Posted: Jun 05, 2011 11:13 pm
Byron wrote:willhud9 wrote:First of all the end of Leviticus, is informally known as the Holiness code. This section was aimed nearly directly at the priesthood. [...] Second of all, many Biblical scholars are dubious about how much of Leviticus is still applicable being that Levite law ended after Christ.
A fact gleefully overlooked by proof-texters. I know you ain't that, Will, but what is your criteria? It appears to be wholesale abandonment of the Mosaic Law due to the spiritual regeneration of Christ. In which case, what do you claim as your source of authority? Paul of Tarsus? If that's the case, nowhere does Paul create a systematic formula for dispensing with the Mosaic Law. Often, as with the circumcision controversy, it's a mess. (As in Galatians c.2, where Paul rambles about separate gospels for the circumcised and uncircumcised.) If your authority is some categorical imperative found in Christ, what's your method for identifying and following this imperative?
Oh, and I don't see how Jesus (if the "law won't pass" saying is authentic) couldn't contradict Paul. The only way he couldn't contradict him is if all was fulfilled with the Resurrection, which isn't even proto-orthodox doctrine. Since the synoptics hadn't even developed a systematic Christology yet, this looks like highly dubious anachronism.
So I ask again: what's your ethical source (Romans 7 is a theological musing on the status of the Law, not a how-to) and how do you arrive at it?
I do believe Romans 7:4 "Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God."
Covers it. as well as Romans 7:6 " But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter."
So 1) Paul is teaching that the law WAS fulfilled by Christ. 2) That is doctrine taught by the church. Or else all of the baptist seminars I have been to have been lying and saying it was. 3) I do not say the law is bad. I say the law no longer controls Christians. Christians are bound to a higher law which is the grace of Jesus Christ. Again, all of this can be found in Paul's and Peter's epistles as well as John's gospel.