Pro-Life Principles- The Ethical Questions

As we noted in the previous post, the abortion discussion can be divided into two parts: the ethical and the political.  These are not unrelated questions, but they are distinct.  So first, the ethical-

Is abortion moral? 

This question is the elephant in the room.  Almost no one in the pro-choice camp is willing to answer in the affirmative.  They will always say that abortion is to be regretted, yet there are other influential factors that may make certain abortions morally justifiable.

We can already anticipate more questions, but we must not run off just yet.  Let’s stick to this one question.  Is abortion moral?  Or rather, is it moral to end the life of (kill) a human entity (person?  being?  life?) prior to its birth?

Constantine and Religious Tolerance

This paper seeks to show that Constantine did have a policy of religious tolerance.  It will be of interest to many folks I know, and it will shed some light on the recent political conversations we’ve been having.

Righteous Gentiles

One of the most neglected categories, even in “Biblical Theology,” is that of the Old Testament “Righteous Gentile.”  The assumption is that the Jews, as special people of God, are coterminous with the saved in the Old World.  “Covenant Theology” especially propagates this, as “the Church” is often equated with “Israel.”  However, upon closer inspection, we can think of many saved non-Jews.  Moses’ father-in-law is one example.  Hiram of Tyre is another.  Jonah’s audience in Ninevah is another group.  We could even include Namaan the Syrian in the list.

Beyond these cursory examples, there is actually a rich tradition within Judaism.  The “law of the nations” or the “Noahide order” was a rabbinic expression used to explain the existence of the “God-fearer.”  Mark Nanos, in his provocative Romans commentary, explains:

While these gentiles did not keep the Jewish law per se (the 613 commandments of Torah), they kept what was later referred to in rabbinic Judaism as the “Noahide” or “Noachian Commandments.”  These Noahide Commandments trace their roots to biblical antecedents, particularly to the Mosaic model for the laws governing the “resident alien” living in Palestine, the “stranger within your gates” (Lev. 16-26; Ex. 12:18-19; 20:10-11).  In other words, the Levitical laws provided the historic halakha for governing hte minimal requirements of purity and righteousness for foreigners dwelling in the land of Israel. 

The “Death Principle” At Work in the Old Covenant

Rather than speak of a “works principle,” we ought to speak of a death principle.  Paul is clear that that Old Testament was a ministry of death and that the letter kills.  It was when the commandment was given that sin sprang to live and “I died” (Rom. 7:9).

The law kills stuff.  That was part of its original purpose in Eden too.  Tree of life.  Tree of death.  To fulfill the law, Jesus could not have stopped with a perfect life.  He needed to be obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

We Establish the Law

I won’t lie.  I still don’t understand Romans.  Paul’s theology is greater than I am.  I think I get what he’s saying in Galatians.  I feel good about Hebrews.  Romans, however, is still beyond me.  I’m making progress though.

For instance, Romans 3:31 often gets used, in Reformed circles at least, to teach the fundamental continuity of the law between Old and New Testaments.  Paul writes:

Do we then make void the law through faith?  Certainly not!  On the contrary, we establish the law.

This can’t mean that our faith establishes a new system of circumsion and kosher foods.  That would contradict Paul’s whole point.  Nor is it simply a “moral law” continuity, though I think it is that.

Rather I think Paul is using prophetic rhetoric and is reinforcing what he has already said in 3:27:

Where is boasting then?  It is excludeed.  By what law?  Of works?  No, but by the law of faith.

The older Christians were able to speak of the “new law.”  I think they are correct.  Jesus brings a new law (which has a fundamental moral continuity), and it is of faith.

Hebrews 7:12 supports this as well.  Whenver you the high priest dies, you have a change in law.

Noahide Laws

Alan Segal has some interesting works on the state of Judaism just prior to the advent of Christ.  I am not sure what faith tradition Segal is coming from, and as one reads his works it becomes clear that he does not acknowledge any strict view of divine inspiration of the New Testament.  He will argue that various authors disagree with one another, and he will also say that Paul or Luke have misunderstood Judaism.  With such sentiments, I cannot agree.  That being said however, Segal has some very helpful observations.

