"MODIFIED DISPENSATIONALISM" DENIED
A Response to Brian Schwertley
by Greg Loren Durand

Exhibit M:
Addendum to "A Response to the Misrepresentations of Brian Schwertley"

       Nearly two months after receiving my documentation regarding his misrepresentations of my position on Sermon Audio, Brian Schwertley returned to the subject of the Mosaic judicial law on 16 December 2007 and resumed the very same misrepresentations that I had already corrected:

       Those who use this section of Scripture [2 Corinthians 3:1-11] argue that Paul is teaching that the whole Mosaic system, including the Ten Commandments and the moral case laws, is explicitly abrogated here by Paul. And the best example of this argument, of course, is Greg Loren Durand, who essentially takes a Dispensational interpretation of this passage. And I’m going to quote him. He writes, “It is not possible to interpret ‘done away’ as merely the outward performance of sacrifices, for it was certainly not the ceremonial law which was ‘engraven in stones,’ but the ‘words of the covenant, the ten commandments’ (Exodus 34:28). Furthermore, in speaking also of ‘that which was written,’ Paul intended to bring to mind Deuteronomy 31:9.... Therefore, all the case laws, tithing laws, sacrificial laws, etc., as well as the summary laws of the Decalogue, were all classed together by Paul as the ‘ministration of death’ and declared to have passed away in contrast to the ministry of the Gospel ‘which remaineth.’” ...Durand’s argument is typical of Dispensationalists, who confuse arguments in favor of the New Testament superceding the Old Covenant with the superceding of the Old Testament ethic. Paul is not saying that the Old Testament ethics as a way of sanctification has been done away [“Judicial Law,” Part Nine, 5:41].

       This claim has dominated Schwertley’s lecture series: that I reject the Old Testament as useful to Christians for sanctification. I have expressly denied that I believe this, and have repeatedly corrected him on this point, but he has persisted in turning a deaf ear to my protests. The passage from my book which he quoted above was not even dealing with the subject of personal sanctification, but with the Mosaic system as a superceded, and thus abrogated, covenant. This fact was obvious in the chapter from which he extracted the quote and from the numerous clarifications which I have written since this controversy began. There is not a single orthodox Christian who would disagree with my contention that the Old Covenant has been abrogated by the New, and yet this is the point from which Schwertley has launched his most vicious public attacks against me.
       To these misrepresentations Schwertley added the charge of heresy the following week, again condemning me for views I do not even hold:

       The fact that we are justified by Christ and He has eliminated the guilt and liability of punishment that violating the law brings does not even speak to the role of the Old Testament moral laws, including the case laws — it doesn’t even speak to its function in the New Covenant believer’s sanctification. So once again we see here a confusion being made between the law’s role — and we’re talking about the moral law — in justification and sanctification.... So [Paul in Colossians 2:14] is talking about the whole law. It has been nailed to the cross. Your violations of the law have been eliminated by Christ’s death on the cross....
       Okay, I hope you understand very clearly what I’m saying here. The law — the whole law — even the Ten Commandments, the moral law — as far as the covenant of works — as far as our obligation to keep in order to be saved — is done away by Christ. The law as far as penalty is concerned for violating it, both precept and penalty, Christ has taken care of both of these. He took care of the obligation to obey the law by perfectly obeying the law in our place, and His righteousness is imputed to the believer — the believing sinner. He took care of the penalty by paying the penalty Himself for violating the law by dying on the cross. He suffered in our place — vicarious atonement. So, in that sense, we are dead to the law — the law has nothing to do with us....
       Now, to expose Durand’s heretical understanding of God’s law, the first thing we want to do is correct his false presupposition regarding the book of Galatians. Did Paul, as Durand asserts, write Galatians to show believers that the whole law of Moses was abrogated — that believers are now not in any sense under the law of Moses? Now, remember, the Christian Reconstructionists... he’s saying that they’re a bunch of legalists because Christian Reconstructionists say that we should obey the laws in the Old Testament as a guide for sanctification.... [“Judicial Law,” Part Ten, 2:22, 31:37; emphasis in original]

