Are we willing to pay the financial cost of Faith….or not? What's answer say about what we value?

Archdiocese of Washington ^ | September 15, 2013 | Msgr. Charles Pope

[Buggman]

I agree in part, though I would argue that Galatians is more concerned with covenants than with commandments based on chapter 4, where Paul clearly defines being "under law" (not "under the Law" as found in most translations) as meaning to be under the Sinaic Covenant. Understanding that, we then note that the Ma'asei Torah, "works of law" (not Ma'asei HaTorah, "works of the Law" as seen in the DSS) always seems linked with circumcision and often with the cultural commandments of the Torah.

So my read is basically that the Gentile Christians were being told that they could only have a covenant relationship with Hashem if they joined the Sinaic Covenant by becoming circumcised as Jews. This would of course entail not only keeping the Biblical commandments but coming under Jewish authority so as to make them liable to the Mishnah (in it's oral form, of course). Paul's objection was both that this would, if allowed to spread, negate the promise that all nations would be saved as Gentiles, but also that Israel had broken the Sinaic Covenant 700 years earlier and was now suffering under the curse clause of Deu. 27-28 (which Paul twice cites in Galatians). That curse twice specifies that Israel would be subject to not only the nations, but also their gods, which is why Paul connects the idea of Gentiles being subject to the old covenant to their being enslaved again by their old gods.

However, outside of circumcision, Paul didn't object to Gentiles keeping the Sabbaths and Feasts. Clearly, the expectation was that Gentiles would do so, as we see, for example, in 1Co. 5. His objection was that anyone should depend on such observances rather than depending on their faith in and faithfulness to the God of Abraham and His Messiah.

Now I of course agree completely that our attitude to God's commandments should be, "I get to do that? Awesome!" instead of "How can I get out of this?" Nevertheless, there is a case to be made that just as there are special commandments that apply only to priests, men, women, farmers, shepherds, Nazrites, etc. that there are certain commandments that are only requirements for Jews. Circumcision is clearly one such.

If someone wants to make the argument that they as a Gentile Christian are not bound to keep the Sabbath or the Feasts and they make a cogent Biblical argument for it, I'm fine with that. We can argue it back and forth intellectually for the sake of edification, but I don't have a problem with someone who is clearly wrestling with God's Word and has simply come to a different conclusion on a relatively minor issue. My objection is when Christians then decree that nobody should keep the commands that they themselves don't, and in the process tell Jews that they must cease to be Jewish in order to be saved. That is, in my opinion, just as much a matter of legalism as the reverse and also presents a clearly false "gospel" to the Jewish people.

Shalom uv'recha.

[editor-surveyor]

Again, mostly agree, but the nonsense that I keep seeing is that “Torah has been cancelled by the perfect sacrifice at the cross” or something close to that, which is in complete disagreement with every word recorded in the gospels as coming from the mouth of Yeshua.

[Buggman]

Oh, that's clearly nonsense, and no Christian really believes it. They're not arguing that the commandment against murder, adultery, or drinking bloog have been abolished. What they mean to say is that the purpose of the Torah's rituals was to point to the Messiah, and now that He has come, they have been set aside with their purpose fulfilled. (Of course, since the NT does speak of keeping the Passover and many of the Feasts point to the 2nd Coming, that's still problematic.) But they've heard it as "The Law has been fulfilled" so often that it's just become a part of their vocabulary, a cliche spoken without really thinking through all the ramifications.

There's another cliche that we have to be aware of and be dillegent to overcome, and that is the idea that anyone who keeps the Sabbath, Feasts, kashrut, etc., does so in order to be saved "by the law" instead of trusting in "grace." This is why I take a personal demand against Gentile Christians (Jewish Christians are another matter) off the table and rephrase the argument: "So you're saying that God sent the King of the Jews to tell Jews to stop being Jewish?"

Most Christians that I get a chance to speak to are rightly horrified that this is the practical implication of what they've always assumed about the NT. They're not antisemitic; in fact, most true Christians love the Jews, even if only abstractly. They just never considered how their understanding of the NT plays out in that regard.

