https://churchandfamilylife.com/podcasts/667344e11a0b9ce0df045b5d
Law in Scripture is complicated and there is a tendency among some to reduce its complexity or flatten its dimensions. Sometimes law refers to the commandments of God and at other times it is cast in Redemptive-Historical terms.
The law (whether general commands or specifically Mosaic) certainly exposes sin but primarily the Law (which sometimes is Mosaic and sometimes the whole of the Old Covenant) points to Christ. And yet this is further complicated by its typological role which means to put it bluntly the Old Covenant Law was not 'the' Law and so as it was temporal (or temporary) and failed to produce salvation - it was reckoned obsolete. Christ the antitype fulfilled the Law and revealed an eschatological order - one much more simple (it might be said) and yet of a higher order. This does not mean it has greater demands but rather a higher calling and expectation. There's a difference.
There are dynamics at work here and nuances that I find Theonomists like Brown unable to navigate - perhaps even to grasp. This is not a personal insult but rather indicative of a basic theological problem.
I commend his courage to state plainly that the Bible does not separate obedience from salvation. This is true and needs to be heard, and yet such language is met with hostility by not only the Evangelical realm and its watered down gospel of cheap grace but in actuality much of the Confessional and Reformed world as well.
But he then jumps to a series of muddled and sometimes false conclusions.
The New Testament does not employ the Law (which he does not define) in terms of the civil realm.
The Law of God is critical in terms of witnessing (which aspect we wonder?) but he misses the fact that in addition to its role in exposing and condemning sin, the gospel reveals that salvation cannot be earned by those who would keep the law (again whatever is meant by that).
The Law of God is covenantal - something Dominionists consistently fail to understand. This is why it doesn't apply to the civil realm in that there is no Theocratic state in our day - under the New Covenant and the Last Days. The only Theocracy is the Church itself. Also, the Law applies to children only if they're in covenant. For a Calvinistic Baptist like Brown to argue this way makes no sense. Romans 8 (among other places) makes it clear that unbelievers cannot submit to or understand the Law of God. If Christian children are unbelievers and unregenerate until a conversion experience - there is no basis or rationale to teach them the commands of God. One must (it seems) wait until they are of sufficient age and then they must be evangelised. Only then can the Law be applicable to them.
Then Brown turns to the Decalogue - I would assume he understands this Old Covenant prologue/summation to be the equivalent of the Eternal Moral Law. It's not and in fact it is insufficient for an understanding of Christian Law (as it were) - our calling to obedience to Christ. The Ten Commandments are limited in scope. This is not to demean them but rather to read them and understand them in light of the New Covenant and of Christ who fulfilled them. I'm sure he would argue that to love God and neighbour encapsulates the Decalogue but in reality these commands in the context of the New Covenant imply a great deal more than merely the 'thou shalt nots' found in the Ten Commandments - a point Christ makes in the Sermon on the Mount. And even the sole exception of the Sabbath has been fulfilled and transformed, not into Sunday worship (which is not the sabbath) but into the eschatological life of the New Covenant believer in which every day is a sabbath and a call to worship and perseverance.
Indeed we are to love the Law of God and meditate on it day and night but Brown doesn't explain how he understands this. The Psalmist was undoubtedly focused on the Mosaic Law - which the New Testament declares fulfilled and done away with. And yet as we know not every precept of principle in that Law is annulled - because it contained and expresses in many places aspects of the Eternal Law.
So how to navigate this? The Three-fold division put forth by the Westminster Confession is insufficient and represents an inaccurate and contrived hermeneutic as the New Testament does not deal with the Mosaic Law in that fashion. It is treated in a holistic, monolithic fashion with no suggestion of modification. Therefore the principles that seem to be retained are better explained by means outside the specific context of the Mosaic Covenant - a paradigm some theologians have elaborated upon. The Eternal Law is only known to us in the context of covenant forms and while it's not spelled out for us in the New Covenant, the principles are there and through that lens we can discern how to read or apply the Old Covenant and its moral principles.
What we find is rather than a forced and oversimplified continuity/discontinuity scheme such as that of Westminster, or the unjustified Law/Gospel hermeneutic of Lutheranism, we instead find a series of eschatological ethics and imperatives that supersede much of the Old Covenant order. To simply go back and read it apart from Christ and His transformation of it, is not only to Judaize but to take the Mosaic Law as an end in itself. The New Testament reveals that such an approach renders it weak and unable to save, indeed an administration of death.
We can rejoice with the Psalmist regarding love for God's Law but the New Covenant understanding is not only very different but (to use its own words) better. By this we can understand it to be of a higher or more eternal order.
Brown's attempts to deal with the Law are well meant but inadequate and reveal the hermeneutical inadequacy and poverty of both Dominionist and Theonomic theology.
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