How should Christians approach biblical interpretation when it comes to Old Testament law? This episode tackles the essential question of Christian biblical interpretation with father-daughter theologians Paul Hinlicky and Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. They explore how proper interpretive methods help us understand the relationship between biblical law, Jesus' fulfillment of the law, and contemporary Christian living. The discussion emphasizes that effective Christian biblical interpretation requires avoiding supersessionism while recognizing Jesus as the interpretive key to understanding Torah and Old Testament law.

The conversation reveals why Christian biblical interpretation must be grounded in deep scriptural knowledge and practiced within faithful communities. The guests discuss Lutheran interpretive frameworks, including the three uses of law, and address how churches can develop better practices of Christian biblical interpretation. They emphasize that biblical law interpretation shouldn't be a weapon or burden, but should promote human flourishing when approached through proper Christian biblical interpretation methods rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Welcome to the Enter the Bible podcast where you can get answers or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker.

And I'm Katie Langston. And today on the podcast, we are delighted again to welcome our very dear friends, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson and Paul Hinlicky. They are related, father and daughter, in case you were wondering. Sarah, what? Who are you? Yes. Sarah is recently back in the U.S. after spending six and a half years as a pastor of

Tokyo Lutheran Church English-Speaking Congregation in Japan, doing some missionary service there with her family. And she is a theologian, author, publisher, ecumenist, and all around amazing human. So hello, Sarah, welcome. Paul is likewise an amazing human and wonderful friend, and he is retired professor of theology at Roanoke College and premier Lutheran theologian. So welcome to the podcast to both of you. podcast together with a podcast called

queen of the sciences, which is an awesome listen and everyone should check it out. So highly recommend. So today we have a question that we are responding to that came in from a listener. And of course, you dear listener, if you would like to submit a question, you may do so at enterthebible.org. We get to as many of these as we can. And the question goes like this. What is our relationship as modern Christians with biblical law? What is the law?

is it relevant? Now, when I read this question, I hear some like, do we have to follow the Old Testament laws? But there's probably more to it. So what say you? Can we just disregard the laws of God because Jesus?

Well, I think we need to start by zeroing in a little bit more on this phrase, biblical law. I think the first thing to say is it's really important to look at this historically because human beings been around a real long time now. Jurisprudence is a universal phenomenon. There's all kinds of law. There's political law, case law, civil law, criminal law, religious law, et cetera, church law, family law, rights.

You

So biblical law, and we'll circle back to why the question is even being asked, because as I said on our last episode, it's always worth finding out why a question is sought to a theological, or why an answer is sought to a theological question. So I think the first thing to say is that it's super easy for especially Gentile Christians to dis Old Testament law in all respects, because you know, Jesus, as you said.

And I think a lot of times, Christians have made the mistake of interpreting Jesus as come to liberate the Israelites from their own past. And if that's what they thought salvation was, no wonder most of them didn't go for it. So let's start there. Whoever Jesus is, he is certainly a Jew. He's one who read the scriptures, who thought very deeply about all of them, including the legal parts of them and the moral parts of them.

Yeah.

And I think the first layer we need to look at at Jesus slash Christian interpretation of Old Testament law is taking it seriously and that his arguments are within the family of Israel and its legal and moral traditions, not the founder of a new and better religion called Christianity that just wants to kick all that away. And I will just observe that even Gentile Christians are usually pretty inconsistent because like they'll love the prophets, but decide they hate the Torah.

or especially Leviticus. And then the quotes, you know, love God above all things, love your neighbor as yourself from Jesus with no idea that Jesus was quoting it from Leviticus. So, I mean, like the Bible's long and history is long. You have to like spend a lot of time knowing the traditions and the texts before you can even begin to formulate a useful answer. There's not a simplistic yes law or no law kind of answer here.

Yes, I think that Sarah's put her finger on one of the huge issues here. The answer of modern-day Christians' relationship to law and the Bible is a complex one, and it requires distinctions and differentiations from the beginning. Let me just point out that in the Galatians controversy, the apostle was dealing with interlopers into a congregation he had founded among non-Jews, Gentiles.

