The following is a production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information about the seminary, visit us online at gpts.edu. Romans chapter five, beginning in verse 12 and continuing through the end of the chapter, hear God's word. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus far in the reading of God's word. Let us pray. O Lord our God, we come to you as the one who is alone God. We are not God, you are God. And you are the only one who is good. And therefore, we come and ask that you'd work good now in this conference and now especially through this talk to us. We come to you in Christ and in him crucified through the rent veil of his blood, of his flesh and blood spilled for us. And we ask for your mercy to be upon us. We ask that you'd bless Pastor Barcellas as he comes to speak to us. You give him a quick mind and tongue that he might speak clearly to us and give these critiques and reviews clearly. Grant him grace that he may speak with a gracious manner, but also boldly about that which is wrong. And we ask that you would be with him and bless us and nourish and edify us upon your word and upon your truth. For we ask it in Jesus' precious name. Amen. Well, as you know, the theme of the conference is the law of God. And in our conferences, what we seek to do will be to address certain issues that we think are serious before the church. And this year we've chosen three. Something that does not directly relate to as many of us, perhaps, although I think in its practical effects, it carries over in a number of ways, even into our Presbyterian Reformed churches, and that is new covenant theology. which Dr. Barcelles has studied and written about. And then antinomianism that is increasingly prevalent, if not in its historical manifestations, there's very serious current manifestations. And then the republication of the covenant of works in the Mosaic Covenant. So those are the three critiques. We always seek to do at least one historical lecture, and this year it's Robert Rowlick on the Covenant of Works. And then to instruct, we have three very interesting topics. I'm looking forward to all of these, but No Gospel Without Law, On the Use of Law in Evangelism, The Principle of Equity and Counseling, and Paul and Law in Galatians Chapter 3. And the evening messages then will be sermonic in form. and what the law could not do tonight from Romans 8, tomorrow night God's law and our sanctification. And so be praying for us as we work through these things together this weekend. It's a great privilege to introduce now to you Dr. Barcellas. I've known him a bit from the distance but for a number of years and greatly respect him and When we put together the conference, obviously because of the work he's done in this whole area, I first became exposed to New Covenant theology when I was writing my book on the Lord's Day and realizing that was a major group in opposition to what I consider to be the biblical approach to the Lord's Day. Interact a bit with those people in the book, but we're just very excited to have Dr. Vassilis with us this afternoon. Richard. It's good to be here. If you haven't figured it out, I'm the token Baptist this year. I've never been in the presence of so many Presbyterians. I got a story about that. You know what? I have the microphone now. I knew him before he dyed his mustache white. I've never been in the presence of so many Presbyterian ministers who pick on covenant children. Locusts and basically hoodlums. So, on behalf of the covenant children, I threw that zinger about your mustache. And the other thing is, do you know that your mustache is on Twitter? Do you know that there's a hair pointing north? And the rest of them are all going, So I thought, why are they having me go first? It could be because of alphabetical order. Barcelos is second letter in the alphabet, but I don't think the rest of them are in alphabetical order. Then I thought, it's probably because I'm a Baptist and they want to either correct what I said the rest of the week, which I think you're going to agree with everything I say, or they wanted to make fun of me. Speaking of making fun of me, I need to go get my watch so I can tell what time it is. Or they wanted to make fun of me the rest of the week. Which you can do, but I have Twitter, Facebook, and a blog site. So I have power. I think we met in 1990 or 91. There was a roundtable discussion on Jonathan Edwards and revival or something. I think Earl hosted it. There were ministers from various denominations there. And then the next time I saw Dr. Piper, I believe was at a meeting with a lot of Baptists. Remember that? You preached in Bellflower. You preached in Bellflower, and I remember what you preached. I was thinking about that on the plane ride over here. You preached on corporate prayer from Romans 15. He's so old, he can't even remember that. You did. And you made a distinction. You said in the Greek, you can see Paul speaking to the congregation because the pronoun you in plural is different than it is, has a different ending than it does in the singular. In English, it looks the same. And then, trying to be cool to all these Southern Californians, you said, where I'm from, singular you is y'all, and plural you is all y'all. You said that. Or you and you all. OK. OK, you and you all. Anyway, you said that. And you chuckled. And we all chuckled, too. But you thought we were chuckling or laughing with you. There's another preposition that describes better what we were doing. And for all the homeschoolers, all the homeschooling moms had to correct the kids on the way home. So, but it is a delight. I have known him since then, but we see each other once every 15 or 20 years. But I love and respect Dr. Paipa and the work he's done, and God has blessed his ministry here. I noticed that there are three former Southern California men here. You're one of them and two others. I'm from Southern California. And it is a privilege to be here. When I first got the invitation, I was told that I would be presenting a lecture. So I produced a lecture. And I thought it's at the Greenville Presbyterian Seminary Spring Theology Conference. So I thought there's going to be seminary students, seminary professors. And I had no idea there would be homeschooling families here. Okay, so I aimed it kind of high, but on the way here, I tried to change a few things, and that's what I want to use the PowerPoint for, just to help you on some of the quotes I'm