I've gone back and forth in what I think of Justin Taylor and Between Two Worlds. But this post on the Mosaic Law, and the Christian's relation thereto, provides a couple of the most concise and thoughtful summaries I've seen in some time. Plus, it's very close to my own position.
The comments are being interesting, too. It took longer than I'd've guessed for the inevitable "but this clashes with my preconceived template about the church and Israel!" comment.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
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7 comments:
For a lay person like me, it is rather difficult to wrap my brain around the differences between dispensationalism and covenantalism. That post you linked helped me understand a lot.
Chris, I feel your pain(in a Clintonian voice). When I first dove in to the whole cov. dispy. thing i was compleatly lost (as in confused). But Justin was spot on from my intial read of what Justin put down. When Christ died and was raised again he fullfilled the whole law. Not just the civil and the cerimonial, matter of fact I would say to you he came even more so to full fill the moral law. Now we are under a new law, the law of Christ.
I'm glad it's helpful, Chris. I'd bet that none of these guys is a dispensationalist. But (as I've often said) it's not just dispensationalists who believe in dispensations, and there are few areas of dispensational belief that don't overlap with parts of other systems.
It's just the best from all of them, in one beautiful package!
(c:
It is refreshing to find fellow dispensationalists in the blogosphere. :)
I am still confused by the covenantal/dispensational stands. I need to study more I suppose. We go to a covenant reformed Baptist church...but we used to go to a dispensational Arminian church...so the issue has come up a couple of times, and I keep trying to figure it out.
Candy,
I feel like I've done this a lot over the past month or so, including a question Dan elsewhere, but let me suggest to Dr. S. Lewis Johnson's The Divine Purpose (this is an audio series). Dr. Johnson provides an overview of Covenant theology, an overview of dispensational theology, and then his "middle ground."
After reading THIS-
How then do we apply the OT laws to our own lives today?
"I would suggest the following theocentric hermeneutical procedure for applying any of the OT laws, whether the law be deemed ceremonial, judicial, or moral:
1)Remind yourself that this law is not my law, that I am not legally bound by it, that it is one of the laws God issued to ancient Israel as part of his covenant with them.
2)Determine the original meaning, significance and purpose of the law.
3)Determine the theological significance of the law.
4)Determine the practical implications of the theological insights gained from this law for your own NT circumstances."
--the thought occured to me that this is not really THAT different from Bahnsen's conclusion in "Theonomy in Christian Ethics", even though Bahnsen takes a completely different path to get there. I'm not necessarily defending hard shell Theonomy here. I'm still reading and thinking about these issues!
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