The Relevance of the Old Testament Law: A Response

A couple of days ago a reader who is apparently also a professional preacher (I have to admit this makes my cheap online credential from the Universal Life Church look quite worthless) took time out of his busy schedule two days ago to make some detailed comments, on my comments, on Leviticus 25 (the article is older, here).

To reward the inexcusably tiny fraction of visitors (according to my stats counter) who actually leave comments, it is standing policy at the Church of the Orange Sky to respond to lengthy posts with equal verbiage, something made possible by my current lack of gainful employment and ability to procrastinate on my still-incomplete thesis research. The following has not been well thought-out yet, but I hope it counts for something.

According to Toby of Texas, whose blog Beware the Ides of March is here:

Fair enough, but all of these laws are based on 2 ideas that are somewhat unique to Israel's historical situation: 1) the extermination of the Canaanite peoples, and 2) the preservation of the land and seed so that the promise to Abraham could be visibly fulfilled in the Messiah.

With the coming of Messiah, the preservation of the land as ethnic Israel's and in fact of Israel as a distinctive ethnicity no longer has a function. The whole earth is deeded to the Messiah, and the promised inheritance flows through Him to His People, thereby fulfilling the promise to Abraham.

I'm one to take Old Testament law as continually binding for today, with the proviso that the land and seed laws were for a specific time and place. Granted, that interpretation leads to bigger questions about what constitute the land and seed laws as opposed to other aspects of Old Testament law that should govern human conduct in perpetuity, but interpretation will always be a task as long as there is a written text one uses as the basis for law. This is true whether the origin of the written text is divine or not.

I'm a relative novice in the area of theonomy, but if you have any sincere questions about Biblical Law you should consult Greg Bahnsen's work "By This Standard, The Authority of God's Law Today." You will find that he and others like him (myself included) do not toe the line of the popular religious right. We are often lumped in with them, but most of our political views fit the paleolibertarian (think Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry) mold much better than the Republican.

If I have intruded on a blog that is intended merely for satire whose author does not with to seriously engage the ideas of the Bible, my apologies.

First off, Toby, this blog is not intended merely for satire, though I suppose it is riddled with sarcasm, beginning with the frequent references to my Church of the Orange Sky. My proclamation several months ago that I would read and seriously consider the entire Bible was also not made in jest - if it was, I'd have picked a smaller target. I also apologize for lumping too many people into the same category when it comes to Biblical interpretation - it's a shorthand I indulge in which is probably quite unfair, and which I probably shouldn't actually indulge in at all.

I actually started with a more conservative (distinct, I think, from "religious right") view of the Bible, partially as a result of years spent in the pair of Baptist churches in which I first learned the Bible. At one point I in fact embraced total Biblical inerrancy, though ultimately I found that viewpoint not worth keeping, particularly since I am currently convinced that not doing so doesn't detract from the validity of my religious beliefs about what the Bible discusses, and also because I'm convinced that there are too many mythical, inconsistent, and otherwise very probably errant elements to the Bible to cling to any absolute position in that regard which isn't completely necessary.

I didn't really know what my position on the law would be when I started this project because it had been a very, very long time since I'd read the Old Testament all the way through. So we are both "novices," and probably me more than you in terms of any sort of training.

Now that the handshaking and pleasantries are out of the way:

I'm one to take Old Testament law as continually binding for today, with the proviso that the land and seed laws were for a specific time and place. Granted, that interpretation leads to bigger questions about what constitute the land and seed laws as opposed to other aspects of Old Testament law that should govern human conduct in perpetuity, but interpretation will always be a task as long as there is a written text one uses as the basis for law. This is true whether the origin of the written text is divine or not.
I have a couple of principal objections to the viewpoint you're providing here.

First, I'm not all that concerned about the division you're suggesting because my moral and other objections to the law don't really fall evenly on the line between "land" and cultural "purity" laws on the one side, and some category of "moral" or other laws on the other. I know that that division is common, although I'm not convinced it was intended by the initial writers and I'm certainly not convinced that "reading in" that division is an easy or perfect process.

First off, though it's a tempting way to move beyond objections to the more genocidal and oppressive elements, I have to worry that making divisions between "good" rules and "bad" rules - or at least "irrelevant" rules - is an interpretation we're adding on later, which the original writers of the texts that are now in the Old Testament simply did not have. While I am not completely averse to the idea that god may use actions in ways other than they are strictly intended, I am hesitant to do this with respect to the Bible. The legal code of the Old Testament as a whole, barring I suppose (and hypothetically) any rules which might have been added in after the fact by later scribes and forgers, are pretty much a complete set which reflect the thinking of that particular culture.

Nevertheless, I'll accept for the sake of argument, and at least for the moment, that the laws regarding conquest and "seeding" the land are a set which only applied at a particular time in history, and can be easily distinguished from the other rules. I still have two remaining objections.

First, suggesting that they applied only to a particular set of circumstances gets us out of the question of how we'd have to consider upholding them today, but it implies that under those circumstances, those laws were morally justifiable. And I have to say that I can't see those laws as morally justified. As a pacifist, in particular, I believe that there are no circumstances which justify the murder of other human beings. This certainly sets me outside the will of god as his will is interpreted by the writers of the early Old Testament. I have to accept that my conscience leads me in other directions than the plain language of this part of the Bible. It's probably a fairly pointless thought experiment, but if I put myself in the position of an ancient Israelite, I would refuse an order to kill others in order to take their land. (Probably irrelevant because I would also likely have been killed off in the Kohathite rebellion in Numbers, for the sin of protesting the place of the holy priesthood.)

This brings us to my other principal complaint, which is that the laws regarding treatment of other nations in ancient Israel are only one thing I find a little distasteful, if quite understandable given the historical context of what frequently went on at the time. I actually like some of what is in Leviticus 25, and I think it speaks directly against some of our current ideas about capitalism and private ownership, which is intriguing - for example, should we follow this today by suggesting that all loans must be forgiven after seven years, we must never profit off the poor's need for food, the land should be rested, and so on? Which part no longer applies? The process of drawing lines between standing and outdated laws tends to reflect our personal interests as much as anything, and I have to wonder at how convenient it would be if we today were to suggest that private land ownership is now okay, after all.

More to the point, and without going too far along that tangent, I don't like the Old Testament laws for a wide variety of reasons. Even if the treatment of foreigners laws are now obsolete, and that religious wars are no longer justified, I object to many of the rest of the laws for a host of other reasons. For example, I object to the sexual and marital laws, including that of homosexuality, on the grounds that they reflect and reinforce a patriarchal system that comes disturbingly close to owning women, and which I simply do not agree with. Even the Ten Commandments are phrased in such a way that arguably they are for men only. You could read in their application to women as well, I suppose, but that too would be an alteration of the laws as plainly written.

So I like some of the laws, and I dislike some of the others. I won't indulge in some exercise to justify my feelings here, because I fear it would be much too self-serving, providing some dubious theological pretext for moral beliefs that I already hold and would continue to hold anyways. In my view, either all of the law or none of the law must be upheld as morally appropriate (even if some sections were morally appropriate only in specific times and places). Therefore I must choose "none of the law," and seek theological or textaul support for my moral beliefs elsewhere. Ultimately I admit I may not find that support in the Bible, though I remain hopeful that later sections of the Old Testament will change my views on the subject.