Christian views on the Old Covenant

The Mosaic covenant or Law of Moses which Christians generally call the "Old Covenant" (in contrast to the New Covenant) played an important role in the origins of Christianity and has occasioned serious dispute and controversy since the beginnings of Christianity: note for example Jesus' teaching of the Law during his Sermon on the Mount and the circumcision controversy in early Christianity.

Rabbinic Jews assert that Moses presented the Jewish religious laws to the Jewish people and that those laws do not apply to Gentiles (including Christians), with the exception of the Seven Laws of Noah, which (according to Rabbinic teachings) apply to all people.

Most Christians, such as the Catholic Church, Reformed Churches and Methodist Churches, believe that of the Old Covenant, only parts dealing with the moral law (as opposed to ceremonial law) are still applicable (cf. covenant theology),Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 100
/ref> a minority believe that none apply, and dual-covenant theologians believe that the Old Covenant remains valid only for Jews. Messianic Jews hold the view that all parts still apply to believers in Jesus and in the New Covenant.

Distinct views

Catholic

Theologian Thomas Aquinas explained that there are three types of biblical precepts: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. He holds that moral precepts are permanent, having held even before the Law was given, since they are part of the law of nature. Ceremonial precepts (the "ceremonial law", dealing with forms of worshipping God and with ritual cleanness) and judicial precepts (such as those in Exodus 21) came into existence only with the Law of Moses and were only temporary. The ceremonial commands were "ordained to the Divine worship ''for that particular time'' and to the foreshadowing of Christ". Accordingly, upon the coming of Christ they ceased to bind, and to observe them now would, Aquinas thought, be equivalent to declaring falsely that Christ has not yet come, for Christians a mortal sin.

However, while the judicial laws ceased to bind with the advent of Christ, it was not a mortal sin to enforce them. Aquinas says, "if a sovereign were to order these judicial precepts to be observed in his kingdom, he would not sin." Although Aquinas believed the specifics of the Old Testament judicial laws were no longer binding, he taught that the judicial precepts contained universal principles of justice that reflected natural law. Thus some scholars refer to his views on government as "General Equity Theonomy."

Unlike the ceremonial and judicial precepts, moral commands continue to bind, and are summed up in the Ten Commandments (though the assigning of the weekly holiday to Saturday is ceremonial). The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
: "2068 The Council of Trent teaches that the Ten Commandments are obligatory for Christians and that the justified man is still bound to keep them; the Second Vatican Council confirms: 'The bishops, successors of the apostles, receive from the Lord … the mission of teaching all peoples, and of preaching the Gospel to every creature, so that all men may attain salvation through faith, Baptism and the observance of the Commandments.'"
: 2070. The Ten Commandments belong to God's revelation. At the same time they teach us the true humanity of man. They bring to light the essential duties, and therefore, indirectly, the fundamental rights inherent in the nature of the human person. The Decalogue contains a privileged expression of the natural law: "From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the Decalogue" ( St. Irenaeus, ''Adv. haeres.'' 4, 15, 1: PG 7/1, 1012).
: 2072. Since they express man's fundamental duties towards God and towards his neighbour, the Ten Commandments reveal, in their primordial content, grave obligations. They are fundamentally immutable, and they oblige always and everywhere. No one can dispense from them. The Ten Commandments are engraved by God in the human heart.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Apostles instituted the religious celebration of Sunday without transferring to it the ceremonial obligations associated with the Jewish Sabbath, although later some of these obligations became attached to Sunday, not without opposition within the Church. The Roman Catholic Church thus applies to Sunday, the Lord's Day, the Third Commandment.

Lutheran

Article V of the Formula of Concord (1577) of the Lutheran Church declares:''Triglot Concordia'', FC Epitome V, (II).1, p. 503ff

The distinction between Law and Gospel is that Law demands obedience to God's will, while Gospel refers to the promise of forgiveness of sins in the light of the person and work of Jesus Christ. Between 1580 and 1713 (considered the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy) this principle was considered of fundamental importance by Lutheran theologians.