going to share. They might sink in better if you can read them along with me. A lot of people here might not even know what New Covenant theology is. I think in one sense, for confessional Reformed Christians, New Covenant theology might be able to be better defined by what it does not assert or affirm. In other words, by what it denies. For instance, it denies the perpetuity of the Sabbath. That's what Dr. Piper was mentioning early, from creation to consummation. It denies the threefold distinctions within the Mosaic law, moral, ceremonial, and civil. It denies a covenant of works with Adam in the garden. These are all standard confessional reformed doctrines, which none of y'all's denominations are struggling with any of those doctrines, right? There are struggles outside of Baptist circles with the same thing. So that's how I think it's going to bridge the gap. Some of these things that they categorically deny and have arguments for are issues that confessional reform Christians can fudge on at times. And I think that's probably happening. I'll let the other speakers deal with those issues. But I am very thankful to be here. And what I hope to do today is offer some views of the New Covenant Theology men in their published works. I originally came to, I was going to critique their view of denying the threefold division of the law in a moral, ceremonial, and civil, and then I was going to critique their denial of the covenant of works, and then I was going to critique their denial of the perpetuity of the Sabbath, or fourth commandment, and then I realized I had too much material, so I cut the three issues down to two, and then about a week ago I said, I can't even do two issues, so I'm going to primarily focus on their denial of the threefold division of the law into moral, ceremonial, and civil. I'll mention some other things along the way, and then I'll give some critiques. When I give you their views, that's when the quotes will go up on the screen, then some critiques, and then to propose a way ahead. So the first main section is going to be dealing with the words themselves from some of the authors of New Covenant Theology books, and then my critique, and then offer some brief proposals for them. Before I say anything, I believe that New Covenant Theology adherents and the authors that I'll be quoting, the Lord knows his own, but as far as I know, in the judgment of charity, they're all Christians are all believers in Christ and they teach on the main Orthodox Christianity. God has revealed himself both in creation and nature and in a special manner through the scriptures of the Old and New Testament. God is one in essence, three in persons. The Son of God, the eternal Son of God became one of us for us and for our salvation and justification is by faith and faith alone in Christ alone apart from any and all works. Done by us and Christ is coming again, and there's a judgment. There's a heaven and hell and we live in the eternal state They believe all those things okay, so these aren't aren't heretics damned heretics or anything they're brothers and sisters in Christ and So I'm going to offer First of all, before we look at their views, something that's, I think, absolutely crucial for everyone, and it's one of the reasons why I think they go astray on some of these confessionally formulated doctrines, and that has to do with interpreting the Bible, hermeneutics. So what I'd like to do is remind all these Presbyterians of these principles that I learned from Presbyterian authors from a long time ago. Some of these principles, all y'all, or you all, however you say that, need to come back to and restudy. Because I think these principles, these are called hermeneutical principles that were embedded in the history of the church prior to the Enlightenment. These are pre-Enlightenment or pre-critical principles that are embedded in the Westminster Confession. invented by the framers of the Confession. They were utilized. There were long-standing principles that I think were actually grounded in the canonical writers of the Hebrew Old Testament, but I don't have time to show you that. But anybody that's a student of historical theology knows that these principles of interpretation are the principles that were utilized by the formulators of all the famous creeds and confessions of the Christian Church. Catholic small-c church, prior to the Enlightenment, all utilized these kind of principles. It's after the Enlightenment that rationalistic thinking in the Bible became, you know, one of man's ancient books on religion that we started to use principles of gender hermeneutics that we might use to interpret the front page of the newspaper. We started to superimpose those over the Bible. So I think it's important, and I think as I go through these principles, then when we go critique their denial of threefold division of the law, you'll have the hermeneutical grid through which I'm doing the critique. And it's a confessionally reformed hermeneutical grid, so it should be nothing new, at least to a lot of you. The denials I had hoped to deal with once I reduced the three down to two were these two, the denial of the careful distinctions in the law of God. And you notice I have i.e. that is moral slash positive. leading to the threefold division of the law. I'm going to define what I mean by moral and positive law. But it's a construct that's very old, and out of that distinction, moral law, universal, based on creation, applicable to all men under all circumstances at all times, that's moral law. Positive law would be laws that God reveals at a given period in time to a given group of people, and sometimes restricted to a certain place, like in the land of promise. That distinction led to what we call the threefold division of the law. New Covenant theology denies that categorically. They believe that the law is a whole, it's a whole package, and in one sense it is. But when it is said to go or be abrogated, the whole thing's gone. So we need a new law, and they call that the law of Christ. So they deny that, and then they deny the covenant of works. It is interesting, as I'll point out, that within New Covenant theology there is a movement that does view God in covenant with Adam in the creation account. They call it the covenant of creation, but still, as far as I can tell, to a man they are adamantly opposed to any profferment or offer of eschatological life. or the enjoyment of the fruition of God, as the Westminster Confession 7.1 says, they are adamantly opposed to that. They don't like the works concept. They don't like the fact that the covenant of works, as formulated in the Westminster Confession, has God offering, preferring or offering eschatological life to Adam in the garden. So they deny that as well. So I won't be reading as much on that. I might read some of the things. It just depends on if I ever get to what I actually wrote on the piece of paper that I brought with me here. And I have till 2.30, correct? 