How vital is the Law/Gospel distinction to orthodoxy?

[TimeRedeemer]

And to get a right 'feel' for the new relationship to the law post-regeneration and once already justified think of the different feel these terms have:

legalism, chain, can't do that

vs.

new birth, Christian liberty, spiritual warfare

We associate spiritual warfare as a positive thing that we DESIRE to do, and it's here that our new relation to the law exists as well. It's something we desire to do (and it's tempered by our new birth which gives us ability to do it, and by our Christian liberty which frees us from it as a means of justification and hence as a curse).

 

[Pilgrim]

Originally posted by crhoades

Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia

Originally posted by Draught Horse
Now for my favorite Wilsonite, Louis Berkhof,

Yet we cannot separate these two, for the law contains a presentation of the gospel, and the gospel confirms the law and threatens with its terrors...to teach otherwise would be Lutheran and Arminian

Systematic Theology, page 490.

Jacob, you are proof-texting a man against himself. In other words, you are either confused and taking Berkhof's statement here to be a support of your viewpoint, making him to be at enmity with himself (you find Berkhof insane perhaps?), or ... well, I don't know what else it could be. Surely you are confused or you simply 'misunderstand' as you yourself might have conceded above. As Dr. Clark quotes in his work above, Berkhof himself stated:

Louis Berkhof (1898-1975). "...the purity and integrity of the gospel stands or falls with the absoluteness of the antithesis between the function and potency of law, on the one hand, and the function and potency of grace, on the other." (Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics [GrandRapids: Eerdmans, 1957], 186).

So, like I said - either Berkhof is insane and contradicts himself on such a major and obvious point, or you misunderstand either this discussion and distinction along with its implications or are simply misrepresenting Berkhof, out of the context of this discussion.

Just to clarify...I wasn't aware that Berkhof wrote a book Principles of Conduct. I know John Murray did. So was the quote an actual Berkhof quote but the source was wrong, or was it an actual quote from Murray? Or do I have residual effects from stuff I wasn't supposed to do in college still hangin' around?

This is indeed a quote from John Murray. I was going to email Dr. Clark about it before noticing the corrected page here.