AUDIO
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Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
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On Saturday, Mike Carlton criticised our Archbishop. Writing in his weekly column, he lampooned the Archbishop’s defense of school scripture classes. Carlton thinks it is ridiculous to hold the Bible up as an ethical guide for our children - after all, it tells you to execute people who work on Sunday, and other silly things like that.
Carlton is a perennial critic, so we might be tempted to ignore him. But his question is one that I see pop up time and again in the media. It’s essentially this - what is a Christian to do with the Old Testament law? Obey it? Apologise for it? Ignore it? This is not a new question, of course. It is actually the very oldest question that the Christian church has grappled with. Much of the New Testament concerns this question, and plenty more has been written on the subject since then.
So there are answers. But it seems that our answers have not penetrated the popular consciousness. You can point to the stubbornness or laziness of our critics, but I actually think we need to do a bit more work in this area, and to come up with a response that is easily digested and understood. Now there is a challenge for our apologists…
You can say that again!
It also codifies the ceremonial/civil/moral law distinction, which is a bit out of fashion these days, and is also a little bit hard to defend by exegesis.
Over time I've come to see that although there isn't a explicit distinction between "moral", "civil" and "ceremonial" laws in the OT, it is the only consistent way to understand it in the context of Biblical theology.
It gives us the best way of understanding Jesus' statements about the law (Mat 5:17, 23:23) without trying to wriggle out of them, and provides a good context into which Paul can say positive things about the use of the law like Romans 2:15, 7:12, Ephesians 6:1-3 (see also James 2:8-12).
Note also that the moral/civil/ceremonial distinctions aren't so much literal distinctions within the law, so much as categories which sum up the way that the Scriptures talk about the law.
Every Christian believes that the OT contains laws which are now abrogated (food laws, Sabbath laws, circumcision laws, theocratic laws) and laws which are continuing (love God, love your neighbour as yourself). Why is it improper to put the titles on them? I'd hope we are allowed to use words not found in the Bible to reflect Biblical concepts ;)
Perhaps because it's not a question that's really being asked. It's a flat-reading of scripture being used as a polemical attack. One of the reasons it's so hard to refute is because many opponents of Christianity simply don't care enough about understanding the Bible to intelligently engage with an appropriate answer. That, coupled with the fact that developing a reading strategy for the Old Testament that is centered on Christ and the Gospel is hard work, and by no means straightfoward when you get to minutiae of the Old Testament, means there is no easy, digestible answer, except perhaps to say that the non-Christian is forever fated to misread the Scriptures.
In the New Testament, the "pure" community is spiritual, not societal.
A slightly longer answer:
In the New Testament, the "pure" community is spiritual, not societal. That is, it exists in parallel with society, rather than being a society itself. Membership is therefore open to all who put their faith in Christ, rather than being "closed" by reference to particular social rules / sanctions.
It may be that we can't come up with an easily digestible, sound-biteable comeback. But if so, we might lose this little battle...
Oh, for sure. The major problem is that the distinction is not made explicit in Scripture, so it can come across as special pleading.
Q. Why do we insist on some bits of the Bible (e.g. no homosexual sex nor fornication no adultery), while ignoring large parts of the Old Testament law (e.g. the prawns and poly-cotton prohibitions!)?
Simplest answer
A. Because (most) Christians are not Jews!
Christians believe Jesus fulfilled all the requirements and hopes raised by the Old Testament Law of Moses. As such, we base our ethics not on the Old Testament but on the New Testament teaching of Jesus and his apostles.
It's very simple. Does the New Testament teach something as a moral imperative? Then Christians ought to heed it.
You may have heard the saying in Christian circles along the lines of "not being under law but grace". This is a short hand way of expressing the idea that Christians are ruled not by the Old Testament Law (whose moral elements we all fail in), but by the forgiving grace shown by Jesus Christ, especially in his sacrificial death for our moral and spiritual failures.
Jesus fulfilled the OT Law; both by obeying it perfectly, and by providing the perfect sacrifice it called for. And so we are now under his Grace, not the old Law, like we said earlier. So our ethics come from his teaching in the New Testament, although this often echoes what was said in the Old.
E.g., Jesus taught that the Old Testament food laws no longer applied (Mark 7:1-23, esp. v19). But he reaffirmed that marriage is between one man and one woman (heterosexual) for life, with the explicit alternative given being celibate singleness (Matthew 19:1-12).