2.25, okay. That's great. So the importance of these hermeneutical principles Hermeneutics is the foundation in one sense to doctrinal formulation and important when we're doing theology and when we're critiquing somebody else's theology. It's a grid in one sense through which we do that. I remember in a conversation six or eight years ago I had with Dr. Vern Poitras, I asked him, he teaches at Westminster Seminary in Pennsylvania, I said something like this, Dr. Poitras, is it true that if you get the garden wrong, the Garden of Eden wrong, you get eschatology wrong? Some of you have probably heard or maybe even met or sat under Dr. Poitras. He kind of skittled for some words and he finally said, well, if you get the garden wrong, well, you're going to get everything wrong. And if you know him, you can hear him saying that. And I kind of thought at the time, well, there's probably a little rhetorical overkill there. If you get the garden wrong, you get everything wrong. And there may be, there is. But in one sense, I agree with him. If you get the garden wrong, you're going to get everything wrong. If you don't understand Adam and the covenant God imposed upon him, how are you going to understand Christ? Which, Paul, that's why I had the scripture reader read Romans 5. Christ goes back to Adam there. and compares and contrasts the type and the anti-type in Romans chapter 5. So in the main body of my lecture, I'm going to argue that New Covenant theology gets crucial, not all, but crucial aspects of the Bible's teaching on the law of God wrong because it gets the garden wrong. As you'll see, this moral positive distinction that I talked about, and I'll unfold a little later, it's grounded in the creation account. But if you get the garden wrong, you're not going to have that theological category to do exegesis of the subsequent scripture passages. So I think they get the garden wrong, and I think they get the garden wrong because I think they have the wrong hermeneutic. And I'm going to challenge them to keep developing, because I think there's development going in. The book Dr. Piper mentioned, I wrote it in the late 90s. It was published in 2000, 2001. It's out of print now. But since then, there's been a lot of development. They're not there yet, but they're admitting there is a covenant of creation, at least some are. They're admitting there are distinctions that we should make in the law of God. Not the threefold distinction, there's a twofold, and you'll see what I mean by that. So there is some development. I'm gonna offer some challenges to them to try to nudge our brothers, I think, in a better direction. And it may be helpful, as I said before, to remind ourselves of these principles of hermeneutics that I think are going to come up here. Oh, there they are. I skipped one. Sorry about that. The first principle is this. The Holy Spirit is the only infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture. The Holy Spirit is the only infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture. An example of this principle can be found in many places. Here's John Owen. He says, the only unique, public, authentic, and infallible interpreter of Scripture is none other than the author of Scripture himself, that is, God the Holy Spirit. And then a particular Baptist of the 17th century, Nehemiah Cox, in similar fashion, says the best interpreter of the Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the new. And I could multiply quotations, but I won't. But I'll just say this. This meant that these men and others who hold this principle, that they see the Bible's interpretation and use of itself as infallible. You know how sometimes you're reading the Bible, maybe over here in the New Testament, and if you're reading God's Word, the New American Standard Version, at least the one I have, the Old Testament quotations are capitalized. Okay, so you'll know that's the Old Testament. And then you can usually go into the reference margin and it'll tell you where it is. Well, a lot of times when the writer is doing that, they're explaining or applying a previous text in a new situation. What this principle says is that when that happens, it's infallible because it's the Spirit of God in conjunction with the writers of Scripture that produce the written Word of God. So the only infallible interpreter of the Word of God of Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is God Himself. Any other place in Genesis 4 through Revelation 22 that Genesis 1 through 3 is either quoted, referred to, echoed, or alluded to. And you can ask your Pastor, what do all those words mean if you don't know what they mean? But any way, any fashion, any form in which the Scripture interprets and uses previous Scripture, it's infallible because of the Spirit of God in conjunction with the writers of the New Testament. So it's God's word on God's word. That's what they're saying. So as Reformed Christians, we can actually say, I know this to be certain because God told me. because we have his written word. Now we can't say, I know you need to marry that woman because God told me. He doesn't tell us that kind of stuff. But he does comment on his own word through the penman of scripture. The second principle is the analogy of scripture, analogia scripturae, the analogy of scripture. basically says this, since the Bible is God's Word in its totality, and since we have interpretive moves by the scripture writers themselves going on as we read our Bibles, you know, when you read the prophets, they're applying the Pentateuch to the disobedience on the main of Old Covenant Israel. So they're applying the Bible to their situation. The Bible would be the Pentateuch in that sense. And so what the analogy of Scripture says is that when we study the Bible and we come up against a difficult text, it's difficult to us, it's obscure. we need to see if the Bible speaks about this same issue that we're struggling with in another place. And then we