A mega-church pastor in Atlanta named Andy Stanley has written an article in Relevant magazine asking why Christians persist in protecting monuments to the Ten Commandments when, in truth, they no longer apply to us. Although keeping up with the ramblings of various mega-church pastors could be a full-time job, this particular article merits attention because it is demonstrative of heresies in general and how they seem to persist, especially when believers are cut off from the preservative protection of the Catholic Church.
A native of Sinope in modern day Turkey, Marcion was a shipbuilder who rejected the Old Testament. He desired to strip Christianity of anything Jewish and any connection to the Old Testament. In his view, Christ came to undo the work of the Creator. He even went so far as to produce his own set of Scriptures, removing the Old Testament along with any references to the Old Testament in the New Testament and any suggestions that we would be judged by God. Within the plan of Divine Providence, Marcion of course moved the Church along by encouraging her to make explicit the role of the Old Testament in the life of the Church.
The Law and Historical Christianity
Pastor Stanley and the second century ship builder are, in a very real sense, kindred spirits. For truly, there is “nothing new under the sun” when it comes to heresies. They are simply recycled throughout the ages. That is why Blessed John Henry Newman’s maxim rings true—“to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” Pastor Stanley’s error is not just theological but historical. He claims that “the blended model began as early as the second century when church leaders essentially kidnapped the Jewish Scriptures and claimed them as their own.” This is simply rehashing what Marcion said and he interprets the Church’s clarification as “kidnapping” the Jewish Scriptures. In other words, he is saying that Marcion was right.
Interestingly enough, many German Lutherans became Marcions under the Nazi regime for obvious reasons. To be clear, Pastor Stanley is not suggesting anything like this (he does in fact condemn it). But his doctrine necessarily leads to that no matter how unwittingly he proposes it. This is the nature of heresies, they always lead to a dead, and sometimes even deadly, end. Given enough time, what is implicit will always be made explicit.
The Law and the New Covenant
That is why it is instructive to cut off his error at its roots, especially because it is a common one. In essence, his thesis comes at the end of his essay—“While Jesus was foreshadowed in the old covenant, he did not come to extend it. He came to fulfill it, put a bow on it, and establish something entirely new.” The error really comes in equating the Old Covenant with the Law. There was not a single “Old Covenant” but instead God made a series of covenants with man, beginning with Adam and ending with David, all of which culminated in the New Covenant that is sealed in Christ’s blood. Nowhere in Scripture does it suggest that Jesus was “establishing something entirely new.” The new wine and new wineskins are like the old wine and wineskins, even if they are new.
The question, and it was one that the early Church had to wrestle with (c.f. Acts 10-20), was what role the Jewish law would play in this New Covenant. That it was to play a role was clear when Our Lord said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17-18). For Pastor Stanley and many like him Jesus came precisely to destroy the Law.
St. Augustine in his famous treatise on the Sermon on the Mount said that to “not abolish the law but to fulfill it” can be taken in two ways, both of which are applicable to Christ’s words. First to fulfill means to add what is lacking. Augustine says, “he who adds what is lacking does not surely destroy what he finds, but rather confirms it by perfecting it.” For Pastor Stanley, addition comes by way of subtraction. You need only one commandment—“love one another as I have love you”— but he would have this commandment demolish the foundation of the Law rather than building on it. No wonder he calls out Chick-fil-A for closing in observance of the Sabbath. His one commandment says nothing of loving God, a commandment that surely requires more than keeping the Sabbath sacred but most certainly not its exclusion.
Christ also fulfilled the Law by doing everything that was in it. He did this not just to show it was possible, but to make it possible for us as well. In Christ, the impossible becomes possible. Ethics becomes ethos as the Divine Stonemason moves the law from the stone of Sinai to the stone of our hearts. The Ten Commandments cease mere laws, but prophesies. Christians “shall keep the Sabbath” and “shall not kill, lie or steal.”
As further proof that Christ does not want to abolish the law, He devotes much of His Sermon on the Mount to how it will be fulfilled. He does this by precisely using the Ten Commandments as the model. “Moses said, but I say to you…” So clearly He has no intention of abolishing the Ten Commandments. But what about all the other Old Testament precepts? Some of them, particularly the ceremonial aspects will find their fulfillment in the rites of the New Covenant. Other precepts, especially some of the moral ones will remain in place. Still, if we examine the issue honestly, there is still not enough guidance. This reveals the larger error that Pastor Stanley makes and, unfortunately, many other Christians with him .
The aforementioned quote of Newman is really an indictment that Protestantism is not the Christianity of history. Sola Scriptura necessitates that view because they are rejected a historical explication of Christian dogma in favor of one based solely on the Bible. The problem with this however is that it is a dead Christianity because much of the Bible only makes Revelation implicit. Which aspects of the Mosaic Law are binding and which are not is never explicitly told to the Biblical reader. Instead what is implicit in Christ’s words must be made explicit. This explication must happen under the guidance of the Church, led by the Holy Spirit “who guides us to all truth” through the Church. Once a Protestant turns to the Church Fathers and sees the unbroken line of belief to what the Apostles taught, errors such as Pastor Stanley’s are never made. Christ did not make something entirely new, he added the necessary ingredients to Judaism to make it Catholic. But if you reject the Catholic Church outright then you necessarily will think He must have started something new.
Being closing we would be remiss in neglecting Pastor Stanley’s fundamental question as to why Christians should insist on the presence of monuments of the Ten Commandments instead of the Sermon on the Mount. Perhaps Pastor Stanley’s suggestion is a little self-serving in that he is looking for a place to actually read and study it. But in theory there is no particular reason why we could not use the Sermon on the Mount instead, although it is, admittedly, a little long. But the Ten Commandments, especially in a post-Christian culture can be very effective for the same reason that God gave them first. The law was given so that the people became aware of their inability to keep it and would cry out to God for redemption. Sometimes the bad news is just as effective as the good news.