The foundation of evangelical Lutheran biblical exegesis and exposition is contained in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article 4) (1531):

:All Scripture ought to be distributed into these two principal topics, the Law and the promises. For in some places it presents the Law, and in others the promise concerning Christ, namely, either when n_the_Old_Testament.html" ;"title="Old_Testament.html" ;"title="n the Old Testament">n the Old Testament">Old_Testament.html" ;"title="n the Old Testament">n the Old Testamentit promises that Christ will come, and offers, for His sake, the remission of sins justification, and life eternal, or when, in the Gospel [in the New Testament], Christ Himself, since He has appeared, promises the remission of sins, justification, and life eternal.F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau, ed. and trans. Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), Apology IV (II).5, p. 135

Lutherans, quotin
Colossians 2
an
Romans 14
believe that circumcision and the other Old Testament ceremonial laws no longer apply to Christians.

Reformed

The view of the Reformed churches or Calvinism, referred to as Covenant Theology, is similar to the Roman Catholic view in holding that Mosaic Law continues under the New Covenant, while declaring that parts of it have "expired" and are no longer applicable.Bahnsen, et al., ''Five Views on Law and Gospel''. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993). The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) divides the Mosaic laws into three categories: moral, civil, and ceremonial. In the view of the Westminster Divines, only the moral laws of the Mosaic Law, which include the Ten Commandments and the commands repeated in the New Testament, directly apply to Christians today. Ceremonial laws, in this view, include the regulations pertaining to ceremonial cleanliness, festivals, diet, and the Levitical priesthood.

Advocates of this view hold that, while not always easy to do and overlap between categories does occur, the divisions they make are possible and supported based on information contained in the commands themselves; specifically to whom they are addressed, whom or what they speak about, and their content. For example, a ceremonial law might be addressed to the Levites, speak of purification or holiness and have content that could be considered as a foreshadowing of some aspect of Christ's life or ministry. In keeping with this, most advocates also hold that when the Law is spoken of as everlasting, it is in reference to certain divisions of the Law.

Anglican and Methodist

Anglican and Methodist theology regarding the Old Covenant is expressed by their historic defining statements known as the Thirty-Nine Articles and Articles of Religion, respectively.

Article 7 of the Church of England's 1563 version and other versions, as well as Article VI of the Methodist Articles of Religion, specify only that Christians are bound by the "commandments which are called moral," but not bound by the ceremonial, ritual, or civil laws from the "law of Moses."

Dispensationalism

As a theological system, Dispensationalism is rooted in the writings of John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) and the Brethren Movement, but it has never been formally defined and incorporates several variants. Dispensationists divide the Bible into varying numbers of separate dispensations or ages. Traditional dispensationalists believe only the New Testament applies to the church of today whereas hyperdispensationalists believe only the second half of the New Testament, starting either in the middle of Acts or at Acts 28, applies.

Wayne G. Strickland, professor of theology at the Multnomah University, claims that his (not necessarily "the") Dispensationalist view is that "the age of the church has rendered the law inoperative".

This view holds that Mosaic Laws and the penalties attached to them were limited to the particular historical and theological setting of the Old Testament. In that view, the Law was given to Israel and does not apply since the age of the New Covenant.

Replacing the Mosaic Law is the “Law of Christ”, which however holds definite similarities with the Mosaic Law in moral concerns, but is new and different, replacing the original Law. Despite this difference, Dispensationalists continue to seek to find moral and religious principles applicable for today in Mosaic Law.

Believing the New Covenant to be a new dispensation, George R. Law has proposed that the Law of Christ is recorded in Matthew 5-7. He suggests that Matthew’s record of the Sermon on the Mount is structured similar to the literary form of an ancient Near Eastern covenant treaty. Law’s theory is built on the work of Viktor Korošec, Donald J. Wiseman, and George E. Mendenhall. This new covenant form, like other variations of the covenant form throughout ancient history, can be identified by its combination of ancient covenant elements. If this record in Matthew can be identified as the record of the promised New Covenant, then its contents can also be identified as the formal presentation of the Law of Christ (and includes Christ’s new Ten Commandments).