compare the clearer text with the less clear text. That's the analogy of Scripture. The analogy of faith, which is the next principle, is a little broader. It says this, since the Bible is a theological revelation from God, it ultimately has one author, then when we come up against maybe a difficult passage here, We can interpret that passage by utilizing any other texts in scripture that might help us understand it. For instance, in Acts 20, 28, in the New American Standard, it says that God has blood. God is the referent, previous referent to the statement, he purchased the church with his own blood. Now, the covenant children know the catechism, right? Does God have a body? He does not have a body like men. God is invisible. How can God have blood? Blood is creature. Blood extends into space. Blood was not and then it became when God created it. Well, the analogy of faith helps us to understand the mystery of the Incarnation by going to other texts in Scripture, seeing that the Word became flesh, and sometimes the Scripture speaks of the person of Christ, the person of the Mediator, according to either nature. God has blood. Well, does God, as God, have blood? If we say yes, is it eternal and infinite and immutable? No, we're gonna say, no, he doesn't have blood, but the text says he has blood. Well, sometimes, and this is actually a proof text, I'm not sure if it's in the Westminster Confession, it probably is, because the Baptists use chapter eight of the Mediator, where sometimes the scripture speaks about the person utilizing language that's more descriptive of one nature as opposed to the other. So the analogy of faith tells us that we ought to use the whole Bible to help us understand any portion of the Bible. The analogy of Scripture tells us that we need to go from Matthew chapter whatever to Mark chapter whatever to help us. Because Matthew wrote first, right? Anyway, pet peeve I have. It doesn't matter who wrote first, okay? What matters is the Bible speaks about this issue here, I'm having difficulty understanding it, go to another place where it speaks about the same issue. That's the analogy of faith. And the last principle is the The scope of Scripture, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, Westminster Confession 1-5, if you study that out in its historical context, I think it's more specific than maybe at the first glance and the first read of the Confession. The scope of Scripture is the glory of God. The scope would be the target, the end, the goal to which All parts of Scripture is aiming, it's to bring glory to God through what He does in the work of the incarnate Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who became one of us for us and for our salvation. He's going to bring many sons to glory. The scope of Scripture sees God's glory gained by what the mediator does for God's elect in bringing them to glory. I'm skipping over large sections here just to get to the two denials by New Covenant theology. Adherence. So those are the principles I'll be using. The Holy Spirit is the only infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture. The analogy of faith. One text is speaking about a certain issue. I'm having a problem understanding it. I'm going to find another text, hopefully, that's going to help me. The analogy of faith says I can use any text of Scripture, and I ought to, to help me with any other text of Scripture. And then the scope of the whole. God gave us the Word of God. By the way, the Bible is because sin and a plan of redemption is. We have special written revelation, the Word of God, because there's a covenant of redemption, and God is going to save a sinful people by His Son. And so if that's what He's going to do, then that's what the book's all about. It is ultimately about God getting glory for Himself through what He does in the skull-crushing seat of the woman, our Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered and then entered into glory, and who also will, in turn, bring many sons to glory. So if those are our hermeneutical principles, they're the ones I'll be using as I critique these views, then let's get to these views, these two denials that I'll mention. Only one of them will I critique. In this section, this section is comprised largely of quotations from New Covenant theology adherents. Here's the first one. And I'll get there in a minute. And a few of these quotations, I'm not sure if I put them up on the PowerPoint or not, but I'll read them in my lecture notes, are from others who hold the same view, though do not use the denominator NCT, or New Covenant Theology, for self-identification. Dr. Piper mentioned that the issues that New Covenant Theology denies aren't denied by only New Covenant Theology Baptists, okay? There are some Presbyterians Is there a back door here in case this gets bloody? There are some Presbyterians that are fudging on some of these clear, confessional, historical, historically formulated doctrines that are rooted, I believe, in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. So this isn't a Sola Baptist thing, so you can't just blame us for it, unless Presbyterians are now learning from Baptists, which they shouldn't learn that stuff from those Baptists. If you want to know what Baptists to learn from, I can tell you after the lecture. So I'm going to attempt to refrain from providing too much comment at first, just read the quotations, and then I'll have some discussion in the next section. I want you to notice though, which most of you have probably already read that, I want you to notice the rhetorical power. There's a pungency, there's a punch about some of the words and phrases and the way certain authors, especially one of the New Covenant theology authors, especially the way he writes. It's powerful. And I'm convinced that it's the powerful rhetoric that sometimes causes people to embrace it. It's not the arguments. It's not the fidelity to scripture, it's the rhetorical power. Here's the first one by John G. Riesinger. He says this, every time someone uses the term, the moral law, all the italics, by the way, if there are any up there. They're all his. I didn't tamper with this. I'm tempted to reply, I assume by the moral law that you mean the opposite of the immoral law. I understand the opposite of moral is immoral in the normal use of the word. A moral act is the opposite of an immoral act. A moral person is the opposite of an immoral person. However, the word moral differs from