Originally posted by fausto:
quote:I would worry about you if you didn't.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I think Jesus does a great job
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
quote:Jesus seemed to think the Law was important. Not the 10 Commandments in isolation.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Because Jesus seemed to think they were important...?
Which of the ten commandments do you think is no longer relevant?
quote:I'm not denying any of them. As practical rules, they are still sound advice today, even if perhaps for different reasons than they were originally for a band of tribal desert nomads 3,000 years ago.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Because Jesus seemed to think they were important...?
Which of the ten commandments do you think is no longer relevant?
quote:I always chuckle a bit when people start with "Christiany teaches that ..." as if these things were universal. This isn't really what Christianity teaches me.
fausto: Christianity teaches that the Old Covenant (Mosaic Law) was fulfilled in Jesus, and we are now operating under a New Covenant which has superseded it.
quote:Perhaps not, and perhaps I haven't expressed it as accurately as possible, but theologically it is the orthodox reason usually given why Christians don't feel obliged to keep all 613 of the Mosaic commandments.
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:I always chuckle a bit when people start with "Christiany teaches that ..." as if these things were universal. This isn't really what Christianity teaches me.
fausto: Christianity teaches that the Old Covenant (Mosaic Law) was fulfilled in Jesus, and we are now operating under a New Covenant which has superseded it.
quote:I suspect the reality is that the 10 commandments are fairly easy to remember and seem fairly universal in nature. They are easy to carve or write onto displays at the front of church and occupy about the same amount of space as the Lord's prayer.
Originally posted by fausto:
Perhaps not, and perhaps I haven't expressed it as accurately as possible, but thelogocally it is the orthodox reason usually given why Christians don't feel obliged to keep all 613 of the Mosaic commandments.
quote:Jesus singled out the commandments to love God and to love your neighbor as the two greatest. We feel bound by those as well, but he didn't place any similar special emphasis on the Ten.
Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
quote:Jesus seemed to think the Law was important. Not the 10 Commandments in isolation.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Because Jesus seemed to think they were important...?
Which of the ten commandments do you think is no longer relevant?
But they are no longer binding, as the Jerusalem Council in the book of Acts came to understand (case in question was circumcision, as the foremost of those kind of laws). They have all been fulfilled in Christ.quote:Was that going beyond the law, or was it explaining what the law always meant, from God's viewpoint?
Originally posted by leo:
Jesus went BEYOND the 10 commandments - a lustful look is adultery of the heart, anger is murder etc.
quote:It has been pointed out to me that Jesus did specifically endorse five of the Ten at Matthew 19:18-19, although not the other five.
Originally posted by fausto:
Jesus singled out the commandments to love God and to love your neighbor as the two greatest. We feel bound by those as well, but he didn't place any similar special emphasis on the Ten.
quote:100+ years ago, the church I serve had a congregation largely made up of the moneyed merchants of the town. At that time they would, I guess, have been very strict about Sabbath-keeping. But they had no compunction in expecting their servants to make beds, help them dress, make up fires, serve at table and prepare Sunday dinner to be ready when they got home (although I guess that normal cleaning and washing of clothes etc. did not happen on that day).
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Sabbath was Saturday, and was a day of no work, even women got the day off from cooking; now it's a day to do yard work or house repairs, and in many households the women have to do extra work to prepare a fancier than usual meal because sabbath concept was ditched in favor of the feast day concept - preparing a feast is inconsistent with rest, so rest was eliminated (at least for women).
quote:Yes, I think in those instances he was interpreting and applying the Law, not issuing new commandments.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:Was that going beyond the law, or was it explaining what the law always meant, from God's viewpoint?
Originally posted by leo:
Jesus went BEYOND the 10 commandments - a lustful look is adultery of the heart, anger is murder etc.
Some people, faced with a rule, love to see how close they can get to the line, argue if they stick a toe over the line they haven't crossed the line yet because the foot itself is still on the right side of the line.
The letter of the law vs the spirit of the law.
Was Jesus changing the letter of the law, or just explaining the spirit of the law? How much can you think about adultery, dream about adultery, stalk someone on Facebook, plan how to do it, initiate caresses, kiss, lie together naked, and still claim "I have not committed adultery, I'm wholly innocent." Under the spirit of the law, none of that, even if you haven't yet crossed over the technical letter of the law.
An attitude of "How much can I get away with and still claim I'm honoring the law" is itself dishonoring the law's intent of teaching us attitudes consistent with God's attitudes.
I think the bare ability to break them exists (otherwise why the temptation of Jesus?). Rather like eating liver. I have the ability to do so, but there is nothing could tempt me to do so, and I recoil from it. Bleurghhh.![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
We see it (that is, the big 10 and all the little ones that function as specific examples thereof) as having three uses:quote:This might seem like very basic stuff I'm saying. But when you look at human history and all the ideas people have had about what God/the gods want, we tend to get it badly wrong. (not human sacrifice, not endless rote prayers, not pilgrimage on your knees, ....)
What does the Lord require of you
but to do justly,
and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God?
quote:Not really. Many different interpretations on the relationship of the Law and the gospel have been put forward, of which this is but one.
Originally posted by fausto:
quote:Perhaps not, and perhaps I haven't expressed it as accurately as possible, but theologically it is the orthodox reason usually given why Christians don't feel obliged to keep all 613 of the Mosaic commandments.
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:I always chuckle a bit when people start with "Christiany teaches that ..." as if these things were universal. This isn't really what Christianity teaches me.
fausto: Christianity teaches that the Old Covenant (Mosaic Law) was fulfilled in Jesus, and we are now operating under a New Covenant which has superseded it.
quote:Out of interest, were the servants expected to be Baptists as well, or could they attend other churches? Or was it rather the case that Baptists preferred to employ other Baptists? If you want to employ a Baptist in particular I suppose you're expecting someone who goes to church. Otherwise there's not much point, is there? It's not like the CofE.
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
100+ years ago, the church I serve had a congregation largely made up of the moneyed merchants of the town. At that time they would, I guess, have been very strict about Sabbath-keeping. But they had no compunction in expecting their servants to make beds, help them dress, make up fires, serve at table and prepare Sunday dinner to be ready when they got home (although I guess that normal cleaning and washing of clothes etc. did not happen on that day).
Of course, the servants did have some allegedly "free time" in the evening. How convenient that it coincided with the Evening Service (which the now-sated middle classes did not attend). The servants' absence from worship would, of course, have been noted ...
quote:AFAIUI, actual Jews make a very much less distinction between 'moral' and 'ceremonial' law, in that what we consider 'ceremonial', they consider moral.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Among Lutherans (and I thought pretty much all of the church, but what do I know?) we make a distinction between the moral Law and the ceremonial laws.
quote:Very much agree with this - especially as (according to some Rabbinical interpretations) Noahide Laws have things to say about animal welfare.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
AIUI, Talmudic Judaism distinguishes between the Noahide Laws (ultimately a reference to Genesis 9, but expanded a bit in the Talmud) - which are the principles of morality given to all nations - and the Mosaic Law, which exists to mark out the Jews as the Chosen People.
It is argued that the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is in effect reaffirming the Noahide Laws (rather than the Torah) as binding on Christians (or at least on Gentile converts), which does raise the question of why we don't elevate them instead of the Ten Commandments.
quote:Some good points here. The 10 Commandments are more notable for what is not included. The 10 Commandments hardly seem supernatural in their wisdom. Moreover, as you were saying, would the Bible be a better moral guide if the nasty and useless bits were taken out? For example, sticking with The 10 Commandments; who keeps Saturday as holy day? It was extra-Biblical voices and ideas that changed that.
Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
I can't help noticing (present thread and all present exempted), how often these kind of discussions are aimed at reconciling the Bible with the current, secular morality. I do not think this is a dishonest endeavour, more a spurious one.
Let us be sincere about our moralities, and choose the best of them. If we think a 4000-1500 year old set of ethics to be superior to the work of current philosophers, then let us go with the Bible, consistently, and observe all it's laws. But if we think ethics has made progress since then, then let us regard the Bible (respectfully) as the foundation on which this progress was made possible, and go with the current state of ethics as a definite improvement.
Cheers, PV.
quote:Not sure what you mean when you say that the 10 Commandments ''hardly seem supernatural in their wisdom'. Four of them do refer to God specifically.
Originally posted by Komensky:
The 10 Commandments hardly seem supernatural in their wisdom. Moreover, as you were saying, would the Bible be a better moral guide if the nasty and useless bits were taken out? For example, sticking with The 10 Commandments; who keeps Saturday as holy day? It was extra-Biblical voices and ideas that changed that.
quote:Or was he 'fulfilling' it - in the sense of filling it out, deepening its meaning?
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:Was that going beyond the law, or was it explaining what the law always meant, from God's viewpoint?
Originally posted by leo:
Jesus went BEYOND the 10 commandments - a lustful look is adultery of the heart, anger is murder etc.
quote:I did not know that about SDA. Thanks.
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
quote:Not sure what you mean when you say that the 10 Commandments ''hardly seem supernatural in their wisdom'. Four of them do refer to God specifically.
Originally posted by Komensky:
The 10 Commandments hardly seem supernatural in their wisdom. Moreover, as you were saying, would the Bible be a better moral guide if the nasty and useless bits were taken out? For example, sticking with The 10 Commandments; who keeps Saturday as holy day? It was extra-Biblical voices and ideas that changed that.
