RE: Old Testament & Christian Morality
March 22, 2012 at 9:04 pm
(This post was last modified: March 22, 2012 at 9:06 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Unfortunately this a very difficult area to discern OT commands that are eternal versus those that have limited application. For example, God commanded Noah to build the ark, but that doesn't mean every believer is supposed to make a boat. The Laws of Noah apply to all of humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, but the Laws of Moses were set forth to govern the ancient Israelite theocracy. Leviticus and Deuteronomy nevertheless remain instructive in their inner meaning. That is why Jesus can say, the neither the Law nor the Prophets will pass away.
Part of Torah study goes beyond extracting hard and fast rules, but to cultivate a state of mind able to receive the inner spiritual meaning of the text. An Orthodox Jew will attend very closely to both the natural and spiritual meaning while a Swedenborg student would seek primarily the inner meaning.
Like everything else the text is deeper than the people who read it. I for one have been studying for many years and continue to get fresh insights and shades of meaning, things I had overlooked before. So what I'm saying is that ultimately it's not what you pull out of it so much as what it brings out in you.
Part of Torah study goes beyond extracting hard and fast rules, but to cultivate a state of mind able to receive the inner spiritual meaning of the text. An Orthodox Jew will attend very closely to both the natural and spiritual meaning while a Swedenborg student would seek primarily the inner meaning.
Like everything else the text is deeper than the people who read it. I for one have been studying for many years and continue to get fresh insights and shades of meaning, things I had overlooked before. So what I'm saying is that ultimately it's not what you pull out of it so much as what it brings out in you.