Of course, we learn important background information, including on moral issues, from the Old Testament. But apart from the way Jesus fulfilled the law, we also realise the Old Testament Law in particular was delivered to the Jews, who were gathered as a socio-political entity at the time, as the people of God. Its laws could not apply directly to Christian believers who now come from all nations and are not gathered as a socio-political entity.
Even this more developed answer simplifies, but its aimed at a popular level.
"Because I'm not Jewish!"
Andrew Cameron's proposal (from the essay 'The Logic of Law on Exodus and Beyond' in Exploring Exodus), is:
I like the line about Carlton now deciding to read it literally. Maybe one response (if given the opportunity) would be to say "Oh, I wouldn't want to read the bible so literally as that. The Bible requires a more sophisticated response than that". This begs further explanation, and so you create some space.
Step 1: Create a series of categories based on artificial abstractions to explain why some precepts in the Scriptures need to be obeyed, while others can be routinely ignored.
Step 2: Rally around a particular issue and frame it in moral terms. Declare loudly that Christians have believed in "x" since time immemorial because the Bible is clear on the issue and that if Christians cave in to popular culture on "x", then society will collapse and the apocalypse will come upon us.
Step 3: Wait two generations, rallying against "-x" with progressively reducing intensity until "-x" becomes part of commonly accepted Christian culture.
Step 4: Disassociate and distance oneself from "x", stating that some Christians did once believe in "x", but that their reading of the Bible was obscured by the times that they were living in and that they were products of their culture.
Step 5: Repeat Step 2, ad infinitum.
Explaining it away under notions of purity doesn't resolve the issue, because we -- modern Christians -- would still judge such laws as immoral (or certainly unethical) today in any other context. Consider our reaction to Mid East Islamic regimes, for example.
Furthermore, combine this with the fact that the bible *doesn't* set up or anticipate modern, secular democracies focused on human rights, and consider the current climate with revelation of the indescribably evil, widespread child sex abuse scandals, and you can understand why ethics might seem more reasonable. The question is then, of course, whose ethics?
It really is a piece of rehashed rhetorical mooting. I would reverse the question: so does that mean we should not teach children that they shall not murder, that they shall not commit adultery, that they shall not covert? If they want to ignore everything the Bible has to say then start with the obvious stuff.
Well, Leviticus 20 would be the go-to place for laws that most people, Christian and non, would consider to be immoral. For example, if you put that chapter in the Koran, and asked Christian whether they thought it was moral, I don't think you'd get many positive responses. (An experiment where people are asked to consider OT passages as though they were Koranic, and vice versa, would have interesting results I'd imagine.)
For example, consider the recent case of a TV presenter in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to death by beheading for sorcery. (International outrage meant he will get a lighter sentence).
Most people would think that is intrinsically wrong, yet Leviticus 20 says "'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.' "" So, the secular objection is that a book attributing what is intrinsically wrong to a moral God is not a sound basis for ethics.
... today.
With that in mind, are you suggesting it is morally acceptable in some time and places to stone people to death for sorcery?
A few questions in reply and then my attempt at an answer.
1. Do we suppose that modern moral frameworks are always better than earlier ones? This is an assumption which should not go unchallenged. I think the picture is much more complex than either just better or just worse.
2. Are we always against the death penalty in the world today in all places and for all crimes? I have not seen the latest surveys, but even in Australia there's still a fair bit of support for the death penalty in certain circumstances. There was even de facto governmental support or at least assent for the execution of the Bali Bombers.
3. Are we in the modern West in a good position to know just how damaging the practice of sorcery is in other cultural situations? My information is limited, but I have heard that there can be terribly destructive fear caused and damage done by various magic practices, such that a society which decided to outlaw such practices might legitimately punish them.
So far I have tried to make this a non-religious response.
The OT mandated it in a number of circumstances for Israel gathered as a socio-political nation. As I trust the Lord Jesus, I believe his words which point me to the truth and authority of God's Word written in the Old Testament and so I believe those laws were right for Israel as a nation. The false religious practices of surrounding nations were incredibly damaging to Israel's relationship with God and to her moral purity.
However as previously indicated the law of Moses no longer mandates how Christians organise themselves scattered as we are among the nations. Nevertheless the NT recognises (Romans 13:1-7, esp. v4) the right of the secular state to bear the sword, which appears to refer not just to external military action, but to internal judicial punishment.
