Torah and the Two Ways: Wisdom unto Life, Not Legal Death - Episode 135

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today on the podcast we're gonna be talking about biblical theology and law and wisdom.

[00:00:25] One of the big things I'm going to be looking at today is John Walton's book that he wrote with his son, the Lost World of the Torah.

[00:00:34] We're going to be looping in the conversation of biblical theology into what we've been talking about. I'll be doing a little bit of defining of what biblical theology is and some ideas surrounding it because I think that this is a really big part of the conversation surrounding John Walton and his work.

[00:00:53] Now my simple definition of biblical theology is studying the Bible in context. Of course, most people have a little bit more complex of an idea than that, and it's definitely not that simple when you look at the different ways that people do this and the fallout of their application of it.

[00:01:14] When we're talking about John Walton's work, we're also gonna be talking about changes in the context of Scripture, and I hope you'll bear with me in these next couple of episodes because I'm sure I'll have some rabbit trails to pour over and maybe a few rants to be had because this is one of those big topics for me. And it's a thing that I think a lot of people in the church are starting to digest and understand, but there's also, I think, a lot of misperceptions about it.

[00:01:43] Now when we're talking about biblical theology, we could pick any scriptural theme or element to have this conversation about. But we're going to be focusing on the concept of law here. And again, I know it sounds like I've been all over the place, but I really do have an aim in mind. For those who haven't been following along, and it is fine if you just drop in here in the middle of the conversation, but I did some episodes on the theme of wine in Scripture. This is an element that is very connected to our lives as Christians in worship and fellowship and ritual. It's a rich image that when you really study it deeply, I think it gives us some surprising things to consider, both about humans in general and also about our relationship with God. We're talking vertical and horizontal relationships here, and that is in fact what we're trying to focus on.

[00:02:42] Wine is connected, of course, to the Lord's Supper, and it's connected to another major sacrament of the church, which is baptism. As I was thinking about those two things, I realized that to really understand them, we need to understand covenant better. So that's what's brought us here today.

[00:03:04] Now we're exploring how covenant and law are related, and that all might seem like a long trail of items that might not be all that connected in your mind . But believe me, all of these views that we hold really are connected in our theology. The ways that we think about these things determine how we read Scripture.

[00:03:27] And personally, I'm interested in the early chapters of Genesis and how those affect our faith. Why does Genesis mark the spot anyway? It's not because it contains everything we need, but in large part it's because how we treat it is going to be how we understand everything else in Scripture.

[00:03:50] The way we read Genesis one through three is crucial to our approach elsewhere. I truly think that getting into the ancient person's mind regarding these chapters can really crack open the most amazing studies we can have about the Bible and about our relationship with God. Now, I'm not saying you can't start your Bible study elsewhere or that other things are not important. If you are one of those to go to the gospel of John first, then more power to you. But Genesis is, as they say, the beginning.

[00:04:26] We will eventually be talking about the Genesis story in the garden, but first we're gonna go back to the ideas of covenant and the law. Our views of these also open up the door to ask how do we understand the church and its sacraments and worship? When I say that Genesis marks the way forward for our Bible reading, I really mean that. Our view of covenant and law is generally connected to what happened in the garden.

[00:04:56] And as far as the question of the church and sacraments goes, we want to know what is essential. And these are honestly really hard questions for the church because there are so many ideas and because people hold very firmly to them. These end up being dividing lines. Just ask Matthew Bates and the reception he's been getting with his book Beyond the Salvation Wars.

[00:05:22] I wonder if it's possible to understand the Bible contextually enough that we can genuinely come together at least more than we do now. I don't think we need to ditch tradition. I don't think we even need to ditch our denominations. I'm not saying anything against creeds, and I think the church fathers can be insanely helpful to us as we work on these things, but I think that's true of each other and our views in understanding one another as well.

[00:05:54] At any rate, to look at studying the Bible in context, we have to wrestle with some hard things, not only from the point of view that we have a different context from our world to the Bible's world. But also to understand that within the biblical world itself, there are different contexts. Last episode, we talked about how the law came to be viewed differently between the Old Testament and the New Testament's time.

[00:06:24] We want to wrestle with what we do with that kind of information. We haven't done enough wrestling with that question, in my opinion. Lots of biblical theology, podcasts and books. And that's like, cool. But now what the heck do we do with this information? How do we apply it? And I'm not sure there's a single answer and maybe that's not as big of a problem as it feels like. At least I hope it's not.

[00:06:55] We are going to be talking about different interpretive methodologies and approaches that have been used to look at the context of Scripture. Probably more next week we'll be doing that than this week, but that is our plan here. We'll be talking a little bit about how silly it is that there are so many approaches as if they're really all that different at heart, but I digress with that one.

[00:07:20] What we're not gonna do is try to say that there's only one way to do this, and I know that's not a thing that some people want to hear. Some people only want one single overarching method for interpretation of Scripture. Only the literal historical grammatical method for me, thanks. Because after all, if we have many methods, then does that lead us to some sort of relativism or lack of truth?

[00:07:50] Honestly, I don't think that's the case. No, we aren't gonna all be right, but sometimes it's just a different perspective, a different angle, and that is really useful.

[00:08:04] Here's a secret. Most methods that take a high view of Scripture really are literal, historical, grammatical at their heart when you come down to it. Not saying that they're exactly the same, because they certainly aren't, but we tend to focus on differences and you know, understandably so. But we don't wanna focus enough on similarities. Simply because usually we to say how badly someone else is doing interpretation or exegesis.