One view of Dispensationalism divides the Bible into these seven periods:
#of innocence (Gen 1:1–3:7), prior to Adam's fall;
#of conscience (Gen 3:8–8:22), Adam to Noah;
#of government (Gen 9:1–11:32), Noah to Abraham;
#of patriarchal rule (Gen 12:1–Exod 19:25), Abraham to Moses;
#of the Mosaic Law (Exod 20:1–Acts 2:4), Moses to Jesus;
#of grace (Acts 2:4–Rev 20:3), the current church age; and
#of a literal, earthly 1,000-year Millennial Kingdom that has yet to come (Rev 20:4–20:6).

A misunderstanding of Dispensationalism sees the covenant of Sinai (dispensation #5) to have been replaced by the gospel (dispensation #6). However, Dispensationalists believe that ethnic Israel, distinct from the church, and on the basis of the Sinai covenant, are featured in New Testament promises, which they interpret as referring to a future time associated with the Millennium of Revelation 20 (dispensation #7). In Dispensational thought, although the time from Jesus' resurrection until his return (or the advent of the Millennium) is dominated by the proclamation of the gospel, the Sinai covenant is neither terminated nor replaced, rather it is "quiescent" awaiting a fulfillment at the Millennium. This time of Jewish restoration has an especially prominent place within Dispensationalism, see also Christian Zionism.

Theonomy

Starting in the 1970s and 1980s, an obscure branch of Calvinism known as Christian Reconstructionism argued that the civil laws as well as the moral laws should be applied in today's society (a position called Theonomy) as part of establishing a modern theonomic state. This view is a break from the traditional Reformed position, including that of John Calvin and the Puritans, which holds that the civil laws have been abrogated though they remain useful as guidance and revelation of God's character.

Some theonomists go further and embrace the idea that the whole Law continues to function, contending that the way in which Christians observe some commands has changed but not the content or meaning of the commands. For example, they would say that the ceremonial commands regarding Passover were looking forward to Christ's sacrificial death and the Communion mandate is looking back on it, the former is given to the Levitical priesthood and the latter is given to the priesthood of all believers, but both have the same content and meaning.

New Covenant Theology

New Covenant Theology (or NCT), is a recently expressed Christian theological system on this issue that incorporates aspects of Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology.

NCT claims that all Old Covenant laws have been fulfilled by Christ and are thus cancelled or abrogated in favor of the Law of Christ or New Covenant law. This can be summarized as the ethical expectation found in the New Testament. Thus NCT rejects antinomianism as they do not reject religious law, only the Old Covenant law. NCT is in contrast with other views on Biblical law in that most other Christian churches do not believe the Ten Commandments and other Divine laws of the Old Covenant have been "cancelled."

New Covenant theologians see the Law of Christ or New Testament Law as actually including many of the Divine Laws, thus, even though all Old Covenant laws have been cancelled, many have still been renewed under the Law of Christ. This is a conclusion similar to older Christian theological systems on this issue, that some Old Covenant laws are still valid, but this understanding is reached in a different way. On the issue of the law, Dispensationalism is most similar to NCT, but New Covenant Theology may be still evolving a coherent system that will better distinguish itself from it. Richard Barcellos has criticized NCT for proposing that the Ten Commandments have been cancelled.

Dual-covenant theology

In the years after the Holocaust, at least one article has questioned whether Christianity requires a triumphalist stance towards Judaism. Christian teaching traditionally holds the supersessionist view that under the New Covenant the Christian people were the new spiritual Israel, further, that "the old carnal Israel had been superseded".

There are some Christians who reject the supersessionist view. In direct contrast with Supersessionism (and also the doctrines of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus