A Brief Response to Steve C. Halbrook's Defense of Daniel F.N. Ritchie

Stephen Halbrook recently posted a video on YouTube in which he attempted to defend Daniel F.N. Ritchie from the charge of covenantal nomism. While denying that Ritchie is teaching "justification on account of good works," Halbrook does admit that Theonomists such as Ritchie believe that "the Covenant of Grace is conditional and faith is the condition of the covenant." As I discussed in Chapter Five of Judicial Warfare, Bahnsen and Rushdoony in particular adopted Daniel P. Fuller's redefinition of faith as "obedience." Echoing Norman Shepherd's insistence that faith and works are essentially the same thing, Bahnsen wrote that faith and obedience are "two sides of the same coin." Elsewhere he stated, "Continued blessing for Adam in paradise, Israel in the promised land, and the Christian in the kingdom has been seen to be dependent upon persevering obedience to God's will as expressed in His law." Contrary to Halbrook, such a teaching is a departure from the Reformed teaching that obedience flows out of, and is therefore distinct from, saving faith. A Christian's standing before God is not conditioned on his obedience, but on Christ's obedience in his behalf. To insist, as Ritchie does, that a Christian's eternal destiny depends on his "keeping the covenant" and "striving to obey the law," is a clear perversion of the Gospel.