In The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church, Richard Averbeck proposes “three theses”: “…the law is good, the law is weak, and the law is a unified whole.” He goes on to suggest, “The main concern here is that we must hold tenaciously to the truth and significance of all three theses all the time and all at the same time because all three correspond to significant statements about the law in both the Old Testament and the New.” Averbeck’s argument concerning the Old Testament law provides a clear, cogent understanding of the law within the biblical narrative, recognizing its ongoing benefit and influence for the church while acknowledging the law’s inability to overcome the willfulness of human hearts.
I don’t assume Averbeck would have intended for his theses to apply to law beyond the Old Testament. His focus in the book is to demonstrate “that the whole [Old Testament] law was and still is good and profitable for the Christian and applied to the life of the Christian today in a new covenant way.” Still, whatever similarities our nation’s laws might have in content or structure with Old Testament law, they are fundamentally different from the Old Testament law in so much as they are “of the people” and not “of God.” As is the case with certain laws in the United States, legal consensus may be informed and inspired by reflection on certain biblical texts, yet, as I note in Serpents and Doves, “using the Bible as an inspiration is far different than recognizing the Bible as inspired.”
Understanding the similarities and differences between Old Testament law and our nation’s laws informs the way we think about political participation. Passing laws and, by extension, electing the officials who pass those laws can be a way for Christians to encourage justice. However, enacting justice (or anything else) through legislation or other political means must emerge as an act of discipleship such that those actions do not diminish God’s glory or end up emboldening one political party or candidate to claim God’s works as their own (cf. Gen 14:21-23). To put it differently, once we understand the nature and limitations of our nation’s laws, we should be reminded that discipleship, not politics, will open up opportunities for God to use us to build his kingdom beyond anything we could ever ask or think (Eph 3:20).
Why Do We Need the Law?
In Theology and Social Theory, John Milbank notes, “Once, there was no ‘secular.’” Instead, there was a span of time ‘’between fall and escaton where coercive justice, private property, and impaired natural reason must make the shift to cope with the unredeemed effects of sinful humanity.” To put it differently, there is a “time between” the unmarred order God created “in the beginning” (Gen 1:1) and the new creation in which fully sanctified women and men will life in God’s presence without pain, tears, death, or any of the other effects associated with sin (Rev 21:1-27).
Law is necessary in this “time between.” The state (governing authorities) is established by God. We obey the laws the state establishes because we recognize God’s authority (Rom 13:1-2). Christians are to follow the state’s laws (as well as its policies and practices) to the extent that they do not require Christians to compromise our theological convictions. When a nation’s laws oppose God or hinder discipleship, Christians are under no obligation to follow the state. Our first loyalty (or love) is to God, and from that loyalty (or love), all of our loyalties and loves flow. By honoring God’s authority, we end up in a tenuous relationship with those to whom God has delegated civil authority. As their governance has sufficient alignment with God’s order, Christians are able to submit to that governance. When their governance hinders discipleship, Christians serve as a corrective by living so as to witness to “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:7).
Law is, on the one hand, important for restraining evil in the “time between.” On the other, the law is an expression of a society’s convictions and underlying values that are rooted in human limitation, sinfulness, and misdirected desire. As such, the law is necessary to keep humanity in check and to reinforce a given society's understanding of the world, yet because it cannot overcome human sinfulness, it is insufficient. This insufficiency should not suggest that we can do without the law, but it should suggest that we cannot give the law of a given nation our final authority.
The Old Testament Law at Good, Weak, and Unified
With this brief understanding of the law, we may turn to the Old Testament law more specifically. The Old Testament law does differ from laws established by other nations because the Old Testament law was given by God rather than constructed by humankind. As such, the Old Testament law is perfectly adapted to the “time between.” While it is tempting to say that the Old Testament law is perfectly aligned with God’s order, we do see instances in which that seems not to be the case. For example, God allows divorce “because of your hardness of heart.” Divorce is not what God desires (i.e., it is not fully in line with the order he established at creation), but it is a provision made to manage the conditions in the “time between.”
