Can/Should Laymen Counter Heretical Views?

[Nathan Rinne]

Brian,

"The Torah does not distinguish between different types of laws. All came from God."

Maybe not, but Luther did (just see the quote I provided for you). As have Lutherans (see Book of Concord). And, it doesn't take too long a time in the New Testament either to see there are important differences and distinctions there.

"As I noted earlier, the fact that Luther nor most Christians see it as referring to the seventh day as God commanded throughout the Old Testament, indicates that it is not a law that expressed God's will for all times and places."

I'd say that you don't approach the question with the sophistication it deserves. The principal that the whole of the creation was to worship the God of Israel (and yes, worship is primarily about hearing the Word and believing) has never been in question. Luther talked about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil being given for just this reason. So again, there is a universal principal here that any careful and concerned reader of the O.T. immediately discerns.

You might also find it worth your while to read that CTQ article I linked to above. It also makes the point I have made: "Luther distinguishes the moral law (“Ten Commandments”) as perpetual, from the temporary civil and ceremonial laws of ancient Israel. In our examination, we are focusing on the moral law, not the civil and ceremonial laws."

In any case, I'll check back again, but probably not for a few days. I can't imagine having to argue all these points with you in order to get to the really important point I'm bringing up. I am beginning to better understand Pastor Mark Brown's thread about killing threads...

+Nathan

[Brian Stoffregen]

I'd say that you don't approach the question with the sophistication it deserves. The principal that the whole of the creation was to worship the God of Israel (and yes, worship is primarily about hearing the Word and believing) has never been in question. Luther talked about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil being given for just this reason. So again, there is a universal principal here that any careful and concerned reader of the O.T. immediately discerns.

Ah! It's not really the Law (or even the Decalogue) that you are talking about, but the "principals" behind them. I don't see them as equivalent.


I do not believe that the oldest forms of the sabbath laws were about worshiping God (or that principal). They were simply about resting and taking time to refresh - people, land, and animals.

Exodus 23:10-11: For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.

Exodus 23:12: Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed.

Exodus 34:21: Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even in plowing time and in harvest time you shall rest.



In my opinion, the desire to separate the 613 commands into moral, civil, and ceremonial, is our human attempt to decide which laws (especially if they are the will of God) no longer apply to us. In other words, we look at the commands and decide, "This command makes sense to us now, so we'll call it 'a moral law'."

[readselerttoo]

All,

...“legal scheme,” “nasty tool,” or “disposable tool”....

Again, those are all names for the decalogue or moral law, per Paulson. Hence "my contention that Paulson denies the third use of the law for the same reason that He believes Christ committed sin, namely, because, for him, the law of God is not His eternal will we are created to walk in but is really something else."

And this, it seems to me, is not just something that we can begin to clearly see with Paulson...

It also has to do with other popular theologians who have been very popular in the LC-MS but have reliably believed in something less than it's doctrine of Scripture.

+Nathan

For us sinners God’s law is inescapable.  I’m not convinced that we can talk about it as His will let alone His eternal will.  By talking this way it assumes that we can judge what is God’s eternal will and what it is not.  We sinners do not have this POV.  In fact according to Luther’s Bondage of the Will it is blasphemy to assume that we aspire to measure God’s purpose beyond scriptures.  Show me in
Scripture that God’s law is his eternal will.  Unfortunately we are always under judgment of condemnation under God’s law.   God isn’t waiting for us to see what we will do in terms of good and evil.  But as sinners we are tragically beyond the Garden of Eden.  Only God can (and has) bring us back into fellowship and reconciliation with Himself and with one another.

God’s law is valid now as it has been.  Whether it is eternal I’d like to see that posted in the scriptures.  Perhaps from God’s view it is.  But we don’t have access to that beyond scripture.  So I guess I’ll search the scriptures for this.  Psalm 119 maybe?

[peter_speckhard]

If the law (Love God and your neighbor) were not God’s eternal will, it would be sort of meaningless to say the law always accuses. Accuses us of what?

The law always accuses sinners, and we’re always sinners in this life. But in eternity it surely remains God’s will, and the reality, that we love Him and our neighbor.

[DCharlton]

DCharlton,

Sorry so long to get back to you.

"I agree that this discussion is really characterized by a "neutral objective scientific method"."

OK, but I was saying that even if Brian S. does think that "'a neutral objective scientific method' solves disputes about the meaning of Scripture and Christian doctrine," I am saying that I don't think the conversation necessarily revealed that pn the face of it. In other words, a person could have said basically the same things to you, challenge you in the same ways, without having that particular worldview.

"Its a cultural and historical question, not a question of what is eternal valid."

That helps -- thank you!

Its been so long since I read my post, I'm not sure what I meant, but I think in left the word "not" out.  I can't imagine I mean to say that my discussion with Brian S. is characterized by a "neutral objective scientific method".   

Rather, I think I meant to indicate that he falsely assumes that we "modern" people can solve problems that frustrated ancient and medieval people because we are "enlightened", that substituting neutral reason for tradition we have eliminated any bias.  That his method is seldom neutral and not always reasonable doesn't thwart his optimism.

[readselerttoo]

If the law (Love God and your neighbor) were not God’s eternal will, it would be sort of meaningless to say the law always accuses. Accuses us of what?

The law always accuses sinners, and we’re always sinners in this life. But in eternity it surely remains God’s will, and the reality, that we love Him and our neighbor.

Eternity means outside of time.  A time-confined sinner of which I am does not have a view into eternity.  I am always subject to God's law but always subject as sinner with no view into eternity. 

[readselerttoo]

Romans 5:20...”The law came in (entered) to increase the trespass.   This may not have much bearing on the above.  But as to the origin of God’s nomos it entered at creation.  Imo

[Nathan Rinne]

Brian S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Sabbath

Is this article totally wrong then?

Readselerttoo,

So you are pretty sure that your position is the one Elert took as well? And you basically sympathize with what Paulson is saying here?

+Nathan

[peter_speckhard]

If the law (Love God and your neighbor) were not God’s eternal will, it would be sort of meaningless to say the law always accuses. Accuses us of what?

The law always accuses sinners, and we’re always sinners in this life. But in eternity it surely remains God’s will, and the reality, that we love Him and our neighbor.

Eternity means outside of time.  A time-confined sinner of which I am does not have a view into eternity.  I am always subject to God's law but always subject as sinner with no view into eternity.

Our “view” of eternity is only what God reveals. For example, we know in this world that God is eternally triune. We know God is Love. And we know we live in eternity. So unless you’re saying that we live in eternity with the triune God who is love but it is not His will that we live in love in eternity, it seems obvious that His revealed will, that we live God and neighbor, applies to eternity as much as His self-revelation that He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[readselerttoo]

Brian S.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Sabbath

Is this article totally wrong then?

Readselerttoo,

So you are pretty sure that your position is the one Elert took as well? And you basically sympathize with what Paulson is saying here?

+Nathan

I have not read Paulson nor much by Forde.

[readselerttoo]

If the law (Love God and your neighbor) were not God’s eternal will, it would be sort of meaningless to say the law always accuses. Accuses us of what?

The law always accuses sinners, and we’re always sinners in this life. But in eternity it surely remains God’s will, and the reality, that we love Him and our neighbor.

Eternity means outside of time.  A time-confined sinner of which I am does not have a view into eternity.  I am always subject to God's law but always subject as sinner with no view into eternity.

Our “view” of eternity is only what God reveals. For example, we know in this world that God is eternally triune. We know God is Love. And we know we live in eternity. So unless you’re saying that we live in eternity with the triune God who is love but it is not His will that we live in love in eternity, it seems obvious that His revealed will, that we live God and neighbor, applies to eternity as much as His self-revelation that He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

While I do not disagree with scripture as the touchstone to our knowledge of God, I take issue with the idea of that which we know about God and eternity, ie. God in Himself as opposed to God revealed.  Sinners are confined to time and cannot extrapolate what eternity is except as told to us in scripture.  So as creatures we are always under both the burden of living under the law and its resultant curse or in the freedom of forgiveness in the Living Christ ie. The Gospel. 

There is a marvelous discussion of Gottes Selbst in Elert’s dogmatics which seriously wounds the Kantian regard for splitting up reality between things in themselves vs. things as they appear to us.  Elert believes this worldview is antithetical to the biblical which has no split.  Creation is as we receive it and we receive it either as the exigency of God’s law or as the comfort and assurance of the Gospel.  No third way.  The understanding of what eternity is (barring what we know from scripture) for us is beyond our boundary as time-confined creatures. 

Elert does a great job of dismantling these 19th century notions, imo.

[readselerttoo]

Another avenue:  I’m not sure what “God’s eternal will” is because as a time-confined sinner I have no view to this outside of scripture.  Gods triune nature is noted in the scriptures as what it is and not as what it is beyond time.   I guess only God would know that beyond time as the deus absconditus.

[peter_speckhard]

Another avenue:  I’m not sure what “God’s eternal will” is because as a time-confined sinner I have no view to this outside of scripture.  Gods triune nature is noted in the scriptures as what it is and not as what it is beyond time.   I guess only God would know that beyond time as the deus absconditus.

So you’re not sure if Jesus lives and reigns to all eternity because you have no view of eternity? He revealed it. So we know it. He is love. We know that. I’m not saying anything about eternity that God hasn’t told us, yet you seem to think even God telling us isn’t enough for us to go by.

[readselerttoo]

Another avenue:  I’m not sure what “God’s eternal will” is because as a time-confined sinner I have no view to this outside of scripture.  Gods triune nature is noted in the scriptures as what it is and not as what it is beyond time.   I guess only God would know that beyond time as the deus absconditus.

So you’re not sure if Jesus lives and reigns to all eternity because you have no view of eternity? He revealed it. So we know it. He is love. We know that. I’m not saying anything about eternity that God hasn’t told us, yet you seem to think even God telling us isn’t enough for us to go by.

I was talking about knowledge of God (prior to Christ) under the law in history (not that Jesus is not a part of that).  Certainly in Christ all the issues of God are finalized because He is God.  My remarks were more to what Luther was getting at in the Bondage of the Will.  Certainly all of God's will is revealed and exhausted in Christ because he is complete God and complete human.

So I guess I'm done with this.

[peter_speckhard]

Another avenue:  I’m not sure what “God’s eternal will” is because as a time-confined sinner I have no view to this outside of scripture.  Gods triune nature is noted in the scriptures as what it is and not as what it is beyond time.   I guess only God would know that beyond time as the deus absconditus.

So you’re not sure if Jesus lives and reigns to all eternity because you have no view of eternity? He revealed it. So we know it. He is love. We know that. I’m not saying anything about eternity that God hasn’t told us, yet you seem to think even God telling us isn’t enough for us to go by.

I was talking about knowledge of God (prior to Christ) under the law in history (not that Jesus is not a part of that).  Certainly in Christ all the issues of God are finalized because He is God.  My remarks were more to what Luther was getting at in the Bondage of the Will.  Certainly all of God's will is revealed and exhausted in Christ because he is complete God and complete human.

So I guess I'm done with this.

Fair enough. I think we're probably talking past each other. My point is simple. That we love God and our neighbor is Law in this life, but it remains God's will in eternity. Thus, "the law always accuses" needs the caveat "...in this life," or "sinners." It is not the eternal nature of the Law as a mere expression of God's will to be inherently accusatory. It just always is that way in a fallen world.