At issue is not the bi-covenantal (covenant of works – covenant of grace) structure that I’m concerned with him to maintain, particularly in the face of contemporary monocovenantalisms and the errors of the New Perspective. I remain unpersuaded, however, that this structure either requires or is particularly enhanced by Horton’s view that under the Mosaic economy the judicial role of the law in the life of God’s people functioned, at the typological level, for inheritance by works (as the covenant of works reintroduced) in antithesis to grace.It is difficult for me to see how this way of viewing the theocratic role of Israel as God’s covenant people from Moses to Christ (historia salutis) avoids creating an uneasy tension, if not polarization, in the lives of his people between grace/faith and (good) works/obedience (ordo salutis), especially under the Mosaic economy. As far as I can see from reading the Old Testament, particularly the prophets, the reason Israel went into exile was not failure as a nation to maintain a requisite level of formal obedience to the law in all its details. Rather, Israel lost the land for the deeper reason of unbelief, because of the idolatry that was at the root of and focused the unbelieving nonremnant’s disobedience of God and his law. A further discussion of this issue cannot be entered into here.
Excellent!