Also, remember that there are indeed Christians who keep Saturday as their Sabbath. The 7th Day Adventists are the obvious group. They are growing significantly in numbers around the world, including the USA, and in some cases they've become the largest denomination.
quote:Hmmm.
Originally posted by Komensky:
As for the supernatural, there is nothing there that could only be known by a deity, or reflects some deep understanding of humanity not already known in the world. Imagine if God had only 10 things to say to the world—and unlike all the other stuff he'd said where he merely spoke through clouds and visions, this time he had them engraved on stones. Well, read the 10C's and see for yourself. Be kind to your parents because they might give you something, don't make images of me (oops!), keep Saturday holy (oops!), remember that I am the best god of all the other gods (ah, so there are other gods.), don't take my name in vain (whatever that means), don't kill (finally, here is a useful piece of moral guidance—hardly a revelation though), note well that women should be treat like chattel. In moral terms, the 10 Commandments are utterly ignorable.
K.
quote:Really? Then why have so many people of other faiths and other cultures adopted virtually the identical set of principles?
Originally posted by Komensky:
As for the supernatural, there is nothing there that could only be known by a deity, or reflects some deep understanding of humanity not already known in the world. Imagine if God had only 10 things to say to the world—and unlike all the other stuff he'd said where he merely spoke through clouds and visions, this time he had them engraved on stones. Well, read the 10C's and see for yourself. Be kind to your parents because they might give you something, don't make images of me (oops!), keep Saturday holy (oops!), remember that I am the best god of all the other gods (ah, so there are other gods.), don't take my name in vain (whatever that means), don't kill (finally, here is a useful piece of moral guidance—hardly a revelation though), note well that women should be treat like chattel. In moral terms, the 10 Commandments are utterly ignorable.
K.
quote:Because moral law is written on our hearts, and does not need Christian faith to determine it, only endorse it? And what implication would this finding have for Christian ideas about 'salvation'?
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Really? Then why have so many people of other faiths and other cultures adopted virtually the identical set of principles?
quote:Exactly. Which doesn't make the 10 commandments irrelevant, just universal.
Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
quote:Because moral law is written on our hearts, and does not need Christian faith to determine it, only endorse it?
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Really? Then why have so many people of other faiths and other cultures adopted virtually the identical set of principles?
quote:Since Christians don't find their salvation in the keeping of the Law, not a whole lot.
Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
quote:And what implication would this finding have for Christian ideas about 'salvation'?
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Really? Then why have so many people of other faiths and other cultures adopted virtually the identical set of principles?
quote:I guess the point of keeping some laws (eg. Thou shalt not kill) is also that other people won't be dead.
cliffdweller: The point of keeping the Law is that we come to trust in God enough to recognize that doing life his way-- i.e. loving God and others-- is the best possible life for us.
quote:Well, not killing others would be one way (albeit a rather minimal one) of loving them. And it is the not-too-arguably the best way for us to live. Life tends to get rather nasty once you get involved in murderous plots...
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:I guess the point of keeping some laws (eg. Thou shalt not kill) is also that other people won't be dead.
cliffdweller: The point of keeping the Law is that we come to trust in God enough to recognize that doing life his way-- i.e. loving God and others-- is the best possible life for us.
quote:To pickup your point about sabbath - I used to work in human resources, the field has done lots of studies -- if you will take a day off from work to do things you enjoy, like sports or arts or family time, your productivity for the week is higher than if you work all 7 days even though you work more hours the weeks you skip sabbath.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, the point of keeping the Law is not to make ourselves "good enough" for God or avoid some divine punishment. The point of keeping the Law is that we come to trust in God enough to recognize that doing life his way-- i.e. loving God and others-- is the best possible life for us. The fact that others who don't happen to be part of our tribe also often come to recognize that only makes life living in a diverse community that much better.
quote:The problem here is that you are dismissing the mainstream historic Christian position as somehow illegitimate--either keep the Law in the OT form only, or throw it completely out the window and go with something modern. But it is within the Bible itself that we get the Christian shift in the view of the Law. That's where we're getting Jesus' expositions, Paul's commentaries, the immediate change to Sunday as a day of worship (book of Acts, NOT "extra-biblical voices"), the Jerusalem council decision that not every part of the Law is binding on Gentile converts to Christianity.
Originally posted by PilgrimVagrant:
I can't help noticing (present thread and all present exempted), how often these kind of discussions are aimed at reconciling the Bible with the current, secular morality. I do not think this is a dishonest endeavour, more a spurious one.
Let us be sincere about our moralities, and choose the best of them. If we think a 4000-1500 year old set of ethics to be superior to the work of current philosophers, then let us go with the Bible, consistently, and observe all it's laws. But if we think ethics has made progress since then, then let us regard the Bible (respectfully) as the foundation on which this progress was made possible, and go with the current state of ethics as a definite improvement.
Cheers, PV.
quote:It seems to me that the 10 are all about loving God and loving neighbor. They are about how to live in community, and how to be a community that is in in relationship with God.
Originally posted by fausto:
Jesus singled out the commandments to love God and to love your neighbor as the two greatest. We feel bound by those as well, but he didn't place any similar special emphasis on the Ten.
quote:They do, as I understand it. The "Ten Words" (Decalogue) are considered foundational to the remainder of the law. In Jesus's time, they would have been recited in the Temple daily, before the recitation of the Shama Yisrael. The two tablets are called in Hebrew Luchot HaBrit—"the tablets of the covenant." They were kept in the ark of the covenant.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Do Jews place much emphasis on the Ten Commandments relative to the rest of the Torah? I have a feeling they don't but am open to correction.
quote:It isn't about me.
cliffdweller: Life tends to get rather nasty once you get involved in murderous plots...
quote:When I was a strict Sabbatarian I never felt so knackered, particularly on a Saturday. With the legalistically imposed stress of it all.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:To pickup your point about sabbath - I used to work in human resources, the field has done lots of studies -- if you will take a day off from work to do things you enjoy, like sports or arts or family time, your productivity for the week is higher than if you work all 7 days even though you work more hours the weeks you skip sabbath.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, the point of keeping the Law is not to make ourselves "good enough" for God or avoid some divine punishment. The point of keeping the Law is that we come to trust in God enough to recognize that doing life his way-- i.e. loving God and others-- is the best possible life for us. The fact that others who don't happen to be part of our tribe also often come to recognize that only makes life living in a diverse community that much better.
So says science. Catching up with God.
quote:I suspect you were treating it as a law rather than a blessing, as though Martin60 were made for the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath made for Martin60.
Originally posted by Martin60:
When I was a strict Sabbatarian I never felt so knackered, particularly on a Saturday. With the legalistically imposed stress of it all.
quote:They still are - in synagogues they are above the ark (housing the Torah scroll[s])
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
The two tablets are called in Hebrew Luchot HaBrit—"the tablets of the covenant." They were kept in the ark of the covenant.
quote:Acts 15 describes a dispute within the early Church over whether the Mosaic Law should apply to Gentile Christians. (It was taken for granted that the Law still applied to Jewish Christians.) The decision of the Council was that Gentile Christians should "abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." So at least at that time, the leaders of the Church including many who had known Jesus personally did not consider the Law to have been mooted as to Jewish Christians, nor any other part of it except three laws about food and one about sex to apply to Gentiles. That seems inconsistent with both the Noahide theory and the supersessionist theory.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
AIUI, Talmudic Judaism distinguishes between the Noahide Laws (ultimately a reference to Genesis 9, but expanded a bit in the Talmud) - which are the principles of morality given to all nations - and the Mosaic Law, which exists to mark out the Jews as the Chosen People.
It is argued that the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is in effect reaffirming the Noahide Laws (rather than the Torah) as binding on Christians (or at least on Gentile converts), which does raise the question of why we don't elevate them instead of the Ten Commandments.
quote:Peter did remark at the time, though, that the Mosaic Law was very difficult even for Jews to obey fully. I wonder whether the Old Covenant/New Covenant theology didn't develop out of the obvious tensions that must have arisen when some Christians were expected to observe the old laws while others were not. It would have been reasonable to extend Peter's argument for leniency toward Gentiles to Jews as well, given that both groups shared a faith in the superiority of Jesus's teachings, and the doctrine of a New Covenant would have provided a justification to do so. That wouldn't explain, though, why the Ten Commandments continued to be held in such special regard.
Originally posted by fausto:
quote:Acts 15 describes a dispute within the early Church over whether the Mosaic Law should apply to Gentile Christians. (It was taken for granted that the Law still applied to Jewish Christians.) The decision of the Council was that Gentile Christians should "abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." So at least at that time, the leaders of the Church including many who had known Jesus personally did not consider the Law to have been mooted as to Jewish Christians, nor any other part of it except three laws about food and one about sex to apply to Gentiles. That seems inconsistent with both the Noahide theory and the supersessionist theory.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
AIUI, Talmudic Judaism distinguishes between the Noahide Laws (ultimately a reference to Genesis 9, but expanded a bit in the Talmud) - which are the principles of morality given to all nations - and the Mosaic Law, which exists to mark out the Jews as the Chosen People.