[00:08:37] But look, it's not the methodology that is going to ensure that you're right. Would be a lot easier if that was the case. But even within the same methodology, people can have different conclusions. They can put different weight on different things. They can define things differently.

[00:09:00] I mean, let's look at the literal historical grammatical method. Literal means the most obvious meaning. Or a factual meaning. That is, we're avoiding metaphor or exaggeration. But even the most literal of readers will need to use metaphor, and they will need to see hyperbole in the text. It's just that they pick certain things over others, just like we all do.

[00:09:28] The historical aspect, tells us that the text was written in a real time to real people during and about real events. Even the most historical of readers though, will usually see that poetry and typology exist, and that is only one step away from then looking at it narratively and with the design pattern of Scripture in mind.

[00:09:56] Then we come to the grammatical aspect of this method. It's a text. So yes, it relies on grammar. One of the stricter uses of the literal historical grammatical method is to say that if the text seems to be describing something as a historical account, then it must be historical. Plain readings mean that genre is often flattened out into only a few options, and thus we have our problem.

[00:10:27] We'll have the same problem with the idea of law and wisdom here today, in my opinion. Every method, and I mean every method tries to overly flatten things out because that's just what we do when we try to analyze something. It's what humans are good at. This is what happens when we try to explain anything at all.

[00:10:53] So don't think that it's some sort of attack to say that your method flattens things because it does. And honestly, that's why I think a plethora of methodologies and ideas is more beneficial than a single one. A single one simply cannot get that complexity of truth that we see in reality.

[00:11:15] At any rate, let's have a look at The Lost World of the Torah. Now, the reason that I'm gonna go into this book is that it is very deep into the methodology and ideas of J Harvey Walton. And a lot of people are talking about his impact on his father and his father's theology and his father's methodology. Now, the point here is not to run after a particular scholar. That is never the point. The point is always the ideas and what they can give us and also to look at their weaknesses as well.

[00:11:54] Now, I will promote the Walton's work. Yes, both of them as being exceptionally helpful, but I will also critique ideas because that's how we get better ideas. Critique is what you should get when any new idea is put up for contemplation. Pushback should be expected, and this is partly what peer review is even for, and I think that critique should not be left only to the academy.

[00:12:23] Now, of course, any critique should be given charitably and with as much information as possible, so that does make it harder, but certainly not impossible for a layman to give a really concrete critique.

[00:12:39] At any rate, today I just want to look at some ideas and I'll comment on some of the implications that I see for the sake of furthering the conversation. Frankly, I think there can be a bit of a poisoned well problem here, and I want to do a little bit of work to clear that up.

[00:12:58] As always, we should be free to critique ideas, but we should not be critiquing people. People are simply too complex to box in, even if they hold a particular theology, even if they're in a particular denomination. Let's work to presume that the person we're talking to or about is so complex that we can't actually understand them in full from a brief description. Even knowing a person for a long time should bring us to the realization that there's always something fascinating and new to learn from them.

[00:13:35] At any rate, let's go ahead and dive into this book and the point that it's making. You're going to find that this book aligns very much with what I was talking about last week with Dr. LeFebvre's work. Michael LaFebvre was looking at Torah and law and seeing where there was a difference between what we have in the Old Testament and the ancient Near Eastern understanding of law versus what we have in a more Hellenistic culture.

[00:14:04] So if you're familiar with that work or if you're familiar with the Lost World of the Torah, you're gonna see a lot of overlap as those two things collide.

[00:14:14] I'm going to read a quote from The Lost World of the Torah. Again, this is written by both of the Waltons and the subtitle is Law As Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context. They say, quote, " The objective of law is order. And moral behavior is often one aspect of order. In modern Western societies, law is formal, written, codified, and enforced by agencies and institutions, police and judiciary. Such an approach to legislation is referred to as statutory law. Given how deeply entrenched this idea of law is, it is instinctive for us to imagine that law in other societies functions in the same way. That is one of the major presuppositions that will be challenged in the following chapters." End quote.

[00:15:13] Part of the point of biblical theology, in my opinion, is to help us challenge our modern presuppositions, because a lot of times we don't know how much of our context we are putting into this ancient book. Now, we'll also eventually talk about how right or wrong that may be to do. Because we absolutely have to use this ancient text and to bring it forward for application today. So we cannot and should not just leave it at the idea of studying it in context.

[00:15:47] But here's kind of one of the points that I see often in the work of biblical theology. The Waltons say quote, " If we seek to be faithful interpreters, we need to be readers who read the text in an informed and careful manner, who are consistent in the methods that we use, who refuse to manipulate the text to our own ends, and who respect the autonomy under which divine authority operates. We must interpret in light of a sound understanding of the language and literature of the text, including how the genre works. We must be committed to seeking what the original communicators intended to say, no more, no less. We dare not incorporate ideas into the text that were not in their purview." End quote.

[00:16:40] Okay, so I wanted to talk about this quote here for a moment in particular, because it's pretty firm in what it's saying, isn't it? The Waltons are saying, do not under any circumstances bring our modern understanding into this ancient text. And that makes it really difficult when we see the church doing theology. And I'm not even referring to systematic theology that comes way later.

[00:17:09] I'm talking about the early church and the early church fathers. They are doing all kinds of things, like not reading the Bible in context, and yet we respect their work, we respect their ideas, we respect the theology that came from the early church.