So my answer to Luke's question is yes - I think it was right at a certain time and place to have the death penalty for sorcery.
And in my previous post, I have given reasons why even those who do not share my presuppositions about the Bible should as least pause before assuming this is self-evidently wrong.
This booklet attempts to deal seriously with the fundamental question of how the Old Testament law is fulfilled in Christ and, therefore, how Christians should live today.
* On the orthodox Christian side, the logic runs from Jesus backwards, as you describe i.e. Jesus -> authority of God's words in OT -> OT laws ipso facto appropriate at the time.
* On the secular side, the logic runs from the OT forwards, i.e. stoning to death people for sorcery is wrong -> moral purity through that kind of killing is a contradiction in terms -> the OT, and much of what flows from it, is not a sound basis for modern ethical reasoning.
That's quite a gulf to bridge, and (to continue to play devil's advocate) I think if you accept stoning people to death for sorcery as ever being morally acceptable, there are several significant problems:
- By definition, Saudi Arabia beheading that man (if they had done so) for sorcery could be reasonable
- Burning witches at the stake (same thing) could also be reasonable in certain times & places
- Either way we judge it not acceptable today, and not with the bible's help, thus implicitly conceding the point
- We choose to respond to witchcraft/sorcery with education that it's a nonsense, but God took it so seriously he demanded death, therefore our framework is more effective than OT God's was, again conceding the point.
What do you think about those?
On the other hand, I would openly acknowledge we may have different starting points. And at that level, I would want to discuss the gospel of the Lord Jesus with them, as to put it in modern terms, I think Jesus is the best advertisement for the existence of God!
I return to my other question - where do you get your ethics from?
On your other question, I've been discussing the foundation of morality and ethics with a friend recently, and it's a thornier issue than it often appears. Most Christian rhetoric talks about absolute morality coming from God, but it's hard to escape the fact that:
- We have taken some issues further than the bible explicitly or implicitly does, eg slavery, women's rights, child brides, democracy, human rights, etc.
- We apply a level of nuance that's often not there in the text, i.e. a sort of meta-morality that has developed over the centuries, which, by definition of it needing to be developed, shows we apply reasoning beyond the bible
- God didn't dictate a universal set of morals that encompasses or anticipates the best part of what we have, or what we'll have in say the year 4000.
So the question of where we get our ethics from may involve the bible, but it certainly involves a whole lot more, so appeals to the bible alone or 'absolute morality' are inadequate imo. That said, I find the secular atheist position incredibly weak, reductionist, and unappealing so I'm not about to be arguing for that!
I just feel that we really have been quite lax in teaching (our own) people a more sophisticated way of understanding morality that isn't so easily shot down.
Regarding the death penalty for sorcerers, I'll make a couple of points. First, we don't really know much about what sorcery involved at the time, but it's possible it was really, really foul. Secondly, a nomadic people have very limited options when it comes to punishing crime. They can beat you, exile you, or execute you. Exile into the wilderness would often lead to death anyway, and a fairly wretched death at that...
So far, when it comes to difficult OT laws, it seems our response is that if we can imagine a scenario where the crime could be really bad, then as you say we can give God the benefit of the doubt. We're assuming the best, critics assume the worst, but I'd wager on some issues (like sorcery) it looks like our assumptions are a pretty big stretch, particularly in the context of other harsh laws (e.g. death for adulterers, homosexual acts, cursing parents... and that's just Leviticus 20.).
As I've mentioned, the issue of bias is very interesting to me here. Similar laws are still in effect in some Islamic regimes today, but I imagine most Christians would deem them immoral, inhumane, disproportionate and oppressive. However, we seem to give ancient Israelites a free pass for the same thing, and indeed think it was a matter or moral purity.
Not only that, we clearly don't practice the same system of law or morality today, so by definition we see it as deficient. So, as you asked, what should we do with it?
So, it may be that there was still room for grace in the community response to such conduct, just like there are "maximum punishments" in today's criminal law which are very rarely, if ever, meted out.
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html
Ps. I understand that each case is unique, and therefore it's impossible respond really effectively to a blog like this, but I'm interested to see what you think anyway.
I would consider that fairly "trivial" to explain. It only becomes hard to explain if you follow the non-Christian world view that a creator God doesn't have the right to destroy his creation.