Segal explains the role of the Noahide laws in rabbinic Judaism:

The fate of the gentiles is discussed in rabbinic Judaism through the doctrine of the Noahide Commandments.  This rabbinic doctrine is derived from a midrash on the flood narrative in which God makes a covenant with all humanity, not just Jews, never again to destroy the world.  God seals the covenant with the sign of the rainbow, as he thereafter seals the special Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants with circumcision, indicating membership in Israel.  Conversely, the sign of the Noahide covenant, the rainbow, is available to all humanity to symbolize God’s promise of safety.  The rabbis assumed that the covenant with Noah also contained several revealed commandments defining just and humane behavior.  Their exegesis of the flood narrative extends the benefits and some of the responsibilities of Torah to all the peoples of the world.  The Noahide Commandments (e.g., b. Sanhedren 56b) function like a concept of natural law, which any just person can be expected to follow by observation and reasons.  In Christian theological language, it is available by God’s grace to all humanity.

In rabbinic midrash, the Noahide Commandments include monotheism, avoidance of murder, organizing courts and promulgating justice, avoiding incest, theft, blasphemy, as well as avoiding eating the flesh of living creatures and, sometimes, recognition that the Lord, the God of Israel, is the one true God.  All of these ideas can be derived from the Noah story in Genesis, if they are read together with the rules for sojourners, principally in Leviticus 17-26.  These two passages are associated because they point to the origin of the laws for the legal treatment of resident aliens

(Paul the Convert pg. 193)

Israel’s Feast Days and the Sabbath

The nation of Israel had a liturgical calendar. There was the annual passover, the feast of tabernacles, the feast of trumpets, the day of atonement, and even the less regular jubilee. Special events went on during these times, as these feast days called to memory, both our’s and God’s, the covenant and the saving acts that God brought about in history.

Leviticus 23 lists these feasts and gives descriptions and instructions for them. The big thing to notice, in my opinion, is the first feast listed: the Sabbath.

The weekly Sabbath day is the first feast listed, and I believe it is the paradigmatic feast. It sets the principle of liturgical days, and it sums up and encapsulates all of the other feasts. Just as each of the other nine commandments serve as a summary for all of the law (Deuteronomy is an explanation of the ten commandments.), so too the Sabbath summarizes all of the feasts. It is, in a way, ceremonial law through and through.

This also explains why Paul associates Sabbaths with the other feasts. Colossians 2:16-17 says, “So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.” Food, drink, festivals, new moons, and sabbaths are all things that New Covenant Christians cannot be judged by, for they were shadows.

N T Wright on the Sin Behind the Sin

Ok, so a lot has been said about the problem of Judaizing being either legalism or racism. I’ve tried to suggest that it is actually idolatry and manipulating God’s timing, and it appears that I was thinking Wright’s thoughts after him (only beforehand).

In his latest book, Surprised By Hope (a book that I’m finding several disagreements with mind you), Wright explains that the patterns of evil behavior have “three things to be said about them.” He states:

First, they all stem from the primal fault, which is idolatry, worshiping that which is not God as if it were. Second, they all show the tell tale marks of the consequent fault, which is subhuman behavior, that is, the failure fully to reflect the image of God, that missing the mark as regards full, free, and genuine humanness for which the New Testament’s regular word is hamartia, “sin.” (Sin, we note, is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; rather, the rules are the thumbnail sketches of different types of dehumanizing behavior.) Third, it is perfectly possible, and it really does seem to happen in practice, that this idolatry and dehumanization become so endemic in the life and chosen behavior of an individual, and indeed of groups, that unless there is a specific turning away from such a way of life, those who persist are conniving at their own ultimate dehumanization.

(pg. 179-180)

This is in back of what Wright means when he says that God is, by his very nature, committed to put the world to rights.  Sin is a de-evolution from creation. Taking away this sin is a re-creating.  God’s judging sin is his establishing a new society. God’s glory is a good creation.

And of course, this puts Wright in a much more traditional position in Christian theology than many of his critics.