[00:17:28] So what are we supposed to do with all of that? What does it mean to leave the text and let it speak for itself? What lines need to be drawn? Is it really the case that we cannot say more of Scripture than the original human author intended? I think this is a really big sticking point that people have with biblical theology and the Waltons in particular.

[00:17:54] Personally, I'm pretty sensitive to what Walton is trying to do, but the way that he states this is even a bit too firm for what I would want to say. And I feel like I'm fairly extreme in wanting to understand the biblical authors in their context. And I'm okay with the fact that one author could be saying one thing and another author could be saying and understanding something else, and I think that we should not flatten those views.

[00:18:24] I don't think that necessarily means that we cannot use this text for other purposes. And the reason I say that is because we see that actively happening within the Bible's context itself. Like if from one period of time to another period of time the people of God went from one context to a new context, and they were able to use their sacred writings in some new ways, then I think that suggests that we also can do that.

[00:18:57] The difficulty in it is understanding how we're able to do that without doing damage to the text and without just using the text for our own purposes, because the Waltons do bring that point out. We should not manipulate the text to our own ends and our own purposes, but we see the early church fathers doing all kinds of things that are similar to that. So what do we do with that information? I'm going to push off a little bit of that conversation till later, but I will note that when the early church fathers were doing their work, even the most allegorical of them, what they were doing was using Jesus, the historical person of Jesus, God incarnate on earth, He was their lens.

[00:19:50] And so it's really this interesting dichotomy where you have a text and you have the person of Jesus. A lot of people call the Scriptures the word of God, and I actually don't wanna challenge that too much because in the New Testament we have the idea of word and preaching being something that is this communication of the gospel and the wisdom of God.

[00:20:17] So I don't think that's necessarily a bad way to put anything or to use the term "word of God." But the fact that we have Jesus himself, who is described as the Word of God should point us to the fact that there is kind of a both and thing going on here.

[00:20:36] We have Scripture or preaching, that is the word of God. We have the person of Jesus who is the Word of God. Those two things need to intersect and overlap. When we are preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are speaking the word of God because the word of God came here in flesh to save us. Right? And I think that that actually maps really well onto what the Waltons are saying about law and wisdom here, even if they're not exactly saying that, because they probably aren't going all that direction that I am saying.

[00:21:16] But I think there is a way to combine those two things so that what the Waltons are saying is actually not threatening at all. Honestly, some of the critiques and the criticisms that I see for the Walton's work, it's a little bit interesting because I think a lot of it is situated in this evangelical context of systematic theology. Particular views of the atonement and et cetera.

[00:21:46] Now, it won't surprise us when the Waltons lean really heavily into the idea of order in the book, the Lost World of the Torah. They're suggesting that law is not legislation, but it is about order. It's about societal order.

[00:22:05] That's a really important point, and it's a difficult point to point to, I think. What would be the wisdom of the law? Now, I kind of wish the Waltons came out and said these things a little bit earlier in the book than they did. But wisdom is not just a text. Now, we're kind of talking about a text when we're talking about Torah in general, right? Usually we're talking about the written down words or the law as described in words. But wisdom isn't just a text. It's also things like oracles from God.

[00:22:43] Now, in the New Testament context, I think we can kind of conflate the two a lot. Torah and wisdom, lot of that was already being combined in the Second Temple period. And Torah, like the word Torah is used in a variety of contexts, like a parent teaching their child, right? So there is this idea of instruction given and words used to give that instruction.

[00:23:11] And honestly, the fact that oracles were how things were governed really throws some wrenches into our ideas of legalistic law. And it makes it hard for us too, because if we are evangelicals who don't believe that we're receiving new revelation, then what do we do with all of that?

[00:23:33] Now, someone who believes in continuing gifts might not believe there's new revelation for the church at large. But they might believe there's prophecy and things for limited situations. The idea of oracle and wisdom might help some believers from, say, the Eastern Orthodox Church in their stance that tradition passed down is precisely this kind of thing. This might also help us to understand how the New Testament authors seem to have done such crazy interpretive moves at times. For myself, I know that looking at law in a different view is going to make me go and read Paul a little bit differently with some fresh eyes.

[00:24:17] At any rate, I think one of the book's weaknesses is that it's still describing so much about the written word. Here is what the Waltons point out as the problem. Quote, " We have too often looked to the Torah to construct legislation as if the Torah were intended to be legislation. If as we contend, it was never intended as legislation, then that is the wrong approach. If the focus of the Torah is order and wisdom, then it will provide for us an understanding of order and wisdom, at least in an Israelite context. We will then have to determine the relevance that has for us today." End quote.

[00:25:03] Now there is a section of the book that talks about the Walton's methodology. I find this a very helpful section, although a lot of their Lost World books will kind of have the same thing over and over. So people who are reading a lot of Walton's books might get a little bit bored.

[00:25:20] I know a lot of evangelicals and some other people will have some really big problems with Walton's methodology, and I can sympathize. It might be the case that Walton occasionally takes the ancient context a little bit too stringently. He doesn't want to read a canonical narrative, it seems, and that's a problem for a lot of people.

[00:25:45] And I myself am a big fan of canonical narrative. Now, what do I mean when I say canonical narrative? Well, that's where we look at the canon of Scripture. All of the books that we have as Scripture, and we presume that what it is saying is something that is a unified whole. In a canonical narrative reading we would presume that each part is going to speak into the whole story, but there shouldn't be major differences.

