Some observations:
1. In part 2, I don't accept his tripartite schema respecting the covenant people of old as if it represented a bona fide reality. Why should we accept the notion that the Pharisees had a basically correct view of things? That is, that there were people who were "felons," and permanently separated from the covenant community?
"The Law held out no hope whatsoever to such. It cut them off utterly." This is a patently false statement. Was not Israel guilty of a host of such failures all along? And was not God though his prophets constantly calling those very rebellious idolaters, murderers, adulterers, and many such sinners back to faith? Just take David, or Manasseh as examples. I guess the Law held out no hope whatsoever to such? What is the alternative conclusion? That God or the nation
violated the Law in order to reinstate these men? That is an untenable conclusion.
I dispute that Jesus takes a "new" approach to those people; I don't think he accepted such a Pharisaic view of those folks, but rebuked the elitism of the Pharisees. They weren't acting covenantally according to the spirit of the Mosaic law. Jesus doesn't introduce a new inclusiveness, but acts toward those people the way the Pharisees should have been acting all along.
There seems to me to be entirely too much concession to the Pharisees, that they were operating just as we might expect letter-perfect legalists to act. Jesus attacks them for their traditionalism, and for failing to read the OT correctly. Mat 12:7 "And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless."
2. I suppose, as one committed to the "correctness" of Covenant Theology (CT), it will not be surprising that I find a number of the analogies of the train-metaphor lacking. At a most basic level, the "one train" analogy of CT does little or no justice to our understanding of the transition from one covenant-administration to the next. As if we think of this moment as little more than a change-over in "engineers."
I understand that the pastor is making a quick sketch of what he deems failures, to his left and to his right, of walking a correct meridian. But I believe he does CT very little justice.
3. I think the author misses explaining the true distinction between CT and both his view and that of dispensationalism. And that would be the hermeneutical distinction. We simply read the Bible in two fundamentally different
directions.
To be fair, I want to say that our Confessional Baptist brothers do claim to read the Bible Christologically. But their way is still different from ours. I speak from a long time now, even on our board, interacting with them. And, if I may, Baptists tend to look backward, from the NT vantage point, and see the OT through Christ
located in something of a positional, linear moment in the Gospels, at the inception of the New Covenant age.
How to we, on the other side, read the Bible? From front to back, forward. We read the OT assuming that everything we know of Christ (via the NT) fully informs us at every stage along the route. We assume that CHRIST/MESSIAH was the proper focus for the OT saint at every single moment along the trail of the history of Redemption.
Therefore, we repeatedly read that history as if we at every instant could be found among the participants in that history. In substance, however much (or little) dissimilar in detail, our faith is exactly the same as should be believed by anyone living in that hour.
The article's author states that the passengers of the former train were to all entirely disembark form Moses' train, and get aboard Christ's.
"As the train of Moses pulls into the station, an announcement is made that the passengers are now to switch to the train of Christ. Some do, but most don’t, and the train of Moses soon derails." (part 4)
This is foreign to our understanding. The believers in the OT were on "Christ's train," not "Moses' train". The transition they make is akin to riding in the shadows, then riding in the sunlight. (although I have already expressed my reservation respecting the usefulness of the train metaphor).
Obviously, my response cannot be comprehensive. Nor am I intending to thoroughly critique the pastor's position or his expressions here. He has explained things as he sees them.
Linear Mode
