Purpose of the Law Study

As mentioned, I will be posting a series on the difficult subject of The Law. These posts will be a bit rambling—almost like notes I want to save as I read some books. I have to assemble them into a coherent Sunday School by next fall. Unless I am excommunicated first.

I thought I would start with the purpose of doing such a study. Let's begin with a familiar if unpleasant verse:

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. (Lev 20:13)

So, are you a hypocrite, or do you advocate the death penalty for practicing homosexuals?

This is the false dilemma that many atheists present to believers. If the atheist is loathsomely troll-like, he may even say something like this:

If you really want to see the most honest adapation (sic) of what the bible and Christianity really stands far if you follow the most literal interpretation of the bible, go to [Fred] Phelps.

The motivation of this line of, um, reasoning is not honest intellectual debate—the motivation is to portray Christianity in the worst possible light using the least possible effort. The atheist-troll's utter transparency defangs what he considers a killer argument. Nevertheless there are sincere versions of the question that must be addressed, for example: why do Christians keep the Ten Commandments yet wear blended cloth? (Lev 19:19)

It doesn't help that Christians have both unsatisfying responses to this question and inconsistent practices—or at least large loopholes.

An example of the former is the oft-repeated claim: The Old Testament has three types of laws: ceremonial, civil, and moral. The first two are null and void, but the third type remains in force. This sounds sublime (well, maybe) but suffers from at least two major flaws:

1. There is no such teaching in the bible—that there are three types of laws and two and only two are nullified.
   
   
2. It is arguable some laws that are readily jettisoned by most Christians, like the call for execution of homosexuals, are in fact moral in nature—the very type of law that is supposedly preserved from the Old Testament. So, again, are we hypocrites for ignoring them?

An example of the latter (inconsistent practices and loopholes) are churches that take a high view of Sunday-as-the-Sabbath: no restaurants, no yard work, etc. In my experience these churches, conservative as they are, always have a liberal "works of necessity" exclusion. You can't work on Sunday! Oh, it's a work of necessity! Why didn't you say so? Probing would generally reveal that "work of necessity" means "My schedule came out, and I am assigned a shift on Sunday."

Not to mention the number of times I have heard someone rationalize: but I like mowing the lawn, it's relaxing, so it's not really work, is it?

The purpose of this study is twofold. The first is to argue that the atheist does indeed present a false dilemma. That our choices are not limited to: executing homosexuals or being hypocrites. We have, it will be argued, a third option: to comprehend the fuller revelation of the law as presented not by God through Moses, but by God through his Son. As a metaphor (Apropos? You tell me. I think so) for the argument we will use the Transfiguration:

¹After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. ² There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. ³ Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. ⁴ Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. If you wish, I will put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” ⁵ While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Math 17:1-5)

Here we have personifications (not the right word—but you know what I mean) of the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) and the New Testament/New Covenant (Jesus.) God makes it clear which one is supreme: Listen to Him! 

When it comes to the law we have much to learn from Moses and Elijah. But ultimately, we listen to Him.

We will look for a solution to this dilemma by these very means: the superiority of the law as revealed by Jesus over that of Moses. Not as a denigration of Moses—but as an acknowledgment that God's revelation has always been progressive. The gospel first appears as the protogospel in Genesis 3:15. Throughout the Old Testament more is revealed—including the motif of the suffering servant. But the full revelation—the supreme revelation—required the incarnation of the Son of God. We acknowledge the supremacy of the fully revealed version of the gospel over the protogospel of Genesis and prophetic gospel of the bulk of the Old Testament. We evangelize with the gospel as revealed in the ministry of Jesus, not with Genesis 3:15.

The second purpose of this study is to show that Christians do not need inconsistent practices or loopholes. Spoiler: I will argue that it is perfectly fine to go to a restaurant on Sunday—or to mow the lawn.

I found this interesting table in the book All Old Testament Laws are Cancelled
by Greg Gibson. It list seven popular views and which laws they say must be
obeyed:

Popular Views
Orthodox Judaism	All OT and no NT Laws: 1) Decalogue 2) Temple 3) Priests, sacrifices, 4) State-Church Theocracy 5) Infant Members
Roman Catholicism	Some OT and all NT Laws: 1) Decalogue 2) Priests, sacrifices, 3) State-Church Theocracy 4) Infant Members 5) All NT Laws
Theocracy, Reformed Covenant Theology	Some OT and all NT Laws: 1) Decalogue 2) State-Church Theocracy 3) Infant Members 4) All NT Laws
Non-Theocracy, Reformed Covenant Theology	Some OT and all NT Laws: 1) Decalogue 2) Infant Members 3) All NT Laws
Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology	Some OT and all NT Laws: 1) Decalogue 2) All NT Laws
New Covenant Theology	No OT and all NT Laws: 1) All NT Laws
Antinomianism	No Laws

Some of it I disagree with, but nevertheless it is food for thought.