[00:26:19] Now, I'm not sure about not having major differences, but that's kind of a canonical approach. And I personally think that a canonical approach can help us resolve some problems in Walton's work.

[00:26:33] I like the Walton's description of prescriptive documents versus descriptive documents. A prescriptive text is going to expect obedience or conformity, but a descriptive text is only going to expect comprehension. Now that comprehension might lead to other things such as the formation of an identity. But that is the context of wisdom literature.

[00:27:03] Now, we've talked about this change between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between a Hebraic mindset or an ancient Near Eastern mindset and a Hellenistic mindset. But that is not the only change we have in regards to the idea of law. After the Reformation, we get another major change. It stems from this Greek idea of law as legislation and codified written things.

[00:27:32] But we take it even farther. We think of law as this written standard, right? For instance, if we had a judge who was trying a murder case, for instance. And the judge just decided to let the murderer free without regard to any legal stipulations, without regard to the legal framework or the legal process, we would have a major problem with that. The judge would be removed, the trial would be declared a mistrial and a new judge would have to be brought in that would obey the rules of the land.

[00:28:11] Right? So even though our judges might do things like determine a sentence for someone, and our judicial system is part of our ways of making law, right? We can have judges who set precedent. But they're doing so within the framework of our constitutional law. if a judge works outside of that constitutional law, then that's a problem. That's how we're viewing law. And that's an even more stringent way than the ancient Greeks would've seen it.

[00:28:46] Let's talk about some technical terminology that the Waltons bring up. They define divine command theory, for instance. Now in divine command, the source of law is God. So this is where people want to sneak in this idea of wisdom, but also have it be legislation, right? So law is divine decree, and the written documents either come from God or are written in response to revelation from God. This is a little bit more like what we see with oracle being the basis for decisions. But in this view, we still have law being this set body of literature or ideas.

[00:29:31] Okay, so another idea of law is natural law. We see this brought out by Paul in Romans one to two. Natural law can still derive from God and society isn't free to make its own decisions, and there are universal moral truths and they are embedded into the framework of creation. If you're breaking the natural law, then nature is said to be the one who is imposing the penalty, perhaps. This is kind of a functional order of the world, and you know, it's part of, again, that idea of creation and wisdom and law.

[00:30:11] Now, by the way, these ideas aren't necessarily opposed to one another, and they aren't necessarily things that only one type of law has and other types don't. There can be quite a bit of crossover here.

[00:30:26] Then we have a positivist law. This is basically our view of law. There is a body of rules and it is enforced by somebody in authority, in accordance with their will. The source here is either the divine world or the king or the government. It's the approach of law that develops in the Hellenistic period, and that continues to our day, even more stringently applied.

[00:30:54] It ends up in the realm of a statutory law. This is the codified text that is the law of the land.

[00:31:03] The Waltons also mention common law. Common law might seem a little bit like natural law, but common law is also associated with judges and has a little bit more freedom to the judge for determining like the sentences and how the law should be applied and seen. Common law doesn't have to depend on a written code. But it's going to be a body of practice and ideas that a culture or a society would presume is going to be how law should be done.

[00:31:37] Now, again, a lot of these have crossovers and it's not like none of them have any relevancy to the ancient Near East at all. It's not like legal collections have nothing to do with the rule of law. A legal collection would do things like teach judges the right way to do things, like they would give them practice. They could also be written simply as precedent, so they could be actual legal rulings that happened in real time that are written down that those form the basis for an understanding of what justice is.

[00:32:14] The Waltons go into the context of what it means to obey in the Old Testament. Now, this is a pretty deep and major argument. J Harvey Walton uses it very strongly in his dissertation. I will probably kind of set that aside for another time to really dig into. But suffice to say, for our purposes today, the idea that they're bringing out here about obedience, it's not about obeying the letter of the law.

[00:32:45] This is their emphasis on wisdom instruction. If you live your life according to wisdom instruction, this is what brings order. This is what pursues the best life, and this is what perpetuates it. When you don't heed wisdom, that means you're not keeping Torah. The result is death.

[00:33:08] And this reminds me of the two ways, right? The way of death and the way of life, It's not always, or even mainly associated with just not breaking a command. That is the least that we can say about it. And somehow we are okay with saying this about wisdom literature and saying, yeah, of course wisdom is life. Living foolishly is death, and we're okay with that.

[00:33:39] But especially in the evangelical world, we really don't want to leave it there. We want there to be a legal framework as well, where if you break this law, you will die.

[00:33:53] I mean, we see the death penalty over and over and over in the Torah, don't we? But the question is, how often would that have been applied? We simply don't know. But there's not a whole lot of data to suggest that when a law says that you will die that everyone who broke that law was then killed.

[00:34:16] The Waltons make a point that wise living cannot be legislated, and that kind of makes a lot of sense, right? You can't tell a child exactly what to do to live a wise life. Part of that is just living in the real world and having experiences, and it's about learning how to apply principles of wisdom rather than just following rules. No Christian should really disagree with that. None of us want to be called legalists.

[00:34:49] But here's something that the Waltons say that might kind of boil some people's blood. They say, quote, " If God did not give rules, as we have suggested, there are no rules to if God did not provide legislation, there are no laws to obey." End quote.