It is argued that the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is in effect reaffirming the Noahide Laws (rather than the Torah) as binding on Christians (or at least on Gentile converts), which does raise the question of why we don't elevate them instead of the Ten Commandments.
quote:The Bible gives a different reason. Somewhere in Moses God explains murder is wrong because destroying a human being is destroying an image of God.
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I guess the point of keeping some laws (eg. Thou shalt not kill) is also that other people won't be dead.
quote:If that's all you're after, it's pretty easy I think. The Ten Commandments are the Law in a nutshell--they cover the ground pretty thoroughly (even the ceremonial ones, but that's another long, long post), they do it in a short, easily memorized form, they are repeated twice so they must be important
Originally posted by fausto:
That wouldn't explain, though, why the Ten Commandments continued to be held in such special regard.
(Ex. 20, Deut. 5). Moreover, they are the first thing God said to Israel from Sinai at the giving of the Law. Not even a "Ladies and gentlemen, please listen up" to start off beforehand.quote:Why? That's quite puzzling. If you're all really keen to get them back in, you might want to think of enlisting the Georgian Society, the Victorian Society or whichever era's heritage organisation might be most interested.
Originally posted by L'organist:
The church where I play had the two wall plaques with the Ten Commandments restored in the very early 1950s - then c1966 they were removed and put into storage.
There is now a move to have them reinstalled: the spaces they occupied are still vacant and they would enhance the interior of the church because they are very beautiful. The trouble is the DAC which is fighting their reinstatement.
quote:'It is argued' was a hedge for 'I'm sure I read somewhere'. Looking online I'm struggling to find a source that isn't blatantly partisan and/or somebody's blog, so I might be talking nonsense here.
Originally posted by fausto:
quote:Acts 15 describes a dispute within the early Church over whether the Mosaic Law should apply to Gentile Christians. (It was taken for granted that the Law still applied to Jewish Christians.) The decision of the Council was that Gentile Christians should "abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." So at least at that time, the leaders of the Church including many who had known Jesus personally did not consider the Law to have been mooted as to Jewish Christians, nor any other part of it except three laws about food and one about sex to apply to Gentiles. That seems inconsistent with both the Noahide theory and the supersessionist theory.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
AIUI, Talmudic Judaism distinguishes between the Noahide Laws (ultimately a reference to Genesis 9, but expanded a bit in the Talmud) - which are the principles of morality given to all nations - and the Mosaic Law, which exists to mark out the Jews as the Chosen People.
It is argued that the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is in effect reaffirming the Noahide Laws (rather than the Torah) as binding on Christians (or at least on Gentile converts), which does raise the question of why we don't elevate them instead of the Ten Commandments.
quote:Exactly. This, I think, is the way Jesus reshapes our understanding of the Law in the Sermon on the mount. Not by declaring it irrelevant, but by showing us the purpose and intent-- causing us to look at it not as some arbitrary set of rules to measure our righteousness, but rather a set of heart attitudes that transform us into the people we were always meant to be.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:The Bible gives a different reason. Somewhere in Moses God explains murder is wrong because destroying a human being is destroying an image of God.
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I guess the point of keeping some laws (eg. Thou shalt not kill) is also that other people won't be dead.
Very different framework.
I suspect stealing is wrong in God's eyes not just because it is unloving but because you are turning away from recognizing God as the source of whatever you need. False witness similarly.
If we will relate to God as we are designed to for our best health, all these things become automatic and cheerful, we see and enjoy God in everything, and through that enjoy and appreciate all other people.
quote:Acts 15:1-5 says:
Regarding the assertion that 'It was taken for granted that the Law still applied to Jewish Christians' - what is the evidence for this? I've seen it before so I know you haven't just made it up, but I've just re-read Galatians and Romans and to me the most natural reading does seem to be that neither Jews nor Gentiles are required any more to keep the Law. I might just be reading what I expect to see of course. [/QB]
quote:The evidence is in Acts 15-- which is describing an event that takes place prior to Galatians and Romans. The context of Acts 15 doesn't make sense w/o the realization that the early, mostly Jewish, Christians assumed the Law was still binding. Gal. and Rom., written after that event, would of course have a different context-- they are written to a church that has already had the benefit of the Jerusalem Council and one that was rapidly becoming more and more Gentile in composition.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:'It is argued' was a hedge for 'I'm sure I read somewhere'. Looking online I'm struggling to find a source that isn't blatantly partisan and/or somebody's blog, so I might be talking nonsense here.
Originally posted by fausto:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ricardus:
[qb]Acts 15 describes a dispute within the early Church over whether the Mosaic Law should apply to Gentile Christians. (It was taken for granted that the Law still applied to Jewish Christians.) The decision of the Council was that Gentile Christians should "abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood." So at least at that time, the leaders of the Church including many who had known Jesus personally did not consider the Law to have been mooted as to Jewish Christians, nor any other part of it except three laws about food and one about sex to apply to Gentiles. That seems inconsistent with both the Noahide theory and the supersessionist theory.
Regarding the assertion that 'It was taken for granted that the Law still applied to Jewish Christians' - what is the evidence for this? I've seen it before so I know you haven't just made it up, but I've just re-read Galatians and Romans and to me the most natural reading does seem to be that neither Jews nor Gentiles are required any more to keep the Law. I might just be reading what I expect to see of course.
quote:Well it is this that I reject, more and more.
Belle Ringer: I suspect stealing is wrong in God's eyes not just because it is unloving but because you are turning away from recognizing God as the source of whatever you need. False witness similarly.
If we will relate to God as we are designed to for our best health, all these things become automatic and cheerful, we see and enjoy God in everything, and through that enjoy and appreciate all other people.
quote:Although Acts does describe events prior to the composition of the epistles mentioned, it was written about three decades or so (given the most likely chronology) after those epistles. There's always the possibility that the author decided what "[t]he real kicker" was based on controversies of the day rather than what was controversial at the time.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The evidence is in Acts 15-- which is describing an event that takes place prior to Galatians and Romans. The context of Acts 15 doesn't make sense w/o the realization that the early, mostly Jewish, Christians assumed the Law was still binding. Gal. and Rom., written after that event, would of course have a different context-- they are written to a church that has already had the benefit of the Jerusalem Council and one that was rapidly becoming more and more Gentile in composition.
The real kicker in Acts 15, of course, is circumcision.
quote:LeRoc, I'm sorry. I can't follow this.
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:Well it is this that I reject, more and more.
Belle Ringer: I suspect stealing is wrong in God's eyes not just because it is unloving but because you are turning away from recognizing God as the source of whatever you need. False witness similarly.
If we will relate to God as we are designed to for our best health, all these things become automatic and cheerful, we see and enjoy God in everything, and through that enjoy and appreciate all other people.
quote:Yes, I was aware of the difference in dating, which is why I was careful to say the event preceded Gal. & Rom, not the recording of the event. And yes, there is always that possibility that history gets rewritten in that way. But in this case, that doesn't seem to fit what we know of the make-up of the early church and the growth of the Gentile church, at least as reflected in the NT writings.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Although Acts does describe events prior to the composition of the epistles mentioned, it was written about three decades or so (given the most likely chronology) after those epistles. There's always the possibility that the author decided what "[t]he real kicker" was based on controversies of the day rather than what was controversial at the time.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The evidence is in Acts 15-- which is describing an event that takes place prior to Galatians and Romans. The context of Acts 15 doesn't make sense w/o the realization that the early, mostly Jewish, Christians assumed the Law was still binding. Gal. and Rom., written after that event, would of course have a different context-- they are written to a church that has already had the benefit of the Jerusalem Council and one that was rapidly becoming more and more Gentile in composition.
The real kicker in Acts 15, of course, is circumcision.
quote:What I'm rejecting is that the emphasis in this is too much on me. It's about what I do, and how God reacts to this, and what will happen to me because of that.
Enoch: Those are strong words, but what are you rejecting?
quote:OK, I can see how you get that interpretation. No, there's something more basic going on - it's not about the effects on others of one murder or slander at a time so long as I make it right by ask God's forgiveness so *I* can be well off in spite of leaving a wake of ruined lives behind me.
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:What I'm rejecting is that the emphasis in this is too much on me. It's about what I do, and how God reacts to this, and what will happen to me because of that.
Enoch: Those are strong words, but what are you rejecting?
quote:A lot of people seem to be looking for forgiveness for themselves *without* restitution to the neighbor they hurt, treating forgiveness as a way to avoid punishment for wrongdoing while keeping the illicit gains. (To make it worse, "God, please forgive me" is sometimes coupled with "but punish that person who mistreated me!")
I have the feeling that our neighbour is so often forgotten when we talk about things like sin and forgiveness.
quote:I read that as suggesting there was a faction within the church that thought everyone should apply the Torah, but that this was subject to debate, i.e. not taken for granted. To my mind, the comment in Galatians 2:14 that Peter lived like a Gentile, in context, suggests that Peter did not follow the Torah.
Originally posted by fausto:
It does not say explicitly that Jewish Christians were expected to obey the Law, but it does not make any sense that they would have demanded that Gentiles obey laws they themselves did not.
quote:I'd have thought that circumcision for Jewish Christians would have been a moot point, since most of them would already have had it done when they were eight days old and Christ was just a little boy making birds out of mud pies ...
