This from Doug Moo’s Romans commentary, discussing 
Paul’s citation of Psalm 68:10 in Romans 15:3:
- The OT, though no longer a source of direct moral imperative ([Romans] 6:14, 15; 7:4), continues to play a central role in helping Christians to understand the climax of salvation history and their responsibilities as the new Covenant people of God.
I found this to be a helpful way of putting things, even if somewhat jarring to many of us.
The Old Testament is important, but it is no longer our moment in the story. Moral directives do not come to us directly from it, but the entirety of the OT comes to us modulated through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.
Put differently, the reason why Psalm 68:10 applies to us is that it is true of Jesus’ life and death and therefore must become true of ours.
Daniel, could you expand on/nuance your “modulated through” language? While I think I agree with you (see below), aren’t you arguing something rather different than Moo is?
On the one hand (against Moo): Surely there is a fundamental distinction for Paul between “OT” (a book, the only Scripture that Paul had) and the covenant stipulations (look at the verses Moo cites!) which–according to Paul’s argument–were insufficient to give life because of the people’s weakness. If this is true, then of COURSE “moral directives” come to us through the OT (the first half of our Scriptures), just as much as they did for Paul: the OT story shapes the reader.
One of the reasons I read this fine blog is because it is a witness to the fact that story DOES exert a “direct moral imperative” force on the reader
On the other hand: God has done something new in Christ to create a community in union with the Crucified One. This fact creates demands on us that in some ways go beyond what we see in the first part of the storyline.
So does your “modulated through” language mean something like: “don’t be like Cain” (moral imperative derived from Gen 4 > 1 Jn 3:11-12) is modulated through “we know love by this, that he laid down his life” (1 Jn 3:16)? I.e, the shape of the story’s plot line is significant to our ethic? This seems to go a wee bit beyond the language of the commentary you are citing.
It’s tough to know exactly how and where to apply such a broad statement. Jesus’ statement in Mt. 5:17-20 is also very broad. pvk
‘Modulated through Christ’ seems to be a good way to put it. How else can we account for the radical distinction between Jesus and Moses at the point where they address retaliation? One says how to do it; the other says love your enemy.
Ever read Luther’s “How Christians Should regard Moses”? Also jarring. It’s been quite a few years since I read it, but if you’re barking up this tree, it might be worth your looking it up.
To be sure we are not justified by the OT law but the moral directives from the Older testament do bleed into the NT. Such as Lev. 19:18, loving neighbor as yourself. Jesus’ alluding to OT law and/or prophets (Mt 22:36-40; Mk 12:31, Lk 10:27-28—- the problem with the lawyer here (Lk 10: 29) is that he wanted to be justified by the OT moral imperative), and Paul’s use of the Old (Rom. 13:8-10, Gal 5:14).
In Moo’s chosen passage, Rom 15:3 and Paul’s quote (Ps 69:9), reflects how a neighbor should be treated (see prior verses) and Christ was that extraordinary example. However, it alludes to the moral directive of the law and prophets; loving neighbor as self. The shift as I see it, is not in the absence of the OT moral ethic imperatives but the shift is in what now gives us life (Spirit), what gives us freedom (grace), and what gives us righteousness (Christ Jesus). The new covenant people live by faith and are justified by faith but “not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Mt 5:17-20). [when is “all accomplished?” Now and not yet??]
It is this ethic from the OT moral imperatives that teach us how to treat/love our neighbors and allow the Gentiles to come in. So the OT moral directives are still part of the salvation/historical narrative we just aren’t justified by them.
I suppose I could buy that formulation as it allows for the ethical rules to come through. My big problem with rhetoric along those lines is that it allows/promotes/fails to discourage the prevalent idea that there is really no reason for Christians to give careful and detailed attention to the Pentateuch.
Thanks for jumping in, everyone. There were also some interesting posts on my FB page about this.
Here are a couple of thoughts: (1) I think Moo is right, but without requiring us to embrace something like Dispensationalism. (2) I hear in a number of the responses (perhaps especially on the FB page) some employment of traditional Reformational categories of law and grace, and thoughts about justification. I do not think that appeal to this language is going to be very helpful in adjudicating the issue of the relationship of the OT to the NT. It fails because it misses the particularity: “works” are “works of the Law of Moses,” and “grace” is “the grace of God put on display in the cross of Christ.”