[00:35:13] Well, those are fighting words, aren't they? God didn't give rules? There aren't rules to follow? There aren't rules to obey? Now many of our Christian hearts will say, right, of course, being in relationship to God isn't just about following rules.

[00:35:31] And yet, we still want Torah to be about following rules, don't we? We still want everyone in the Old Testament to be tied and yoked to this idea of legislation, whereas Christians are not. Of course, you have sectors of Christianity that kind of see that false dichotomy and go, oh, what do we do with that? Maybe rule following is not so bad after all. Let's do it anyway, but we're gonna choose the ones we're gonna obey, and we're gonna say that these ones are the ones that promote life versus these other ones that we think are too particular. They don't really promote life, so we'll ignore those.

[00:36:18] Even in the early church, we have this going on. We have people who are categorizing law according to ethical distinctions, moral distinctions, and ritual distinctions. Justin Martyr in his writing, he said, well, you know, it's not that all of the laws are the same. Some of them were given because of Israel's rebellion with the golden calf, and so they were given some really hard rules to follow because of that rebellion. But those are the cultic laws, and we don't have to follow those as Christians. We just need to follow the moral laws.

[00:37:00] The major with saying that is that we then get to go into the Old Testament and cherry pick it apart. We get to say for ourselves, this one is about morality. This one is about the cultic system. This one is about ethics. Now we've boxed them all in and we know which ones we're supposed to obey.

[00:37:23] Now, of course, the idea of God giving rules or not, it doesn't have to be an either or as Waltons seem to be suggesting here, and it's a little bit hard to see how they could have said that, that stringently, because we can see rules as not just legislation, but wisdom, right? When we tell our kids what we expect of them, that doesn't mean that everything that we say is the only things we expect of them. They are just the set of guidelines so that they understand how the world works, how to navigate things in the world to be safe and to promote good life.

[00:38:06] Generally speaking, we expect that if we tell our child that they should clean up their mess over here, then we presume that they understand that that means that they should clean up another mess as well. Like it's not just the letter of the law that you're supposed to obey because no one can go around and tell you exactly what to do all the time. It's not how anything works. So the fact that we don't have God giving us this set list of everything that were to be expected doesn't mean that God doesn't tell us anything at all. But part of that is the context of not just legal law, but covenant stipulation.

[00:38:49] The Waltons say quote, " Israel's judiciary system like that throughout the ancient Near East was based on the wisdom of the judges, not on legislation. It involved a dynamic integration of custom, divine revelation, including oracles and intuition rather than static codes. The legal collections found in the Torah and other legal collections embodied that wisdom by providing an aspective mosaic of sayings that manifested the sponsor's wisdom, instructed the judges, and helped the people to understand order in society. The people are to heed this wisdom and to preserve it. In this view, the expected response to the Torah is far different from a response to legislation. Legislation carries a sense of ' you ought.' Instruction carries a sense of 'you will know.'" End quote.

[00:39:52] When we're teaching a child or we're teaching anyone else, really, we might be giving some information, but a larger hope is that the instruction and the information given is not the only thing that they'll do. Really good teaching and a really good instruction is something that should make the person capable of doing more than just knowing that information.

[00:40:16] Here's the difference between that and law. The consequences of wisdom and living out your life rightly, can be seen as a natural outcome of you are not listening or you are not learning. A law on the other hand, is imposed punishment, and I think that's a major distinction. Now, of course, on the other hand, I will say this is a picture of how God often works.

[00:40:47] Remember how we talked about wrath and the giving over to desire? Yep. That's the same thing. But it's not different, we want to say, because God has said to be doing that. God is imposing a judgment and a consequence. Now, I think both things are true but we think of the imposed punishment as something that is due us as something that we deserve. We broke the law. We deserve punishment. That doesn't have a whole lot of space for forgiveness and mercy.

[00:41:25] A law of order and wisdom, on the other hand, has this idea that God is a parent or somebody who is trying to teach us a good life. When your child misses up, if you just punish them, they might learn the way of wisdom, but hopefully you're seeing your child as a real human being who has their own hangups and can learn different ways, right?

[00:41:52] So if your child isn't quite getting it in one way, you can change things, you can adjust, and the goal is to get them to learn something so that they can have a good life. There's a goal other than just following the instruction, there's a wider goal.

[00:42:11] Our modern court system doesn't care if you live a really healthy life. If you destroy your own life and you're not living a happy life, our legal system does not care. It cares only if you harm others or if you break a law that is in place.

[00:42:31] So these are the differences between seeing law as a legal system and seeing law or Torah as wisdom. Law as wisdom is not there just for the law's sake. It is there to provide a situation of health.

[00:42:48] Here's what I think is a really big problem in this understanding of law and wisdom and covenant versus legality. The Waltons are not actually saying that there are no obligations.

[00:43:03] In regards to covenant stipulations, the Waltons say quote, " These stipulations are not a comprehensive list of everything that is expected of the vassal. IE. If it's not on this list, you are free of obligation, but it is a representative list. The detailed specific expectations should be considered real, but they are not exhaustive." End quote.

[00:43:33] That is why you have the Torah and the Sinai Covenant and all of these things written in the Pentateuch. And yet the people are kicked outta the land, not simply because they didn't do everything that the law prescribed, but because they weren't being very good vassals. They weren't doing what God expected them to do and they were kicked out for it.

