#138914 - 08/27/07 09:58 PM
Some Challenging Questions For a Challenger of Our Faith
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Registered: 04/28/07
Posts: 127
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2nd Part – The Disappointing Lack of Detailing the Bottom Line Issue
Since Ratzlaff himself stressed among his introductory remarks the idea—“Last, and probably most important for the readers of Proclamation!, Does the law written on the heart include the keeping of the Sabbath? If so, what Sabbath law applies to the new covenant Christian? How is one to demonstrate the he is keeping the Sabbath, if indeed the Sabbath is included in the law written on the heart?”—it turns out very disappointing that he doesn’t elaborate on that. The Sabbath being applicable to “new covenant” Christians or not is virtually absent from his long exposition, while admitting to be the most necessary issue to be discussed!
After all things considered of what he discussed, is the Sabbath commandment included in the law written on the heart or not?
He didn’t answer objectively this question. He just alleged that the Sabbath commandment is never repeated by Paul or any other New Testament writers. Well, if every one of God’s moral laws and requirements had to be validated for the Christian by its reference in the New Testament, than the Spiritists have a good point when they allege that the law against contacting the deceased ones belonged only to the Old Testament Era since it is not repeated anywhere in the New Testament (Deut. 18:9-12; Isa. 8:19, 20). And there is no clear, ipsis literis repetition of the precept against speaking God’s name in vain. Nor even any clear reference to not manufacturing sculpted images and use them as an auxiliary for devotion. In the New Testament there are only indirect references to that, for the mention to principles against idolatry is just limited to “idols”, which have to do with statues of pagan divinities, not the Church’s saints. So, the Roman Catholics have a good point about that too, to take seriously this kind of “argument of silence”, a very weak tool to either advocate or combat any cause. And it is the only that Mr. Ratzlaff uses in order to “prove” that the Sabbath is not included in the New Covenant.
We have already seen that the promise for the New Covenant is that God writes on the hearts and minds of His children what is called “My laws”. The text of Hebrews 8:8-10 is purely a reproduction of Jer. 31:31-33. So, the logical conclusion is that all those universal principles that were part of the law known by Jeremiah (and Ezekiel) are confirmed as also being among these “My laws” that God writes on the hearts and minds of whoever accepts the terms of this New Covenant [New Testament].
Now, how about all the ceremonies and rites that also belonged to the law at the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel? In Matt. 27:51 we read about the Temple’s veil that was rented from top to bottom. In due time the Christian community understood that to represent the end of all typological aspects of the Mosaic law. But the Sabbath is not ceremonial, as we have proven in the article that was never refuted point by point, “10 Reasons Why the Sabbath Is Not a Ceremonial Law”, that can be found in the following Internet address:
http://foroadventista.com/index.php/topic,610.0.html
In his article Mr. Ratzlaff reminded us of the existing “natural law”. Isn’t the requirement of resting regularly a “natural law”, in a sense? Somebody sent me a C.D. lecture by a medical doctor and Evangelical pastor, called Dr. Michael Cesar, who even mentions how Hitler had his workers dedicating every day of the week to build his planned arsenal, before Second World War. They would only pause at night, but would carry on their job from Sunday to Sunday. The outcome was not good at all. Production fell, the workers got sick, had nervous breakdowns, and finally Hitler decided to restore the six weekdays labor practices. To work seven days a week non-stop proved totally unnatural.
So, God so lovingly created this weekly pause for man at the creation of the world, for He knew well man’s physical and mental structure, how that would be a blessing to him, and associated this special time to a holy day. If later on men turned it into a holiday, a time for looking for pleasure and material gain, that was never God’s intention for His “Lord’s day”.
What Mr. Ratzlaff & Co. seem to ignore is that as he teaches that the Sabbath is not a commandment of God derived from the Creation of the world, he is not at odds only with the “Adventist tradition”, but against what Baptists, Presbyterians and other Christians have been teaching along the centuries in their confessional documents. The fact that they reapply the commandment to the first day of the week doesn’t reduce the truth that “the Sabbath was made for man”, as Jesus said, thus confirming its moral and universal character.
And, interestingly, both Baptists and Presbyterians say in their respective Confessions of Faith, that the first four commandments deal with man’s responsibility vis-à-vis God, and the last six, the same vis-à-vis his neighbor. So, how could the Sabbath not being part of the New Covenant?
