(June 22, 2015 at 6:21 pm)Milleby Wrote: The first one goes something like "Well, those laws were intended for the ancient Hebrews, modern day Christians aren't expected to follow them." I'm genuinely curious in regard to this, what does the bible have to say on that? What OT laws are gentile Christians expected to obey, and which ones do they get a pass on? Could you guys refer me to any literature on this matter?I think it was Paul who first floated the idea that the old testament law died with Jesus on the cross, and that from then on Christians were to follow Jesus' example and teachings and not the old commandments. Jesus' own sacrifice replaces the animal sacrifices of the old testament, and he does away with the list of laws given the Israelites along with the ten commandments.
With the ease of having Christ as an intercessor, Christians can rest easy even in the face of such onerous new concepts such as thought-crime (Matthew 5:21-30), because absolution is just a prayer away. This allows them to sidestep the subtle dangers of the new approach to worship. They can also dismiss the crude and brutal god of the OT --and his ridiculous laws-- as somehow necessary due to the backwards and intransigent nature of the cultures of the time.
There are a number of questions to ask regarding this. Not only did Jesus offer the contradictory messages regarding the importance of the old law (Matthew 5:17-20, versus Matthew 12:3-8), but the laws themselves remain 'on the record' and we can judge the god of the OT by them. The explanations regarding the culture of the time make god seem helpless in the face of stubborn humans. But otherwise we must wonder about the odd and almost rambling nature of the old law and just what it might say about a god who spends an inordinate amount of time reminding his chosen people to remember that he's god, or an even greater amount of time explaining exactly how they must prepare their animal sacrifices. It shouldn't take long to get into "mysterious ways" territory, though, at which point the conversation might hit a wall.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