       As is his usual mode of operation, Schwertley once again claimed what is actually my position as his own while attempting to push me into a theological position that I utterly reject. This should be obvious when his above admission that “the whole law” is indeed, in a certain sense, “done away by Christ” is compared to what I wrote to him on 3 September 2007:

       God codified the Covenant of Works specifically for the Israelites in the Mosaic law, and as an Israelite, Christ fulfilled that law to the letter. In a broader sense, He therefore also fulfilled the Covenant of Works in behalf of the Gentile elect. The specific Mosaic code for Israelites, and the general Covenant of Works for Gentiles, was therefore abrogated as far as the believer is concerned because Christ’s active obedience is imputed to their account. In order to escape His judgment, God commands faith in Christ, not obedience to the Mosaic code/Covenant of Works.

       Once again, when I refer to the Mosaic law as having been abrogated, I am referring to it in its Old Covenant context — i.e. as a covenant of works, or, as many Reformed commentators have described it, a restatement of the original Edenic Covenant of Works designed specifically for the nation of Israel. As such, the Mosaic law held forth the promise of God’s blessings for obedience and His curse for disobedience, but due to the sinful nature of fallen man, it could only condemn. In this sense, the entire law, including the Decalogue, has been abolished — just as Schwertley has admitted. Not only did the specific judicial laws governing the unique features of Israel’s national life and the various ceremonial laws cease to function with the close of the Old Covenant era, but the condemning nature of the moral law also has no binding authority over the New Covenant believer.
       Schwertley has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that this is what I’ve been saying all along, and has falsely interpreted everything that I’ve written regarding the law’s abrogation as speaking of sanctification, which it never has been. I reject the notion that the Christian should not study the written laws of the Old Testament for “instruction in righteousness.” The moral law, being coeval with man’s creation, is itself unwritten, but the Old Testament provides concrete and perspicuous examples of how the moral law should be applied, and is therefore a valuable guide for not only personal sanctification, but for society at large as well. Many of God’s moral demands found in the Old Testament have no corresponding equivalent in the New Testament, and it is therefore perfectly legitimate for the believer to study the Mosaic laws in order to extract these principles. Thus, as a moral guide, the Old Testament still speaks to the Christian, but as a covenant, it has nothing to say to him. This is biblical; this is confessional; this is plain, common sense.
       Schwertley has completely ignored the main point of my critique of Reconstructionism as it is promoted in the writings of Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony in particular — that the individual Christian and nations in general are under the covenantal sanctions of the Old Testament, so that they receive blessings or cursings according to their keeping of the Mosaic law. According to Rushdoony, “[D]iligent keeping of the law” is “the condition of blessing: it is the ground of conquest and of possession, in terms of which the covenant people of God, His law-people, enter into their inheritance.” Besides misidentifying the Christian’s inheritence as earthly dominion, this teaching takes the typological nature of the Mosaic covenant and transfers it to the New Covenant where it does not belong, and makes personal law-keeping, rather than the imputed righteousness of Christ, the basis of the believer’s right standing with God (i.e. "the condition of blessing"). This is what Rushdoony meant when he wrote that “sanctification is by the law”; he subtlely redefined sanctification in terms of progressive justification (increasing blessings) and based his novel version of postmillennialism upon it. Gary North’s doctrine of covenantal sanctions was no different. No more blatant promotion of the Judaizing heresy could be asked for than in the teachings of these men and it is my contention that Reconstructionism is the seed from which the more blatant Federal Vision heresy has sprung. Schwertley rightly condemns anyone who “speaks of an obligation to keep the law in any way in order to be justified [i.e. to gain the favor, or blessing of God, and to escape His curse] is a damnable heretic, a Judaizer, and a lieutenant in Antichrist’s service” ["Judicial Law," Part Nine, 12:57], and in doing so, has conceded the whole thesis of my book that Reconstructionism is a modern-day variation, if not a revival, of the ancient Galatian error.