The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Evangelical Reformed Presbyterian

The link goes to the NPP view of 1st century Judaism, i.e., that it was a religion of "grace" wherein "grace" consists of unmerited membership in the covenant community ( = salvation), which is maintained by obedience to the law, the end of which is ultimately "justification" (justification by faith . . . -fulness). So what the NPP says is that Paul was combatting a too-narrow Jewish definition of covenant boundaries that excluded the Gentiles. Ultimately, then, the Reformers were wrong to take the Lutheran view that Paul was combatting a religion of meritorious works by which we are saved.

FV/AA shares this same basic view and extends it all the way back to Adam. God's covenant with Adam was not the Covenant of Works, but the Covenant of Grace, since God "graciously" included Adam in His covenant. The Mosaic Covenant then, too, was not a reiteration of the Covenant of Works, but rather the Covenant of Grace. Again, it is by grace we are saved (i.e., brought into the covenant). By remaining faithful to the covenant, we are justified (justification by faith . . . -fulness). The idea being that since we didn't earn our way into the covenant community to begin with, we don't make God owe us (we don't merit from God) a place in that community by our continued obedience.

However, in their attempts to avoid merit and to reinterpret 1st century Judaism as a religion of grace, they are managing only to reproduce the errors of 1st century Judaism and to change the Covenant of Grace into a covenant of works-righteousness. This is why so many FV/AA people are theonomists, because they do not distinguish between the Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works—it's all the same. Furthermore, this creates all sorts of problems with imputed righteousness, since Christ by His obedience did not merit anything, but was a recipient of grace!