Shalom

[editor-surveyor]

We surely don’t want to lose our right to eat bacon, and worship Tammuz on 12/25, and Ishtar and the lovely rabbit eggs...

[Buggman]

I give no Gentile a hard time about kosher. Noah was told he could eat anything despite the fact that he knew the difference between tahor and tamei. Moreover, the Torah is quite specific that the alien in the Land may eat treif which is forbidden to the Jew.

As far as holidays go, no Christian is worshiping Tammuz or Ishtar. They repurposed holidays within their own Greco-Roman culture as evangelistic tools, and the tradition stuck. Given that Psalm 29 was originally a hymn of praise to Ba'al that David repurposed to praise the Lord instead and Paul repurposed an alter "to an unknown god" in Athens as the jumping-off point for preaching about the true God, I don't think that's a sin in and of itself.

The real problem is that by rejecting the Biblical Feasts, the Church both lost some of the most potent symbolism pointing to Messiah and intentionally rejected any association with its Jewish roots. In the process, they took a body that was supposed to be "neither Jew nor Greek" and turned it into "Greeks only; Jews need not apply."

Shalom

[editor-surveyor]

The “alien in the land” didn’t seek the benefit of the oracles of Yehova. He was lost.

As for Xmas and Ishtar, the original effort by Constantine was the defeat of the Gospel, not the repurposing of his pagan worship. He persecuted those that stuck to the Way. He slaughtered Rabbis and scribes, and he burned manuscripts.

[Buggman]

The “alien in the land” didn’t seek the benefit of the oracles of Yehova. He was lost.

Actually, no. There are two terms for aliens in the land, ger and nakor. The ger is a Gentile who came to the Land as a resident, temporary or otherwise, and gave up idolatry, but who never became a full citizen. (Later rabbis would claim the term meant "proselyte.") The nakor is the openly pagan, and who lacked many of the rights and protections of the ger.

Deuteronomy 14:21 uses both terms: A Jew may give trief to the ger or sell it to the nakor.

Since the Torah prohibits putting a stumbling block in the path of the blind and since the ger at least was in the Land to seek the Lord, the fact that he could be given treif means that Gentile worshippers of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not under the same obligation to kashrut as the Jew.

Of course, eating trief or tamei does mean that the Gentile would be ritually unclean (tumah) until he immersed and evening fell. He would have to take more care if he were going up to the Temple to worship. Obviously, that's an academic problem for us at the moment.

Also obviously, in any setting where Jew and Gentile were eating together, the meal would have to be kosher. Therefore, Messianics of Gentile birth have every reason to adopt kashrut to at least some degree, and I think are blessed for doing so. I think all Christians should at least know how to prepare a kosher meal, even if they don't keep it perpetually themselves. But again, there's not an obligation for all Christians to keep kashrut, nor should it be a point of division in the Body--Romans 14 is still in my Bible, after all.

Shalom

[editor-surveyor]

Of course, there is always the presently unanswerable question: How many of these ‘messianics’ are truly gentile?

Until Yehova reveals his dispersed tribes, we can only make educated guesses. All the more reason to get educated as to kashrut.

[Buggman]

That's not an issue. Torah specifies that if someone commits certain sins, including not keeping brit milah, the Sabbath, the Feast of Matzah, and Yom Kippur, the Holy One will cut them off from the people. This is not a death sentence, but rather a loss of identity: We've found from bitter experience that if a Jewish family doesn't observe the Feasts, they become assimilated into the prevailing culture after just two generations. At that point, it takes deliberate conversion to reconnect.

Take Timothy as a case in point. He didn't even have one generation of separation and his mother was a Jewess, but he still had to be circumcised by Paul in order to be considered Jewish.

Ergo, someone whose family hasn't practiced brit milah or keeping the Torah may have a Jewish ancestor, but can't claim to be Jewish himself unless he deliberately converts. Basically, he's counted as a Gentile until he decides to take the steps to become (again) a Jew, just like someone without a speck of Jewish blood.

