No, I don’t think so at all. I would say the opposite. You should read Horton’s dissertation on Goodwin and assurance.

Which Puritans did you have in mind?

Many today emphasize justification so much that they make the gospel and salvation co-extensive with justification.

What I’m afraid that you might be doing – and I say this tentatively because I don’t know you, but the language is familiar – is overly polarizing justification and sanctification. Some say justification is what God does – it is the Gospel – and sanctification is the believers response. Sanctification is “gratitude” from our side.

I understand that we want to protect the graciousness of justifiation (i.e. apart from law), but I don’t always like the language of “our response” to what God has done in Christ because what God has done in Christ includes our sanctification, just as it included our justification.

As Richard Gaffin has wrote: “But church history has made all too evident that the apparently inevitable outcome is the rise of moralism, the reintroduction into Christian experience of a refined work-principle, more or less divorced from the faith that justifies and eventually leaving no room for that faith. What is resolutely rejected at the front door of justification comes in through the back door of sanctification and takes over the whole house.”

But, sanctification is a work of the Spirit and not simply “our response”. It is God’s response as much as ours.

Finally, I simply don’t know how the law-gospel paradigm can work in sanctification. Imagine trying to use “law-gospel” when preaching Romans 8:13!

Add to that the fact that Ursinus makes “repentance” part of the Gospel.

Mark

And, it’s not as if the Lutherans deny sanctification; I just don’t think they are as strong on it as the Reformed are. Moreover, to speak of “law-gospel” in sanctification is stupid, I think, and open to all sorts of problems.

I find it interesting that in both Owen’s and Goodwin’s writings there are almost no positive references to the Lutherans. Owen and Goodwin quote more favorably from Catholic writers than Lutherans!

A lot of people say that “law-gospel” is not only Lutheran, but Reformed. I reply: what do you mean by “law-gospel”? There’s a lot of ways that schema can be worked out. So, is repentance law or gospel? Lots of different answers on that.

I think my brother, Marty Foord, can back me up on this. He’s doing his PhD on Owen and the law-gospel thing comes up all the time.

Mark