Most of the complaints about the OT law are from cushioned Western elites who haven't even the faintest notion of the hand-to-mouth existence of bronze age societies. Penalties were universally harsh because a society couldn't afford to spend years in sentencing a criminal and even more years in warehousing them. It has absolutely nothing to do with those societies being "barbaric" and ours having a "better moral framework", it was simple economics.
The often completely misconstrued laws like "an eye for an eye" were amazingly compassionate limitations on the natural harshness of the justice systems of those societies.
Well, the situation is far worse than the author of that table realises - God is actually responsible for *all* human death that has ever occurred. Death was the penalty that He inflicted upon mankind in response to our rebellion.
God is man's creator - He is also man's judge. He gives life as an act of grace. He takes away life as an act of judgement. I doubt there is anything you can say to the author of that table. Like most human beings, he clearly hates the idea that God is judge.
Which modern scholarship are you referring to?
For myself, I don't especially like it when a preacher quotes directly from a commentary, or says something like, "Dr Fred Smith has this theory..." But I've known several preachers who, at the start of a series, will say, "Here are the books I used when I was putting this sermon series together."
I doubt anyone is trying to do that.
@Craig, sorry I should have added an (unintentionally), my bad. I would prefer that people say there are a range of views on an issue, and we believe x, due to abc, rather than just ignore any and all other views as though they don't exist, which I tend to resent as it's patronizing. I think the former approach encourages critical thinking and engagement, whereas the latter is just an invitation to turn your brain off.
Conversely, like most Christians, you clearly hate the idea that you are not the apple of some big eye in the sky.
We do not die because we were first "sinners". We "sin", in part, because we die. Our mortality is the spur for our selfishness. As for death per se, well, we die as all else in nature dies. Consciousness does not render us exempt. We begin; we end - like mites, beasts, storms, days, and suns. We rage against the "dying of the light". The way of things. We do not end because some cosmic manufacturer-magistrate is angry.
If stars had not died, we would not exist. Cessation => Becoming.
Why is it an instance of "rebellion" against the divine "judge" to be appalled by all those Rwanda-like massacres expressly commissioned by God in parts of the OT?
Why does the judge of all the earth exult in the violent passions he condemns in his creatures?
I never said they executed every criminal. But the punishments were harsh (the non-death ones tended to involve beatings and/or public embarrassment).
And "Western elites" is entirely appropriate. Pretty much everyone who owns property in the West is at the top of the world pyramid. And the people I see raising that issue most loudly are the ones who have never considered what they would do if they had a choice between toiling in a field to barely feed their family or starving due to the taxation required to run a modern justice system in the bronze age.
Western culture only has a "better moral framework" because we are rich enough to afford one.
Nonsense.
He does not. There is no delight in hurt for it's own sake. God is not cruel. When God inflicts a punishment, it is perfectly just.
But it's not uncommon, I believe, for criminals to believe that magistrates are out to get them, and that the whole system is really unjust.
Again, the issue isn't so much the death penalty, it's the 'crimes' that it is applied to. Church leaders in Uganda have been suggesting the death penalty for homosexuality recently (anyone know if there has been any Gafcon intervention in this, by the way?), and the question here is if it was appropriate then in ancient Israel (there wasn't much 'love the sinner, hate the sin' back then, it would seem), why is it not appropriate now? That is, have we developed a better moral framework for our judicial system, or should the OT standards be aspired to for all time? That's the choice -- trying to argue it was the height of moral purity then, but we have absolute no reason to aspire to it now seems bizarre, to me.
You are applying your framing to my word choice. I have a global perspective and to me "Western elites" refers to those who are elites from a global perspective and live in the West.
As has been said a few times here "Because (most) Christians are not Jews!". The NT is quite clear that we aren't to judge those outside the church, and the harshest punishment mentioned for sexual misconduct within the church is expulsion from the community. This is why I become rapid whenever some Christian politician starts acting like forcing people to obey moral laws will make them Christian.
Which shows you missed my point. It was a very good system for bronze age subsistence farmers. The law put limits on the harshness and cruelty of the systems that develop from people living in those conditions. "Eye for an eye" was a limitation on retribution so that the aggrieved party did not exact revenge out of proportion to the original offence. Now days we are filthy rich and taxes can support jailing a stupidly large percentage of the population for minor crime.