Before addressing Averbeck’s categories of good, weak, and unified, we need to have some notion of what we mean by “Old Testament law.” While it is common to use the word “law” to refer to the Torah or the first five books of the Bible (cf. Matt 5:17; Lk 24:44), Averbeck is focused on that portion of those first five books that contain legal literature. For instance, he suggests that there are “five basic units of law in the Torah,” namely The Ten Commandments (Exod 20:1-17; Deut 5:6-21), the book of the covenant (Exod 21-23), the priestly regulations (Lev 1-16)), the holiness regulations (Lev 17-27), and the Deuteronomic regulations (Deut 12-26). These portions of the Torah offer regulations intended to guide Israel’s life and practice, as well as offering precedents that would influence later judgments. This legal genre is, unlike many other ancient Near Eastern and modern-day law codes, embedded within a specific narrative context (i.e., the Pentateuch) designed to make known the character of God and the way he relates to his people and the way they relate to him.
The explicit narrative is crucial to understanding Old Testament law because it roots it within a theological context. The Old Testament law is inseparable from belief in the Triune God though some have suggested that the Christian community set aside theological convictions to create “summary lists” that do not “depart greatly from the contents of our present Decalogue.” As a potential “summary,” Harrelson suggests that the first commandment (“You shall have no other gods before me” might be generalized to say, “Do not have more than a single ultimate allegiance.” This way of construing the commandment detaches it from its theological context. In doing so, one’s “ultimate allegiance” need not be conformity with Christ…it can just be “good citizenship” (or anything else).
The Old Testament law is necessarily embedded within the theological narrative of the Old and New Testaments. Decoupled from that narrative and the reality it reveals, the Old Testament law is not particularly distinct from that of other ancient Near Eastern nations. The distinctive aspect of Old Testament law is not due to its content but to its Author. Because, as theologian Robert Jenson notes, “God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt,” the Old Testament law reveals the very fabric of reality, particularly the reality of the Triune God. This law…this revelation...is characterized by Averbeck as good, weak, and unified.
First, the law is good. Drawing on Romans 7:12-14, Averbeck highlights the goodness of the law. It was good in the sense that it is “holy, righteous, and good” as well as “spiritual.” The goodness of God’s law surely derives from the one who gave that law. Because God is good, the law he gives is also good. As Averbeck notes, “the Old Testament law was then and still today is not only ‘good’ but also useful for the Christian.” It is “good” in the sense that it is an authoritative and reliable guide for Christian living. We simply need to understand how to apply it. The law’s divine origin also means that it is aligned with a “public (in the absolutely broadest sense) good” and intended to influence individual and communal behavior.
Second, the law is weak (and good all at the same time). Its weakness involves its inability to change human heat. God tells Israel that he will eventually address this problem in Ezekiel 36, noting that he will “vindicate the holiness of my [the Lord’s] great name” (23) by cleansing Israel from uncleanness and idolatry (25) and changing our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh through the Holy Spirit (26-27). In doing so, God will “cause you [his people] to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (27). Paul, as Averbeck notes, points to this change post-Christ in Romans 8:3-4. Whereas “the law was powerless” and “weakened by the sinful nature,” Christ's sacrifice and the coming of the Holy Spirit were capable of overcoming the willfulness of the human heart. As good as God’s law is, it has limitations (or weaknesses).
Finally, the law is unified. There has been a tendency to divide the law into broad sections (e.g., moral, civil, and ceremonial or “cultic”). This division, while helpful on a superficial level, can create an impression that certain aspects of the law (e.g., the civil or ceremonial) are not applicable to the Christian life. The difficulty is that the Bible does not distinguish between the various laws. As Averbeck notes, “This does not mean we should bring every specific law in the Old Testament over directly into the church and the Christian life. However, every law does contribute to some dimension of the law that, in turn, does indeed apply to the Christian life as part of the ‘law of Christ.’” (For more on how that works in various cases, I would encourage you to purchase The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church or listen to my interview with Richard Averbeck).