normal usage. Theologians have created a new and unique use of the word moral in order to justify a preconceived theological position. They have made the opposite of moral to be ceremonial and civil. Then, without biblical evidence, they use the three categories created by the new definition to divide the entire Law of Moses into three kinds of laws. They insist that the Law of Moses can be divided into three distinct lists, the moral list, the ceremonial law list, and the civil law list. By the way, in that book, I got that from, Riesinger continues to attempt to prove his point by quoting a 2002 edition of Webster's Dictionary on the word moral. Commenting on Westminster Confession 19.3, where it says, commonly called moral, Reisinger says, every time I read that phrase, commonly called in the Confession, I want to ask, commonly called that by whom? None of the Confessions commonly called things is ever mentioned in the Word of God. If any had been, the framers of the Confession, or their heirs, would have quoted texts. What the confession really means, by commonly called, is this. This concept is essential to our theological system. We do not have a text of scripture to prove it, but the theologians use the phrase all the time. By commonly called, we mean is used all the time by theologians. And then he says, the statement commonly called moral is the sole source of authority that theologians today use for dividing the Mosaic law into three lists. That's the more rhetorically charged version of New Covenant theology. There's another one here. Who put this PowerPoint together? Did someone say a Baptist? Well, I'll have to read this one. This author is a graduate from Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He says, while we agree that some verses can be safely classified as moral, ceremonial, or civil, we find it unhelpful and, more importantly, unbiblical to do so. One looks in vain for any biblical evidence of these classifications. Furthermore, all that God commands is moral. in the sense that it would have been immoral for an Israelite to disobey any command of God, regardless of its classification. Now, you could just stop there. If you've read through the prophets, you know that sometimes God is so disgusted with the people, He says, stop your sacrifices. I don't even want them. Would it have been immoral of them to continue sacrifices, even though God, through the prophets, says, you need to go repent before you offer sacrifices? So even in the prophets themselves, there's distinctions that are being made between a certain type of law and another type of law. But here they're saying the opposite of moral is immoral. Well, that's not historically and theologically how the term's used. And if you don't like it, I'm sorry. You can get another term. But the concepts are what's actually more important than the terms. The terms, just when it says commonly called, you know what commonly calls them that? Theologians throughout the history of the church, older 17th century writers often said that when they were talking about something and they didn't want to talk about it too much, they would just say it's commonly called this or commonly used this way. It doesn't mean you go to a 2002 Webster's Dictionary and say, oh, the 2002 Webster's Dictionary doesn't use it that way. Well, if you've got the right dictionary, Muller's Dictionary, of Latin and Greek theological terms, you might get educated in the proper way to understand historical documents like the 17th century Westminster Confessionary. He goes on and says, we want to get our theology from the text, not impose our theology onto the text. With our threefold division of the law, We believe that advocates of covenant theology have imposed a man-made grid into the text of scripture to make it fit their theological system. This is the same author, Blake White. Covenant theology divides the law up into three parts, moral, civil, and ceremonial. While we see how some commandments, now watch this, while we see how some commandments could be classified as moral in nature, as opposed to the civil or ceremonial, New Covenant theology denies this tripartite division of the law because the writers of Scripture do not make such distinctions. Well, how could you see that these could be done and yet deny it, and then say the Scripture writers don't even make that distinction? How did you see it then? Although this tripart distinction is historically rooted and held by many men more respectable and learned than the present writer, it must be rejected. This distinction simply will not hold up to exegesis. It is a theological construction imposed on the text of scripture. Everything God demanded from Israel was moral. So when you read those things, you're going, wow. It's kind of powerful. In a book published in 2013, Gary Long denies the threefold division of the law He does, however, make a distinction between what he calls absolute law and covenantal law. Remember I said there's some rethinking going on, there's reformulating. This is a New Covenant Theology adherent, Dr. Gary Long. He's pressing his NCT brothers to rethink this. He's making a distinction between, he's done this for years, absolute law and covenantal law. I found his book, this book that I'm quoting from now, to be the best written and the most historically and theologically informed book of all the New Covenant theology books I've ever read in my life. Here's what he says. This is the quote I believe I have up here. Biblical law may be rightly explained under two distinctive categories, the absolute law of God and the covenantal law of God. God's absolute law is unchanging law, individually and personally binds all mankind by virtue of their being created in the image of God regardless of dispensational and covenantal distinctions. But God's covenant law, covenantally binds only those who are in the covenant community according to the terms of the covenant in force at a specified time within redemptive history. To emphasize, in its absolute sense, God's law is ethically and morally binding upon all mankind forever, because we're creatures created in the image of God. But in its covenantal sense, God's law is only binding upon a covenant community so long as that specified covenant is in force. Long's formulation, as we'll see below, is similar to the moral, positive distinction held by more confessional, reformed Christians. There are some in our day who don't use the denominator NCT, or New Covenant Theology, but also deny the threefold division. Thomas Schreiner, who teaches New Testament and biblical theology probably at Southern Seminary, denies it. Jason C. Meyer, who wrote an important book on Paul and the Law. He was a graduate from Southern Seminary. I believe he's preaching in John Piper's pulpit now. He denies it, and I think I saw the book by Philip Ross, From the Finger of God, on the book table. Mentor, Christian Focus Mentor published that book a few years ago. It's on the three-fold division of the law. It's the book I used to stay up at night dreaming that I would write. Someday I want to write on that subject. I want it to be in my own pea brain thinking, the definitive work. And then I got that book, and I was able to sleep. Because somebody else already did it, and he did a way better job than I can do it. Anyway, in that book, where he quotes Meyer denying the threefold division in 75 words, you can read an interesting quote on page 9, if you want to go back on page 9. I think it's on page 9, where he says, here is Meyer. basically new kid on the block, in 75 words. undoing the Christian Church's traditional understanding of how to view the various types of law that we find in the Bible. And he undoes it in all of 75 words. And he said, it makes me wonder if he's ever read a confessional argument, a confessionalist trying to argue for this threefold distinction. So it's not just a New Covenant theology adherence. Brian S. Rossner Does he teach in the States now? Is he still in New Zealand or something? But in the series that IVP publishes, where they did Greg Beal's Temple and the Church's Mission, that series on biblical and biblical studies or whatever it is, and D.A. Carson is the editor of the series, Brian Rossner says that the threefold division is anachronistic, impractical, and unsuccessful. And just as a footnote for the seminary students and the profs, Schreiner, Rossner, and Jason Meyer all have the same thing in common. They're all New Testament specialists. And I just wonder if this over-specialization that we've been into since the Endarkenment, the Enlightenment, that comes from John. John Gerstner said that once. You know who John Gerstner is? He's the guy that taught R.C. Sproul how to talk. If you've ever heard Sproul, you've heard Gershner. He's just 40 years younger and alive. But Gershner called it the Endarkenment. One of the things that the Endarkenment did to education was produced all these specialists, because since God is no longer the one that makes sense of the many, then there's all these different compartments of thinking. So we have different departments and all this stuff we have in the seminaries now. I'm not against New Testament prophets from South Africa or anything like that. But I think that is part of the problem, especially when I read Rossner's book. I couldn't even get through the whole thing. I got a review copy. I was going to review it for Theological Journal. I started writing this review, and now I recommend Guy Waters put up a review someplace. Just read his. It's very much worth reading. But the point is this. You don't have to be a New Covenant theology adherent. carrying the flag, to deny some of the things that New Covenant theology denies. They also deny, categorically, the Covenant of Works. And I'm not sure if I left these up here. Let's see here. Yes, here's a denial of the Covenant of Works by John Riesinger. Covenant theology assumed that covenants were the key to understanding Scripture. Okay, so there's the scripture over there. And here's the covenant theologians over here. And they say, you know what? We got to go to the Bible with an assumption that we can't prove from the Bible. Namely, that the covenants are the key to understanding scripture. And then discovered two covenants in Genesis. a covenant of works with Adam before he fell, and a covenant of grace with Adam after he fell. Neither of these covenants is found in Genesis or anywhere else in Scripture, neither is based on clear textual evidence." Well, there are other quotes, for instance, Gary Long, I'm not sure if I put it up there, I'm not going to look because I need to get to the next section here, but Long says, New Covenant Theology agrees with Covenant Theology that there was both a pre-, now watch this, John Riesinger A New Covenant theologian just categorically denies any sort of covenant with Adam in the garden. Now we have Gary Long in 2013. New Covenant theology agrees with Covenant theology that there was both a pre-fall covenant and post-fall covenant with Adam, but New Covenant theology rejects the traditional covenant of works explanation of Covenant theology as taught by the majority of Reformed theologians. I'm not sure if I had that. There it is. That was that quote. Now, I told you there's some rethinking and reformulation going on. There is one man within the movement that believes New Covenant theologians need to rethink whether or not there's some sort of Covenant theology going on in the Garden. Blake White, who I quoted before, is another man that stands with Gary Long, believing that there was some sort of Covenant theology going on there in the Garden of Eden. Gary Long prefers to call this covenant a pre-fall covenant or a creation covenant. That's what White calls it. That's what the big writers of the huge book out of Southern Seminary, Wellam and Gentry, that's what they call it. Some of the New Covenant guys get a lot of their stuff from Schreiner and Wellam and Gentry, and there's a lot of good stuff, I'm sure, that I am positive that these men write. But they don't want to call it a covenant of works. Gary Long even cites Hosea 6-7, like, Adam, you have transgressed the covenant. The New American Standard has the proper translation there. He cites Hosea 6-7, which is over here on the Bible timeline. If this is Genesis, this is Hosea 6-7. Hosea is a prophet, inspired by the Spirit of God, looking out at Israel as a covenant-violating nation, and he says, you're just like Adam, which means God just told us. that Adam's a covenant breaker, if that text is properly translated, and I think it is. You can read B.B. Warfield on it. So there's rethinking and reformulating going in, and that's good, and I'm encouraged by that. But I want to give a critique in 15 minutes of this. denial of the threefold division. And some of this will carry over into the denial of the covenant of works, though I'm not going to give a critique of the covenant