The Lost World of the Torah: Law as Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context by John H. Walton

Author:John H. Walton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 9780830852413
Published: 2019-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Proposition 19

We Cannot Gain

Moral Knowledge or Build a

System of Ethics Based on Reading the Torah in Context and Deriving Principles from It

Before we continue the topic of the relevance of Torah as Scripture, and particularly its relevance for ethics, we need finally to address the approach that is very common today—applying the Torah by deriving behavioral principles point by point. We will refer to this as the “derived principles” approach. 1 For many years I (John) taught this method for deriving the message of the Torah for us today as I looked for a relevant and applicable principle for each legal saying. More recently, I have become persuaded that such a methodology cannot yield consistently reliable results, and so I have changed my approach. Before we discuss individual examples, we need to address the usual validation for the practice of deriving principles from the Torah’s stipulations. Paul appears to use such a method, and people have taken that as justification for also employing it.

The practice of deriving principles of behavior from the Torah is similar to the likewise common approach of deriving principles of behavior from the Old Testament narratives. We can demonstrate the flaws of the methodology in connection with Torah by examining the methodology applied to the narrative literature. As with the Torah, we sometimes substantiate a derived-principles method by pointing out that the New Testament authors show an inclination to use Old Testament characters as role models for behavior (cf. especially Heb 11). Such methodology is typical of children’s curricula and is foundational to many sermons and Bible study series. The problems with this method are multitude. One problem occurs when, in some cases, it is not clear at all whether a character’s behavior is acceptable or not, in which case no principle can be derived by claiming that it is biblical.

For example, endless arguments take place concerning Rahab’s protection of the Israelite spies by lying to the king’s men as she sends them off on a wild goose chase while the spies are hidden on her roof. Is her lie commendable or deplorable? Is lying always wrong? The text does not resolve this in the course of the narrative and is not intended to engage or answer such questions. No principle about lying can be derived as the biblical teaching.

Another more frequent problem occurs when the behavior is incidental to the intent of the narrative—obvious by the fact that the narrator offers no comment about it. Is the narrative about Abram and Lot (Gen 13) trying to teach us about the importance of letting others choose first? Or for that matter, does the feeding of the five thousand (Mt 14:13-21) offer a lesson about sharing because of the boy who shared his lunch? I would contend that these are illegitimate approaches to identifying the authoritative message of the text. 2 They are dependent on the imagination of the reader, not on the intention of the author. With no controls, abuse is inevitable and amply attested in the history of interpretation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.