The temporary quality of Old Testament law can make it a bit confusing to interpret. Part of it we as Catholics embrace, but part of it we don’t. For example, we still forbid murder (Ex 20:13), but we don’t forbid wearing a garment of mixed materials (Dt 22:11). What’s the rationale behind that? How come some of the law still applies—like the Ten Commandments—but some does not?
St. Thomas Aquinas can help us here. He breaks down the Old Testament laws into three categories: moral, ritual, and judicial.26 Moral law has do with universal principles of right and wrong. Ritual or ceremonial law has to do with symbolic, religious cleanness and uncleanness in Old Testament religion. Judicial or civil law involves the structures for the administration of the law in the Old Testament. Remember that the law of Moses foresees not just a religion, but a state religion, even a theocracy. So certain features of that system don’t make sense in a non-theocratic government system. Aquinas teaches that the ritual and judicial laws have been abrogated, but that the moral law still holds. So we can eat bacon, but we can’t eat our neighbor. This three-way division of the old law is helpful, but then the interpretive trouble comes down to figuring out which of those 613 commandments fall in which category. Beyond that, we also have to ask what is the pedagogic purpose of laws that would eventually be eliminated.
The law of Moses, which has 613 commandments all told, was not meant to be God’s final revelation to his people or definitive for all time.
If we don’t make these distinctions, we can fall into problematic views—becoming either libertine (thinking that no laws apply to our behavior) or wannabe Jews (where we try to observe the ritual laws of the Old Testament without actually being Jewish). Because we don’t have space to sort through every law, let’s focus on the overall teaching purpose of the “schoolmaster” law. What is it that the law of Moses, especially the ritual laws which we no longer observe, teaches us about living for God? The ritual laws of the Old Testament cover the minute details of life. They show us that living for God permeates every aspect of our daily lives. Every choice we make brings us closer to him or pushes him farther away. The ancient ritual system of cleanness and uncleanness we find in the Old Testament has some similarities with the other religious systems of the ancient world, some measures directed toward health and hygiene (such as the rules about leprosy and mold spores), but the point of it all is to direct our gaze to God and show us our need for him. Many things could make a person unclean, and animal sacrifices were only partially helpful in helping a person attain ritual purity. This temporary law was a powerful teaching tool that God the Teacher uses to reveal to us our own impurity, inadequacy, and fundamental need for him to purify and cleanse us. It is one step in God’s pedagogical program to instruct us about who he really is.
This means that when we read the Old Testament, we have to be conscious of the gradualism of it all. The theology of Abraham is far more advanced than that of Adam, but the theology of Isaiah is far beyond even the theology of Moses. As time goes on and God reveals more and more of himself to his people, the picture fills out. Yet it is not until Jesus comes that the fullness of revelation is realized. The Catechism states: “Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one.”27 He is the high point and the final point of divine revelation. He is the last lesson of the divine pedagogy.
Chapter 5
God the Savior
Thinking of God as a judge in a black robe and powdered wig looking down on the accused with a somber scowl and issuing his judgment in stentorian tone doesn’t exactly give us the warm fuzzies. Even the awesome majesty of God on display in thunder and lightning at Mount Sinai might not make us feel comfortable. A “nice” God who conforms to our ideas and experience—dare I say, even our culture—is what we’d prefer, at least at first. But how would it be to have a God who didn’t have anything to teach us? If we already knew everything we needed to and he simply helped us along our merry way, but couldn’t actually guide us, what would we do? In addition, we tend to like the passages that talk about God as the one who “secures justice for the oppressed,” who rescues the lowly and vindicates the righteous. If he were always “nice” and never fierce, how could he rescue anyone from powerful oppressors?
When some of the first apostles were evangelizing, they were arrested and charged with “turning the world upside down” (see Acts 17:6). God turns the ways of the world on their head. He is the great equalizer, the force that establishes justice firmly at the end of the day. The justice of God can be fierce, but it also can bring healing, redemption, even salvation. The trouble for our minds is holding these two characteristics in tension. We like the beautiful Garden of Eden, but it stings a bit when God kicks Adam and Eve out of it. We like justice for the oppressed, but tremble a little when the master boots wedding guests “into the outer darkness where men will weep and gnash their teeth.” It might help for us to keep in mind that the execution of justice is actually an act of saving. When a murderer is sentenced for his crime, the judge “saves” the memory of the murdered person. When a judge orders a thief to pay restitution to his victims, those persons are made whole.
Justice—Harsh or Beautiful?
Justice is harsh because it seeks to undo the cruel evils of crime. Evil criminal acts are truly harsh, and justice responds by attempting as best as possible to reverse the evil effects of a crime. Sadly, in many if not most cases of earthly justice, the wrong is never truly undone. A judge cannot bring a murder victim back to life or take away the horrible experiences of an abuse victim. A judge is limited to handing down jail sentences, community service, and, on rare occasions, the death penalty (about which recent popes have expressed strong reservation28). Each act of sentencing, of punishment, is an attempt to restore the order of justice, to put things back the way they were before the crime was committed. This function of just punishment is beautiful and restorative. It at least tries to do what cannot completely be done: to bring salvation. However, God’s acts of justice surpass earthly justice.
This rescue plan had multiple stages that reveal different dimensions of God’s character, but, most importantly, the rescue plan shows that God the Savior and God the Judge are one and the same.
God in fact is perfectly just, the measuring stick against which all judges can be measured. His justice does not suffer from the incompleteness that earthly justice does. But his dispensing of justice is conditioned by our circumstances—that is, we get to receive his acts of justice from his eternity into our time-bound existence. We can be confident that in the end he will bring all things together in his perfect justice, but in the meantime many injustices persist. This situation has its upside, in that God provides time for the wicked (us) to repent and so obtain salvation. Justice is about salvation, about putting things back the way they were supposed to be, about caring for the fatherless and the widow, about turning unjust systems on their heads and saving “all the oppressed of the earth” (Ps 76:9). The time between now and the final judgment gives us an opportunity to turn to God and become a recipient of his mercy through repentance rather than a target for his judgment through obstinacy.
God’s Rescue Plan
But God knew that we were stubborn. That’s why he didn’t sit on his hands in heaven and wait for us to fail. As soon as we dropped the ball (or the apple), he initiated a rescue plan that would bring us back to himself and get the real order of justice firmly established for all time. This rescue plan had multiple stages that reveal different dimensions of God’s character, but most importantly, the rescue plan shows that God the Savior and God the Judge are one and the same.