Link Cleaning

Upon resurrecting this blog, I have cleaned up links. My link policy has always been "mutual links," so I dropped all one-way links. If we are no longer linked, and you'd like to reestablish links, just drop me a line.

Returning with a series on "The Law".

I will resume blogging with a series on the law. This is in preparation for a Sunday School class on this topic that I will offer in the fall.

This is a difficult topic. It has been proposed, and I agree, that the three most vexing theological questions are:

1. The antinomy of God's sovereignty vs. Man's free will.
2. Eschatology.
3. The role of the Old Testament law in the life of the Christian living under the new covenant.

Of these, the third has the most practical impact. From the simple question of whether it is proper to mow the lawn on Sunday, to questions regarding the amount of political engagement we should accept.

America's greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, wrote

There is perhaps no part of divinity attended with so much intricacy, and wherein orthodox divines do so much differ as stating the precise agreement and difference between the two dispensations of Moses and Christ.

So very true.

One piece of advice I will surely give my class--advice that I think clarifies many (but certainly not all) passages, is to replace the phrase "The Law and the Prophets" or "The Law or the Prophets" with "The Old Testament." That is what those phrases refer to--the Old Testament before it was called the Old Testament.

For example when Jesus stated:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. (Matt. 5:17)

We read it, accurately and probably more clearly, this way:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Old Testament; I have not come to abolish it but to fulfill it.

Much more to come.

Parallelism in Experimental Nuclear Physics

At CNU, January 6th and 7th

Fundy Irony

It is no uncommon when examining the doctrinal statements of fundamentalist churches that both dispensational pre-trib premillennialism  (Left-Behind-ism) and Young Earth Creationism are both elevated to essentials.

Dispensationalism owes its popularity to C. I. Scofield who was a genius. A misguided genius, but nevertheless a genius. Scofield did something that was then novel. He published  his Scofield Reference Bible (1909, rev. 1917) in which he embedded his notes and extensive cross-referencing scheme--unambiguously written from a dispensational viewpoint, into the biblical text rather than in a separate commentary. Combined with the fact that his notes were written with an air of absolute authority left many believers with the impression that Scofield's commentary had been vetted by ages and sages.


So, back to the fundy churchs that demand fealty to both dispensationalism and YEC-ism.

What about the hero of dispensationalism, the undisputed heavyweight champion, C. I. Scofield? He needn't apply. Maybe the Methodists will take him. Why?

Because C. I. Scofield was an Old Earth Creationist.

It is interesting--dispensationalism is the only systematic theology developed in the scientific era. As such, Scofield was well aware of fact that geology teaches us that the earth is old. So he embedded a particular form of OEC into his notes: the gap theory. He taught of an unknowable (from scripture, at least) long period of time between the first verse of the bible and the second. When he picks it up in the second verse he sounds like a YEC--he taught literal 24-hour days and even included Bishop Usher's calculations (with the dreaded 4004 BC result) in his original notes. So many people think was a YEC. But he wasn't.

Even in the 1967  New Scofield Reference Bible (from which the Ussher chronology was purged) the notes in Genesis state that the age of the universe is unknowable from scripture.

Not funny and low class...

is no way to go through life, son.

Coyne the poet :

But sometimes even God falls down
And makes a poor pathetic clown:
Yes, poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make Behe.

Barf.

Coyne is one of those people who, every time he tries to make a joke--it just ends up making you cringe. If you want a witty new atheist, it's Hitchens, PZ, or nobody. On average they're a dire, humorless lot. You'd think they were Calvinists for crying out loud.

Remember when Uncommon Descent was worth visiting?

Ah—sweet nostalgia—a post on Uncommon Descent that harkens back to the good old days when Dembski would post Harold Camping-like prophetic utterings about the precise moment the ToE would die a thousand painful deaths. Or the "Brites" would provide hideous, amateurish, and sometimes grotesque photoshop caricatures. Or the famous Judge Jones Flash video with gastrointestinal sound effects. Sigh.  I could go on and on, but eventually the weight of nostalgia becomes overwhelming.

