reformed exposition, Reformation and modern, and they welcome healthy discussion of “important issues for the doctrine and life of the church” (20). Among the important theological points requisite for the exposition of the doctrine of republication are these: the doctrine of probation in connection with Adam, Israel, and Christ (what is directly related to Estelle’s discussion of “entitlement to heaven”); the idea of a national covenant of works (introduced by Charles Hodge, who “raises the issue of the grand narrative of redemptive history, namely, the idea of Israel as God’s son who prefigures God’s only begotten Son” [13]); and the shift in discussion from matters concerning ordo salutis to matters concerning historia salutis, anticipating the rise of the distinct discipline of biblical theology, standing alongside systematics (or church dogmatics).

Despite superficial appearances, the editors rightly insist, “The doctrine of republication is not in any way dispensationalism” (14).

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