Maybe Eric can comment, but I believe this is effectively the same thing Richard Pratt was addressing at RTS this past Monday. I’m not trying to say he’d agree with Wright on any other point, but on this one they sound an awful lot alike.

Covenantal Righteousness

Genesis 30: 33 reads, “So my righteousness will answer for me in time to come, when the subject of my wages comes before you: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the lambs, will be considered stolen, if it is with me.”

I’d imagine most of us would initially want to say that Jacob’s dealing with Laban was unrighteous, since he uses a sort of trickery to fix the outcome. Jacob has no such fears though.  Wisdom in warfare always works this way, as we have a bit of the ransom theory in Genesis yet again.

“Righteousness” is fidelity to the terms of the covenant, but this isn’t at all opposed to morality.  Rather, the Bible gives us cause to examine all of our presuppositions of what morality ought to be.  God keeps true to himself, and as he reveals himself in covenant, we keep true to his character by keeping the terms of the covenant.

Romans 3

I was reading the third chapter of Romans today. This is a section of scripture which many Christians coming out of the Reformation understand to be the core of the gospel. The first half of Romans, at least, is what it’s all about.

And I really can agree with them, though perhaps for different reasons. Let’s take a look:

What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written:

“ That You may be justified in Your words,
And may overcome when You are judged.”

But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man.) Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world?
For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.

So what is the question that Paul is fielding?
He begins the epistle a few chapters back by saying that the Gentiles are bad dudes, but some of them are fulfilling the law, even while not having it. How Gentiles “fulfill the law” is difficult to understand, but Paul seems to affirm as much in 2:27.

Chapter three is all about how bad the Jews are, but an extra element is added because the Jews are complaining about Gentiles being justified. What good is it being a Jew in the first place they ask? How come the Gentiles only came to work after lunch, but we’re all getting paid the same thing?

More particularly the Jews want to know how come God promised to be their God and yet so many of them have gone astray. What happened? Why did God let His people go? Still more probing they suggest that since God wanted the Mosaic administration to fail, they should be off the hook. What was supposed to happen happened right?

Paul says no dice.

What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.
As it is written:

“ There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“ Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;

“ The poison of asps is under their lips”;
“ Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“ Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace they have not known.”
“ There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

The Jews are as bad as anybody, and really God didn’t have to save any of them. That the quote from Psalm 14 is intended for Jews in particular is clear from the inclusio before and after it. Paul asks “Are we better than they?’ Are Jews better than Gentiles? One could imagine Jews thinking this. After all, they were the covenant people and not like “Gentile sinners.”

No way Jose.

The law speaks to those who are under the law, and it is common to include the Psalms under the term of “the law.” Jesus does it in the gospels, and the apostles do it in Acts. We already knew the Gentiles were bad news. The whole creature worship thing gave that away. But Paul’s point here is that the Jews are just as full of sin and deserving of God’s wrath. Being a Jew is not going to get you justified, nor will glorying or trusting in the law.

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

And now look. God’s righteousness has done something that we didn’t think it was supposed to do. It broke our rules. It came apart from the law. God demonstrated and revealed His righteousness when Jesus Christ became the new mercy seat, topping off the ark of the covenant. His death was what confirmed that God did what He had promised to do. God is righteous and He is the one who righteous-ifies those who have faith.

Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.

So now nobody gets to boast because everybody has been shown to be bad. And just in case you want to get cute, this rule -”Don’t boast”- is not a new law by which you can put your trust in and in turn start the process anew. No, this is the law of faith. Believing God is what counts.

Indeed from all that’s been said we conclude that everybody is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law because if anybody, ever, was justified by the deeds of the law that would mean that God was the God of the Jews only.

And we know that isn’t the case. Well, at least now we do.

And everything we’re doing here simply establishes what the law was all about to begin with.

We can see that Romans 3 has everything to do with its specific context in redemptive history. It testifies to truths beyond that context, to be sure, but that context cannot be removed and the main point still remain. Justification is a justification of God as much as of anybody else, and the solution to all of this is Jesus’ death on the cross.