Understanding the Old Testament law as unified disallows any final separation of moral, civil, and ceremonial. It also reminds us that we are integrated beings whose whole lives are to be devoted to the Lord without qualification (Deut 6:5; Matt 22:37). The whole law (even those portions normally referred to as ceremonial) continues to inform and guide Christian practice though Christian practice may take different forms than in the Old Testament (Rom 12:1; Heb 13:15, 16; 1 Pet 2:5).
Our Nation’s Laws as Good, Weak, and Unified
When we think about our nation’s laws and policies, we are thinking not only about speed limits or zoning ordinances (cf. Deut 22:8), which are often intended to ensure some aspect of the public good but also the Constitution of the United States, which expresses the fundamental values of the people of the United States. We are also, to some degree, thinking about the interpretation of laws and policies in the form of judicial decisions and institutionally established guidelines (e.g., Title IV and IX). In considering our nation’s laws, we may say that they are good, weak, and unified; however, not in exactly the same way that God’s law is good, weak, and unified.
First, our nation’s laws can be good. Whereas the Old Testament law’s goodness was derived from its divine origins (i.e., God gave Israel his holy, righteous, and good law), the goodness of the United States laws comes from their alignment with certain aspects of God’s order. Because our nation’s laws were produced by men and approved by “the people,” there is no guarantee that the laws will be good. We might say that it is good to the extent that it happens to align with various attributes of God (e.g., justice), though our nation’s laws can never align fully with God’s order because it denies the sovereignty of the Triune God.
Human law can also be “good” in the sense that it restrains evil. Yet, it is also possible for our nation’s laws to promote evil. Even when human law is good, its goodness is both qualified and limited. It can help us navigate the “time between” even as it reinforces aspects of the “time between.”
Second, given this understanding of human law’s goodness, its weakness should be evident. If God’s law was incapable of transforming the human heart, no human law would be able to overcome it either. All law is weak in this sense. Human law’s weakness, however, is compounded because human law tends to venerate human capacity. However important human law may be (and it is important), it can reinforce human willfulness by giving humans the false impression that they can solve their own problems through human effort.
Finally, our nation’s laws are also “unified” in the sense that they do more than govern behavior or codify moral convictions. They also reflect ceremonial and symbolic meanings by establishing religion, or the underlying sense of duty that binds people together and directs the actions, if not attitudes and opinions, of citizens. In the Old Testament law, Israel’s duty was to fear the Lord through uncompromised obedience that would issue forth in love for neighbor. In the United States, our duty is to be “good citizens” who contribute to the formation of “a more perfect Union” characterized by justice, peace, security, and prosperity throughout the ages.
The laws of the United States reflect “the people’s” convictions about the role of a god (or conceptions thereof), the people, our nation, and the world more generally. Though it is often asserted that the United States is a “Christian nation,” our nation has never been determined by Christ in the way the church is determined by Christ. The church, in other words, is not a law unto itself. It sits under Christ’s authority and seeks to discern what that looks like in any given situation.
The United States, by contrast, does not view itself as determined by Christ and his authority. Instead, it determines its own course so that, in various different periods of our shared history, laws have not reflected reality. Some of those laws have been corrected to align with reality (witness the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution) while other proposals, such as the Equality Act, are currently questioning and distorting reality in various ways. In any case, the laws of the United States, including the founding documents, shape what it means to be a “good citizen,” and because living under Christ’s authority is not essential to that definition, there will be times when being a “good citizen” stands in opposition to being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Click here to read Part 1: 3 Meaningful Actions Christians Can Take for Our Nation
Click here to read Part 2: How Can We Distinguish between Church and State?
Click here to read Part 3: Thinking Like a Christian This Election Season
Click here to read Part 4: Is Christian Political Participation a Sacred Duty or a Civil Right?
Click here to read Part 5: What Role Should Law Play in Christian Political Participation?
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