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*Originally posted by Homebrew *
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I would agree with you about the OT – the ceremonial aspects of the Law and those aspects of the Law that have to do with the administration of theocratic justice within national Israel – to some degree. But I still don’t think there’s anything about the 2 that actually contradicts the 10. As I said, there is a great deal about the work of Christ that is shocking in light of the OT, taken on its own terms. If it were not so, Christianity would be theologically indistinct from Judaism.
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I would respond that God acts within time, and therefore, does change the ways in which he reveals himself, to fit the circumstances in which his people live.
Aspects of the administration of the Law that have not been reiterated in the NT have been left un-reiterated, because the purposes for which they were handed down no longer apply in the Church Age. God’s people no longer exist solely within the theocracy of national Israel, nor is their worship confined to the Temple. Israel was a nation ‘holy unto the Lord’, with certain cultic practices required of them by God. As such, God directed that they conduct themselves in certain ways.
We in the Church are scattered among the nations and living in a totally different dispensation (loaded word that I use for lack of a better one) of God’s Grace. We no longer live in a theocratic nation state, and the Spirit now dwells within us, rather than in the Temple. As such, God has set up some rules for our conduct and worship that do look different from those that he gave to national Israel.
I don’t think that this necessarily suggests that God has now adopted a different attitude about homosexual activity. The mere fact that God does not require the Church to execute homesexuals need not be taken as an endorsement of homosexual activity. (And the mere fact that I have used the phrase “does not require” should under no circumstances be taken as an indication that I think it might still be the pious thing to do. I was trying to wrestle with some of this in my earlier response to Polycarp, just after the introduction of Swedish grundlag.)
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Given the fact that slaves were to be set free every 7 years within Israel, and the fact that the Law made provisions for slaves who freely chose to remain with their masters, and the fact that the OT law is quite clear that slaves are not to be treated as livestock, but rather, humanely and as fully human, I don’t think that we’re talking about exactly the same thing as slavery in the Confederate States of America. So, I’m not sure that there’s necessarily a conflict between Christ’s injunction in the NT to love one’s neighbor and the Law’s conception of slavery in the OT, or that God has endorsed the love of neighbor in any more emphatic sense in the NT than he did in the OT.
Your larger point in all of this is a fair one, though. And I have not stated myself clearly if you think that I reject it. There is both continuity and discontinuity between OT and NT. Much of the history of Christian theology – as I’m sure you know – has been the process of trying to hash out the relationship between Grace and Law.
I lean in the direction of covenant theology, with regard to the Grace-Law dynamic. I gather that you are more of a Dispensational guy? Or have I missed the joke, and you’re a non-believer who thinks the Bible is hopelessly conflicted? I’m sorry to ask silly questions. I have really lost track of who’s who around here. I am getting put through the paces on this one.
–B