Dear Dr Clark,
Thanks for taking the time to reply amidst marking papers. I'm doing exactly the same thing at the moment--it's driving me crazy seeing that pile of essays not getting smaller as quickly as I'd like ...
Just so you know from where I'm coming:
[1] I'm not sympathetic in any way to the FV. Thankfully, it doesn't exist where I live here in Australia.
[2] Norm Shepherd's understanding of justification (in my mind) is very muddled, and guaranteed to be a pastoral disaster. I have seen his teaching mess with sincere people's heads.
[3] I once held to a very Lutheran understanding of the law / gospel distinction, and was horrified with some things that John Owen said. It was then I decided to do a dissertation on the topic to demolish Owen ... and the in the process I was won over to Owen.
[4] Moreover, I'm not saying there isn't a sharp law / gospel distinction in the reformed tradition (like Frame). However, I am saying it's fundamentally different to the Lutheran tradition. The basic difference (as affirmed by Ursinus) is that the call to new life (repentance)
is in the gospel.
To put this whole discussion in a nutshell: in the reformed tradition, the gospel actually presents the law
but only in it's third use--without the condemnation attached for not keeping it fully. That to me is magnificent news!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by R. Scott Clark  How many times have I noted here and in articles that the word "gospel" is used in the NT to refer broadly to the entire Christian message but that doesn't eliminate the narrow or strict sense of the word. |
I personally struggle to find any narrow versus broad understanding of the gospel both in the NT and in the reformed tradition; it is in the Formula of Concord. If I understand the point of our disagreement, you wish not to place a call to repentance in (your posited) "narrow" understanding of the gospel but are happy to place it in the "broad" understanding of the gospel.
As I see it, both in the NT and in the mature reformed tradition, all usages of the gospel refer to same thing (namely the covenant of grace, as is explicit in your Ursinus' quotations). However, (and as Owen notes) we can present that same gospel in a summary or expanded form. For example, we can preach the gospel without mentioning repentance (say 1 Cor. 15:3-4). But, when we unpack this summary message the call to repentance (and faith) arises from the heart of this gospel, not least the double grace of justification and sanctification offered in it.
You are concerned that including the call to repentance (and new life) takes us back to the pre-reformation church. I struggle to agree with this. (How could it when this is what Zwingli, Calvin, Bullinger, ... Owen and others believed?). This is because:
[1] The gospel presents the law in it's third use.
[2] The believer's
actual repentance and faith is
not the gospel, even though they are commanded in the gospel. We must distinguish between the commands of the gospel and our actual
doing of them. The latter is not the gospel, it's our works. (That's why I don't think feeding the poor is the gospel, however it is the sort of thing the gospel produces). What we do is not the gospel (otherwise we'd be justified by works) but if our lives don't change, it's a sign we have not embraced the gospel (with its double offer of justification and sanctification).
I'm anxious to clarify this because of the history of the Lutheran tradition itself (and my own experience). Lutheranism was (and is) particularly susceptible to dead orthodoxy precisely because of it's excessive focus on "done" with little if any mention of the new life. To be sure, justification is more significant than the new life (so Calvin and Romans 5:9-10), but in Lutheranism the latter tends to be forgotten altogether.
In short, the gospel is: Christ is saviour (hence the demand of faith) and Lord (hence the demand for new life).
God bless you Dr Clark.