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The real kicker in Acts 15, of course, is circumcision.
quote:Yes, it was only a faction, not the consensus of the whole Church. Among that faction, though, obeying the Torah was taken for granted, a fundamental belief, and Jews were the largest faction of the Church in its earliest years before Paul's ministry to the Gentiles gathered momentum. How to accommodate Gentile converts was the first doctrinal controversy so deep that it required convening a formal Council to resolve. Yet the resolution apparently reached by the Council (that Gentiles were excused from most Jewish law, but still needed to obey three of the laws concerning food and one concerning sex in order to be saved) apparently had no lasting influence on subsequent doctrine -- except perhaps broadly, as an intermediate stepping stone in a larger trend away from Torah obedience as a point of doctrine altogether. (Of course, the tension between legalism and antinomianism has survived in one form or another to the present day, but that's another discussion.)
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:I read that as suggesting there was a faction within the church that thought everyone should apply the Torah, but that this was subject to debate, i.e. not taken for granted. To my mind, the comment in Galatians 2:14 that Peter lived like a Gentile, in context, suggests that Peter did not follow the Torah.
Originally posted by fausto:
It does not say explicitly that Jewish Christians were expected to obey the Law, but it does not make any sense that they would have demanded that Gentiles obey laws they themselves did not.
quote:I'd have thought that circumcision for Jewish Christians would have been a moot point, since most of them would already have had it done when they were eight days old and Christ was just a little boy making birds out of mud pies ...
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The real kicker in Acts 15, of course, is circumcision.
quote:It would be a moot point for those already more than 8 days old Jewish Christians, but surely in the talk of law and freedom from law some debates were about circumcising babies of Jewish Christians.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:I'd have thought that circumcision for Jewish Christians would have been a moot point, since most of them would already have had it done when they were eight days old and Christ was just a little boy making birds out of mud pies ...
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The real kicker in Acts 15, of course, is circumcision.
quote:Yes, that was my point. That's why, as I said, the issue doesn't really come up until you start having Gentile converts, in particular, adult male Gentile converts.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:I'd have thought that circumcision for Jewish Christians would have been a moot point, since most of them would already have had it done when they were eight days old and Christ was just a little boy making birds out of mud pies ...
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The real kicker in Acts 15, of course, is circumcision.
quote:I doubt it did for Jewish Christians-- just as it didn't for several generations of Americans. When I had my sons, it was a minor blip but didn't receive the amount of consideration I would give it today. These sorts of engrained cultural norms can be incredibly powerful. So no, I don't think 1st c Jewish Christians spent any time at all worrying about whether they should circumcise their sons or grandsons. Acts 15 seems to support the notion that it was adult male Gentile converts who first raised the "wait... you want me to do what?!?" flag.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
.... you know it WOULD come up if you were still in your childbearing years, and had sons. Or grandsons.
quote:Possibly, but I don't see that in Acts 15 at all. I don't see any indication that the early Jewish Christians were all that perturbed by keeping the Law. And I certainly don't see any indication there was any of our modern angst about potentially harming small infants by circumcising them. I'm sure they could appreciate and empathize with the dilemma facing adult male Gentile converts, but I honestly doubt that extended to considering whether they were mistreating their own infants. Again, looking at the prevalent custom of circumcision among non-Jewish Americans, which was sustained for a long time with relatively little medical justification and no religious compulsion at all, and even now is only beginning to waver, I think we're over-reading our own experience into the 1st c to think Jewish parents would have any similar qualms.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Sure they did. But the overflow from that argument would probably trickle into the all-Jewish families.
quote:and the Lord's prayer on another.
Originally posted by Enoch:
Very often, one board would have the 10 Commandments, and another, the Apostle's Creed.
quote:You've got to admit the evidence is in favour of it having to be spelled out...
Originally posted by Gwai:
I think not being a jerk is part of loving your neighbor as yourself.
quote:I kept the Sabbath (on a Sunday) for years. At the time I was both studying and working, but both were part-time. I found that I had plenty of half-days of work or leisure, but no full days of anything. So I wiped Sunday off my calendar.
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:When I was a strict Sabbatarian I never felt so knackered, particularly on a Saturday. With the legalistically imposed stress of it all.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
quote:To pickup your point about sabbath - I used to work in human resources, the field has done lots of studies -- if you will take a day off from work to do things you enjoy, like sports or arts or family time, your productivity for the week is higher than if you work all 7 days even though you work more hours the weeks you skip sabbath.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, the point of keeping the Law is not to make ourselves "good enough" for God or avoid some divine punishment. The point of keeping the Law is that we come to trust in God enough to recognize that doing life his way-- i.e. loving God and others-- is the best possible life for us. The fact that others who don't happen to be part of our tribe also often come to recognize that only makes life living in a diverse community that much better.
So says science. Catching up with God.
quote:You have a point. If "don't murder" had to be spelled out, why not "don't be racist/sexist/etc"? But if "don't murder" did have to be spelled out, maybe God figured he had to take one step at a time starting with the most basic. If you're going to be racist, at least don't be killing, stealing, slandering in the process!
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:You've got to admit the evidence is in favour of it having to be spelled out...
Originally posted by Gwai:
I think not being a jerk is part of loving your neighbor as yourself.
quote:Except "don't murder" didn't really need to be spelled out. The last six (or seven, depending on how you divide them up) commandments are the usual rules against murder, theft, and impertinence that humans tend to independently come up with over and over again when organizing their societies. You could argue that this is because God "embedded" these values in people or some other mystical mumbo-jumbo explanation, but the point is that those particular commandments don't seem to require direct divine revelation.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
You have a point. If "don't murder" had to be spelled out, why not "don't be racist/sexist/etc"?
quote:I think Jesus does a great job of parsing each of them, including murder, in the sermon on the mount. None of us thinks we're going to have to worry about murdering someone. But Jesus points us to the heart attitudes that put us on the road to murder-- hatred, which leads to contempt, which leads to dehumanizing the enemy, which allows us to contemplate what for us by that time won't seem at all like murder... Jesus tells us to stop it in the heart when we first move toward hatred.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Except "don't murder" didn't really need to be spelled out. The last six (or seven, depending on how you divide them up) commandments are the usual rules against murder, theft, and impertinence that humans tend to independently come up with over and over again when organizing their societies. You could argue that this is because God "embedded" these values in people or some other mystical mumbo-jumbo explanation, but the point is that those particular commandments don't seem to require direct divine revelation.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
You have a point. If "don't murder" had to be spelled out, why not "don't be racist/sexist/etc"?
The first four (or three, again depending on your numbering system), on the other hand, are very specifically about religious practices and represent a distinct minority viewpoint. Things like "religious toleration is bad" or "don't worship graven images" or "this is your official day off" don't seem to pop up independently.
quote:I would worry about you if you didn't.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I think Jesus does a great job
quote:Yes, I'm sure Jesus is relieved to know I approve of his job performance!
Originally posted by fausto:
quote:I would worry about you if you didn't.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
I think Jesus does a great job
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quote:Of course not. As usual in these situations, Dad looks the other way and lets him do whatever he wants, and everyone else has to treat him like he walks on water.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[thinks for a moment]
It's a family business--surely the owner's son never gets reviewed?
quote:You could also argue that this is because God wanted to let us know that they were not merely for the sake of civilized society.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You could argue that this is because God "embedded" these values in people or some other mystical mumbo-jumbo explanation, but the point is that those particular commandments don't seem to require direct divine revelation.
quote:You could also argue that if there IS a creator of human beings, any seemingly self-evident knowledge of any sort was obviously placed there by him--whether it's knowledge of the moral Law or an instinct to protect one's own children. What you suggest makes no sense unless you postulate that the ultimate source of wisdom and the ultimate source of human life (however it got here) are two separate entities.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You could argue that this is because God "embedded" these values in people or some other mystical mumbo-jumbo explanation, but the point is that those particular commandments don't seem to require direct divine revelation.
quote:I think the proper way to read the Old Testament is as a record of "progressive revelation" -- a more-or-less chronological and contemporaneous human witness to the growing human apprehension, across the span of history and the rise and fall of civilizations, of God's true character. Therefore, the earlier elements of the testimony present a less complete, less accurate, view of God's character (as seen through the lens of their time and place) than the later ones. In that context, the report of Moses's insights on Sinai represents a towering milestone and sudden advance in the course of our maturing apprehension.
Originally posted by Martin60:
I used to believe the Bible as writ with about the only caveat being there were four trillion days of creation. Therefore Exodus was history. The Red Sea was parted and crossed 1443 BC using Biblical chronology.
That God wrote the Decalogue with His finger. The God who 40 years later stopped slaughtering Israelites guilty of the Heresy of Peor - demon worshipping with excrement - at twenty four thousand only after Phinehas kebabed Zimri and Cozbi in coitus. Some offering. Ian M. Banks couldn't have come up with that one. To the God who commanded the genocide of the Amalekites.
In my complete and utter theodicy of such a God, a God Jesus HAD to believe in I understand still, I kept Sabbath and defended South Africa as they were Israelite.
Was there any of God in the metanarrative of the Old Covenant and its myth upon myth? More so than in the Enuma Elish and all the other myths of redemptive violence since while humanity tried to communicate with the weather?
It would seem so. Only so. I still see God's minimalist hand at work in such profoundly beautiful vignettes as Job, the story of Joseph, Nathan before David, The Fiery Furnace, Jonah above all. Prior to Jesus of course. Transcendent Love shines through the blood and fire and shit and smoke and our fearful, ignorant projection back on it.