[00:43:58] The Waltons give a really interesting comparison between treaty stipulations and user license agreements from software purchases. I really like this analogy. You buy some software, you have to agree to use it in a certain way. Almost none of us will go and read every word of the license agreement. We already know what it says. The license agreement can be evoked in a lawsuit against pirates, and we don't have to read the whole thing to know that we're not supposed to steal it and that we're not supposed to just give it away to everybody else.

[00:44:36] So just like that, the vassals did not have to read the document to know what constituted rebellion. The suzerain in the covenant wants the vassals faithfulness. And pretty much everyone knows what that looks like, but it's written down as a covenant witness. And so there are definitely obligations and expectations, but those are not the same as legal obligations and expectations because a legal obligation and an expectation is something that is codified and you deserve the punishment if you break the law.

[00:45:17] In a covenant agreement, you deserve the punishment or the consequences because you were unfaithful to the suzerain. Whatever that unfaithfulness looks like, it kind of doesn't matter. Your particular method of unfaithfulness didn't actually have to be written out in the law.

[00:45:38] The Waltons further point out that the existence of a treaty communicates the greatness of the suzerain. And this honestly makes so much sense when you read the literature itself and you read the Old Testament. The vassals serve to demonstrate the power and the competence of the king or the suzerain. The more powerful and prosperous the vassal is, the greater the king who rules over them.

[00:46:05] We don't have some like charity situation here with covenant treaties in the ancient Near East. The isn't just doing this out of the kindness of their own heart, but because what he is doing is honor reflected back on him. That is the description that we see in Scripture, isn't it? The honor and the glory of God.

[00:46:27] I know that people might not like it put this way, but the Waltons say quote, " A vassal was a showpiece of the suzerain's grandeur." End quote.

[00:46:40] That might make us a little bit uncomfortable because we want God to be doing things simply for our benefit, don't we? But I mean, even a lot of systematic theologians will say that the purpose of the law and the purpose of theology and the purpose of God's relationship to us is to give himself glory. It's to give himself honor. There is a very strong emphasis on Yahweh's reputation.

[00:47:07] Now does that trickle down to the wellbeing of Israel? Well, it's supposed to if Israel is faithful to Yahweh, but of course they're not. And so this explains why they end up suffering and they end up in exile and they end up under the wrath of God.

[00:47:26] But this also isn't a prosperity gospel. Both in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, suffering is implied by understanding and following God.

[00:47:39] Another thing that we might come back later to in this conversation is the Walton's description of holiness and what that is. This is one of the best descriptions of holiness that I've ever seen because a lot of times our descriptions and definitions of holiness, it's not really all that descriptive, right? Something that's holy is set apart to God. Well, that's true, but what we don't tend to look at very carefully is how what is holy actually defines the divine identity.

[00:48:14] The Waltons call this the constellation that defines God. And what's obvious is that the Old Testament is very different from other ancient texts and their descriptions of the other deities' holiness. It's absolutely fascinating because there are so many similarities, but there's a wealth of difference.

[00:48:36] The Waltons say that holiness is a status that is conferred. It is not earned or acquired or lost by behavior. It does not encompass morality or ethics. I. Holiness is what connects somebody to God because of his identity and our identity in him.

[00:49:00] I find that a very helpful idea of what holiness means, and that the realm of holiness sums up the constellation of what it meant to dwell with God and to define who he was in relation to the people.

[00:49:15] Now, why does this matter? Well, we tend to think of holiness as some property that we or something else might hold, but it's not. It's not a property of Israel. It's not a property of the sanctuary. It's a property of God himself.

[00:49:35] Now, this brings us into the realm of participation with the divine identity. This is where we get ritual and that is just steeped in symbolism and ritual is where people can play an active participatory role to maintain order in the cosmos and stability in their community by maintaining that identity with God.

[00:50:00] Now, of course, in the ancient Near East at large, the idea with the people and the gods was that the gods had needs just like the people. The people needed to meet the god's needs, and so the gods needed to bless the people in order for that to happen, right? They couldn't feed the gods if the people weren't growing food.

[00:50:22] But the Bible presents Yahweh as being distinctively different from this. Yahweh does not have needs that we need to sustain him with.

[00:50:32] However, the Bible took similar ideas it just recast them in the realm of covenant. Now we have relationship as being core to ritual and our participation with God. It's not God coming down and saying, I have needs, feed me. It's God coming down in the midst of the people to have a relationship and a covenant.

[00:50:59] In a sense it's still reciprocal, but only because we are able to participate in a real way in that relationship. It's not reciprocal in the fact that God requires or demands certain things. That would be the legal framework. The legal framework has God needing things and setting these boundaries that if you don't adhere to them, then you don't get to be in relationship with me because you are now punished.

[00:51:30] It's much more the case that we see this covenantal relationship, and that's what we see in the idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice in the pagan world was to appease or feed the deities. Sacrifice in Israel was not that it did serve the role of tribute in a covenantal relationship, however, so there is a hierarchy. God is up there and we are down here and there is a sense of obligation of our offering something to God in order to participate and be in relationship to him.

[00:52:10] The purification offerings and the goodwill offerings and the thanksgiving offerings served different purposes and some of them did restore a measure of equilibrium, we might say, right? Intentional sin didn't have a ritual release. Sacrifice wasn't about getting away with sin.

[00:52:31] In a legal framework, what you have is this give and take that is written into the codified law. In a covenant, you have obligation. Yes, you have requirements. Yes. It's not about following the letter of the law.