And the interlopers were saying, well, you've only got half a salvation. You've got to be incorporated into the people Israel by circumcision in order to fully enjoy the salvation that Jesus has brought to us. Paul blew a stack about that, right? Right. He said, there's neither circumcision nor uncircumcision. All that counts is a new creation. So he threw down the gauntlet. He even challenged…

the very stature of the law by saying it was delivered by angels, i.e. not directly by God. was, you know, some intermediators gave the law to Moses. He says that in Galatians, but then he changes his tune in Romans and says it is holy, just, and good, and it was the treasure of Israel given to it by God. So, you know, even within the New Testament, you see this conflicted relationship to the overwhelming legacy of biblical law.

that you've got to make distinctions about the legacy. And then just finally, for Lutherans, let me say this. Early in the Reformation, Luther was confronted by the Zwickau prophets and his former pupil, Thomas Munzer, and his former colleague, Karlstadt, who were both saying, Luther, you've done it halfway with your Reformation. To have a full Reformation, we've got to institute legally the Book of Leviticus and the Book of Deuteronomy.

Where am I?

and to which Luther said, no, no, no, no, you're quite wrong about that.

Germans aren't gonna give up pork. You're diluting yourself.

Exactly. I need my bratwurst and my weismurst.

I mean, fundamentally, you have to make a distinction here. And I think the way to do the distinction is to follow the Jew Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, who announces that, have not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Right? Right. then read the Sermon on the Mount and ask yourself, can I live with the law that Jesus delivers in the Sermon on the Mount? Then you've got the precise question.

for Christians to struggle with.

just say, I really appreciate where you started with that to say, right, Jesus is a Jew. Jesus doesn't throw away the law. Jesus, in fact, quotes the law, know, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind from Deuteronomy and love your neighbors yourself from Leviticus. And I think it's just always important in any discussion of the law to guard against that kind of supersessionism or anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism.

anti-Old Testament. so it just warms my Old Testament teacher heart to have both of you clarify and make clear that the law is part of Jesus' teaching. It's a part of Christianity. Christianity isn't, as you said, Sarah, Christianity isn't a whole new religion. It builds on the foundation of Israel and of the Old Testament. When I teach the Torah, when I teach the Pentateuch, ⁓ I say to my students, look, if you don't, if you

take nothing else away from this class, remember this, that the law in the Old Testament is understood as a gift. It's not understood as a burden. It's not understood as death dealing, taskmaster. It's understood as a gift for the promotion of community, for the building of relationship amongst the community and for right relationship with God.

And we see this all over, right? Not just in the Torah, but Psalm 119, this ode to the law and ode to the Word of God, and Psalm 19, and just all over, there's an understanding that God gives the law as a gift to Israel to learn how to live in relationship with each other and with God.

And I think it's just we won't be answering the question for historical or present day Jews, but they also have never had an unmediated relationship to the laws in the Pentateuch. They have had a long tradition of interpretation within what we call the Old Testament canon, and then in what eventually gets codified in Mishnah and Talmud. So even the 16th century Karlstadt's idea, well, we're just going to go do this the right way.

mean, none of their Jewish contemporaries were doing it that way because time changed, places changed. There hasn't been a temple for a long time. And there's been deep reflection on how we continue to be faithful without it. And that's another deep, I think, fault line within the New Testament. It's not obvious if you don't get some training in how to read the New Testament that there are writings there that either take place or reflect a time before the fall and destruction of the temple. And those that are explicitly

afterwards in their writing or addressing situations afterwards. And if you don't feel that, you don't understand what's at stake in this question about, so how, first of all, how do, how are Jews faithful to Jesus as Messiah, still part of the Jewish community? How are Jews faithful to Jesus or not faithful to Jesus, but still faithful to the God of Israel?

supposed to carry on when the temple is gone? And then how are Gentiles who have no ethnic or religious relationship to the God of Israel except through Jesus supposed to relate to all of this stuff that comes before? So those are three different realities that we need to think through. But I sort of suspect that maybe behind the question, or not necessarily this particular listener, but often is the question, do we need law at all? Can't we just be all love and and gentleness, and there's no need for law anymore?

I think that's a different kind of question and maybe that would be worth pursuing a little bit.

That came up in the second, later in the Reformation, in the Antinomian controversies.

