Protestant Ethics Today (Part 1)
“Protestant ethics,” wrote Herman Bavinck, “was immediately given the form of the Decalogue” (Reformed Ethics, vol. 2, p. 14). This has been the case since the Reformation, whose theologians and confessions followed early Christian precedent in giving the Ten Commandments the place of centrality in Christian ethical teaching. If one wants to know how a Christian must obey God, what better place could one turn than the Ten Commandments?
As obvious a question as this might seem, it is disputed by many today. Those in the Anabaptist stream of thought argue that Jesus’ teaching, especially as found in the Sermon on the Mount, is the place from which the church derives its ethical teaching. This is often formulated in terms of a strong contrast between New Testament and Old Testament moral instruction. Anabaptists take the contrasts expressed in Christ’s sermon as indicating that Christians are no longer bound by Old Testament law in any sense. For example, Jesus says in Matt 5:21–22: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” For the radical anabaptist (and those perhaps more indirectly influenced by their approach), this is a repudiation of the sixth commandment in favor of a new commandment from Christ. “You have heard it said” tells us what was once binding on God’s people. “But I say to you” tells us what is now binding. The contrast appears multiple times in Matthew 5, thus (in this way of thinking) giving us a paradigm for Christian ethics: what Christ teaches is what binds the believer. When Christ told his disciples “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” and that “not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matt 5:17–18) he was teaching them that he had already fulfilled the law and accomplished what it taught in a way that abolished its concrete moral imperatives.
Others also emphasize the contrast between OT law and NT moral teaching. Proponents of New Covenant Theology, for example, argue that the “Ten Commandments are a summary of the requirements of the Old Covenant, a works covenant that God gave to Israel on Mount Sinai” and are therefore no longer binding on the believer. Instead, “the law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21) “is the law that must be obeyed in the New Covenant era. It comes to us through Jesus and the Apostles. It is what believers are required to obey today.” “The content of the Law of Christ,” proponents contend, is all of the “new laws” stated in the New Testament, or with regard to Old Testament laws, only those that are repeated in the New Testament.
Although more recent Dispensationalists have somewhat softened the way they explain the contrast between the dispensation of Old Testament law and the dispensation of the church, Dispensationalism has always maintained for the Christian a sharp break with the Mosaic law. Some forms of Dispensationalism even argue that the Sermon on the Mount is not for Christians today, that it was part of the kingdom offered to, and rejected by, Israel, and therefore does not bind Christian believers. The basic Dispensational position on OT law is roughly the same as that of New Covenant Theology, namely, that only those laws repeated in the New Testament are binding on believers today.
Many Christians don’t have a well formulated system of theology at all. Nonetheless, chances are, if they have been influenced by the dominant views in evangelicalism, they will hold to some notion that they are no longer bound by the Old Testament laws, perhaps even including the Ten Commandments.
Like Anabaptists, classical Protestant ethical teaching also understands the Sermon on the Mount to be foundational, but for a very different reason. This reason helpfully illuminates a key distinction in Protestant ethics: the expansive scope of the law. Instead of positing a disjunction between Old Testament law and New Covenant moral instruction, Protestants (Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, classical Baptists) have understood Jesus’ teaching in light of his constant contrast with the Pharisaical approach to the law. The Pharisees, although frequently adding man-made laws to God’s law, also made a practice of evading the true force of God’s law. One can see this, for example, in their concept of Corban. In Mark 7:9–13 Jesus confronts the Pharisees for “rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition” (9:9). The Pharisees, in fact, rejected the fifth commandment (9:10) by claiming to have set aside money for God (9:11), when their real aim was to finding an ingenious way to keep that money for themselves, instead of helping their parents (9:12). The main point of Christ’s teaching is that one can outwardly seem to be zealous for God’s law (see Rom 10:2), while being far from genuine, heartfelt obedience.
Getting this right helps us make sense of the contrasts in the Sermon on the Mount. They are not repudiations of the binding force of the Ten Commandments. Rather, they are ways in which Jesus continually takes his disciples to the heart of God’s law, showing them that observance only of the strict letter of the commandment is not sufficient (though it is certainly necessary). That is to say: one must indeed keep the Old Testament laws, but the laws are ultimately more expansive than their surface commands might seem to indicate (especially for those who seek in the law “what I can get away with” rather than what God truly requires).
Some examples should make this clear. In Matt 5:21 Jesus quotes the sixth commandment against murder. One might think that a simple refraining from the physical (unjust) taking of another’s life would be sufficient. But it isn’t. Jesus follows this up by saying that “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment” (Matt 5:22). Sinful anger, then, is a legitimate implication or application of the sixth commandment. God’s law requires more than surface conformity to the letter. It requires a changed heart and obedience that seeks in every way to honor the Lord and please him. Jesus is teaching that murder arises from sinful anger, and that the law forbidding the former also forbids the latter. God’s law, including the Ten Commandments, must be understood in an expansive sense. We must seek out the manifold implications of each of God’s laws, not being content with Pharisaical, outward conformity merely to what is explicitly forbidden in the law. We see the same thing with regard to the seventh commandment prohibiting adultery in Matt 5:27–30. The outward act of adultery is obviously sinful, but Jesus takes us to the true heart of that law, which addresses the sinful state of the heart that leads to adultery, that of lust. Lust, like sinful anger, is the source of any number of additional sins. True obedience to God’s law requires attending to all of these.
The Westminster Larger Catechism follows the classic Christian catechetical tradition of explaining the key points of Christian belief with a basic summary of the nature of God and salvation (addressing what is treated in the Nicene Creed in Questions 1–90), the Ten Commandments (Questions 91–148), and the Lord’s Prayer (Questions 178–196); Questions 149–177 on the word and sacraments could possibly have been placed with Questions 1–90, but are placed after the section on the Ten Commandments because they deal with how a sinner who has broken those commandments may find forgiveness.
In its lengthy section on the Ten Commandments, the Catechism follows Christ’s example in the Sermon on the Mount in seeking to explain God’s law in an expansive sense. It seeks to understand the broader and deeper implications of each of the commandments. It does so by first stating the commandment, and then providing a question and answer that shows what is positively required by that commandment, and then another question and answer revealing what is forbidden by the commandment. In this series on classical Protestant ethics, we will use the Catechism as a starting point for our discussion of the relevance of the Ten Commandments for contemporary Christian ethics, in addition to bringing in relevant contemporary ethical challenges. The goal in all of this will be to follow the example of Christ as we seek to understand precisely what he meant when he said that “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished” (Matt 5:18) and that “whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:19).
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