Question on a Useful Analogy for the Law of God

[No Other Name]

Good morning all,

I have been doing a lot of research on Covenant Theology and the Law of God. I felt forced into this when a couple of close pastor friends who I got back in touch with were brimming with excitement about books by Fred Zaspel and the NCT variant of dispensationalism.

To my horror, they recounted how free they are from the Ten Commandments and the Sabbath. What they meant was Christ came and re-published the OT laws except for the Sabbath, so they are retroactively 9/10 of the Decalogue. Weird. Bizarre. And again, chilling how they expressed being so free of it all.

Appropos of nothing, this morning, I was reading a book on gravitational physics when an analogy grabbed me from the sub-conscious and I wanted to run it by my esteemed colleagues here on PB.

The law of gravity is "written" into the fabric of spacetime relative to the mass of objects and the distance between them. (let's stay Newtonian here)

Back in the 50's, I heard of a kid who was inspired by the TV Superman George Reeves to jump off the roof of his family home with both arms straight outward expecting to fly. I imagine that his parents created a household law that he is prohibited from jumping off any high places ever again.

In this kid's particular case, one could also imagine that such a prohibition would no longer be required after a period of time. When this kid turned 17, he has to be "free" of this particular household law (assuming normal cognitive development).

Yet, the law of gravity still holds. But his development required no accompanying household law prohibiting jumping off the roof.

I imagine Aquinas would say this is interaction between natural and human law.

What I am wondering is: does this work for an analogy of the concept of Torah?

From my reading of Daniel Block, Bruce Waltke, Derek Kidner the English word "law" is used as a poor translation of the Hebrew "Torah".

"Torah" means moral instructions, teachings and yes, nested within are requirements that demonstrate moral and ethical behavior. But these are not the same as "commandments" - indeed, the Decalogue are not "commandments" but "covenant principles" or "sayings" and had no penalties attached upon failure which marked them as terms for the King in the treaty he makes with his people (the penalties would come later in the commandment-prohibition sections and were for outlying individuals and presumed good faith compliance from the community of the King's subjects on the whole).

I imagine most agree with the meaning of "Torah". If not, help me because I am merely summarizing these scholars and their commentaries on OT passages.

So if the "Torah" is spiritual and unavoidable in spiritual life, then a non-spiritual analogue might be the laws of nature such as gravity. And due to gravity, we would have behavioral laws - "commands" such as if you fall off a height like a ladder, bend your knees and try to roll with it or "prohibitions" such as don't throw coins off the Empire State Building.

And some individuals may interact with gravity in such an intuitive way that their very nature precludes the need for any "commands" or "prohibitions". Most feel zero temptation to jump off roofs flapping their arms or dropping coins from skyscrapers making "commands" or "prohibitions" redundant and unnecessary.

Can the Ten Words be seen in somewhat a similar way - if not necessarily analogous? Seems to me to be that way.

The anti-nomians may "not tithe" but these guys do seem to give rather frequently. They may "not observe Sabbath" yet they set aside Lord's Day for worship and mitigate their work plans and even recreational plans. [I overheard one of them even choose Saturday for fishing rather than Sunday because it's a "church day".]

Which made me bite the insides of my cheek so hard. (I "memed" him in my mind).

Thanks in advance for what I am certain will be wise interactions with my random thoughts.

God bless you all.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

The historic, Reformed perspective re. the moral law is that it is co-extensive with natural law. It covers exactly the same ground, but is collated, verbalized, and summarized in those Ten Commandments which God spoke to Israelite ears at Sinai. Man, by reason of the fall into sin, was neither desirous nor able to maintain his original constitution, which was (if you will) innately perceptive of the proper course of action and capable of executing it, or at least willing it if an outside force thwarted the effort.