The reason why I find the Moo quote helpful is because of the word “direct.” Yes, the OT is important. Yes, it story is the inseparable context for making sense both of Jesus’ identity and work and our own as those who have been grafted into him.
However, the OT does not come to us directly, but is modulated through the Christ event. To take a few examples:
The Matthew 5:17 passage: “I didn’t come to abolish but to fulfill.” Then, what does Jesus immediately do? He cites a whole bunch of OT law and says, “This is what the Law says, but I say to you…” The way that those laws come to us is through Jesus as a new law-giver. Sometimes the law is affirmed, sometimes it is amplified, and sometimes it is rejected. But we don’t know until it is modulated through Christ.
In Luke 10, yes Jesus cites Leviticus, love your neighbor as yourself. But that same verse tells us who the neighbor is: the Jew’s fellow Israelite. And then Jesus tells a story to say that one who “neighbor loves” is not the Jew who loves his Jewish neighbor by keeping Torah (what the Priest and Levite did) but the outsider who loves the other. Lev. 19 does not come to us directly, but modulated through the work of Christ.
Is the NT a direct source of moral imperative? Everything is mediated in some way, of course.
I think Origen’s, or rather Paul’s, criterion of “usefulness” (ophelimos, cf. 2 Tim 3.16) is perhaps a more productive way to engage this question than the route of historical differentiation, even salvation-historical differentiation. All of Scripture is determined by its usefulness to the (new covenant) believer in their time and place, at their stage of spiritual maturity. And this is because the Logos is present in Scripture, continually carrying out his teaching activity through the sacramental medium of Scripture. After all, things written beforehand were actually written for us in any case, as (ecclesial-moral?) examples for us (1 Cor 10.11; Rom 15.4).
The OT’s horizon of interpretation, then, is first and foremost the Logos’s present teaching activity and only secondarily its time of production and previous use in the salvation-historical sweep. (Perhaps Barth’s “becoming” language for Scripture expresses the same thing . . .)
In other words, all Scripture is modulated by the Logos himself and useful for transforming us into his image (cf. 2 Cor 3.18).
On loving neighbors, cf. how Leviticus 19 ends:
“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God” (v. 34).
Blessings, all.
Jesus speaks of the ‘law and the prophets’ as that which he ‘fulfills’ in his own authority in the ‘reign of God.’ How so? By insisting that the ‘law’ be ‘practiced’ and ‘taught.’ But as he himself unpacks that authority to teach the meaning of the ‘commands,’ he intensifies the particulars in ways that ‘surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers.’ In every case, his authority tilts toward a greater and more merciful humanitarianism. The ‘law and the prophets’ were pointing beyond Moses to a greater fulfillment.
Murder is not limited to the physical act. Reconciliation is more important than ritual. Avoiding adultery involves a greater respect for women than just an outward purity. ‘Clean and legal’ divorce can still leave women unprotected. Manipulative oaths, no matter how steeped in god-language, are evil. ‘Proper’ retaliation is not good enough. Loving neighbors while hating enemies is contrary to God’s nature. Giving and being religious in order to be seen is unacceptable, etc.
Jesus honored God’s law by bringing it to a higher level, to a greater and more fundamental truth, to a new perspective in light of God’s full revelation in the kingdom-bringer.
Just shooting from the cuff here. I’m not even sure the Ancient Israelites themselves can be conceived of as seeing even sections like the Covenant Code as giving absolute, direct moral imperatives. If they did, I rather doubt that they would have adapted many of the laws in the ways that they did. I’m thinking here of things like laws concerning slaves. When one compares the laws concerning slaves in Exodus 21.2-11, Deuteronomy 15.12-18 and Leviticus 25.39-55, it does not seem like the Ancient Israelites considered the laws of Exodus 21.2-11 as a source of direct moral imperative. Rather the laws in Exodus can be seen as setting a trajectory. “YHWH cares about your servants and how you treat them.” The way that looks in later generations is different than during the time at which the Covenant Code was written.
well, this is just begging for some more posts.