[00:52:49] At least this is how it's presented, a covenant is a matter of mutual agreement between parties. Legislation is imposed upon a community, and again, the penalty for breaking a law is coming from somebody in authority and giving you that punishment, right?

[00:53:10] The idea of covenant being one of mutual agreement is going to play a big part in our discussion on J Harvey Walton's view of Adam and everything that goes on there, but I won't get into that just yet.

[00:53:23] I wanna talk a little bit about stipulations in a legal collection versus covenant stipulations. I kind of have already laid out the differences there. But this is the kind of thing that we see that is the duty of the vassal. They are to acknowledge the suzerain as master. There's even often language about loving the suzerain as you love yourselves. Faithfulness and allegiance. Sometimes a land grant. And the suzerain promises to protect the vassal. There can't be language about coveting land or inhabitants of other lands. Basically, there's this idea of respect and allegiance.

[00:54:09] Now there can be some specific details. It can talk about water or land management boundaries, provision for battle troops. It can talk about extradition of rebels and fugitives, payment of tribute, and talk about trades and tariffs, debts and lawsuits, restitution of stolen property. These are things that to us seem in the realm of legal law.

[00:54:40] And indeed there is some crossover with legal collections. So part of my goal in this conversation is to look at the idea of covenant and look at our idea of law and look at those as conceptual realms themselves. There must be some crossover between those two realms. It doesn't mean that those two realms are the same, but there is some distinctive meshing together.

[00:55:10] And this is really interesting. Okay, so you have apodictic and casuistic formulation of law.

[00:55:19] A casuisitc form says something like, if this, then that. We see that kind of language in legal collections all the time. Now, an apodictic form is something like, thou shall not. This is what we see in the Decalogue. This language is found in treaty stipulations, but interestingly enough, the Decalogue addresses the subjects of legal collections.

[00:55:51] So what we can kind of see here is that with the casuistic forms and the apodictic forms, there is that crossover. We have both genres going on. We have both treaty stipulation as well as legal collection stuff going on in things like the Decalogue and elsewhere.

[00:56:15] I mean, look at the Decalogue. Don't have any other master. Respect the image of the master. Do not speak evilly of the master. Give honor to the master that your days may be long in the land. Do not commit murder against any of the people of the master. Do not engage in sexual behavior with any of the master's family. Do not steal what belongs to the master. Do not swear falsely or violate the oath made to the master. Do not covet what belongs to the master.

[00:56:52] Those are absolutely fascinating parallels and I think that, you know, most of us not thought of it in that way. Actually a lot of evangelicals will split the 10 Commandments into laws relating to God and laws relating to each other. This kind of shows that it's all laws relating to God and our relationship to him, how we relate to and honor God is directly related to how we relate to and honor each other. When it is the case that the other person also belongs to God.

[00:57:28] Okay so when we wrap all of this up and we see Torah as being situated in covenant, that's not that we can't loop in the legal collections context, and the Waltons are not saying that we can't do that. So if somebody says that they are denying that there's anything other than wisdom literature, well that's just false.

[00:57:52] we might say that there's three different things that are really primary here. We have justice, we have purity, and we have faithfulness. All three of those things are embedded deeply into what we see as Torah law.

[00:58:09] Holiness is an attribute of Yahweh and it can be conferred upon Israel in this covenant. And the idea of holiness and Yahweh and our relationship to him is that underlying reason of justice, faithfulness, and purity. When we are in covenant, we receive that holy status. So holiness is not a stipulation, and it's not a matter of meeting all of the conditions of justice, purity, and faithfulness.

[00:58:44] When we see that we have both faithfulness and justice at play, the Walton's say quote. " The Torah therefore reflects a combination of both of these well-known genres from the ancient world, and from that we conclude that the Torah is aspective not comprehensive and that it calls for Israel to be characterized by faithfulness and justice." End quote.

[00:59:13] Okay, so let me unpack that statement a little bit. Here we have the idea of obligation. Obligation according to law is something that, if this, then that, and that was even in the legal collections of the time.

[00:59:30] If Torah law was, if this, then that, then Israel, by necessity, would be called to fulfill the consequences of every punishment. When Israel disobeyed God and rebelled against him and worshiped the golden calf, what did they get? Well, there's certainly consequences, but they didn't all get the death penalty as it seems like they should have.

[00:59:59] If we understand Torah law to be about covenant stipulation, then this is about Israel identifying themselves with God, and as they are identifying themselves with God, they are to live out lives of faithfulness and justice. When they don't. They are not in covenant.

[01:00:21] So you see, it's not like there aren't obligations. It's not like there aren't things that they're supposed to do, and maybe some of the things that they're supposed to do was written down. Yes, you are supposed to obey the Sabbath, but you're not supposed to obey the Sabbath simply by obeying the Sabbath.

[01:00:42] If you are obeying the Sabbath and you are out of relationship to God and you are only trying to check that box, then you're not actually obeying the Sabbath because it is a law of wisdom. This is probably also why the prophets might say things like God does not desire sacrifice. That's not what he wants.

[01:01:05] Yes, he would like to receive our tribute to him, but not in this formulaic way. The point of the tribute is to be in relationship and identity with Yahweh. If you're not, then you are not.

[01:01:22] So I hope that's really helpful, especially for evangelical pushback on what the Waltons are saying. I think next week we will probably get into a lot more context of Old Testament versus New Testament. Was righteousness always about salvation? Do we in fact have different issues that drive the two testaments or do we not?