You could say that the original instinct of the conscience to obey the moral law is analogous to the physical and mental instinct to obey the law of gravity, or follow other prompts that result from sensory and experimental input. However, the conscience's original instinct was irreparably ruined in the fall, and the natural man retains only relics of it. Moreover, the training of the conscience as a faculty of the mind is subject to all manner of defect. The compass no longer points reliably to north; and the jury-rigged assembly for providing internal moral direction put together by the individual (as influenced by his environment, both natural and social) is a much inferior substitute. It's usually better than nothing for regulating behavior, but in the end the human will acting as lawgiver overrides and makes exceptions to whatever direction the broken compass is giving.

NCT theology and its variants seem to operate on several propositions; here are a few:
1) Immediately after the fall, there was no "law" in the world other than nature. Cain shouldn't kill his brother, not because "thou shalt not kill" is divinely expressed law on which his parents rear him in a conscience-training effort; but only because of the natural, created constitution of Adam and Eve. Though Cain inherits the vestigial and unreadable constitution, yet God holds him accountable for his unreasonable spirit and violence. The same case is made for various negative moral judgments found in subsequent chapters throughout Genesis and into Exodus up to Mt. Sinai.

This presumption contains elements of truth, but errs at a fundamental level when it denies that "thou shalt not kill"--in those, or so many other words--is divinely expressed law, even if God did not hand it down as he did later at Sinai. Far more accurate to say: the laws of men against murder are conformable by varying degrees to God's natural, moral law; and being so, are truly law and divinely approved (though subject to divine judicial review). God does not wait until Sinai to express himself implacably against murder, or sexual immorality, or idolatry, or any essential moral order; but his opposition is both in nature, and in the mouths of his prophets even before Moses, as far back as Enoch (Gen.5:22; Jd.1:14) and presumably earlier.

2) The moral law summarized in the 10C is only vaguely distinguishable from the entirety of the Mosaic covenant. The Torah and all it contains stands as a unit for the guidance and judgment of them who dwelt under the Old Covenant until Christ and the New Covenant and the New Testament witness. With the entrance of Christ, the old law is abolished (Heb.11:12) in toto, leading inexorably to the conclusion that all legal expression standing against Christ's people is null and void (Col.2:14ff). Hence, it is false and even dangerous to make any appeal to the 10C, as if it were a suitable expression for Christians of God's moral will for mankind, or especially for them. A key element of this view is the dismissal of the 4th Commandment. It's creational character is denied; it is regarded as uniquely Israelite and Old Covenant, on the basis of Ex.31:16; and is expressly removed per Col.2:16.

This proposition stands fundamentally at odds with the Reformed confessions (though it bears marks of consistency with certain strands of historic Protestantism). From a confessional standpoint--while certain affirmations of the 10C make excessive claims--viewing the 10C as a summary of the natural, moral law and the cornerstone of Israel's constitution is an essential and principled distinction. There are exegetical bases for embracing this concept, not simply backwards reasoning or a division of convenience. For one, the 10C was all God spoke directly to the mass of the people (Dt.5:22); the Book of the Covenant and all other legislation for civic and ceremonial life was revelationally mediated by Moses after that. The 10C are plainly declarations of principle, and even the 4th Commandment is grounded initially in creation, and only secondarily has deliverance and covenant-relation aspects tied to it. The 4C as creationally based is not introduced in Ex.20, but in Gen.2, even before the fall (Gen.3). There are many NT texts on which to base a moral reverence for the Lord's Day as a perpetual, heavenly ordinance; and Col.2:16 is far from a decisive prooftext against the duty of remembrance.

3) The "law of love" (Jn.13:34) or "law of Christ" (Gal.6:2) is fundamentally distinct from previous Old Covenant legislation, per Eph.2:15, if there is overlap in moral dimensions. There is little or no value in comparison of NT moral direction and definition of the new law's dimensions with the OT law; the former was given for an "unspiritual" age; while the new is an expression of the age of the Spirit. To try to understand the present obligation of love by searching out an Old Covenant Israelite's enumerated duties toward his neighbor is spiritually diminishing and retrograde; it is another way of walking in the flesh (Rom.8:1). Instead, let every Christian simply walk in the Spirit, Gal.5:16; listen to the Spirit, 1Pet.1:22; heed the Spirit, 1Tim.4:1. Properly "loving God and your neighbor" (e.g. Jas.2:8) is more of an instinct than a cleaving to the letter, Rom.7:6; 2Cor.3:6.

