Reply Prompt: You will be required to reply to 1 other classmate’s thread in a minimum of 200 words. Be sure that your reply engages specific issues, questions, or passages related to the thread. Your reply must demonstrate that you have read the thread in its entirety and that you are providing thoughtful analysis (considering assumptions, analyzing implications, and comparing/contrasting concepts).
Reply to Seow
Hay began is argument by noting (and I agree) that while Christians nowadays do tend to ignore many Old Testament laws, they do embrace others, especially the Ten Commandments, as the “moral underpinnings of Christian behavior.”[1] Some pertinent ideas and issues which he raised in the article include his reproach that differentiating the Mosaic law between moral, civil, and ceremonial laws is arbitrary, ignorant of the narrative context and overlooks the Law’s covenantal theological context. This approach is inconsistent with sound hermeneutics.
I concur that since the Mosaic Law is set in the context of Israel’s theological history, (from Genesis 12 through 2 Kings 25), the laws are to be considered within the entire story of God’s interventions in delivering Israel from Egypt and establishing them in the Promised Land as His people.[2] As such, I strongly felt that Christians should then understand the Law as a contextual part of the Pentateuchal narrative. The overall principles of the law, filtered and concluded from the Old Testament narrative is key to our understanding. Jesus himself in the New Testament, refuted the Pharisees’ criticism (Mark 2:23-28), of his behavior with principles drawn from a narrative (1 Samuel 21:1-9). God promised to dwell among the Israelite in the Promised land and gave them the Mosaic Law as part of his conditional covenant with them.[3] The practical Laws are hence the principle ethical and moral framework necessary for the Israelites to live a blessed life with God, to be seen within the situation and context of their experience.
Christians should then note importantly that, in the New Testament, Jesus came as the Mediator of a new covenant that replaced God’s covenant with the Israelites in the Old Testament (Hebrew 8-9). Consequently, we can see here Hay’s notion that the Mosaic Covenant is therefore invalid.[4] Jesus came to fulfill the Law. He proclaimed that the meaning of the Law must be interpreted in light of His own coming and by the New Covenant which he established in place of the Old covenant.[5]
With the consistent practice of sound hermeneutics, Christians nowadays should instead employ the approach of principlism[6] to the Mosaic Law as an ethical and moral guide. Christians now face challenges from different non-Christian worldviews and philosophies. Christians can apply the universal principles of the Mosaic Laws as their ethical and moral guide. These laws become commandments for Christians, to be obeyed as the new commandments of Christ.[7] In looking at each specific law, Christians can exegeses the universal principle reflected in the law, and look at broad principles that is applicable to our stage and place in the current life today. With correct exegesis, in the light of principalism, these timeless universal principles will often encompass God’s consistent compassionate and holy nature, the nature of sin, the issue of obedience, or concern for other people. These timeless principles should be reflective of text; correspond to scriptural theology; independent on cultural; and lastly be relevant to both Old and New Testament believers.[8] While some Old Testament laws are repeated as commandments of Christ, others are abrogated. Some commandments are modifications and expansions of the Law (Matt 5:28). Jesus himself authorized the validity and authority of these new commandments.[9] Hence, current day Christian’s relationship with the Mosiac Laws, taken from the perspective of principalism, allows Christians to filter the essential universal principles of the Laws, and see them in the context of Christ’s commandments to us, in the New Covenant, which He came to establish with us today.
[1] J. Daniel Hays, Applying the Old Testament Law Today, Blbllotheca SACRA, 158 (January-March 2001), 21.
[2] Ibid., 24.
[3] Ibid., 27-28.
[4] Ibid, 28.
[5] Ibid., 29.
[6] Ibid., 30.
[7] Ibid., 32.
[8] Ibid., 32.
[9] Ibid.