And explain what antinomian

It's

a fancy word that means being against the law. It's an ism of being against the law, that's we were just talking about. It's interesting here that there's kind of two takes on antinomianism. One is, well, God gives you His grace so that you can get your act together and live under the law. That's one kind of antinomianism, and I think that's probably kind of close to Paul, the apostle, who wants to say, ⁓ are…

no longer under the law, you are under the Spirit, the Holy Spirit that's been given to you. That's what he says in Galatians. Luther's reason for opposing antinomianism is slightly different. It is, if you take away the law, you take away the knowledge of sin. If you take away the knowledge of sin, you take away the need for reconciliation with the Holy God. If you take away the need for reconciliation, you

make Jesus Christ and His life and death for us unnecessary, not needed, a fifth wheel, because you are capable of reconciling yourself if you recognize you need reconciliation at all. And I think the kind of antinomianism that I would obviously prefer is Luther's version. I don't think we need biblical law to tell us what to do other than in the broad sense

of the Ten Commandments and of their reinterpretation in the Sermon on the Mount. I think that otherwise Old Testament law has heuristic value. That is to say, we can look at Leviticus and look at Deuteronomy, as you were saying, Kathryn, as kind of ways of structuring community for health and sanity on the earth without saying that we have to keep these laws in any kind of literal way.

So I think there's a modern kind of anti-nominism that I've run into where, unfortunately, often in Lutheran churches, where as a high school friend of my sister's once said, he had partied pretty hard the night before and he came to church in the morning. And he said, well, I love to sin and God loves to forgive sin. So we make a good pair, he said.

Shall we sin all the more that grace may abound? So, I mean, it's interesting, both Paul and Luther, because of their incredible confidence in Christ's work of death and resurrection and the Holy Spirit's gift of faith, were misread as antinomians who could say, well, if the law and my obedience to it is no longer the basis of my relationship with God, then what's to stop me from sinning? And, you know, and that is

That is a sinner's deduction from the grace of God. This is an easy mark to take advantage of, which I think is why Paul also says, don't be deceived. God is not mocked.

Right, right, right, right, right, right, yeah.

But again, the question is, I think for us on several levels, as people who are sinners and whether we are as overt as the partier or much more subtle in our sinning, we are always looking to give ourselves a pass. And at least my sin is not as bad as his sin and his is not as bad as someone else's, right? And I think the first thing is simply like, again, what is law for? Law, as you were saying, Kathryn, is a gift for the flourishing of human life.

And so celebrating with friends, even getting slightly elated with some good wine, that's something an Old Testament person could appreciate, right? A lot of stuff that goes down at parties is not life-giving to anyone. So not excusing and deceiving ourselves about that. That's one of the reasons for law. I also think, you know, just in a very basic sense, if we think about ourselves as historical beings too, one of the gifts of law

Right.

is preventing us from heading headlong into destruction in our very short lifespan. So, you know, we've all been parents, all of us here. You don't say, you know what, it's so repressive of my child to say, don't stick your hand in the fire. You know, he's got to express himself and like feel what the world is really like. So go ahead, burn your hand, we'll go to the emergency room and then you'll never do it again. Well, yeah, okay, the kid's never going to stick his hand in the fire again.

But have you been a good parent by allowing him to stick his hand in the fire? Of course not. Right? And that's just one microcosm of the whole reason for having law. Now, of course, I think people are often thinking about laws that are clearly irrelevant or inapplicable anymore or impossible to keep or things that should never have been laws in the first place, things that really miss the mark and harm people. So again, it's not a simplistic answer. Yes law, no law.

reason why jurisprudence is a historical discussion is which law, when law, to whom and why the law. And that actually becomes the discernment and often very heated dispute within the community of faith. I think what Dan wants to say is we are always referring back at a minimum to the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and I would add the epistles also, ethical instruction, interpretation of Christian life as a benchmark.

for evaluating all legal and moral proposals. And much of the other biblical law can be useful in thinking more deeply about these things. Wisdom literature, for instance, trying to figure out what is the right way to apply that law.

Right, right, right. Or things like the injunctions over and over again in the Torah and in the prophets to remember the widow and the orphan and the foreigner and to care for those most vulnerable in society, right? Over and over and over again. I think we all pick our favorite laws,

Those are

And the ones we can use to clobber those who don't. I think one of the problems we get into in the discussion of the law is that we reify it. We theologically turn it into something that is real in and of itself and forget that the law is always the Word of God. And this is what I want to stress now. And this is an insight I actually got originally from Rudolf Bultmann, that the account of the law of God in the Sermon on the Mount

Exactly! ⁓

refers to the scrutiny of the Father who is in heaven, who knows and judges the secrets of the heart, a theme from the prophets. And the same kind of scrutiny from above is recorded in the first three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, where the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of humans, right? And this takes the discussion of the law

out of the hands of what human beings are doing with it one way or the other. That's important. We've been discussing that for the first half of this podcast. But to really get it in the proper perspective, and this is what I learned from Bultman, for Paul, the law represents God in the office of the judge, God in the office of the judge, which of course is Paul picking up prophetic discourse and saying, look, you can ignore the law if you want.

