I’m currently reading Michael Horton’s book, A Better Way:Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship. I’m enjoying it, although there are a few reoccuring quirks that get in the way. One is Horton’s Law-Gospel distinction (the other is his strict two kingdom dichotomy).

He sets up the Law-Gospel distinction by quoting Louis Berkhof,

The Churches of the Reformation from the very beginning distinguished between the law and the gospel as the two parts of the Word of God as the means of grace. The law comprises everything in Scripture which is a revelation of God’s will in the form of command or prohibition, while the gospel embraces everything, whether it be in the Old Testament or the New, that pertains to the work of reconciliation and that proclaims the seeking and redeeming love of God in Christ Jesus.

Now, that, to me, sounds like the typical explanation, the law is everything that requires something of us, and the gospel is everywhere that Christ is offered to us. I read Horton’s article, The Law & The Gospel and got the impression, again, that the distinction is something in the actual text.

Horton’s WSC buddy R Scott Clark describes the distinction in this way,

By “law and gospel” I’m referring to the debate between those of us who hold to the historic and confessional distinction between those places in Scripture where God command and those places where he promises. Historically, Protestants have described these two ways of speaking in Scripture as “law” and “gospel.”

Again, this doesn’t appear to make the distinction in how any particular text affects or is received by an individual, but rather is something innate in the text. Even the Wikipedia article on Law and Gospel says that “it is used as a hermeneutical principle of biblical interpretation”.

However, just halfway down the same page, Horton then says:

We have to be careful of reductionism here, of course. Texts are not frozen into categories of either “law” or “gospel.” Often the same verse could be either, depending on how we take it… The same verse may strike one as a threat and then also as a consolation. That is because the Bible is not simply a book of objective, timeless propositions but a means of encounter with the Triune God. Through preaching, God addresses us, and, as in any relationship or confrontation with another person, our existential situation before the one who addresses us is never excluded from the event of being addressed. While the grammatical meaning of the text is the same, it is variously applied by the Spirit to each person.

This seems to me to be taking with one hand what was given with the other. This paragraph sounds strikingly close to what Doug Wilson has said and written on the subject, but I’m pretty sure that Horton wouldn’t claim to be on the same page as Wilson. So… what gives?

Visualizing the Bible

I especially like the cross reference image. A single, unified story of redemption.

HT:Restless Reformer