Why can't Christians say that parts of the Old Testament don't apply??..

[DeistPaladin]

I also ask, "Well, if these laws don't apply any more, then why are they still in the book?" (After all, when we repeal laws they are removed from the law books!)

I have yet to receive a reasonable answer to either question.

Here you go:

The Romans required an appeal to antiquity in order to accept any religion.

The attitude was that any "new" religion had to explain where the hell God has been all these centuries. If the one-true-religion really was so true, why hadn't anyone heard of it until now? Was the same jealous, attention hungry god who desires, nay demands, a personal relationship with his creation just on vacation for the last few thousand years? Is it the case that all the religions of antiquity somehow got it all wrong during that time, were never corrected, and suddenly, out of the blue, the one-true-god decides to fix the problem by speaking to the one-true-prophet, nobody else, and have him set the older religions straight?

I'm talking to you, Islam!

Same goes for you, Mormonism!

Normally, the appeal to antiquity is a logical fallacy but in this case, the Romans had good reason to demand such a bone fide to any religion claiming to exclusively know the mind of Christianity's personal god.

I don't know if I mentioned this earlier in this thread by Marcionite Christianity was a very popular contender by the time of the Council of Nicaea in 325. It seemed like it was within an ace of becoming the victor. Had they won, today people would be asking our political candidates if they believe in two gods. The Marcionites rejected all things Jewish and considered Yahweh and the OT to be inferior to the authority of the higher god Jesus. To them, Jesus didn't "fulfill" the OT laws (whatever that's supposed to mean), he flat out abolished them.

Marcionite seems relatively more consistent and rational than the Trinitarian mess that Christianity today presents but it had the Achilles heal of being a "new" religion, founded by none other than the apostle Paul as discovered by Marcion. Paul's original "start over from scratch" model wasn't going to cut it with the Romans. They needed the OT ties to antiquity. Christianity couldn't throw it out and survive.

The net result from Nicaea, and consequently for modern Christianity, was a strange compromise. They kept the OT but then ignored it all as "fulfilled" by Jesus. Jesus was a god who could forgive sins but also part of and somehow subordinate to the Triune god. Christianity was strictly monotheistic, per the old Jewish directives as codified in the Ten Commandments, and yet also had an intercessor deity, Jesus, who was required in order to reach the Heavenly Father, per the pagan and gnostic influences so popular with the Romans.

Like a child of Judaism and Paganism, the contemporary version of Christianity was born into the world with traits of both. Like most bastard children, the conception was half improvised and half compromised. And so we're saddled with the screaming, dysfunctional, maladjusted brat today.

Oh, sorry, you were looking for a rational theological answer, weren't you? What a contradiction in terms.