FV

Doug Wilson is indeed a prolific blogger. I must say I am impressed with the sheer amount of coherent words he is able to string together on a daily basis, covering all sorts of topics. If he was a writer in ancient Israel they would had to fell half the trees in Lebanon to provide enough paper for his writing.

Anyhow, I was surprised to see that Wilson is responding to every chapter of every book that engages in a critical analysis of the Federal Vision. So he is currently responding to By Faith Alone edited by Gary Johnson, and he recently finished Covenant, Justification, and Pastoral Ministry edited by Dr. Scott Clark. The responses by Wilson can be found here. One consistent reservation that Wilson registers is the idea of the republication of the covenant of works at Sinai. He thinks that this is setting up God's people for inevitable confusion, because if the COW was republished at Sinai, it would mean there were two principle operating at the same time in redemptive history: the Covenant of works and the Covenant of Grace. If this is the case, then Wilson argues that we somehow have to distinguish between which parts of this era relate to works and which relate to grace - something that would be unnecessarily tedious. I don't want to get into it in detail here, but I think one problem is that Wilson does not seem to understand the typological aspect of the covenant of works in the Mosaic economy. Here I would simply recommend an interesting article by TL Donaldson called the "The Curse of the Law and the Inclusion of the Gentiles" (in New Testament Studies, 32 - 1986- pgs. 94-112). Here is a great paragraph from the article that relates to the subject at hand:

"Israel serves as a 'representative sample' for the whole of humankind. Within Israel's experience, the nature of the universal human plight - bondage to sin and to the powers of this age - is thrown into sharp relief through the functioning of the law. The law, therefore, cannot accomplish the promise; but by creating a representative sample in which the human plight is clarified and concentrated, it sets the stage for redemption. Christ identifies (with) not only the human situation in general (Gal 4:4), but also with Israel in particular, thereby becoming the representative individual of the representative people" (pg. 105-106).