4) The Spirit-indwelt Christian is someone who has recovered from the fall, his original constitution has been repaired, and he is once more capable of "natural" obedience to God's moral requirements. And if he does not think the 4th Commandment, or any other ethical idea (even if it arises from someplace in holy writ) makes demands of him--if you disagree, who are you to argue with the Spirit (1Cor.7:40)?

These last two propositions form the climax of NCT resistance to the idea that the Bible--even the NT--has much if anything to say by way of correcting and guiding a Christian in the way of godliness. 1Jn.3:6 could be taken in such absolute terms: "Whoever abides in Him does not sin," and 1Jn.3:9 "Whoever has been born of God does not sin," that the warning of 1Jn.1:8 is conceived purely in terms of failing a new invitation to unite with Christ. Perhaps it is false to say NCT has perfectionist tendencies; but does it have sin-minimizing tendencies? What is the tendency of a theological expression that assumes sanctification has no means of participation, and no path of progress which the believer uses to assess his level of engagement? I do not mean those questions to imply that a Christian's participation and engagement toward sanctification contributes to the Spirit's sanctifying work; but I do imply that true and humble Christians see they are ever weak and sinful, and in need of the means of grace and a map to heaven. They understand the Christian life is constant faith and repentance, and God's law is for both conviction and godliness because it is spiritual, Rom.7:14.

Returning to the concept of Covenant Theology as a different approach, the contrast between the Old Covenant age and the New Covenant age is not that one was unspiritual and the other spiritual. The law didn't become spiritual as of the time Jesus rose from the dead and Paul wrote his letters; but it was always spiritual, if many ancient Israelites still failed to spiritually profit from it. "O, how love I thy law," Ps.119:97, is a spiritual man's exclamation The matter of the moral law is a concern embedded in humanity from its creation, only becoming even more pressing once man fell from his first estate. The wreckage of his soul's moral constitution made divine reconstitution necessary, first by reviving it to life, then by teaching it God's moral will by precept so to bring alien truth within (oriented toward the heart through the ear-gate) and rebuild the conscience according to the right pattern and well-habituated.

The idea that now, only since Christ came to die and rise on account of sin, man comes to possess his original endowment errs in two ways; first, by denying the ages before the Age of the Spirit were spiritual, and men had to be born of the Spirit (see Jn.3:8-10); second, by imagining that the man who is born again in this new age has instantly obtained a fully reconstituted spiritual nature and entire divestment of the flesh. Refutation of both those errors results in a demonstration of the true spiritual utility of the law under the conditions of the Old Covenant, and the very same spiritual utility of the moral law (and other NT-specific ordinances) under the conditions of the New Covenant, see 1Tim.1:8. Conditions change, but the believer of today is of the same quality as the believer before the cross. The cross of Christ irrevocably changed historically the elect's condition. But faith in Christ never wavered, before the cross or after. Nor likewise, any right utility of the law.

At the present time, spiritual believers have not advanced to a new level where the idea of a collection of divine commands, all together comprising a summary of "what duty God requires of man," is superfluous--and worse, a carnal snare and bondage (as if Gal.5:1). The success of Christ's earthly mission and the sending of the Spirit has not made such a change in us from what we were before that success. In those days of yore, the writing of the law of God upon the heart was the difference between an Israelite with only an external commitment to the LORD (at best); and an Israelite who was committed to the LORD both outwardly and inwardly, Ps.37:31. Now under grace, we still sin, and live lives of ofttimes brutal spiritual warfare, and have our faith taxed and sometimes feel like we are slipping from the upward way. But we have not failed the Spirit nor he us; and to raise us up firmly again on our feet, he would direct us to such elementary steps as faith makes use of, including his moral precepts; until our flesh is left behind.

And what we will be in glory and in the resurrection... well, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has the heart conceived it.