the law is not going to ignore you because it is God in the office of the judge, who is executing His judgment on all wickedness of human beings and how they suppress the truth. And so I would say, what is the Christian's relationship to biblical law? It's when the Holy Spirit takes the law out of our hands and puts the law into its own hands. And then

It is the law as John, what is that, John 16, the Holy Spirit will reveal sin and righteousness and judgment, right? ⁓ It is the Holy Spirit's use of the law to indict us for our failure and not the human being's use of the law for self-justification or for scapegoating. ⁓

So I know that not all our listeners and viewers are Lutheran and we're so happy that we have other folks, other Christians and non-Christians listening, but I feel compelled as a Lutheran since all of us are Lutheran here. So we're taught in Confessions that there are at least two uses of the law, maybe three, there's a debate about that. Is that, it just reminded me of what you just said, Paul, about the Holy Spirit convicting us of sin, right?

Obviously one use of the law according to Lutheran teaching. Would you guys just talk a bit about that?

Sure. So there have been these distinctions traditionally in Lutheranism. So the first use of the law is called the political use. And it is kind of like we were talking about, how do you actually know what is commanded for the good of human flourishing and also for the restraint of human evil? And again, that's a human cultural universal. There's a lot of overlap, society to society, not absolute, but most societies don't endorse reckless murder or theft or

totally chaotic sexual relations, right? And it's always rough justice and it always requires an enforcer and therefore violence. in Lutheran understanding, God gives it to make things less anarchic and violent than they would otherwise be, but not because it actually instantiates the kingdom of God on earth. And probably anytime people aspire to force through the kingdom of God on earth, through the political use of the law,

We've moved from anarchy to totalitarianism, not a great improvement in my own judgment. ahead. They're both bad. Yeah. They're both bad. Yes. The second use of the law is what dad was beginning to bring us to, which is the Holy Spirit's use of the law to convict us of our own sin. When we don't want to look at it, don't want to own up to it, don't want to acknowledge it, whether in despair because we know we would never match up or in pride because we refuse to see who we really are.

Exactly ⁓

They're both.

The second use of the law is what strips away all of our illusions, pretensions, self-justifications, and leaves us with no choice but to run to the waiting arms of Jesus Christ who then deals with law and sin in his own very specific and particular way, which, you know, is a shorthand for everything we believe about salvation offered in Jesus. So you can see already, same law, very different uses, very different applications, and not a good idea to confuse them. Like, we don't want

you know, Congress passing laws based on the second use of the law and deciding who was convicted before Almighty God.

I think that gives you a clue on how to think about the so-called third use of the law. Namely, now that what is excluded by the first two uses is human beings using the law for self-justification or for scapegoating. That's what's excluded because you're saying God is the one who's ordering us into rough forms of justice. God is the one who is restraining our violence through these rough instruments of civil government, right?

What would be the third use of the law, which would be the use of the law by the newborn sanctified Christian? How would the Christian use the law? And the fear here is that you would be taking away from what Paul says in Galatians, you're no longer under the law, you're led by the Spirit. That's the fear, that you're going to go back to the law.

The opposite argument, which I am sympathetic to, is that no, the Spirit leads you right back into Galilee. The Spirit leads you right back into the real world of those social relationships scoped out in the Ten Commandments, the family, the economy, the civil law court, and so forth. All of those social institutions in which life is actually lived. That's why Luther polemicized against self-chosen works.

and said, the Ten Commandments will point you to all the places in which the new life of Christian love can be exercised. So don't make up your own law. Just go back into the world where the law is already functioning, and that's where you live out the new life in Christ. If that's what we understood by the third years of the law, I'm totally copacetic with it.

I'll confess to being a third use of the law, Lutheran, I do think that there's a use of the law exactly as you say, Paul, to lead us back into the world to see how then shall we live, right? But it's the work of the Holy Spirit in us to lead us into sanctification, right? Not that that's going to be finished in this life, but that we do grow increasingly.

and even to me even more profoundly to sanctify the world to be a holy secularity rather than a profane secularity.

Yes, yeah, amen.

