This is an article about a book about a controversy about a book. Worse: it is an article about a new book about an old (and largely forgotten) controversy about an even older (and largely forgotten) book. Yet both of the books, and the controversy, are highly relevant to the contemporary evangelical world, because they reflect exactly the same questions that come up in ordinary life today.
Edward Fisherâ??s book, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, was published in London in the 1640s. It contained a series of dialogues about the law and the gospel, with four suitably named characters: Neophytus, a young Christian; Evangelista, a gospel-preaching pastor; Nomista, a legalist; and Antinomista, an antinomian. The goal of the text was to navigate the line between legalism and antinomianism (or lawlessness), and in the eyes of many influential interpreters, it did an admirable job. Virtually nobody today would accuse it of being too licentious and fluffy; if anything, most of us would find it somewhat strict.
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