In the commentary thread of my most recent post published at Banned by HWA (Bible Talk: Universal Sabbath?), it was asserted that the book of Deuteronomy settles the issue of whether or not the Law of Moses was modified by Jesus Christ. More particularly, the commentator referenced three passages from that book:
Deuteronomy 4:1 "And now, Israel, listen carefully to these decrees and regulations that I am about to teach you. Obey them so that you may live, so you may enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. 2 Do not add to or subtract from these commands I am giving you. Just obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you." Deuteronomy 12:1 "12 “These are the decrees and regulations you must be careful to obey when you live in the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must obey them as long as you live.
2 When you drive out the nations that live there, you must destroy all the places where they worship their gods—high on the mountains, up on the hills, and under every green tree. 3 Break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars. Burn their Asherah poles and cut down their carved idols. Completely erase the names of their gods!
4 Do not worship the Lord your God in the way these pagan peoples worship their gods. 5 Rather, you must seek the Lord your God at the place of worship he himself will choose from among all the tribes—the place where his name will be honored. 6 There you will bring your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, your sacred offerings, your offerings to fulfill a vow, your voluntary offerings, and your offerings of the firstborn animals of your herds and flocks. 7 There you and your families will feast in the presence of the Lord your God, and you will rejoice in all you have accomplished because the Lord your God has blessed you.
29 When the Lord your God goes ahead of you and destroys the nations and you drive them out and live in their land, 30 do not fall into the trap of following their customs and worshiping their gods. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ 31 You must not worship the Lord your God the way the other nations worship their gods, for they perform for their gods every detestable act that the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods.
32 So be careful to obey all the commands I give you. You must not add anything to them or subtract anything from them."
Deuteronomy 30:1 "In the future, when you experience all these blessings and curses I have listed for you, and when you are living among the nations to which the Lord your God has exiled you, take to heart all these instructions. 2 If at that time you and your children return to the Lord your God, and if you obey with all your heart and all your soul all the commands I have given you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you. 4 Even though you are banished to the ends of the earth, the Lord your God will gather you from there and bring you back again. 5 The Lord your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again. Then he will make you even more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors!
6 The Lord your God will change your heart and the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live! 7 The Lord your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate and persecute you. 8 Then you will again obey the Lord and keep all his commands that I am giving you today.
9 The Lord your God will then make you successful in everything you do. He will give you many children and numerous livestock, and he will cause your fields to produce abundant harvests, for the Lord will again delight in being good to you as he was to your ancestors. 10 The Lord your God will delight in you if you obey his voice and keep the commands and decrees written in this Book of Instruction, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul."
Please notice that ALL of these passages were addressed to the people of Israel (as were ALL of the commands related to God's covenant with those people). Once again, these passages also demonstrate that the legislation was looked upon as an inseverable whole, and that the people of Israel must not modify it in anyway. Notice that this instruction about adding and subtracting was also given to the Israelites. In other words, the children of Israel were not allowed to modify the instructions in Torah in any way. Now, this has important implications for what the Jews did after they were taken into captivity, and the Temple was destroyed. Moreover, we can see that this also had implications for when the Temple was destroyed a second time by the Romans in the year 70 CE.
We know, of course, that the Jewish people had to make major modifications to their religion. Remember, however, that God had commanded them NOT to make any modifications to the Law of Moses. Did God honor those modifications? Did he give them any wiggle room in that commandment about adding and subtracting? "That's not fair," some will protest, "it was impossible to obey many of those commandments in the manner specified in Torah!" Which brings another question to mind: Was what happened in 70 CE part of God's design? In other words, did what happened to Jerusalem, the Temple, and the rituals of the Jewish religion have anything to do with what Jesus of Nazareth had done? I know how I would answer those questions, I'll leave it to my readers to draw their own conclusions.