By the way, even now the most representative Evangelical-Protestant leadership in the US is dedicated to promote the 10 Commandments as a necessity for our society to adopt as rule of conduct, and even a campaign to establish the “10 Commandments’ Day” is under way, with its signature collection having already reached over 331,000. This proposed day is the first Sunday of May. Isn’t that very significant? See the following links to check the information:
http://www.tencommandmentsday.com/
Finally, Mr. Ratzlaff proposes some answers to his initial questions, which I don’t see any reason to not accept one by one, as a Seventh-day Adventist. Let’s check one by one, and later see the “Proposal of Consensus” that I have been submitting to Evangelical Christians in general, with mixed reactions:
* The promise of the new covenant with its associated blessing of the law written on the heart applies to all Christians. {Check}
* Gentiles, who do not have the written law, nevertheless have some knowledge of God through natural law and often know right from wrong. {Check}
* Members of the old covenant community had the letter of the written law, some of which may have been moved to the heart through meditation and memorization. However, the thrust of both Jeremiah and Hebrews is on the contrast between the letter of old covenant law and that written on the heart by the Spirit in the new covenant Christian. {Check}
* The law written on the heart is the law of love, and it is the fulfillment of the whole law and is said to be a “new commandment”. {Check}
* Now our focus is not on the external letter of old covenant law and ritual. Rather it is the indwelling “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” that fully meets “the requirement of the law”--love, which is the law’s fulfillment. This moves the focus of our attention from “here is a list of things we must do”, to “here is a list of things Christ has done for us”. {Check}
Bible Texts That “Backfire”
Some Bible texts used to prove certain opinions often mean exactly the opposite of what is taught using them
* 2 Corinthians 3:3, 7, 8: You show that you are a letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. . . the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. . . . Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?
Since Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:3ff refers to the Ten Commandment as the law “written on stones” as a “ministry of death”, and in another text he shows that the law became “weakened by the sinful nature” (Rom. 8:3), some imagine that he is discarding the Decalogue, to replace it for another set of rules for the Christian community.
But what Paul is really doing is contrasting the ministry of the old covenant with the new covenant. As he applies the qualification of “ministry of death” by mentioning the “tables of stones”, some Bible interpreters mistake his language to mean that the contents of these tables of stones represented a “ministry of death”. Then, we have something very strange—God, who presented Himself to Israel as “longsuffering, merciful, good, forgiving” actually prepared a terrible trap to that people at Sinai: He offered them there a legal code that would result inescapably in death! He reserved the “law of love and grace” only to the New Testament folks! Is that the God Who is no respecter of people?
Going back to the scenery of where God’s law was solemnly proclaimed to the people we can read in Exodus 19:10ff God’s order that Israel purified and even abstained from sexual activity (vs. 15) for an integral dedication to Him in preparation to the utterance of the law. Limits were set around the mount so that not even animals should roam across the area. Finally the Ten Commandments were audibly pronounced before being recorded on the tables of stones. Now, all this preparation, expectation and remarkable solemnity for the deliverance of a . . . “law of death”! That’s incredible! Any one would feel cheated!
Notwithstanding, that is the bottom line of the exegesis that can be read in the writings of certain interpreters of a semi-antinomian orientation, who are unable to realize that “the law of the Lord is perfect and restores the soul” (Psalm 19:7). Truly, David has in mind the entire law (Torah), but that means the inclusion, not the exclusion, of the Decalogue.
Anyway, something went wrong in that agreement, turning its ministry into a death-producing factor. Why? Where was the problem? Was the law of such a tenor—generator of death? Then it couldn’t be “perfect”.
What some people can’t understand is that the problem was not with the law, but with the people who, even before knowing fully what would be proclaimed, precipitously declared regarding the Sinai proclamation: “we will do everything the Lord had said” (Exo. 19:8). But that was a stiff-necked people, so often condemned for their stumbling. Thus, it’s easier to understand: the problem was not in the law, but in the people. That is made very clear in the promise of the New Covenant at Ezekiel’s time—“I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Eze. 36:26).
The ones who had the wrong heart were the people, then the necessity of this people to change their attitude allowing God to perform a serious change—their stony heart removed and replaced by one of flesh.
And the important detail is that as Paul utilizes the “tables of stone/tables of flesh” metaphor it is implied that he intends to include ALL the commandments belonging to the “tables of stone”, as now transferred to the “flesh stones”. Otherwise, the use of the comparison wouldn’t make sense and he would have to employ a different and more appropriate language in vs. 3:3, something like “being manifested as letter of Christ, ministered for us, and written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in tables of flesh of the heart, i.e., only nine commandments of the tables of stones, excluded that of the Sabbath day. . .” But that was not Paul’s language. Consequently, the Sabbath commandment SHOULD BE INCLUDED on the tables of flesh..
Conclusion: In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul doesn’t say that the law is of death, but the ministry of the old covenant came to be like that. The Pauline illustration of “tables of stone/tables of flesh” deals with the old divine promise to Israel in Ezekiel 36:26, 27 that by the action of the Spirit the stony heart would be removed from them so that a more malleable fleshy heart were granted. On the heart of flesh the complete God’s moral law would be written, as promised in the New Covenant (Heb. 8:6-10).
As Paul employs the “tables of stone/tables of flesh” allegory, which is about the same used by Ezekiel (see 11:19, 20 and 36:26, 27), he certainly wouldn’t think of excluding any part of the “tables of stone”, as Ezekiel wouldn’t either. Otherwise the Apostle would have to explain that the Christian would be a letter written, not in tables of stones, but in tables of flesh, excluding the Sabbath commandment, or something on this line.
Paul’s intention is to show that for the Christians renewed by the Spirit, the terms of the divine moral law leave the cold tables of stone to be recorded on their hearts warmed by God’s grace (see Rom. 8: 3, 4). That makes the semi-antinomian interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3:3ff another interpretative “shot” that backfires.
10 POINTS FOR REACHING A POSSIBLE CONSENSUS IN THE DEBATE ON GOD’S LAW
After long discussions in an Evangelical Forum in the Internet, on the topic “The Eternal Law of God”, with several Christians who adopt a semi-antinomian/dispensationalist vision on the subject, 10 very important points were submitted to them so that they expressed their agreement or disagreement in order to see how this theme could be better defined, according to what the Bible really teaches. It was proposed that if in some point there were differences in understanding, that could be worked out and some other way of agreement could be looked for, in the face of alternative proposals submitted by the objectors. It would be a blessing if a consensus on the main points could be reached. Let’s see what these 10 points for the proposed consensus could be:
1) The question of obedience to the divine commandments, or all that God ordains, will not aim at salvation in any measure, since our obedience belongs to the field of sanctification (or “perseverance of the saints”), not justification. The law in itself transmits nothing in terms of justice. To understand the role of the law as a means of salvation would be an “illegitimate” use of it (1 Timothy 1:8).
2) The spiritual failure of Israel, which led to its rejection as a “theocratic nation”, was not in the law, which is “perfect”, “holy”, “just”, “good”, “spiritual”, “pleasurable” (Romans 7:12, 14, 22), rather in the people’s self-confidence attitude (“all that the Lord has said we will do”) regarding their possibilities to obey it plainly.
3) Jesus Christ stressed the basic principles of God’s law as being “love God above all things” and “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:36-40). Paul confirms it in Romans 13:8-10 and both these principles were always recognized by Christians as the synthesis of the divine law, both in the “horizontal” [creature-creature] perspective, as well in the “vertical” one [creature-Creator].
4) There are precepts of ceremonial, civil and moral character in the divine law, independently of occurring such “technical” language in the Bible pages, a fact recognized by the Confessions of Faith and Christian authorities of different persuasions, both of the present and the past, as exemplified by the “Westminster Confession of Faith”, the “39 Articles on Religion of the Church of England” and the “Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689”.
5) In the Sermon on the Mountain (Matthew 5 to 7), as well as in the conversation with the young ruler (Matthew 19:16ff), as Christ dealt with the true spirit of the law He reminded that God takes into account not only the mere external obedience to its texts, but the real, inner intentions of the individual vis-à-vis such obedience.
6) None of the Decalogue’s commandments has application limited to Israel. The Sabbath principle was extended to the “foreigners” (Isaiah 56:2-8), and people of every nationality need a regular day for rest, hence “the Sabbath was made because of man” (Mark 2:27). The most representative, historic, Confessions of Faith of the Protestant Christendom track the principle of a rest day to the Creation of the world.
7) Under the new covenant the basic principles of the divine law are written by God in the hearts and minds of His children, Jews or gentiles, in the manner it had been promised to ancient Israel in Ezekiel 36:26, 27 and Jeremiah 31:31-33 (cf. Hebrews 8:6-10 and 10:16).
8) In Christ’s debates with the scribes and Pharisees on the Sabbath He was correcting the extreme and insensible practice of the commandment by them, not campaigning against a norm established by Himself as Creator and Legislator (see Matthew 12:1-12; Hebrews 1:2).
9) In the beginning of Revelation (1:10) John refers to the “Lord’s day” as being a special day that he dedicated to God, for he speaks on that in the introduction of his book, as he locates himself in space (island of Patmos--vs. 9) and time (“on the Lord’s day”). Thus, he maintained a special day of observance, as established in the 4th commandment of God’s law, a fact that is recognized by the most representative historic “Confessions of Faith” of the Protestant Christendom, and is reiterated by important leaders, authors and teachers in that milieu.
10) The early Church suffered negative influences and adopted condemned practices and teachings after the passing away of the apostles, as had been prophesized by Paul in Act 20:29, 30, 2 Thessalonians 2:7, by Peter in 2a. Peter 2:1-3, a process that already manifested itself at the time when John describes some of the seven churches he addresses Jesus’ messages in the book of Revelation, chapters 2 and 3.
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#139135 - 08/30/07 04:34 AM
Re: Some Challenging Questions For a Challenger of Our Faith
[Re: A_G_Brito]
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Registered: 04/28/07
Posts: 127
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Hello folks.
I asked one of the moderators to correct a little mistake in my exposition above (in the second of the two frames). So far that hasn't been done, but let me clarify, then, what is to change.
In my discussion on the "Bible Texts That 'Backfire'" (on 2a. Cor. 3:3ff), just before reaching the "Conclusion:", the last clause should read:
But that was not Paul’s language. Consequently, the Sabbath commandment SHOULD BE INCLUDED on the tables of flesh.
I underlined the word that is replacing the old form, for it read wrongly, "of stone", which doesn't make sense on the light of the context and of the global discussion.
Thanks
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#139713 - 09/04/07 04:18 AM
Re: Some Challenging Questions For a Challenger of Our Faith
[Re: A_G_Brito]
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Registered: 04/28/07
Posts: 127
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The correction was made, so what I said in my last post is void.
I thank the moderator.
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