[01:01:47] I think that is potentially a very complicated situation to try to dive into, and it's not something I'm going to try and resolve perfectly. We're just opening up some doors and ideas for everyone to consider, and when that happens, hopefully the result is that we are able to read Scripture with fresh eyes.

[01:02:09] Our goal should always be to understand Scripture in relation to God and ourselves. Much of that conversation is about identity. Who is God and who are we?

[01:02:22] A lot of theology tries to boil it all down to mechanisms. Is that really the right way to look at it? Is God just doing things in a mechanistic way? Is that how wisdom works? Is that how anything really works?

[01:02:40] Okay, so I hope that was really helpful to you guys. I am now going to take a little moment to explain something that I have been hinting at in the last few weeks. I have a new project and I am really excited about this. What it is, is a new community platform, and I think I understand and have enough of it in mind to be able to describe it to you now.

[01:03:07] Now, some of it is still a little bit unknown because I'm working through how it all works and what the capabilities are.

[01:03:14] But I am currently in process of developing a new platform for a biblical theology community. My vision for this is to bring together not just my content, but other people's content into one area so that audiences can cross pollinate and meet together and to do a lot of this work that we're trying to do here in understanding Scripture contextually and in growing our ability to critically think.

[01:03:47] And in order to do that, you need to do that with other people.

[01:03:52] so my hope is that you will come into my community and participate and meet other people. And that it won't just be this top down partaking of content. Like that's all well and good. Learn all you can, not trying to stop you from doing that, but there is the sense when if it's only us taking in, then it's a lot harder for us to integrate that into our lives and actually have that outflowing from us.

[01:04:23] Now, I'm not saying that isn't already happening because I know for a fact that it actually is happening and it's happening in major ways today. But that's kind of why I wanna do this, is because I see all of these things happening with the understanding of Scripture in a deep way and doing that together. And I wanna make that easier for you.

[01:04:46] So this community platform that I have, it's a little bit like Facebook, but not hopefully the bad things about Facebook. Like there won't be the distractions that we have with Facebook. There won't be the terrible ads that we have with Facebook.

[01:05:02] The hope is that the community will be a focused place where people can actually study the Bible together, and people can even do book studies together. You can't really do that very well on Facebook because it is just too distracting.

[01:05:19] There's too much going on with the Facebook interface, and if you're on Facebook, you're getting messages from this person and that person, and that group, and this group. And it's really not a place you can really focus down into study deeply. I mean, some of us can, and it happens a lot, but it's a difficult place to do it.

[01:05:40] And I would never presume that within my Facebook group I could run a book study. I just don't think it can happen. I don't think that in my group I can even very easily develop the frame semantics resources that I wanna develop. And I can't do that alone. I just can't because I don't want it to just be another methodology.

[01:06:03] And that's another thing about this community. I don't want it to just be a cookie cutter mold. That's the point of community is that everybody who comes in can make it their own and have an impression upon it. That's what I want. I want genuine participation with each other there.

[01:06:22] So I hope you guys like that idea. I am still in the process of setting it up, so I don't have a link yet to share, but I'm hoping that by the end of this month, which is July, 2025, that I will have that link to send out to everybody and that you can all stream in and have a look at it.

[01:06:44] I'm really not sure exactly how it's gonna work and how it's gonna turn out, but I have high hopes for it. My hopes will, however, fall completely flat if nobody uses it. And I get that it's, it is really hard. It's, it's a big ask to have people go to a new platform, to have a new place to actually have to log into.

[01:07:07] But there is an app you can download and I think that can make it a little more accessible. And I would just ask that you give it a try. I would ask that you come into the community and actually participate, start some discussion yourself, ask questions, connect with other people. That's my deep hope that we can do that even more.

[01:07:29] I know it's already happening and I appreciate everybody who communicates with me. I appreciate everybody who already interacts on Facebook with me, either in discussion groups or through Messenger.

[01:07:40] So just giving this option out here for people, and I hope it's going to be helpful and fruitful. It will be a little bit more than a community as well, because it's also a course platform. So as I'm talking about all this stuff with biblical theology and the different methodologies, I'm hoping to create a course that will actually condense that into more digestible content because in order to really flesh it out in a podcast, it's gonna take me episodes and episodes to really lay it all out.

[01:08:14] But if it can be condensed into a small course, then you can take that and run with it yourself and study it deeply yourself a little bit easier. The thing about podcasts too is that not everyone listens to them.

[01:08:30] Like you might have shared my podcast with other people who are like, oh, okay, cool, whatever. I'm not gonna listen to that. And I get it. Lots of people just don't have time or attention to devote to a long form podcast. So that's again, another reason why I want to try out the idea of doing a course.

[01:08:49] Anyway, that's some of what I have these ideas for. They are not the only ideas I have for the future, however, so I hope that you guys might be interested in joining me on my new platform. I will be announcing how you can access it in upcoming weeks.

[01:09:07] At any rate, I will go ahead and wrap up today, and I thank you for listening. Thank you guys for your support, because it means the world to me. It is really encouraging to me, really uplifting, and I hope that the same can be said for what I'm trying to offer for you. Thanks, especially for my Patreon supporters. You guys are the foundation that I am capable of even doing anything more with, so I really deeply appreciate that. But that is it for this week. I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.