For those claiming that 2700 years ago their ancestors were Israelites, but idolaters (another crime worthy of karat) who ceased to practice Torah at all once they were taken and scattered by the Assyrians, it wouldn't matter even if it were true for the above reason.

None of the above is to say that if someone is a Gentile they can't practice Torah, only that there is a perfectly reasonable Scriptural case that they are no more obligated to certain sections pertaining only to Israelites than they are to those sections pertaining only to the priests. And if a Christian who is seeking God's will and striving to keep His Word makes that case to me in regards to kashrut or the Mo'edim, I have no reason to break fellowship with him or boast over him. He is still serving our Lord to the best of his ability and knowledge.

Shalom

[editor-surveyor]

>> “Take Timothy as a case in point. He didn’t even have one generation of separation and his mother was a Jewess, but he still had to be circumcised by Paul in order to be considered Jewish.” <<

.
That’s not exactly what the word says.

Paul circumcised Timothy to silence the carping of some of the Jews.

[Buggman]

Since when did Paul do anything to satisfy the carping of the Jews that he didn’t think was right anyway?

[editor-surveyor]

Paul even took long trips like from
Antioch to Jerusalem and back just to silence carping Pharisee converts. He didn’t need the support of James on doctrine, the whole trip was just to satisfy the carpers.

[Buggman]

I think that in your desire to avoid the obvious implications of Timothy needing to be circumcised to be considered Jewish, but Gentile converts like Titus not, you are misconstruing Paul. Paul's concern was three-fold: 1) The Gospel of Yeshua the Messiah, first and foremost; 2) the rights of the Gentiles to be saved and accepted as brethren while remaining Greeks, Romans, etc.; and 3) that #2 not be misconstrued as an attack on his own people or the Torah, nor lead his own people away from keeping Torah.

That's why he was quick to agree with Jacob (James) in Acts 21 to not only complete his own Nazrite vow (Acts 18:18), but that he would help four other Jewish disciples do the same. This would show that, contrary to popular opinion, he was not teaching Jews to forsake the Torah of Moses, to cease circumcision (Jewish identity), or even to cease from our traditions. Nevertheless, both he and Jacob were clear that this did not constitute a change in policy towards the Gentiles from the Acts 15 Council's decision.

That's also why he circumcised Timothy. He wanted to take Timothy back with him in Jerusalem, but the fact that Timothy's father was a Gentile and he had never been circumcised meant that Timothy wasn't a Jew--not only in the "carping" opinion of the Pharisees and other Jews, but Biblically (Gen. 17:14)!

The only way that Paul's actions and writings don't contradict is if he and the other Apostles saw more leeway in a Gentile's obligations to the Torah than a Jew's. I've already given examples of commandments that clearly do not apply equally to both--brit milah and kashrut. It is a reasonable argument from Scripture that given Romans 14 and Colossians 2 and Acts 15 and the general lack of emphasis on the Feasts in the NT that the Apostles regarded the Feasts as a commandment that the Gentiles were invited to keep (Isa. 56), but not required as a necessity of avoiding sin.

I frankly am not interested in creating more division in the Body where there are reasonable arguments on both sides, nor of promoting elitism regarding Ma'asei Torah.

What I am interested in doing is driving home the point to my Sunday brethren that the Church, by making eating a ham samwhich a test of faith for the last 1600 years, has been promoting as false a gospel to the Jews as Judaizing was to the Gentiles in the 1st Century. If that is the case, the idea that keeping the Feasts, kashrut, etc. must automatically be "trying to earn your salvation" has to be tossed out as well, and I think that we can re-appraoch the subject in a spirit of brotherhood.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." If you don't like Christians attacking you for keeping the Feasts because they think they know that under the New Covenant that's a sin, don't attack them for not keeping the Feasts because you think you know that their practices are sinful. And remember, we're saved by our faith in a Person, not by keeping the right set of creeds or commandments.

Shalom