As it all does in The Ten Commandments.
quote:I find Jesus' commandment "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." far, far, far, far harder to keep than any of the 10 OT ones! In fact, the 10 Cs are pretty simple for and ordinary person to keep imo.
Originally posted by fausto:
But the issue I am struggling with is why, if Jesus ushered in a "new covenant" based in grace rather than transactional obedience, so many Christians still observe the Ten Commandments as if they were not merely wise and practical ethical principles but binding legal obligations ...
quote:Okay, here's where I'm not understanding you, I think. What precisely do you mean by "binding legal obligations"?
But the issue I am struggling with is why, if Jesus ushered in a "new covenant" based in grace rather than transactional obedience, so many Christians still observe the Ten Commandments as if they were not merely wise and practical ethical principles but binding legal obligations, when they freely dismiss nearly all the other 600+ Jewish commandments as lapsed.
quote:So life is better and fuller if we eschew mixed fiber garments? Explain, please.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Exactly.
Pretty much all of our angst about the Law disappears when we read the Sermon on the Mount and recognize that Jesus is not abolishing the Law, but giving us an entirely different relationship to the Law. We see that the Law isn't some onerous burdensome set of rules that we have to measure up to, the Law is a snapshot of life in the Kingdom-- a life that is better, fuller, more loving and compassionate.
quote:Do you really think it's a coincidence that viyella is an anagram of 'lay evil'?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:So life is better and fuller if we eschew mixed fiber garments? Explain, please.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Exactly.
Pretty much all of our angst about the Law disappears when we read the Sermon on the Mount and recognize that Jesus is not abolishing the Law, but giving us an entirely different relationship to the Law. We see that the Law isn't some onerous burdensome set of rules that we have to measure up to, the Law is a snapshot of life in the Kingdom-- a life that is better, fuller, more loving and compassionate.
quote:That would be an example of looking at the Law as a set of rules we have to measure up to.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:So life is better and fuller if we eschew mixed fiber garments? Explain, please.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Exactly.
Pretty much all of our angst about the Law disappears when we read the Sermon on the Mount and recognize that Jesus is not abolishing the Law, but giving us an entirely different relationship to the Law. We see that the Law isn't some onerous burdensome set of rules that we have to measure up to, the Law is a snapshot of life in the Kingdom-- a life that is better, fuller, more loving and compassionate.
quote:Not necessarily. One could just as easily take your suggested tactic of wanting to only wear single fiber garments. Regardless of motive, the question still remains how "life . . . is better, fuller, more loving and compassionate" through avoiding mixed fiber clothing?
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:That would be an example of looking at the Law as a set of rules we have to measure up to.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:So life is better and fuller if we eschew mixed fiber garments? Explain, please.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Exactly.
Pretty much all of our angst about the Law disappears when we read the Sermon on the Mount and recognize that Jesus is not abolishing the Law, but giving us an entirely different relationship to the Law. We see that the Law isn't some onerous burdensome set of rules that we have to measure up to, the Law is a snapshot of life in the Kingdom-- a life that is better, fuller, more loving and compassionate.
quote:When did I suggest wanting to only wear single fiber garments?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Not necessarily. One could just as easily take your suggested tactic of wanting to only wear single fiber garments. Regardless of motive, the question still remains how "life . . . is better, fuller, more loving and compassionate" through avoiding mixed fiber clothing?
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:That would be an example of looking at the Law as a set of rules we have to measure up to.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:So life is better and fuller if we eschew mixed fiber garments? Explain, please.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Exactly.
Pretty much all of our angst about the Law disappears when we read the Sermon on the Mount and recognize that Jesus is not abolishing the Law, but giving us an entirely different relationship to the Law. We see that the Law isn't some onerous burdensome set of rules that we have to measure up to, the Law is a snapshot of life in the Kingdom-- a life that is better, fuller, more loving and compassionate.
quote:That's not really a distinction that can found in the law, only something that can be imposed upon it post facto from an external perspective.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
When did I suggest wanting to only wear single fiber garments?
As with most everyone here, I do see a distinction between the "purity code" and the moral law, although drawing the line between the two is easier in some place than in others. Fortunately, the mixed-fiber thing is one of the easier places. Jesus' rubric from the sermon on the mount seems to be addressing primarily the moral law-- and, to the OP, the 10 commandments in particular.
quote:In other words, is there any standard by which to distinguish between the "purity code" and the "moral code" beyond "stuff I don't want to bother with" and "stuff I want others to obey"?
But the problem is that this distinction between ceremonial and moral law in Leviticus isn’t actually a thing. It doesn’t come from Leviticus, but can only be retroactively imposed back onto it. And the text itself doesn’t welcome such an imposition.
The people who first wrote and compiled and read the Hebrew scriptures didn’t make such a distinction. Nor did first-century Jews, such as Jesus and Paul. The categories of “clean” and “unclean” in the Hebrew scriptures don’t really allow for this distinction either. It won’t let us treat those categories as merely “ceremonial” and somehow divorced from the matter of morality.
quote:Agreed. That's what I meant when I said "although drawing the line between the two is easier in some place than in others."
Originally posted by Crœsos:
But the problem is that this distinction between ceremonial and moral law in Leviticus isn’t actually a thing. It doesn’t come from Leviticus, but can only be retroactively imposed back onto it. And the text itself doesn’t welcome such an imposition.
...In other words, is there any standard by which to distinguish between the "purity code" and the "moral code" beyond "stuff I don't want to bother with" and "stuff I want others to obey"?
quote:The OT specifically mentions wool and linen. They shrink at significantly different rates. Yes you'd have been happier with single fiber garments, unless you ostentatiously wore an item of clothing only until it's first washing!
Originally posted by Crœsos:
So life is better and fuller if we eschew mixed fiber garments? Explain, please.
quote:It appears alongside a whole bunch of other rules that seem to be sort of the Sesame Street principle, "one of these things is not like the other, one of these things does not belong." iow, keeping things "pure"-- which is why it's often called the "purity code." It seems to have symbolized something to Israel that reflected metaphorically their purity-- i.e. not mixing worship of Yahweh with Baal, etc.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
The only thing puzzling about the prohibition is why it had to be said in an era when everyone knew you don't mix fibers to make an item that will be washed! I wonder if this, like plowing with two very different animals, was not intended as "news" or "a rule you didn't need to keep before but now you do" but instead reminders, examples, pointing to some spiritual principle -- the same principle Paul is assuming in "don't be yoked with an unbeliever." I'll have to do some pondering about the underlying principle.
quote:Interesting! I haven't heard of it and had to look it up.
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
What of the old fabric linsey-woolsey, a mix of linen and wool?
quote:You understand correctly that I mean "legal" in the sense of a divine moral commandment that must be obeyed, not in the sense of a civil law, but you misunderstand me when you suppose that I myself believe that the Ten Commandments ought to be understood that way. I agree with your criticisms of the legal model, but I nevertheless observe that many other Christians do seem to understand them that way. (Look, for example, at the recent controversy over installing and then removing a monument to the Ten Commandments on the Oklahoma state capitol lawn.) I am asking why they do, and what their theological reasoning is for distinguishing the Mosaic commandments that can safely be disregarded from those that remain sacred obligations. I suppose the question can also be asked from the opposite perspective: if the legal model is invalid per se for Christians, whose relationship with God no longer operates under that model (if indeed it ever did), why do so many Christians nevertheless still venerate some of the old laws, and how do they choose which to honor and which to ignore?
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:Okay, here's where I'm not understanding you, I think. What precisely do you mean by "binding legal obligations"?
But the issue I am struggling with is why, if Jesus ushered in a "new covenant" based in grace rather than transactional obedience, so many Christians still observe the Ten Commandments as if they were not merely wise and practical ethical principles but binding legal obligations, when they freely dismiss nearly all the other 600+ Jewish commandments as lapsed.
You could be referring to "legal" as in "this-world legal," i.e. government, but I doubt that. I think you are referring to God's dealings with people, not government (even theocratic) dealings with people.
In that case, it seems to me that you are taking the whole subject of God's relationship to people and reducing it to a purely legal model--as opposed to (say) a parent-child model, a master-servant model, or a creator-creature model.
IMHO that is a mistake. ...
In this case, it seems to me that you are taking the legal model (God as lawgiver and judge; we as the people who must keep the law and who will be punished if we do not) and taking that to be the whole truth about Christianity. Which is not true. You're wondering why so many Christians treasure and obey the Ten Commandments while ignoring the rest. It makes no sense to you in terms of your legal model, because of course, in THAT model, ALL laws must be obeyed. One does not pick and choose. There is no basis for picking and choosing within the legal model. So this behavior is incomprehensible to you.
quote:Belle, I can save you some time, maybe. It's an acted-out metaphor for not mixing religions (i.e. idolatry). The not-so-subtle message here and in the bits about planting one crop by itself, etc. etc. is "stick to one God." Or as James puts it, Don't be double-minded.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
The only thing puzzling about the prohibition is why it had to be said in an era when everyone knew you don't mix fibers to make an item that will be washed! I wonder if this, like plowing with two very different animals, was not intended as "news" or "a rule you didn't need to keep before but now you do" but instead reminders, examples, pointing to some spiritual principle -- the same principle Paul is assuming in "don't be yoked with an unbeliever." I'll have to do some pondering about the underlying principle.
quote:You and I are often on the same page, but this time I beat you to the keyboard.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:Belle, I can save you some time, maybe. It's an acted-out metaphor for not mixing religions (i.e. idolatry). The not-so-subtle message here and in the bits about planting one crop by itself, etc. etc. is "stick to one God." Or as James puts it, Don't be double-minded.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
The only thing puzzling about the prohibition is why it had to be said in an era when everyone knew you don't mix fibers to make an item that will be washed! I wonder if this, like plowing with two very different animals, was not intended as "news" or "a rule you didn't need to keep before but now you do" but instead reminders, examples, pointing to some spiritual principle -- the same principle Paul is assuming in "don't be yoked with an unbeliever." I'll have to do some pondering about the underlying principle.
ETA: Oops, I see now Cliffdweller got to it first!
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quote:I suspect that the amount of wool that was obtained from each sheep was far less than it is nowadays. Many centuries of selective breeding have improved the quality of fleeces.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer
Did Moses' people have plenty of wool?
quote:Plenty is a relative term. In a culture that didn't need lots of new clothes every year to keep up with changing fashion (I'm making an assumption) not nearly as much wool per person was needed as would be used today in middle class west to clothe everyone in linen or wool.
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:I suspect that the amount of wool that was obtained from each sheep was far less than it is nowadays. Many centuries of selective breeding have improved the quality of fleeces.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer
Did Moses' people have plenty of wool?
Moo
quote:I get that, but would that be why Paul used the same metaphor to suggest don't marry an unbeliever?
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:Belle, I can save you some time, maybe. It's an acted-out metaphor for not mixing religions (i.e. idolatry). The not-so-subtle message here and in the bits about planting one crop by itself, etc. etc. is "stick to one God." Or as James puts it, Don't be double-minded.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
The only thing puzzling about the prohibition is why it had to be said in an era when everyone knew you don't mix fibers to make an item that will be washed! I wonder if this, like plowing with two very different animals, was not intended as "news" or "a rule you didn't need to keep before but now you do" but instead reminders, examples, pointing to some spiritual principle -- the same principle Paul is assuming in "don't be yoked with an unbeliever." I'll have to do some pondering about the underlying principle.
ETA: Oops, I see now Cliffdweller got to it first!
quote:My problem with this "it's only a metaphor" explanation is that it seems to be applied unevenly and without any real consistency. For example, it could just as easily be argued that the prohibition against murder is just a symbolic way of acknowledging God's supremacy in all things, so actual murder is okay.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Belle, I can save you some time, maybe. It's an acted-out metaphor for not mixing religions (i.e. idolatry). The not-so-subtle message here and in the bits about planting one crop by itself, etc. etc. is "stick to one God." Or as James puts it, Don't be double-minded.
quote:Sure. But life-- and the Bible-- is like that. Some parts of the Bible are metaphorical and others are literal. Many parts of the Bible have been redacted (and Leviticus is very much redacted) in a way where the two are intertwined in ways that often mosh the two together.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:My problem with this "it's only a metaphor" explanation is that it seems to be applied unevenly and without any real consistency. For example, it could just as easily be argued that the prohibition against murder is just a symbolic way of acknowledging God's supremacy in all things, so actual murder is okay.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Belle, I can save you some time, maybe. It's an acted-out metaphor for not mixing religions (i.e. idolatry). The not-so-subtle message here and in the bits about planting one crop by itself, etc. etc. is "stick to one God." Or as James puts it, Don't be double-minded.
quote:Which is interesting since so many people claim that Christianity does provide a moral code. In fact, that's often one of its chief "selling points"; that it allows you to discern between right and wrong.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Sure. But life-- and the Bible-- is like that. Some parts of the Bible are metaphorical and others are literal. Many parts of the Bible have been redacted (and Leviticus is very much redacted) in a way where the two are intertwined in ways that often mosh the two together.
It's only a problem if, again, you think of the Law as a set of rules that must be adhered to in order to avoid some sort of divine punishment or to garner some sort of reward. Then you're worried you'll "get it wrong" and end up in Big Trouble. But if you understand Jesus as teaching us a new relationship to the Law-- and understanding that the Law is about understanding the heart of God and living a life that is the best possible life for you-- it makes sense. This isn't rules, this isn't a penal code, this is about a relationship. And relationships are dynamic, they are intuitive, they are responsive.
quote:How about torture/murder being wrong outside of Christian (or any other religious) teaching? We don't need our faith to give us a good and right moral code, we simply need our humanity!
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Now a lot of people would say "serial torture-murder is incompatible with Christianity", but hey, it isn't about rules, it's a dynamic and intuitive relationship. So if Mr. Rader's intuition says God wants him to kill people* for his own perverse gratification, that's perfectly in line with Christian teaching, right?
quote:Well, yes. As I noted earlier most civilizations seem to be able to come up with this rule without direct divine revelation, and tend to regard it as non-metaphorical. Some on this thread, though, seem to have a problem with that.
Originally posted by Boogie:
How about torture/murder being wrong outside of Christian (or any other religious) teaching? We don't need our faith to give us a good and right moral code, we simply need our humanity!
quote:People don't seem to be very good at not murdering each other - it's an inherent thing. That's the point - humanity is inherently wrong and broken.
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:How about torture/murder being wrong outside of Christian (or any other religious) teaching? We don't need our faith to give us a good and right moral code, we simply need our humanity!
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Now a lot of people would say "serial torture-murder is incompatible with Christianity", but hey, it isn't about rules, it's a dynamic and intuitive relationship. So if Mr. Rader's intuition says God wants him to kill people* for his own perverse gratification, that's perfectly in line with Christian teaching, right?
quote:I never said Christianity has no moral code. Indeed, I would suggest the Sermon on the Mount is raising the bar, not lowering it. But it's not about rigid rules but a heart transformed heart from which the acts of the law naturally flow. It's not about being "good enough" to earn God's love or avoid God's wrath, but about living the life we were created for.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Which is interesting since so many people claim that Christianity does provide a moral code. In fact, that's often one of its chief "selling points"; that it allows you to discern between right and wrong.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Sure. But life-- and the Bible-- is like that. Some parts of the Bible are metaphorical and others are literal. Many parts of the Bible have been redacted (and Leviticus is very much redacted) in a way where the two are intertwined in ways that often mosh the two together.
It's only a problem if, again, you think of the Law as a set of rules that must be adhered to in order to avoid some sort of divine punishment or to garner some sort of reward. Then you're worried you'll "get it wrong" and end up in Big Trouble. But if you understand Jesus as teaching us a new relationship to the Law-- and understanding that the Law is about understanding the heart of God and living a life that is the best possible life for you-- it makes sense. This isn't rules, this isn't a penal code, this is about a relationship. And relationships are dynamic, they are intuitive, they are responsive.
Take, for example, the BTK killer. A good Christian man and president of his church council. Now a lot of people would say "serial torture-murder is incompatible with Christianity", but hey, it isn't about rules, it's a dynamic and intuitive relationship. So if Mr. Rader's intuition says God wants him to kill people* for his own perverse gratification, that's perfectly in line with Christian teaching, right?
--------------------
*Hypothetical. There's no indication the BTK killer thought he was receiving instructions from God.
quote:??? Who exactly has had a problem with that??? I haven't seen anyone on this thread arguing that "do not murder" or any of the 10 commandments is metaphorical. Nor have I seen anyone have a problem with other cultures having similar rules/laws. As many have argued here, if we are correct in our understanding of the purpose, intent and origin of the 10 commandments, this is precisely what we would expect to see-- because of this:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Well, yes. As I noted earlier most civilizations seem to be able to come up with this rule without direct divine revelation, and tend to regard it as non-metaphorical. Some on this thread, though, seem to have a problem with that.
Originally posted by Boogie:
How about torture/murder being wrong outside of Christian (or any other religious) teaching? We don't need our faith to give us a good and right moral code, we simply need our humanity!
quote:
Originally posted by Pomona:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Boogie:
[qb] People don't seem to be very good at not murdering each other - it's an inherent thing. That's the point - humanity is inherently wrong and broken.
quote:That's not what I said. I said that we don't need religion to know that it's wrong!
Originally posted by Pomona:
People don't seem to be very good at not murdering each other - it's an inherent thing. That's the point - humanity is inherently wrong and broken.
quote:Metaphors are out there for public use. Paul could easily pick up a metaphor like this one without even thinking about its previous uses in other contexts, or caring. In his case he's appealing to the unwieldiness of trying to double-yoke two animals of different height, strength, and shape. It's a different use of the image than the OT use.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I get that, but would that be why Paul used the same metaphor to suggest don't marry an unbeliever?
quote:Indeed, the NT does this in it's use of the OT all the time. It's worth remembering that the NT is not a seminary exegetical paper on the OT-- it is it's own text with it's own intent and purpose, written long before we came up with the "historical-grammatical method of biblical hermeneutics." Which is not carte blanche for us to rip OT texts out of context, but does mean we shouldn't expect the NT writers to be using the texts in the same way the OT authors intended.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:Metaphors are out there for public use. Paul could easily pick up a metaphor like this one without even thinking about its previous uses in other contexts, or caring.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
I get that, but would that be why Paul used the same metaphor to suggest don't marry an unbeliever?
quote:Yes, a sort of enacted metaphor. In some ways, perhaps similar to the sacraments-- a visible sign of an invisible grace (to use Reformed terminology).
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And for what it's worth in general, the OT use was NOT just a metaphor. They really were supposed to avoid wearing mixed garments, planting mixed crops, and so forth. I suspect the reason for this was to try to ram home the basic principle "no mixing" into their culture, by making them literally act it out in several areas of life.
quote:That's been your point repeatedly, that the Law (including the Ten Commandments) aren't to be treated as "a set of rules", but rather a sort of extended metaphor to guide our "dynamic", "intuitive", "responsive" relationship with the Christian deity.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:??? Who exactly has had a problem with that??? I haven't seen anyone on this thread arguing that "do not murder" or any of the 10 commandments is metaphorical.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Well, yes. As I noted earlier most civilizations seem to be able to come up with this rule without direct divine revelation, and tend to regard it as non-metaphorical. Some on this thread, though, seem to have a problem with that.
Originally posted by Boogie:
How about torture/murder being wrong outside of Christian (or any other religious) teaching? We don't need our faith to give us a good and right moral code, we simply need our humanity!
quote:You said we just need our humanity to tell us not to murder - but clearly that's not enough. Atheists seem just as good at killing people.
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:That's not what I said. I said that we don't need religion to know that it's wrong!
Originally posted by Pomona:
People don't seem to be very good at not murdering each other - it's an inherent thing. That's the point - humanity is inherently wrong and broken.
quote:You're moshing two things together here and not following the argument. I did and do assert that the Law, including the 10 commandments is not meant to be rules that we follow in order to be good enough to earn God's love or avoid God's wrath, but rather the outgrowth of a transformed heart from which the acts of the Law naturally flow. That is NOT the same thing as saying the Law is a metaphor. The only aspects of the Law I have said were metaphor (or rather, enacted metaphor-- see Lamb's post) is the "purity code". "Do not murder" is NOT part of the purity code-- it's not a metaphor. God expects us to literally not murder each other. And yet, as we see in the Sermon on the Mount, we need more than that-- as evidenced by the fact that, despite the fact that most every nation and group of people agree that murder is bad, we still kill each other at alarming rates. So Jesus talks in the Sermon on the Mount about the transformed heart that makes this possible-- by telling us that we need to go beyond just saying "I hate this guy but I won't kill him" to stop the hatred which leads to contempt which leads to dehumanization which allows us to contemplate murder.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:That's been your point repeatedly, that the Law (including the Ten Commandments) aren't to be treated as "a set of rules", but rather a sort of extended metaphor to guide our "dynamic", "intuitive", "responsive" relationship with the Christian deity.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:??? Who exactly has had a problem with that??? I haven't seen anyone on this thread arguing that "do not murder" or any of the 10 commandments is metaphorical.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Well, yes. As I noted earlier most civilizations seem to be able to come up with this rule without direct divine revelation, and tend to regard it as non-metaphorical. Some on this thread, though, seem to have a problem with that.
Originally posted by Boogie:
How about torture/murder being wrong outside of Christian (or any other religious) teaching? We don't need our faith to give us a good and right moral code, we simply need our humanity!
quote:Depends on what you mean by "religion." if you're thinking of something external that is imposed on people by outside teachers, yeah. But a lot of people would class the innate moral understanding people are (mostly) born with as part of religion--in the case of Christianity, we call that the moral law written on human hearts by God, and precisely FOR that reason we are not the least bit surprised when it turns up around the world, in various cultures and religious contexts, including among people who call themselves entirely atheistic. We would in fact be surprised if it did NOT turn up so. To find a human culture that was wholly lacking in the basic moral law would call the basic presuppositions of Christianity into question.
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:That's not what I said. I said that we don't need religion to know that it's wrong!
Originally posted by Pomona:
People don't seem to be very good at not murdering each other - it's an inherent thing. That's the point - humanity is inherently wrong and broken.
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
quote:This distinction between purity and morality is not one that can be found either the First Testament or the teachings of Jesus, who often stressed the unity of the Law rather than the partition of it. Given that murderers were held to be "unclean", how does the Biblical prohibition on murder not fall under the purity code? I'm trying to understand how you're making this distinction. Is it anything more than personal preference?
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The only aspects of the Law I have said were metaphor (or rather, enacted metaphor-- see Lamb's post) is the "purity code". "Do not murder" is NOT part of the purity code-- it's not a metaphor. God expects us to literally not murder each other.
quote:We already discussed this upthread. You might disagree, but both Lamb and I have offered our opinion.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:This distinction between purity and morality is not one that can be found either the First Testament or the teachings of Jesus, who often stressed the unity of the Law rather than the partition of it. Given that murderers were held to be "unclean", how does the Biblical prohibition on murder not fall under the purity code? I'm trying to understand how you're making this distinction. Is it anything more than personal preference?
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The only aspects of the Law I have said were metaphor (or rather, enacted metaphor-- see Lamb's post) is the "purity code". "Do not murder" is NOT part of the purity code-- it's not a metaphor. God expects us to literally not murder each other.
quote:So something like sexism and male dominance is moral, since it's a human universal (at least until these more secular times) and backed up by Biblical teaching, but monotheism part of the "purity code", since it's something "given for a particular group of people at a certain time" and can be ignored these days?
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And before someone starts with me, no, I am not saying that God has written the law against wearing linsey-woolsey on human hearts. I DO believe in the distinction between the moral and ceremonial laws, and one of the distinguishing marks is precisely this one--that ceremonial laws were given for a particular group of people at a certain time, and were not ever human universals.
quote:See my last paragraph above. Monotheism is part of the 10 commandments-- 4 out of the 10. The purity code is an enacted metaphor to remind Israel of it's importance.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:So something like sexism and male dominance is moral, since it's a human universal (at least until these more secular times) and backed up by Biblical teaching, but monotheism part of the "purity code", since it's something "given for a particular group of people at a certain time" and can be ignored these days?
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And before someone starts with me, no, I am not saying that God has written the law against wearing linsey-woolsey on human hearts. I DO believe in the distinction between the moral and ceremonial laws, and one of the distinguishing marks is precisely this one--that ceremonial laws were given for a particular group of people at a certain time, and were not ever human universals.
quote:Only one out of the ten, surely? There's nothing inherently monotheistic about having a day of rest, not taking your deity's name(s) "in vain", or not using graven images as part of your worship practices.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:See my last paragraph above. Monotheism is part of the 10 commandments-- 4 out of the 10. The purity code is an enacted metaphor to remind Israel of it's importance.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
So something like sexism and male dominance is moral, since it's a human universal (at least until these more secular times) and backed up by Biblical teaching, but monotheism part of the "purity code", since it's something "given for a particular group of people at a certain time" and can be ignored these days?
quote:Again, this seems to be a lot of words to simply state "the stuff I agree with is part of the 'moral code' and the stuff I don't like is part of the 'purity code' and can be ignored". If there's a consistent hermeneutic beyond this, I don't see it.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
In terms of patriarchy (as well as racism and slavery) many have argued looking at the trajectory of revelation-- which way is it heading-- recognizing that God accommodates himself to where we are at any point in time. Just as individually God does not expect us to transform into perfect, loving creatures overnight but works slowly and steadily over time, so God works in cultures, slowly and steadily transforming them as we/they cooperate with the work of the Spirit. If this sounds like "progressive revelation" then, yeah, to some extent it is. Again, something we all believe in to a greater or lesser degree but parsed out explicitly to help us live it out more thoughtfully and intentionally w/o simply dismissing all that came before as irrelevant.
quote:(shrugs) possibly. The alternative being a rigid, wooden ethics that is all about following rules-- which seems to be precisely what Jesus was preaching against.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Again, this seems to be a lot of words to simply state "the stuff I agree with is part of the 'moral code' and the stuff I don't like is part of the 'purity code' and can be ignored". If there's a consistent hermeneutic beyond this, I don't see it.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
In terms of patriarchy (as well as racism and slavery) many have argued looking at the trajectory of revelation-- which way is it heading-- recognizing that God accommodates himself to where we are at any point in time. Just as individually God does not expect us to transform into perfect, loving creatures overnight but works slowly and steadily over time, so God works in cultures, slowly and steadily transforming them as we/they cooperate with the work of the Spirit. If this sounds like "progressive revelation" then, yeah, to some extent it is. Again, something we all believe in to a greater or lesser degree but parsed out explicitly to help us live it out more thoughtfully and intentionally w/o simply dismissing all that came before as irrelevant.
quote:If the test is whether any specific law of Moses expresses a universal moral code or merely a lapsed ceremonial protocol, I'll observe that the Ten Commandments include requirements about idolatry and keeping the Sabbath, which seem ceremonial and specific, rather than part of a wider moral sensibility that is shared even beyond the religio-cultural descendants of Moses.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[
And before someone starts with me, no, I am not saying that God has written the law against wearing linsey-woolsey on human hearts. I DO believe in the distinction between the moral and ceremonial laws, and one of the distinguishing marks is precisely this one--that ceremonial laws were given for a particular group of people at a certain time, and were not ever human universals.
quote:Yes, that's an explanation - perfectly valid. But it's explaining what's already there imo, rather than the other way round. Whatever the reason (most) humans have an excellent sense of right and wrong, whether they stick to it or not. Where it comes from depends on your worldview.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Depends on what you mean by "religion." if you're thinking of something external that is imposed on people by outside teachers, yeah. But a lot of people would class the innate moral understanding people are (mostly) born with as part of religion--in the case of Christianity, we call that the moral law written on human hearts by God, and precisely FOR that reason we are not the least bit surprised when it turns up around the world, in various cultures and religious contexts, including among people who call themselves entirely atheistic.
quote:That's close to what I'm saying (and I acknowledge that any place it falls short is due to my own inadequacies in expressing what is clearly and evolving and not-fully-formed position). I wouldn't articulate it as arguing between obsolete and not-obsolete, although that may be the practical end result. I'm arguing between the 10 commandments (and other laws that parse that out) and the purity code. I would say the 10 commandments are a universal moral code (so, yeah, "not obsolete")-- the overall ethic of the OT, reaffirmed and summarized by Jesus in "love God, love people." I would agree with Lamb that the purity code is "enacted metaphor"-- a way of living out in a literal way the more abstract truth of the 1st commandment. All of which are to be lived out not as wooden rules to measure up to but as a transformed heart from which these are the natural outgrowth. As such "obsolete/not obsolete" is not a very helpful paradigm, but rather overall principle/heart attitude/universal principle vs. enacted metaphor/one particular living out of a universal principle. And again agreeing that that's going to be very messy and not as neat and clean and consistent as we might like-- because that is what real life and ethics in particular is like.
Originally posted by fausto:
Cliffdweller seems to be arguing that the division is not between ceremony and a uinversal moral sensibility, but between obsolete or no-longer-meaningful-or necessary ceremony and the spirit of the Law as interpreted by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and that it is a transformed heart that allows one to know the distinction.y?
quote:Again, ceremonial would be your term not mine-- I'm using "purity code". Jesus doesn't need to comment on every law because that's not his purpose. Again, he's not trying to set out a rigid wooden set of rules-- "this one applies, that one's obsolete". He's setting out a different approach to the Law. And so to a large degree it's on us to look at the commandments re disobedient sons and determine what that looks like in the larger context of "love God, love others."
Originally posted by fausto:
That sounds incomplete or insufficent to me, though, because Jesus did not comment on every non-ceremonial law. (Deuteronomy 21 includes the commandment to stone disobedient sons. That's not ceremonial; it's an elaboration of the 5th -- or 4th, depending on who's counting -- Commandment. Similarly, a lot of the food-related laws seem to have originally served pragmatic rather than ceremonial purposes.)
quote:I am not arguing at all for a "broader antinomianism". I don't see Jesus doing that in the sermon on the mount-- quite the contrary he is in almost every case raising, not lowering, the bar. He is saying, for example, it's not just good enough to avoid murder, you have to avoid hate-- the heart attitude that precedes murder. It's not just good enough to avoid adultery, you have to avoid lust-- the heart attitude that precedes adultery. That is NOT "antinomianism" but it IS a shift from external obedience to inner transformation.
Originally posted by fausto:
But if it's an argument for a broader antinomianism than Jesus articulated in the Sermon on the Mount, how is that different theologically from applying a test of the practical utility of each law, or a test of whether the law expresses a more universal innate morality?
quote:Idolatry is the absolute heart of the moral law, though non-Abrahamic believers may recognize it better under the heads of "loyalty," "faithfulness," "unselfishness," and "getting your priorities straight."
Originally posted by fausto:
If the test is whether any specific law of Moses expresses a universal moral code or merely a lapsed ceremonial protocol, I'll observe that the Ten Commandments include requirements about idolatry and keeping the Sabbath, which seem ceremonial and specific, rather than part of a wider moral sensibility that is shared even beyond the religio-cultural descendants of Moses.
quote:Seems like another example of "idolatry creep", where the prohibition against the use of graven images in worship is abstracted to such a level that it's described in generic and unrelated terms like "faithfulness" and "unselfishness". Again, the level of abstraction when interpreting the Ten Commandments seems highly variable. Commandments against murder are considered to be literally about murder, while commandments against the use of graven images in worship are really some metaphor about being unselfish.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:Idolatry is the absolute heart of the moral law, though non-Abrahamic believers may recognize it better under the heads of "loyalty," "faithfulness," "unselfishness," and "getting your priorities straight."
Originally posted by fausto:
If the test is whether any specific law of Moses expresses a universal moral code or merely a lapsed ceremonial protocol, I'll observe that the Ten Commandments include requirements about idolatry and keeping the Sabbath, which seem ceremonial and specific, rather than part of a wider moral sensibility that is shared even beyond the religio-cultural descendants of Moses.
quote:No, in both cases, the commandment is expanded to get to the heart of the matter (inner transformation) and not just outward obedience. I don't think anyone imagines that when Jesus says that it's not just "don't murder" that's important, but rather "don't hate" that he means that we don't have to worry about literal murder. I'm quite sure he wants us to avoid literal murder. But he also wants us to focus on the heart transformation which makes murder impossible-- thinking of others w/o the hatred & condemnation which leads to dehumanization which leads to murder.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Seems like another example of "idolatry creep", where the prohibition against the use of graven images in worship is abstracted to such a level that it's described in generic and unrelated terms like "faithfulness" and "unselfishness". Again, the level of abstraction when interpreting the Ten Commandments seems highly variable. Commandments against murder are considered to be literally about murder, while commandments against the use of graven images in worship are really some metaphor about being unselfish.
quote:Yes. But it also makes it impossible to figure out what Jesus was getting at in the sermon on the mount then.
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
This approach eliminates as irrelevant any distinction between moral law, ceremonial law, metaphorical law, health and safety law, etc when considering what parts of the OT law apply to Christians today.
quote:That is essentially the theory adopted at the Council of Jerusalem, although they specifically required Gentiles to obey three rules about food and one about sex and didn't specifically mention the Summary of the Law (which they may have not needed to recite specifically because everyone already took it for granted).
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
A Jewish friend once told me God gave the OT law to the Jews. It is the job of Jews to keep this law. It is not anyone else's job. Non-Jews should keep whatever law God specified to them, not ignore that law to imitate the Jews.
By that theory, we are not Jews and therefore none of the ten commandments apply to us; what DOES apply is the two-part law Jesus gave his followers: "Love God, and love neighbor as self."
quote:I think this is the unexamined supposition of many lay Christians, especially those who have been taught New Covenant theology in childhood. But many of them nevertheless also resort to legalistic interpretations of the Pentateuch on select topics -- not just the 10 C's, but often some social or political controversy du jour like homosexuality. I guess what I'm digging for is to find out whether this is an unwitting contradiction or whether there are formal doctrinal premises in New Covenant theology that provide a basis for understanding just how much of the Jewish law is utterly lapsed, and how to recognize and understand how certain parts (and which parts) of the superseded Law remain relevant to Christians in some residual sense.
Of course, if you are loving neighbor as self, you can't do unloving things ranging from murder to being a jerk. But not because the 10C said so. The 10C are (by this approach) historical artifacts, irrelevant today. What matters to us is the law God gave us Jesus' followers - love.
quote:I think that's also the basis for the arguments of antinomian theologians like Anne Hutchinson. It essentially replaces the Law with personal moral intuition, which it attributes to the Holy Spirit. However, as the Pentecost story in Acts 2 illustrates, the HS speaks not to the entire Church in a single voice, but to every individual believer in his or her own tongue.
Coming from a different angle, Paul says we followers of Jesus are not under the law - he doesn't divide the law into ceremonial vs moral law to decide which bits to reject and which still apply. We are free from the old law, all of it. The rule for us now is love. And occasionally Paul lists behaviors he condemns - not for failing to meet the 10C, but for failing to fulfill (in his mind) the current law of love.
This approach eliminates as irrelevant any distinction between moral law, ceremonial law, metaphorical law, health and safety law, etc when considering what parts of the OT law apply to Christians today.
quote:As I see it, God intentionally divided human understanding at Babel, and spoke through the HS at Pentecost to each believer individually according to his or her individual capacity to understand. The diversity of human apprehension is divine will, while the longing for a towering edifice of uniform Truth is human folly.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[Pedant ON] Actually, the Acts 2 story shows the Holy Spirit speaking through believers in many tongues. Nothing is said about him having multiple messages to the church.
quote:I don't know about multiple messages, but I think the gift was more about comprehension than output.
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[Pedant ON] Actually, the Acts 2 story shows the Holy Spirit speaking through believers in many tongues. Nothing is said about him having multiple messages to the church.
quote:I hadn't thought about it before but in a subtle was perhaps there were different messages. Things can be said in one language for which there is no good translation into another language. Maybe that's part of why we all need each other, no one human language is capable of full expression, it takes them all? (And probably not even all human languages together can fully express God; but they get us started.)
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:The emphasis in Acts 2 is that people from all those different nations and regions all understood the speakers: "each of us hears them in our native language" (Acts 2:8).
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
[Pedant ON] Actually, the Acts 2 story shows the Holy Spirit speaking through believers in many tongues. Nothing is said about him having multiple messages to the church.
This is a reversal of the judgement in the OT, not only at Babel, but in Isaiah 28:11-13 where God says the people will be judged by hearing his message only as meaningless syllables.