So, I mean, the concern with the third use, as Dad was saying, is that you'll be tempted to say, now that I'm living a renewed life in Christ, that becomes the basis of my relationship with God or my approval before God. that God was just kind of, I was in a holding pattern, but now that I'm good, that's really the reason I'm justified.

have to exclude that. But I mean, the thought exercise you could do on the other side is, okay, now that I'm a Christian and led by the Spirit, I have nothing more to learn from the law because I'm directly led by the Spirit. So you think, okay, well, the eighth commandment says I'm not allowed to slander others, but clearly people who don't believe in Jesus are speaking lies. Therefore, I am entitled to take them down, not listen to them, not treat their argument seriously, silence them, burn their books. And, you know, we know that.

Luther fell for that temptation a number of times. He should have hated his own warning in his beautiful elaboration of the Eighth Commandment and the Catechisms, which would have prevented him from doing that. Just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you have the right to shut up and shut down other people. You are still bound by the law against slander. So I think that's a good example where even those in the spirits who are tempted to give themselves a pass on the law are still

held accountable to the content of the law, not as the basis of their relationship with God, but as the right way to engage with others in this world.

And God the Judge will come after you, even though you're a baptized believer.

So watch out.

So a lot of church division is centered on how to interpret the law. I'm not going to go into details here, yes, there are many issues, especially sexuality, sexual issues that divides believers. So without getting into a whole other topic, I'm curious, Sarah and Paul, how would you respond to the question, how does the community discern which laws are relevant and which are not?

We can all guess.

And I say community advisedly there because I think it has to be done in community. That's certainly one thing that I think we've learned in church history. yeah, how would you say that kind of discernment should be practiced or come about? ⁓

I would say, Kathryn, right off the bat, your question begs to me a really big question. Do we have Christian communities that are really, truly catechized, immersed in the matrix of Holy Scripture, thinking with Holy Scripture, immersed in Scripture, understanding Scripture according to the gospel? These are all kind of…if you were…

Reformation Lutherans, these would be the sine qua non, for even to begin discernment. And I factually doubt that many of our congregations are, in fact, such communities. So I hope I'm wrong about that. But I think a lot of the problem we have had in trying to discern the applicability of biblical law is because we don't have…

congregations or synods that are functioning as hermeneutical societies, societies of scriptural interpretation. And in that deficit, discussion about biblical law becomes a free-for-all in which the already polarized ⁓ ideologies of our society pick and choose their Bible verses to attack the other ones with. That's what I would say initially.

Yeah, and I think that sort of things we fight about are things that are often so new or so sensitive, so personal, and then we're supposed to come up with a policy at scale to answer them. And I'm just, this is more a reflection of where I am right now, and probably because I've lived in such different cultural contexts where different kinds of things are important or unimportant. I'm just not sure that anything larger than the scale of a congregation can even deal with these questions. And yet congregations that only talk within themselves,

and are not accountable to the larger church also end up, you know, in their own, like, internal whirlpool of possibility. But I mean, the most hopeful answer I could give is something to the effect of if we could structure disputes about the law in the sense of what restrains evil and promotes Christian flourishing within the rich community life that's premised on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

those at least would be good conversations to have. And I think arguments there are worthy arguments. How often, as dad said, we actually get to that point, I'm less hopeful about.

Indeed, yeah. I really like how you of frame that. And it does seem that so often we sort of take our kind of a priori assumptions, right? What we come into and we impose that upon the scripture instead of allowing the scripture to challenge those kinds of assumptions that we bring and have a conversation within that kind of context.

Yes, it's hard to have the kind of congregations that can have those kinds of conversations.

Yeah, it is hard to have the kind of congregations that can have those conversations.

Well, but what you're doing on this podcast is wonderful if you're getting people back into the Bible. And I think this is the root building block to have those kind of conversations, is to immerse people again in the Scriptures.

And let's say biblical law is not a weapon and it's not an enemy. It is meant for human flourishing. And so that should be the context of how does this hold back evil and cultivate our lives together. That at least should be the starting point, not what do I have to do in order to be saved or what do I have to impose on you in order to feel like the whole world is not going to collapse.

Yeah, that's wonderful. I think we could talk about this for a lot longer, but perhaps just for the sake of brevity we'll leave it there.

Thank you both so much for being with us. It is always such a joy to talk to you both. And thank you to those of you who have joined us here on this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. Remember, you can get ⁓ a lot more resources, reflections, podcasts, episodes, commentaries, courses, all kinds of great stuff on enterthebible.org. We invite you to please rate and review or like and subscribe. And of course, the very best compliment you can pay us is to share this podcast with a friend.

Until next time.