As I promised I am doing a few posts in tribute to Dave Dorsey my former graduate school professor who recently passed away. He was a dear man who I loved and admired.
Here is my first post. Read that first.
Today, I have a treat. I came across a PDF of his online on a topic that many Christians struggle with and ask: “Are we (as Christians) responsible for keeping ancient Old Testament Laws?”
or sometimes, “How do we navigate the 613 laws today?”
Oh! Before you think 613 laws is a lot, remember that our country passes far more than that in a typical week.
But these Old Testament laws are a code for a whole people group that comprise national, both cultural and religious. They include even dietary and clothing restricts and other particulars too.
Don’t eat shellfish?
Don’t wear two types of cloth?
Don’t marry foreigners?
What about the 10 Commandments? Those seem good to keep. Not murdering people is a brilliant one.
Plus, in the new Testament, great care is taken to underscore the importance of the Mosaic Law for Christians; so how do we navigate it?
Dorsey tackles all that and more in this paper with this tantalizing title:
The Mosaic Law and the Christian: A Compromise
Be warned, it is a short paper from a scholar. Is it practical? Yes, very. Is it hard to read? That depends on what you’re used to reading. Give it the old college try!
In this short paper you can glimpse the brilliance of Dave (as he preferred to be called) who taught so many profound things to us. It’s amazingly researched and full of intellectual honesty, and most of all, helpful.
Enjoy it here.
I will absolutely read this. Thanks for offering it. I must admit I have my mind pretty much made up on the general topic — basically, Old is obsolete and New fulfills and enhances any Old that needs to stand. But since you recommend this the way you do, and since I can see within a few lines that the writer is indeed thoughtful, scholarly, and sincere, I hope to have my thoughts on this general area filled out and possibly even corrected. For now, I’ll offer these additional thoughts here, with the caveat that my thinking may be adjusted after reading Dorsey. http://blcasey.wordpress.com/2013/03/03/galatians-old-and-new-2/ http://blcasey.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/old-and-new-inconsistencies-pt-2/
Upon better understanding the OT law in light of the time and cultural surroundings it was written, there is hardly any better way to understand the mercy and graciousness of God. When people got that wrong for longer enough Jesus came and refreshed our memories. Much blessing to you as you learn this for yourself. :)
David Dorsey once used this analogy from a paper he had written and I expound more on this in an article I wrote, http://faithinactionrichlandcob.wordpress.com/letter-to-a-sincere-christian-why-study-the-old-testament/ as well as another http://faithinactionrichlandcob.wordpress.com/a-christians-take-on-some-of-the-levitical-laws/
I hope this helps, the first article is the one worth focusing on, it says, in so many words..”if you met the woman you love at the age of 28 and did not know her before then, would you not want to get to know everything about her so that you could know how to love her more deeply and what pleases her? Would you not spend time reading old love letters, pour over old rewards she had obtained? these describe her and give you a better understanding of who she is”. When we as Christians study the Old Testament, we get a glimpse into the heart of God, into His character, and it prevents us from being ignorant or believing claims like “the God of the Old Testament is mean and the New Testament is a nice God” or something along those lines. It helps us find out the mind of God. For instance, an oft-quoted example we learned was “the law of Moses instructs an Israelite to build parapets on their rooftops”. so does this mean we in the Christian church are obligated to? No. but use this technique C (context/concept), I (insight), A (application). CIA. (easy to remember)
The CIA approach we could use for the above example is “God wanted parapets built so that a person’s neighbor would not be in danger of falling off the roof, so God must want us to care about our neighbor’s well being….hmmm. i do remember reading something about “love your neighbor as yourself” in the New Testament so now we have a deeper understanding of the Law as a Christian as well as a more-informed view of the God who wrote it as well as more proof that God is the same God of both testaments because his ideas line up exactly in both.
Well, wasn’t that a provocative reply to my comment? :-o I’ll bite!
I feel instant support for your first sentence there. What an excellent expression — and one I can deepen my understanding of.
Where I feel resistant is to any (not necessarily your or his) notion that believers today need concern themselves directly with the Old Covenant. I’d written more but realized I’m getting the chariot before the burro, so I’ve deleted the rest. We’ll see . . . I’ll probably get to reading the article within a week and will come back and say more here if I feel newly enlightened!
Since this post is about this article in particular as as more as the topic in general, it would probably help us to base our conversation here on responses to the article. In my opinion, the proposal of the article makes good sense of 2 Timothy 3:16 in particular and many other passages as well, while holding that NONE of the laws are legally binding on the Christian. It’s a worthwhile read.
One of my favorite quotes:
“If it is true that these stipulations are not our stipulations, it is equally true that they were issued by our God, who does not change. If the corpus was tailor-made for another people in another situation, it was tailor-made by the One we seek to know and serve.
Spurred by comments, I have read the article long before I thought I would this week. I have benefited, as anticipated, from a filling out of my already held ideas, in general, and from the thorough, thoughtful, logical approach of an apparently devoted man of God. There is nothing much substantive in Dorsey’s hermeneutic or method to which I take exception. Minor, semantic things surface here and there, such as the term “binding,” which I hear in a legal sense but he must not.
Dan, you excerpted a statement that I also find quotable, but I don’t find that one representative of the paper as a whole. In other words, Dorsey does not seem to stress the Old-New connections or lack of changeability of God. While some (e.g., some so-called “Reformed” thinkers or Herbert W. Armstrong disciples or SDAs) may be comforted here by a statement of God’s unchangeability, in other senses and God may well be said to change, in one sense — read Genesis or I Samuel lately?) :-)
One of the equally quotable — and more thetic — passages in this article is this: “. . . [N}one of the 613 stipulations of the Sinaitic covenant are binding upon NT Christians, including the socalled moral laws, while in a revelatory and pedagogical sense all 613 are binding upon us. . . .” This is where I would have chosen a word other than “binding,” for binding strikes me as a legal requirement, but he must be using the term in another way.
Dorsey’s “theocentric hermenutic,” as enumerated in the last page’s worth, is laudable: #1 is so very true, and Dorsey aptly reminds us of that #4. The “pedagogical” and “revelatory” aspects of the OC law are indeed instructive and revealing as every current-day believer seeks to know more of God, although nevermore bound legally by code restricted to another time, another place, another people. There is still theological significance and insight to be gained by looking beneath the surface of OC laws.
Finally … outside the direct purview of the article . . . To have one’s memory refreshed about the nature of God is wonderful, but I can’t believe that God wants us to exist under a system John and Saul-Paul and others worked so hard to controvert. I’m currently exegeting John and dealing with questions of authorship and date and literary criticism. It seems clear that the wonders and words and witnesses recorded in John are, among other things, showing that Jews may either reject or accept Jesus as “Messias,” and *their choice makes all the difference.* In other words, there was at the time of John’s writing (and/or the time of the collection of His writings) no inherent, salvific value in being a Jew, or in keeping OC law. It was all about what one does with Jesus.