There's one objection that gets raised to Christians all the time. It's the claim that Christians cherry pick from the Mosaic Law. Christians are inconsistent, for example, because they oppose homosexuality, but they're okay with wearing clothes made of two kinds of fabric.
This objection is based on theological ignorance about the relationship between Christianity, the Mosaic Law, and morality in general. While it is true that Christians affirm some aspects of the Mosaic law and do not practice other parts, they aren't being inconsistent. There is a principled reason for making a distinction between laws that should be kept and laws that don't need to be kept. This is my effort to explain what that principled reason is.
The Mosaic law was only given to the Hebrew people under the Mosaic covenant. It has never applied to anybody outside of that nation.
However, there are universal moral principles that have always applied to everybody, whether they were part of Israel or not. Some of those moral principles are codified in the Mosaic law.
So there are Mosaic laws we are obligated to keep, but it is not because they are in the Mosaic law. Rather, it's because they codify universal moral principles.
Christians are not under the Mosaic law, so they have no obligation to keep anything in the Mosaic law merely because it is in the Mosaic law. However, they do have an obligation to keep whatever universal moral principles there are, even if they are in the Mosaic law.
Even though the Mosaic law is not incumbent on Christians, it can serve as a moral guide to a certain degree since it captures universal moral principles. But not every law in the Mosaic law has an underlying universal moral principle. In the case of those laws, we don't have to keep them.
There are a few ways we can make the distinction between laws we should keep and laws we don't have to keep. One way is to look at the basis upon which God judges other nations. For example, we see God punishing other nations for things like violence and for their sexual practices, but he never punishes them for violating the Sabbath or for wearing the wrong clothes. So we know that the prohibitions against murder and adultery are universal moral principles and ought to be obeyed, but we can't say the same thing about wearing clothes with two kinds of fabric.
Another way we can tell is by looking at the moral standard of the New Testament. The New Testament writes to a broad Christian audience, including non-Jewish Christians who are not under the Mosaic covenant. So we can look at the moral proscriptions spelled out in the New Testament to tell what moral obligations Christians should have.
A third way is to give some weight to our own moral reasoning. God has written his moral law on our hearts, and through careful reflection, reasoning, conscience, and moral intuition, we can distinguish between right and wrong. This kind of moral awareness is open to everybody, whether they are Christians or not.
3 comments:
I wonder whether the problem might in part be the theological ignorance of some Christians who cite the Mosaic law as justification without qualifying their citation as eloquently as you have done?
As for homosexuality, I can't see that the Mosaic law gives helpful information at all, the prohibition therein might be generally applicable or it might not. If we must use other principles and sources to judge this, perhaps a better strategy is to think intelligently about how to apply moral principles, and for Christians, consider how to interpret (for example) Romans 1:26-27?
A lot of Christians think we are obligated to keep some of the Mosaic laws, but not others. For example, they think the ten commandments are valid with the exception of the Sabbath Day, but the dietary restrictions in the law no longer apply because the New Testament explicitly tells us that "all food is clean." The practical effect is the same as what I explained, and the reasoning is only slightly different.
There are Christians (namely, Seventh Day Adventists), though, who think we are obligated to keep the whole Mosaic law, including the dietary restrictions and the Sabbath day. But like the Jews, they might agree there are parts of the Mosaic law that are not applicable to current situations. For example, there are laws about sacrificing in the Temple, but since there's no Temple, those Laws don't apply.
As far as general principles in the Mosaic law, like sexual ethics, I think it is consistent for a Christian to point to them as evidence of immorality. It wouldn't prove immorality since it's possible those laws aren't based on underlying universal moral principles. But apart from anything in the New Testament doing away with them, or apart from our own moral common sense opposing them, it's reasonable to use those laws as a general moral guide.
In the case of sexual ethics, there is nothing in the New Testament that would give us any reason to think the sexual prohibitions in Leviticus are no longer prohibited. On top of that, there is plenty of reason to think they still apply. The New Testament explicitly forbids things like adultery and incest. Sometimes it forbids "porneia," which just means "sexual immorality," without specifying any particular sexual immorality or making exceptions or anything like that. If these prohibitions of "sexual immorality" were made to a Jewish audience, then it's reasonable to believe that it was meant to cohere with what Jews already thought was sexually immoral, so they would've thought of the prohibitions in Leviticus 18 among other places. This suggests the the prohibitions in Leviticus 18 still apply.
Another reason to think the prohibitions in Leviticus 18 still apply is because they fit under one of the criteria I mentioned in my post--God judges other nations for violating them. After listing all of these sexual prohibitions, it says, "Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have brought its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants" (Leviticus 18:24-25). God didn't give the Mosaic law to those people, and those people weren't obligated to keep the Mosaic law. Yet God punished them for the sexual practices listed in Leviticus 18. That shows that there's an underlying moral principle behind those prohibitions that apply to people who are not under the Mosaic law. So it is perfectly appropriate for a Christian to cite those passages in opposition to certain moral practices.
Well at least Molek isn't such a live issue any more!
I think there are still problems with using any of the biblical texts as literal morality manuals. For example, a similar passage in Leviticus 20 mentions keeping these decrees for which other nations are punished. The same passage advocates the death penalty for various things, such as cursing your mother and father. Also sleeping with a slave woman who is promised to another is frowned upon.
Yes it is easy to find support for prohibition on what we would now consider as homosexual behaviour, but to read back these texts as a condemnation of homosexuality seems anachronistic.
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