Jesus Never Abolished the Law - Rebuttal

3/4 of Jesus and Abolition of the Law debate
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        Firstly, ouch. That’s a lot of ad hominem you’ve got going on. Secondly, I don’t see how a fundamentalist and literal interpretation of the Bible is a bad thing, as you make it out to be. You can’t start drawing lines on what is and isn’t literal in the Bible, or it loses its meaning! People will disagree on what is literal or figurative, and then bam! You’ve got about…well, an estimated 33,000+different interpretations of the same text!

Figurative interpretation of Genesis as opposed to the literal 7 days of creation

           

           After reading through his blog post and the passages taken from Galatians, I see now that obedience to the Law does NOT correlate with righteousness. I concede that point. I also agree with the purpose of the Law stated in Galatians3:19-21, which is to remind us that we are sinners. I find a similar explanation for the purpose of the Law in Romans7:7-8. This allows Hebrews 10:3-4 to make more sense; that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Sacrifice of these animals wasn’t to cleanse sin, according to these passages, but rather to raise awareness of the sin we commit, and thus give us a need for Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice (Hebrews9:26).

            

           However, when Phillip goes back to how Jesus fulfilled the Law, he comes to the conclusion that it (the Law) is no longer needed. I assume he takes this from the part of Matthew 5:18 that says that nothing will “disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”, and his interpretation of “accomplished” is the prophecies that Jesus fulfills when he is crucified and rises again. However, in that same verse, Jesus says that nothing from the Law will disappear “until heaven and earth disappear”. This is confusing because it means that either “until everything is accomplished” and “until heaven and earth disappear” is synonymous, or they are contradictory. If we take the definition of “until heaven and earth disappear”, that would mean that the Laws would still be relevant for a really, really long time. Furthermore, I don't know why Jesus would address the Law and righteousness as if they were related somehow. It’s a tricky passage, but hey; if it were an easy book to interpret, there wouldn’t be tens of thousands of different guesses at the true meanings-so at least I’m not the only one!

This time, this is LITERALLY the body of Christ

            

            And a quick side-note: your analogy with test-taking is inaccurate. A more accurate version would be finishing a test, having the teacher tell you that you will be retaking the test every week until the end of the year, and assuming that that means you don’t have to retake it every week until the end of the year. I seriously cannot stress enough how important it is that Jesus states that the Law is here to stay for a very long time.

           

             In response to Phillip’s claims about my theories, I also disagree. A quote from Phillip shows his view on my first theory: “Well Daniel strongly implies that believers willfully chose to ignore the words of Christ concerning the Law because of a desire to attract Gentiles to their faith by making it "easier."” Firstly, I wouldn’t say ‘ignore’ so much as ‘make a reason to ignore’. Secondly, I didn’t make this one up. My observation of Acts 15:8-11 (spoken by Peter) and Acts 15:19-21 (spoken by James) is that the Apostles did indeed make it easier for Gentiles to accept Christ by writing to them (as opposed to something else, I do not know) about the Laws to follow. An interesting thing you want to note here is that they made acceptance of at least part of the Law mandatory for the Gentiles. Yes, the same Law that Phillip said is “no longer needed”, is now being taught to Gentiles by the Apostles. So it seems that these early Christians in particular still obeyed at least part of the Law, recognizing that Jesus never abolished them. Props to you guys, Peter and James, for sticking to Jesus’ words!

            
            Phillip also says “Judaism was already easier than the polytheistic paganism of the Gentiles”, and this simply isn’t true. Being a Jew meant following ALL of the Laws ordained by God, which were much stricter than the “laws” of the gods that allowed their followers to be sexually immoral, murder, steal, etc. This claim is just plain false. Moving on, Phillip takes note of the persecution that Christians encountered, which Jesus himself warned of, but also blessed (basicallymartyrdom (2) (3)), making “blessedness” go hand in hand with persecution as a Christian.

            My second theory he didn’t even try to refute since it is so obvious that Christians today throw out Laws for the sake of convenience. They don’t even have to be Old Testament Laws and teachings; Christians today throw out ANY teachings, OT and NT, that conflict with modern society. In addition to my examples with the Ten Commandments (OT), Jesus’ teachings (NT) about both adultery and divorce are constantly broken amongst Christians, but it seems that everyone simply overlooks his teachings about these things…for convenience. I fully encourage you to read Jesus’ entire Sermon on the Mount; find the things that Jesus tells you to do or not to do, and notice how no Christian follows these commands. Disregarding NT teachings from the Apostles is also commonplace in first world Christians, mainly the ones that tell us women are weaker and belong subject to the husband (blog on that coming up).

            Attacking my theories, he writes a good amount based off of his misreading. He creates a false dichotomy that only one of my theories must be true because they contradict each other, but he failed to notice that when listing my theories I placed a little “and/or” in between them! Yes, that means that the first can be true, the second can be true, or both can be true. Next time, read a little more carefully to avoid creating an argument that is both fallacious and not applicable.

          In an effort to refute your point about Jesus and refusing to stone the adulteress (which is mandated in Mosaic Law), I tried looking up more about the situation and found a page that apparently claims that this is an argument used by atheists to contradict Jesus! I’ll refer you back to that page to make whatever sense of it, because I personally don’t care whether Jesus followed the Laws or not. I care about what he said in Matthew 5:17-20 in regard to the Laws. This has nothing to do with that, so we call it a red herring.

And must I say, it is MUCH easier to create a rebuttal than to, should I say, throw the first stone.