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Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie  Quote: |
6. Defending the Decalogue. Still others have very nearly made an idol, or at least a whole Bible, from the Decalogue, and feel the word of God is rendered of no effect if those ten words are not held up as the heart of divine revelation and the sole banner of rectitude. The teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ leave those ten words graven in stone far behind in His “You have heard it said…but I say unto you” sermon on the mount. The Decalogue needs no defense, but we will need far more than those letter-words to know and live New Covenant Christianity.
| I am usually trying to keep away from controversial thread these days, but I must step in here. snip... Furthermore, the Reformed only teach that the Decalogue is a summary of the moral law; they do not teach that it is "the sole banner of rectitude" in the way that is being suggested here. | I too try to avoid controversial threads but I cannot let this by. Historically the Reformed do not teach that the Decalogue is an incomplete summanry of the moral law but the complete summary of the same. As WCF 19:2 puts it, the moral law "was delivered upon Mount Sinai in ten commandments. Those who argue that the answer to WLC 98 renders this view untenable have failed to recon with the force of the word "comprehended" in that question. At that date the word meant ": “trans. To grasp with the mind, conceive fully or adequately, understand, ‘take in’. (App. the earliest sense in English.).” A review of the OED makes it clear that it was never used in the sense of an incomplete comprhension of something. Thus, their use of the word “comprehend” to describe the moral law rules out the idea that the Divines were referring to an incomplete summary. For the Divines, anything not "comprehended" in the Decalogue was not understood or included within the essential moral will of God.
Which is why, historically, the decalogue does tend to be seen as "the sole banner of rectitude" as suggested.
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In Christ's love and service
Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC
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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon
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