I don’t visit UD much anymore—it has become more or less irrelevant and, even worse,  boring. The site really misses the pugnacious DaveScot—without whom UD is not only devoid of scientific value, but it also lacks entertainment value—and I mean that as a genuine compliment to DaveScot. His often outrageous  posts and comments and internecine warfare  made UD one of my daily must stops—even long after I was banned.

But now—we have this gem of post by someone named GilDodgen (what is it with UD and conjoined bylines?) who who has a theory as to why his UD posts generate many comments:

My thesis is that people like me, a former materialist atheist, who have been influenced by logic, reason, and evidence (i.e., the ID movement) represent the greatest threat to the reigning nihilistic and anti-intellectual Darwinian orthodoxy.

Yes, I can see that. I can imagine Richard Dawkins experiencing bladder control problems just thinking about the threat named GilDodgen . 

 

Can you say "Street Theater?"

If we traded him for future considerations, I don't think we'll get much

I suppose that at least it's nice when the nut isn't an evangelical Protestant. Well, okay,  he once was a Protestant. But we shipped him off to he moved over to Rome. And make no mistake about it, Robert Sungenis is as nutty as a fruitcake.

He has organized the First Annual Catholic Conference on Geocentrism. That's right--not Young Earth Creationism, but geocentrism.

Don't worry about the weather--after all there is no Coriolis force.

I'm so glad I missed the Battle of Armageddon

According to Left-Behinders, the armies of the antichrist, no doubt knowing their ultimate fate (I mean, geez, everyone has read LeHaye and Jenkins) will nevertheless oblige prophecy and rage a final, spectacularly anticlimactic battle with a forgone result, the so-called Battle Of Armageddon.

Sorry. It ain’t gonna happen. Because it already did happen.

Armageddon is mentioned but once in the New Testament, in Rev 16:16:

Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. (Rev 16:16)

In his fine book Last Days Madness Gary DeMar¹ quotes a famous Left-Behind guru, the late John Walvoord, former President of Left Behind University, The Dallas Theological Seminary:

The prophets have described [The Battle of Armageddon] as the final suicide battle of a desperate world struggle centered in the Middle East.

I’m not sure what prophets he is referring to—but they are indeed prophets if from the vague Rev. 16:16: Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon they were able to discern the specifics of World War III.

DeMar offers an alternative for explanation of the Battle of Armageddon: It is the “Waterloo” for ancient Israel. I think he is correct. Of course, who can be sure about anything when it comes to Revelation?—but it smells right—especially in light of the book’s first verse:

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. (Rev 1:1)

Whatever the Battle of Armageddon is—the first verse of Revelation tells us that it is in the past, not the future.

In a nutshell, DeMar’s argument is that the Battle of Armageddon refers to the complete and devastating Roman response to the Jewish rebellion, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem, the desecration and conflagration of Temple, and the permanent end Jewish ceremonial worship.

John’s vision, according to DeMar, is a warning to Israel: you are about to meet your Waterloo.

Armageddon refers to a city, Megiddo. According to DeMar this city was ingrained in the collective minds of the Jews as a place where incurring God’s wrath was the price paid for Jewish disobedience:

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo. (2 Kings 23:29)

God told Josiah not to war with Egypt. Josiah disobeyed. DeMar quotes David Chilton concerning the consequences beyond the king's death:

Following Josiah's death, Judah's downward spiral into apostasy, destruction, and bondage was swift and irrevocable (2 Chronicles 36). The Jews mourned for Josiah's death, even down through the time of Ezra (see 2 Chronicles 35:25), and the prophet Zechariah uses this as an image of Israel's mourning for the Messiah.²

So the Battle of Armageddon is a stark warning that, at the time of John’s vision, bad times were a-coming, they were and coming soon. And indeed they did. Israel’s Waterloo was far more devastating than England’s Napoleon's—it was nothing less than a holocaust. More than a million Jews were killed. Hundreds of thousands were taken into Roman bondage. And the Jewish system of worship was destroyed, never to be restored again.

---

¹ Yes that Gary DeMar, ardent proponent of the non-bliblical, loony-tunes position of Christian Reconstructionism/Theonomy. It just goes to show that even nuts can recognize nuttiness. It especially grieves me that this particular brand of yahoos (the Presbyterian intellectual theonomists) tend to be postmillennialists and partial-preterists—both both perfectly reasonable eschatological views. Sigh.

² David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: an Exposition on the Book of Revelation, Dominion Press, 1987, 411-412.