One of the joys of trying to study and write is the multitude of serendipitous discoveries that one makes along the way.  I am trying to finish a monograph, Covenant and Command: Works, Obedience, and Faithfulness in the New Covenant (working title--no pun intended).  At present I am trying to deal with the question of justification and future judgment.  And I have turned to an older essay by Geerhardus Vos, "The Alleged Legalism in Paul's Doctrine of Justiification."  As I read the introduction I was struck by the prescient nature of Vos' thoughts.  Here is Vos, found in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (p. 383).  Vos speaks of

". . . the modern attempt to supplant the theology of the Reformation, so largely based on Paul, by a less elaborate, less speculative, more congenial, because supposedly more humanitarian type of religious thought.  As Paul is usually identified with the traditional theology, so Jesus has come to stand in many minds for the milder, more simple, form of Christianity toward which the tide has been setting for some time and seems to be setting ever increasingly.  The watchword, 'Back to Christ,' implies the charge, whether consciously realized or not, that Paul has deflected the original impulse imparted by Jesus to Christianity, by bringing to bear up on it another force of decidedly lower character.  If such a view could be historically justified, it would furnish the best conceivable defense of the modern desire to shake off the theological trammels of the past.  If it cannot be justified, if it can be shown that the theology of Paul is the legitimate offspring of the teaching of Jesus, then an equally strong apology for the type of religion inherited from the Reformation will have been furnished.  Paul being the true heir and successor of Jesus, all those who profess to be historic Christians must feel in some sense bound to Paul, as they desire to be loyal to Christ."

Well said.

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