The point that they're not picked up in the NT is an interesting one, as I have mentioned. To say 'well it did change, so that's that' is beside the point. The question is why were these acts so immoral in God's eyes they justified death in the OT, but were so benign (?) by NT times (and our own) that, as you mention, the maximum punishment is expulsion from the church?
You can't have it both ways -- either these are intrinsically criminal acts, and remain so today (like murder, rape and theft) and therefore our laws are wrong, or they are not intrinsically criminal (especially not in a way that demands harsh sentences), and the ancient Israelites overstepped the mark.
I think the idea of the execution of homosexuals (as one example) in the Levitical laws is something many people, Christians and non, would have a problem with. Arguing that it is, in fact, an act of moral purity (!) would be quite a hard task, I imagine...
As is your claim that "Like most human beings, he clearly hates the idea that God is judge." Nonsense for nonsense. Goose and gander.
That's begging the question. Why is it ever "perfectly just" to, say, massacre children (as in Joshua's conquests)?
Craig, would you obey a God who required you and your people to massacre children? Would you cut their throats and be satisfied that justice was done?
Does not God delight in his justice being done? Canaanite children deserved to be butchered by Israelites, did they not? It was just and expedient and best practice for the times, no? What's there not to like? Or is God conflicted within his threesomeness, wishing things were otherwise, but steeling himself to pass a dreadful sentence?
Implying that those who are appalled by God's expressly commissioned Rwanda-like massacres are, in fact, on a par with criminals. Nice work.
Indeed. But, as I said, God does not delight in hurt for hurts sake. Did the judges at Nuremberg take great satisfaction in seeing the Nazi leaders brought to account? Undoubtedly. Does that necessarily make them sadistic? Of course not. Same thing.
I admit, I'd find that hard.
The judges at Nuremberg did not create the Nazis, and had no access to their hearts.
And those who are appalled at the Joshuan massacre of Canaanite children are not comparable to Nazis.
Bad analogy.
The analogy is a very good one. You asked why God took delight in cruelty. I explained that He takes delight in justice - just like a good judge might etc
The issue of whether God is actually responsible for the evil that His creatures do - that is a separate issue, and not something you raised in your original question. The short answer is "no - humans are responsible for their own sin." The long answer is a debate that has been going on for 1500 years.
I don't understand this sentence or it's relevance. I wasn't calling you (or anyone else) a Nazi. If you think I was, you have not understood my point. Please read back through the thread. Many thanks.
You stated at #41, in response to Michael Davis' link at #38, that most human beings clearly hate the idea that God is judge.
At #46, in response to me, you expanded on this theme, stating that
implying that those who object to certain massacres/penalties being ascribed to God's "justice" are comparable to "criminals". I took this as an insinuation on your part that I was such a "criminal", along with others who object as I do ("most human beings"?).
At #51 you likened God-in-judgement to judges of Nazis at Nuremberg. You had previously insinuated that objecting to OT divine "justice" = criminality/rebellion. So, in effect, your Nuremberg analogy implies that massacred Canaanite children and those who object to the "justice" of their massacre (me and others) are in the role of Nazis, since God is in the role of the Nuremberg judges.
Perhaps you are not aware of the implications of your own rhetoric.
You have taken several different comments, each with their own context, and twisted them together using spurious logic to say that I was "implying" you were a Nazi - whereas clearly I was doing no such thing.
I find this sort of behaviour unhelpful and offensive, and I won't be responding to any more of your comments on this thread, so as not to encourage you. With sincerity, I hope you have a good week.
You have a good week too.
Bah, Firefox needs a grammar checker and not just a spell checker :P
Jesus. I couldn't advocate that other people be killed for sexual misconduct because I am guilty of it in my heart if not in actuality. Which was what Jesus pointed out.
As I already said I don't think Christian morality should be totally applied to criminal law. Australia isn't ancient Israel and isn't the people of God so applying laws intended to keep the holiness of God's people to Australia is just silly. I support laws to the extent that they minimise civil discord.
For example when people hear "sorcery" they think of some hippy lady reading tarot cards. But traditional sorcery as still practised today can create a great amount of civil discord amongst people who believe in it (and there is some evidence that if people believe in it that it "works"). Villages go to war because someone thinks someone else put a curse on them. If people were fighting and dying because of this in Australia you can bet the government would ban it.