I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).
As I said in the previous entry, while I now understand which parts of the Old Testament are applicable, I still have a lot of lingering questions. This is not to say that at least some of these questions don't have appropriate answers. They probably do, but require a level of research that I am perhaps not fully prepared to carry out – maybe because the answers are buried within inordinate amounts of information (as opposed to directed Internet essays which can then be referenced back to my Study Bible). I have a lot of questions, and fear that each may require its own entry. But let's just start with one:
Does the bible really have such a clear cut line between civil, ceremonial and moral law?
The short answer is “no”.
This consideration was actually discussed in several web pages. But I still view it as a concern for reasons I will now go into.
So let's say you're reading your bible like a good Christian girl, and you stumble across a rule or practice that is either condoned, preferred or explicitly commanded by God. How do you know which category the law falls into? After reading the different types of laws, you understand now that the category the law falls into is important because this determines whether you should still be following it or not. You're not always going to get the answer directly from the Bible itself because the bible was not written in such a sectionalised way. So how are you going to resolve this?
Well, distinguishing between civil law and ceremonial law may not be too difficult – most confusion here may stem from a lack of understanding of the definitions themselves. A little googling and flipping through the pages of your Study Bible might help fix that misunderstanding. But perhaps this is not the case for moral law and any other. A moral code, after all, is the fabric from which all other laws are weaved. So how can any other law – be it civil or ceremonial – be considered in isolation from it?
I think they can – to an extent anyway – for ceremonial laws in particular. Generally speaking, ceremonies (and therefore ceremonial laws – be they from a religious text or elsewhere) are symbolic – they have only as much meaning as is ascribed to them. This meaning is relevant only to the extent that it reminds its participants of some greater underlying tenet.
For example:
“You shall keep my statutes. You shall not crossbreed different kinds of animals. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; neither shall there come upon on you a garment made of two kinds of material.” - Leviticus 19: 19
The vest I'm wearing as we speak is 65% cotton and 35% polyester (it was also made in China). That God would be upset with my wearing such a vest is patently absurd. However, it appears that the “moral” basis of this ceremonial law is to be holy and separate oneself from ungodly mindsets. Not mixing fabric in clothing was therefore a symbolic representation of not mixing good with evil. So if God wanted Israel to partake in symbolism (clothing) in commemoration of his covenant, this is perfectly reasonable. And it would not be contradictory to then say that us Gentiles don't have to partake in such symbolism, but that we do still need to maintain the underlying principle upon which this symbolic Israeli law was based.
Now I want to make something strikingly clear – and this is a criticism for atheist/agnostic sites. Many non-believers pick up verses like these (including my younger self) and say – look at what bullshit God wants us to follow. But I am realising more and more that such verses need to be put into perspective. Absurd as these things seem to be, they were symbolic – important religious gestures (key word being “gestures” in this context) – not inherently good/evil acts. What's more, they are gestures which are no longer applicable.
The only point I would allow to agnostics/atheists in this matter is that some of these gestures, in addition to being a bit silly, seem counterintuitive. That God would ever (in ye ancient times or modern days) want anyone (his chosen people or Gentiles) to follow these laws seem extremely nonsensical. I'll get into a couple later, so in the mean time, let's move on to the distinction between civil law and moral law.
Now, whether we can make the distinction between the moral code and civil law is less obvious. Particularly for the criminal aspect of the civil code. Think about it. The civil code is really a two part consideration – the first being the crime or the unfavourable action requiring compensation and the second being the punishment or the compensation itself. It seems that Christians no longer consider the punishment/compensation relevant, but consider at least some of the crimes still relevant as it relates to the breaking of some aspect of the moral code. For example:
“If a man lies with a male, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” - Leviticus 20:13
So in the verse above, homosexuality is the crime and death is the punishment. A modern day gay guy then will no longer be put to death, but is still considered to be engaging in moral wrongs. Just as an aside, I have seen quite a few websites dedicated to explaining why homosexuality (which is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, believe it or not) is no longer wrong. I assume these persons are arguing that homosexuality is a ceremonial prohibition instead of a moral sin – so, much like eating pork was forbidden in ye olden days, but you can stuff your ass with ham at Christmas time, homosexuality was an abomination in the Old Testament days, but now you can stuff your ass with cock any day of the week.