The regular readers of this blog know that I believe that Christ fulfilled the Law and replaced the Old Covenant with a NEW one (Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, I Corinthians 11:25, Hebrews 9). I believe that this NEW covenant is the one that was prophesied to come in the Hebrew Scriptures (the writings which we refer to as the Old Testament). In other words, I believe that the New Testament teaches that the Old Testament points to Christ, and that God's covenant with Israel has been rendered obsolete. Hence, the legislation which that covenant was predicated on (God: If you do this, I'll do these things for you) has NOT been carried forward into the New Covenant. This is consistent with my contention that Christians are NOT under the Law of Moses - that they are operating under a new iteration of God's Law. After all, Moses did say that "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him." (Deuteronomy 18:15)
Likewise, in the opening to the anonymously authored epistle to the Hebrews, we read: 1:1 "Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets. 2 And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe. 3 The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven." In the past, God spoke to the people of Israel through many different individuals. In the Christian era, however, Jesus of Nazareth has represented "him" and "his" will. Hence, although Christ clearly had the authority to add and subtract from the old, he represents a new deal between God and all people (Gentiles and Jews). Unlike the Law of Moses, this new covenant and iteration does not apply exclusively to the people of Israel! Anyway, that's how I see it. What about you?
Oh, you make this way too easy.
ReplyDeleteIn your quotations of the passages I have primarily used, you omitted what is arguably the most important: Chapter 13. You quoted 12:32, but stopped there. In our discussions on the other blog, I repeatedly cited it as “Deut 12:32-ch13” or occasionally as “12:32ff.” So there is no reason to fail to quote chapter 13.
Most English translations will place 12:32 as the introductory sentence to the paragraph starting chapter 13. In fact, Jewish translations simply refer to that verse as 13:1. A contextual reading makes thinking paragraphic lineup obvious.
Here is what you failed to quote (plus the 12:32 lead-in):
“Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it. If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall [b]put away the evil from your midst.” (NKJV)
So, a man comes along, claiming to be a prophet or some other such awesome thing. You yourself quote Deut 18:15 with its “PROPHET like Moses” as specifically applying to Jesus. This prophet gives signs and wonders WHICH ACTUALLY COME TO PASS. Maybe things like healing people, raising people from the dead, and at his prediction, he himself rising from the dead.
Wow! This guy sure sounds legitimate. He‘s got to be from God. Right? Well, there’s more:
In the context of all this, he says to follow a different god, one the people of Israel had not known before.
Uh oh. That sounds very bad. This supposed prophet starts leading the people away from the God of the Bible. He specifically tells them that follow a god they had not known before.
Hmm. Didn’t Jesus talk about “revealing the Father“ (John, 17:25-26).
Matthew 5:27 - Jesus: “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.“
Oh, so this “Father” can apparently only be known now through this sign-working prophet. he could not be known before. Interesting.
Now let’s go back to the introduction to that Deuteronomy passage. It is a warning against adding two or taking away from – wait for it – THE LAW! The commands and statutes and whatnot of what we call the Pentateuch, the books of Moses. (And yes, it includes the other four books. They are “incorporated by reference,” to use the legal term, in Deuteronomy 5:32 and elsewhere.)
So according to Christian abrogationist philosophy, we have a sign-working prophet (and sign-working apostles) effectively repealing OT commands (and even adding new commands) and talking about a “Father [god]” neither Israel nor the world had known before the prophet’s appearance.
Upshot: If abrogationists are correct about NT theology, then Jesus was and is a fraud.
The only way for Jesus to be legit for him to uphold the Law as operable commands from God. A serious educated Christian, therefore, must reject abrogationism and read the NT as requiring continued obedience to the OT Law.
I know there are questions. But those questions must be answered “pro-Law,” as it were. From a Christian perspective, think of it as Deuteronomy giving the context in which to take the statements of Jesus and his apostles. Read them in that context.
LTW,
DeleteI am responding for the benefit of our readers. Your arguments are based on faulty hermeneutics. Instead of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures through the Christ event, you claim that Christ and his teachings must be interpreted through the Hebrew Scriptures. In other words, you have things backwards. Jesus came to this earth to fulfill those Scriptures, NOT to abrogate them. Jesus obeyed the Law - the ONLY Israelite to ever do so. He was also the embodiment of God's character, the offerings and sacrifices, the Sabbath, the Festivals, the Priesthood, the Tabernacle/Temple, the Ark of the Covenant, etc.
Jesus did, however, make the Old Covenant with Israel obsolete. Moreover, having fulfilled its requirements, and by virtue of his being very God, he had the absolute authority to do so. Where Christ had succeeded, Israel had failed to follow the tenets of that covenant. As a consequence, God had divorced them; and Jesus had instituted a New Covenant.
Your hermeneutics fails to accommodate these facts. The Old Covenant was based on God's Law, but it was tailor-made for the people of Israel and their circumstances. You also continue to fail to account for the fact that all of the passages you quote make VERY CLEAR that this particular iteration of God's Law was addressed to the people of Israel - NOT to all of the peoples of the earth.
By all means, lets continue into the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, it supports my thesis! You quoted: "Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it" Who was he commanding? The people of Israel! You continued: "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, SAYING, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul." Jesus Christ NEVER told the Jews to "go after other gods...and let us serve them," and he served God throughout his ministry. As Christ pointed out, these Jews had never truly understood or obeyed the God whom they professed to serve. Indeed, they insisted on having a buffer to mediate between them and their God! Again, Jesus wasn't trying to entice anyone away from obeying and serving God. His purpose was to reconcile them to the God whom they had alienated themselves from by their rejection of his covenant with them!
Finally, just as Torah was comprehended by the Two Great Commandments which Christ referenced during his earthly ministry, the Law of Christ is likewise based on those commandments. In other words, the Law of God stands inviolable and has been made to apply to both Gentiles and Jews. Hence, Jesus is the real deal. No fraud. You present our readers with a FALSE DILEMMA. You are effectively saying: "If you don't accept my interpretation, Jesus was a fraud." Be very careful, you are danger close to blasphemy and an Anti-Christ perspective. You are unwittingly espousing the very reasoning which the Jews have employed to reject Jesus as the Christ!
You have my TruthSocial handle if you wanna answer this privately, but I do wonder: Did you really think I wouldn’t check this?
ReplyDeleteOn Banned by HWA, "Scout" asked "LTW"
Delete"Which religion and which god do you represent and why are you reluctant to speak about it?"
"LTW" replied:
I worship the Creator and judge of the universe.
I gave up on religious dogmas and scriptures and messengers decades ago. There is no way to verify them, and when it comes to the first two, there is no way to know for sure you are understanding them exactly right.
If I misunderstand, say, the Constitution of the United States, the effect is not eternal. And any expressly human document can be rejected in part if reality breaks it. We even have a means of amending the Constitution! But with supposedly divine word, and given statement must be accepted and heeded, even if it is “obviously” wrong. That is the nature of holding something as “scripture.” (Well, at least it is supposed to be. Some folks around here just discard parts of their scriptures they don’t like.)
God can tell me directly anything I need to know from him. It’s like in court with the “best evidence rule.” You don’t use a deposition when the actual witness or litigant is available. God can appear to any of us anytime. (And no, Bones was wrong in Star Trek 5 — you CAN ask the Almighty for his ID, and it’s a good thing Kirk did. Small redemption for a generally bad movie, I agree.)
So I believe God exists (all those standard “proofs,” perhaps most notably, the fact that we are intelligent with mean that whatever made us must be intelligent). I presume God to be benevolent, because otherwise none of it matters. And so I seek to live benevolently – that is, with an outgoing positive community focus. Yes, that explains a lot of my generally Rightwing politics. It’s simply the context in which I live to be benevolent. And a benevolent God will reward his creation.
As for a Satan, I’ve seen enough weird things to know there is something beyond the natural. The nature of a Satan would involve concealing his true nature, and even existence. And so I don’t “ dogmatically” push out much proof of his existence, but if I’m wrong, and he actually doesn’t exist… Oh well. That’s the nature of a Satan.
So, the smple answer to your question:
- God exists, I presume him benevolent, and thus I seek to live benevolently in the context of reality. And if there is no Satan, things make even less sense in this world!
—
To answer an obvious question: I take part in these Judeo Christian scriptural discussions at this time for two reasons:
1. The heritage of my people is Christian-based, and those that contribute to our civil Deism.
2. It seems the best way to combat Armstrongism in the minds of Armstrongists. They won’t buy disregarding the Bible, and they for a good reason won’t buy abrogation.
Monday, August 5, 2024 at 8:47:00 AM PDT