of works as in-depth as I want to do here. But I think you can see from the quotations I've shared with you, it's obvious that New Covenant theology categorically denies the doctrine of the threefold division of the law and the covenant of works in the Garden, at least as traditionally understood. And I believe these denials reflect what I'm going to call, and others are calling it, a Biblicist mentality, at least at times. They demand things of texts that cannot be produced, but, as I hope to show below, are not necessary to produce in order to prove a doctrine. I'll get to that in a second. One example of a biblicist mentality by a New Covenant theologian author can be found in these words by Blake White. New Covenant theology strives to limit itself to using the language of the Bible. A consistent biblicist doesn't believe anything unless it uses Bible words. Riesinger informs us that ten commandments are never once called the moral law by any writer of scripture. That's a Biblicist kind of a mindset there. Similarly, Gary Long says it should be noted that the word moral does not occur in the original languages of the Bible. Therefore, it is better not to refer to God's law as the moral law of God. But he's the guy that wants to use absolute and covenantal law. But I don't think, I don't know if the word absolute is ever used in the Bible, I'm not sure. I'm pretty certain it's never used in conjunction with the noun law, absolute law. So there's inconsistently going on there. Simply put, consistent biblicism, which New Covenant theology is not, rejects doctrinal formulations which use words not explicitly used by the Bible. If one uses words not utilized by the Bible in the formulation of a given doctrine, like covenant of works, the consistent biblicist rejects that doctrine because it does not use Bible words. I think this is a classical example of the word concept fallacy. which asserts that if a word is not present, then the concept it embodies is not present. If I don't use a word in describing something, then the concept that I think I'm trying to describe isn't present. In other words, you have to use Bible words if you're going to explain the Bible. Here's a phrase, good morning. Is that in the Bible? So for a biblicist, it would be a sin for a pastor to get up and say good morning? Just trying to be biblically nice? Pastor, the phrase isn't in the Bible. You can't be biblically nice by using that phrase. No one's consistent with their biblicism. So let me give a brief critique here of their denial of the threefold division of the law. The doctrine of the threefold division of the law is formulated based on observations from the text of Scripture, okay? It wasn't brought to Scripture. These are theologians over time and pastors over a long period of time looking at the Bible, studying the Bible, and from the text of Scripture, they're noticing distinctions. And then they put their findings into theological shorthand or doctrinal formulations for the sake of convenience. We do that with the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance. In other words, words and phrases are used by theologians to describe concepts that are contained in the Bible, though they might use words that aren't in the Bible itself. Words that either the contemporary audience is familiar with, or words that come through the history of the church that the contemporary audience ought to be familiar with. They're doing theology. That's how the threefold division was organized. was formulated. Men were doing theology. They were putting texts of Scripture together, making observations, looking at the entirety of Scripture, and when it was all said and done, they formulated it into what we now possess. The Bible itself does this, by the way. In Peter's Pentecostal sermon in Acts chapter 2, where he's preaching to the Jews there, he references Psalm 16, 8 through 11. And he says David was speaking about the resurrection of the Christ in Psalm 1611. Now if you go read Psalm 16, 8 through 11, I think even in the Hebrew text, you won't find the word Christ or resurrection there. So what Peter is saying is there are concepts embedded there back in that Psalm. And I'm going to use two words that encapsulate those concepts. I'm going to use two words that David didn't use in Psalm 16, but I'm not going to fall prey to the word concept fallacy. I can use two words that David didn't use to describe those concepts. It's okay. David was speaking about the Christ and the resurrection. So the Bible writers themselves, by the way, the New Testament writers, they were theologians. Okay, great redemptive historical acts of God occurred, the incarnation. The greatest of all redemptive historical acts occurred, the incarnation. And they're theologians doing theology, not just pulling rabbits out of their hat, but they had a textbook that they had to interpret these events by. It wasn't the Westminster Confession. It was the Hebrew scriptures. So they were theologians, and so what we have is a theological explanation of the incarnation, sufferings, and entrance into glory of Christ. That's the New Testament. They did theology. We do theology, too. We shouldn't fall into this word-concept fallacy. If I said, base hit, home run, strike three, and walk off single, hopefully you'd say, baseball. But nobody could say, hey, you didn't use the word baseball. See the word concept thing there? So we don't read our Bibles and say, oh, it says threefold division of the law in Exodus 95-12. We don't have to. We're making observations. And then we're going to put our observations together. That's how the threefold division of the law was formulated. The Bible was examined canonically, the whole thing. Observations were made in terms of distinctions between various types of law. For example, some laws were seen as predating other laws revealed through Moses to Old Covenant Israel. Other laws in the Mosaic corpus were restricted to Israel alone and therefore neither predated Old Covenant Israel nor transcended her. So when the law of Moses, Exodus 20 and following comes, if you read Genesis 1-1 through Exodus 19, you'll see that the Bible assumes some things are right and some things are wrong. But you can't read in Genesis 4.7, for instance, thou shalt not commit murder. But Genesis 4.8 records the first... Murder, right? Cain killed his brother Abel. He was of the evil one. Why? Because he is an example of a hater and not a lover. But you don't read in Genesis 1, 1 through 4, 7, before the murder, thou shalt not murder. But it's obviously wrong. And subsequent writers of Scripture, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, interpreted that as murder, wrong, unloving. So murder must have been forbidden in some form prior to Exodus 20. Right? There's a lot of wrong that goes on. There's rapes going on. All kinds of sin going on between Genesis 1-1 and Exodus 19. But you don't find a law code there. Those are the laws that predate the Mosaic Law and are universal. and applicable to all men because if you study the whole Bible you'll find out that they're based on man being created in the image of God. But there are other laws that come explicitly through Moses. Now Moses incorporates what we call the moral law. He incorporates it into the law for ancient Israel in a distinct form. The ten words. By the way, it's not the ten words the way we might read them in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5 that are moral Their exact forms because they differ it's the essence Read the catechism. It's the essence That is contained of those commandments that is contained in the forms that we read them Moses incorporates the moral law, the law that's common to all men, into the law for Israel. But then, if you keep reading the Pentateuch, you'll find that there's moral law that comes, some law connected to the tabernacle. Remember, they have the tabernacle in the wilderness. Exodus the toward the end of Exodus toward Leviticus Mmm, seven or something like that. There's tabernacle laws a Tabernacle laws you won't find tabernacle laws like you do the moral law prior to from Genesis 1 1 through Exodus 9 time 19 or through Exodus whatever You won't find tabernacle laws there. You'll find tabernacle laws, though, after Sinai, but before they enter the promised land. Then you'll find another type of law. This type of law is in-the-land kind of law. Some law predates the Mosaic covenant, moral law. Some law predates ancient Israel going into the promised land, tabernacle law. And then there's other laws, both ceremonial, religious, worship of God, priesthood, tabernacle, feast days, and all those kinds of things that were to be done in the land. And there's also these sanctions and judgments. capital punishment for various crimes against the state of Israel, to be done in the land as well. So you have in the land civil laws, you have in the land ceremonial laws, you have outside the land ceremonial laws, then you have the moral law transcending all cultures and all covenants at all time. If you read the entire Bible, you can see those kinds of distinctions. You can call them what you want, okay? Call them whatever you want, but they're there. The law is based on who God is and what we've been made as bearers, and it's with us. We can't get rid of it. We can't uncreate ourselves. It's perpetual. Because it's just, it's therefore commanded. Because it's reflective of who God is in conjunction with who we are. Universal. Everyone is responsible to God for that law. The judicial law, the civil law, the distinctions that I tried to show you real quick there that you can get in Philip Ross. He does a great job in that book doing that. Those are unique. Those are positive laws. just, as Turretin would say, because commanded. They can be abrogated, they can be fulfilled, and therefore abrogated, they can be changed, they can be for everybody, or they can just be for a select few. They can be for a covenant nation, for a time. They can be for a certain place, and they are. You read the Pentateuch, you'll see those distinctions. They're real distinctions. Now, if the only fallible interpreter of the Holy Scripture is the Holy Spirit in the Holy Scripture, then we should expect, if those are real distinctions in the corpus, the body of Moses' writings, if those are real distinctions, we should expect other writers to just assume those distinctions, and sometimes help us kind of nudge us along into acknowledging those distinctions. And I already mentioned that in Isaiah 1 or Isaiah someplace, in Isaiah, in the Old Testament someplace, in the Bible, the prophet, there's a couple times, I think it's Isaiah and it might be Jeremiah, stop your sacrifices. Stop your animal sacrifices. Don't do that anymore. Well, how could that be universally binding on all men? It obviously wasn't. Matter of fact, it wasn't even universally binding on Israel as an old covenant nation because it got so bad that God told them to stop. So there are distinctions made, not only in the Mosaic Law, but in the rest of the Old Testament. The Psalms make these kind of distinctions. The prophets make these kind of distinctions. The distinctions are upheld by the New Testament writers, our Lord Himself, in the Gospels, in the Epistles. There are distinctions made in the Mosaic Law. Some law predates the covenant, the Old Covenant. It's moral. Other laws are connected uniquely to it. In the wilderness, some of them in the land. And then the rest of scripture does that as well. So what I'd like to do in the 19 seconds I have left is to... I had 25 pages of lecture notes here. Dr. Piper sent a scathing email. It said, we request that our lecturers don't read their lectures. But what's the difference between lecturing and preaching? I learned this from a young Dr. Joseph Piper. Lecturing, you have a manuscript. Preaching, you make things up without a manuscript. Like he did this morning, which was excellent, by the way. But if you can't read a lecture, then it's a sermon. So you can't call it a lecture. By the way, he has notes. They're just in a different form. They're not scripturated. They're in his head. Anyway, I mentioned already that New Covenant theology is moving. A couple of the guys, there's challenges going on within the writers. That's good. I think they get things wrong in large part because of a faulty hermeneutic, not allowing a canonical hermeneutic to really grip them to understand that the only infallible interpreter of the Holy Scripture is the Holy Spirit in the Holy Scripture. And when you do those kinds of things, I think they'll be forced to either come to this conclusion or, I don't know, make something else up. But I have been encouraged with the direction I've seen some of the writers going, and may the Lord help them. And I hope that my brief little critique here has helped you understand what it's all about and kind of how to think through some of these things. So that is it. I'm finished.