It's an interesting argument, perhaps not entirely baseless, but still a losing one in the end. It's something I hope to research further and discuss in a much later entry and so don't intend to discuss at length here. But the mere fact that homosexuals who argue this point have a toe to stand on (and it's just a toe – maybe two toes, but certainly no more), demonstrates in part the difficulty in distinguishing between a strictly civil law and one that is also based on a moral law. The Old Testament specifies punishments for many things, including the contravention of ceremonial laws, and it is not always easy to determine whether the law being contravened was moral or ceremonial.
This is why some people consider the splitting of Old Testament law into the 3 laws as an arbitrary distinction. This certainly makes following Old Testament laws “the way a Christian should” problematic. It seems to me, in order to be in the clear, you need to have a pretty close relationship with your bible (and the Internet) and research the individual propositions, particularly within civil laws. The vast majority of people however do not do this. They rely instead on what the leaders in the branch of their religion tells them (the Pope, their pastor, etc) and, depending on their age, filter it with the current cultural mores.
There are a lot of extremely religious people I know, for instance, who freely engage in “fornication” let's say. Most (but certainly not all) are not fucking for the fun of it – they seem to restrict the fucking for dedicated boyfriends. But they certainly had premarital sex and it quite often was not with just one person. Is this okay? Without doing the specific research, I believe I can hazard a response, as when I bring up God after a lively discussion on what sexual adventures they conducted with their boyfriend, they tend to clam up. Of course, I have only conducted this experiment a very small number of times because even before broaching a religious topic at this juncture, I sense to do so may not be particularly welcoming. But what is the issue at hand here? Are people cherry-picking the bible to suit their own personal vices? Or are people abiding by cultural norms that have been justified (in some small part) through the bible itself?
Another interesting example is that God forbade cross-dressing (men wearing women's clothes or women wearing men's clothes) in Deuteronomy 22: 5. Is this a ceremonial law or a moral law? The way many people talk about transvestites (whether or not they're gay) you would think it is a moral law, but is it? Laws on clothing after all were generally characterised as ceremonial. But I thought – well it had to be a moral law because God called cross-dressing an abomination. But you know what he also called an abomination?
- Eating flesh of a peace offering on the third day, as opposed to the first or second day when it is allowed (Leviticus 7: 18).
- Offering an imperfect animal to God as a sacrifice (Deuteronomy 17: 1).
- Coming near to a menstruous woman (Ezekiel 18: 6)
The list of abominations is quite long. Take a gander of:
So God calling something an abomination isn't the gold standard of sin. But what this demonstrates here is how blurry the lines are between the different laws and, also – quite significantly, how blurry the lines therefore are between deliberate cherry-picking, subconscious cherry-picking and whole-sale misinterpretation. How can people feel comfortable that what they're doing is really the right thing? I simply don't know. This question seems to be unanswerable (unless, like I said, they read the bible closely). I think my next entry may address this concern in the end, but we will see how even this answer is not conclusive.
In any case, it seems we can go no further. So let's end it here, and, as previously promised, here are a couple examples of ceremonial and civil laws I find nonsensical:
So if a wife intervenes in a fight between her husband and another man, and she grabs the genitals of the other man (I assume with the intention of debilitating), her hand must be cut off. The Christian sites I've seen dealing with this link it to the importance of the perpetuation of the family – the punishment of the woman is severe because she may be limiting the ability of the other man to have a family. But I simply cannot accept this explanation at face value. If perpetuation of the family was the important factor here, then the verse would talk about either man's genitals being damaged in the fight, not simply grabbed by a third party. Although I understand that the intention of the person doing the grabbing will factor in, it seems unbearably harsh to have the same punishment for the intention to temporarily deliver pain, as well as the successful committing of bodily harm, particularly when it is in defense of one's husband or even his life. Also the perpetrator of the damage should be irrelevant, yet it is oddly focused on the woman.
- “He who is wounded in the stones, or has his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the assembly of Yahweh.” - Deuteronomy 23: 1
While this verse is mostly directed to eunuchs, it also refers to those “wounded in the stones” emphasising how important fully functional male genitals are to God. And this, I think, gives more insight into the first example verse I gave. A eunuch, by the way, is a man who was castrated early in his childhood in order to influence hormonal changes and prepare him for a life of servitude. It may also refer to impotent men, celibate men, or men otherwise not inclined to “go forth and multiply”. Why God would ever want to deny certain persons rights to membership in the Assembly (which I believe is not the church itself but perhaps Church leadership) because of factors mostly outside of a person's control (castration at boyhood, medical impotence) is beyond me. Then again, God is no stranger to discrimination.
More questions to come.
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