Preparation (Union): House Rules

Reading: Ps 119.

I. "Come!" The Unitive Way
[Introduce the three-part OT: chart]
All three ways figure in to each part, of course. [preparation slide]
I’ll foreground them as follows:

Unity is the ground and goal of Torah: do this to honor and realize the promises.
Purgation is the work of the prophets, because the old comes to an end as the promises are fulfilled.
Illumination is the spring and substance of the writings.

Protestant theology's hallmark has been justification by grace through faith:

God regards us as having Jesus' ('imputed', 'alien') righteousness.
This is a 'forensic' effect of fellowship with God.
Paul seems to emphasize this as beginning with Abraham's righteousness,
which leads to a whole different life, ethic, and legacy.

The unitive way concerns belonging (or alienating), and its consequences of exaltation and shame.

Belonging is essential for 'groupish' (Haidt) human beings: family, tribe, nation, culture, etc.
New creation is resurrection or renewal through the Holy Spirit
of all that is by, in, and for the Son (1 Cor 6:16, Phil 4:10-11, Col 1:13-20).

Fellowship with YHWH, our relational God, also yields likeness: sanctification and glorification (2 Cor 3:17-18).

This is a long way off from the Torah. The patriarchs look more like wayward but adopted/betrothed Israel.
That demonstrates that transformation is the fruit of this relationship, not its condition.

Stories of union and exaltation include

Enoch, Abraham, Moses, David, Esther, Mary (especially in later Mariology), the Twelve, John the Evangelist/the Beloved Disciple, Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory Palamas, Teresa of Avila, John Calvin, George Fox, Evelyn Underhill, Mother Teresa.

Unitive practices include

Praise/worship, prayer, sabbath-keeping and -honoring, communion, "Spirit baptism," charismata, fruit of the Spirit, marriage/ordination/monasticism, hesychasm, martyrdom.

II. Relationships and Rules
Narratives and rules dominate the Torah.
Rules are of course fundamental in many moral frameworks and ethical systems,

and of great significance to the Kingdom's arrangements with "God's household" (1 Peter 4:17).

Relationships imply rules; rules reflect and structure relationships.

The order is important. Legalism gets it backwards.
Breaking the covenant doesn't end Israel's relationship with God (Hosea 11).
Keeping it insincerely doesn't reflect its intended or ultimate structure (Amos 5:21-24).
Even good rules generate rule-followers and rule-breakers (Romans 7, Peter in Acts 15, Luke 15's two sons). E.g., grades, attendance, etc. 'wag the dog.'
Tim Keller: Both obedience and disobedience (often motivated by 'goodness gets' mindsets) are failing ways to live.
So what is the covenant for?

Israel's origin in the patriarchs and 'constitution' at Sinai both display God's grace in the midst of human irresponsibility and incapacity.

Moses promises that obeying God's rules will be righteousness for Israel (Deut 6:25).
Righteousness is evident (Gen 15:6), if sporadic (King David, in Israel's historical narratives).

The role of righteousness as response to grace signals the responsibility that follows it.

Six common pictures of grace and responsibility, each implying a different kind of relationship: [beinggood chart on grace & responsibility]
These beg the question of what Israel's relationship with God is and ought to be like.

The OT already suggests some fluidity and flexibility concerning commands, according to the conditions and circumstances of Israel's relationship with God:

The Torah frames them relationally and historically (Deut 5:6);
Psalms treasure but do not depend on them;
the histories affirm them but acknowledge their limits;
the prophets foresee restoration and change rather than reinstation or abolition;
Jewish messianic expectation awaited renewed justice and purified worship.
The OT already distinguishes, say, directions for temple and tabernacle
from regulations on relationships and justice as well as rules on hygiene (Hosea 6:6, Micah 6:6-8, Ps 51:17).

III. Kingdom Rules
"When there is a change in the priesthood [the arrangement], there is necessarily a change in the law as well" (Hebrews 7:12).
A pressing Christian (especially NT church) issue: What role(s) do the covenantal Torah regulations play in Christian life? (Rabbinical Judaism faced a similar crisis after the Jewish War 66-70.) [chart]

Rejected Christian positions miss the newness and the continuity of Jesus Christ's restoration of relationships:

Marcion: Both they and their inferior god should be disowned; Jesus represents a different, higher God of love.

'Circumcision party': They apply to Christians as they had applied to Jews.

These demonstrate basic misunderstandings of the nature of God's unitive way with us.

The NT writings reflect disputed positions already in Jesus' day, and especially in the apostolic age:

Hebrews: They are ineffective, old, and passing away (so later Christian 'supersessionism').	James: They are the 'law of liberty', vital for life in Christ (so Calvin's 'third use of the Torah').
Galatians, Colossians: They were (are?) a tutor and a trustee to train Israel, which receives its maturity through adoption and Spirit.	Matthew: While they are limited, they contain 'treasures old and new' for the Kingdom's disciples.
John: Jesus' coming focuses our attention elsewhere.	Romans: Sin frustrates their just intentions and drives us to Christ instead (so Luther).
Mark, Luke/Acts: Christ's work turns out to have transformed and relativized at least some of them (sabbath, food laws), fueling later distinctions between ceremonial commandments and other kinds.	Corinthians: Apart from Christ they are a "service of death"; in him they are instructive for the church, often treated figurally (so patristic and medieval exegesis).

So Christ is determinative for the Kingdom's new arrangement--"lord of the Sabbath" (Matt 12:1-8), and OT and NT rules are newly significant within that arrangement.

Jesus, then the apostles, then later generations appeal to a variety of old rules and issue new ones (rulings, household codes, authoritative opinions, etc.) to order Christian communities.
Common ethics of rule-following ("righteousness based on Torah") ignore the character transformation that comes from 'anticipating resurrection' (Col 3:1-4).
The rules' authority has always been the Holy Spirit's authority.
Their operation is not straightforward but calls for wisdom and judgment;
misunderstanding reflects or risks distortion of the relationships they depend on and serve.

Rules arise out of shifting (and often problematic) cultural locations and circumstances (for instance, Deut's justice laws and Paul's codes of gender conduct) and are bound to them, but their force is not restricted to them.

Then should Christians: [chart]

condemn their respect for fallen and thus unjust circumstances? (cf. some moral absolutisms)	abstract generalizable principles from them? (so Kantian deontology and situation ethics' consequentialism)
ignore them and obey the Spirit directly? (cf. antinomianism)	imitate their circumstances so they will continue to apply directly? (cf. legalism, some divine command theories)
ignore them and favor less disputed material? (cf. some cultural relativisms)	read them allegorically in light of Christ's story? (cf. some narrative ethics)

My approach: Cultivate an 'apostolic sensibility' so we can maintain and deepen apostolic traditions of rule-keeping.

Learn OT and NT rules, in the contexts in which they operate.
Read them always within the unitive framework of Christ, the church, and the Kingdom's righteousness, peace, and joy (Rom 14:17).
Honor them and thus participate in the God-given relationships they manifest.
Respect the complexity, nuances, shifts, and goals of those relationships.
Pay attention especially to how NT writers do all these things.
Case study: Deut 21:10-14? Or choose others?