Pillars of Heaven: The Ethical Dilemma of Religion without Torah

In a recent conversation I challenged someone to provide either a theological or historical foundation for the claim that Christians need to be “good” people.  The topic arose because my friend remarked that her church taught that being saved and going to heaven was the true goal of Man’s spiritual quest.  Once salvation was assured, life’s objective was accomplished.  Subsequent behavior didn’t change the outcome.  After all, according to this line of thought, this world is passing away because it is full of sin and decay.  It will be replaced with a new world modeled after the heavenly kingdom where there will be no sin.  Entry into the new world doesn’t depend on anything that a person “earns” here.  It is simply a matter of God’s grace.  Therefore, once assured of citizenship in the new world to come, life here is merely a “waiting room” experience and what happens in the waiting room has no effect on the final outcome.

I challenged this line of reasoning, pointing out that if it is true then there is no real justification for ethical behavior other than social expediency.  My challenge was both theological and historical.  In my view, once the Christian religion abandoned the perspective of Torah and the requirement of Torah observance, it undercut its own theological and ethical foundation.  In other words, Christianity’s implicit anti-Semitism forced it to find a different foundation for ethical claims, a foundation that was not based on the “Jewish” faith and therefore not part of the revelation of God to Moses.  Both theologically and historically, the Church took deliberate steps to separate itself from the Jewish revelation.  But the consequence left the Church without the Law, the Writings and the Prophets.  That meant that the Church had to base its ethical teaching on the writings of the apostles and Paul.  This could have been satisfactory if it were not for the additional claim that Paul taught that grace replaced Torah obedience.  Under the doctrine of grace, ethical requirements become the outworking of the Spirit following conversion, but since this is an entirely inward and personal matter, the lack of outward ethical behavior is no longer an indicator of the absence of a heavenly guarantee.  In other words, if I believe that I am “saved” on the basis of a one-time declaration of the forgiveness of my sins through the acknowledgment of Jesus as God’s Son, then my subsequent behavior, whether good or bad by societal standards, is irrelevant.  God and I have an agreement.  What I do after that agreement is in place doesn’t really affect the final destination.

Let’s examine the theology of this idea.  This situation occurs because the Church does not accept the idea that God actually requires specific behaviors in this world.  If I accept Torah as God’s revelation for living here, then I become obligated to live up to this divine standard.  This standard provides a foundation for subsequent ethical behavior, a foundation not based in societal mores but based on the will of God as Creator of the universe.  The Church rejects this idea because it points to the gift of salvation (Luther’s idea of imputed righteousness).  It claims that salvation is never a matter of earning God’s favor and therefore any theological requirement for particular behaviors must be dismissed.  But this confuses the difference between demonstrating worthiness and enjoying God’s gracious invitation.  Let me explain.

There is no doubt whatsoever that favor with God is not a function of human effort.  This is just as true in the Tanakh as it is in the apostolic writings.  Paul and the prophets, including Moses, are uniform in this view.  God acts with favor toward men because He loves us, not because we earn His kindness.  In Hebrew, this is the concept found in the word ḥēn.  Yeshua, Paul, Moses and Elijah all agree.

But an announcement of favor and an invitation to participate in the Kingdom is not the same as the consequent obligations that are voluntarily embraced when a person accepts God’s favor.  In other words, the offer of salvation is free but the responsibility of demonstrating worthiness subsequent to accepting the offer is not free.  ḥēn entails ḥesed.  And ḥesed  demands ethical behavior aligned with Torah.  ḥesed is a way of life.  It is not optional.  It is the expression of gratitude and thanksgiving for God’s unmerited favor and its absence is proof that the invitation was either not accepted or the person’s subsequent acts show he was not worthy.  That Yeshua taught this same theology can be seen in the parable of the great debtor.  Membership has its obligations.

When the Christian religion attempted to justify its existence apart from Judaism, when it no longer espoused the way of life revealed in Torah, it was forced to find a justification for its ethical position based only on New Testament teachings.  But this became impossible.  As Gaston observes, if the New Testament is Jewish through and through, there is no biblical justification for the Christian religion.

Now let’s look at the historical record.  The Church saw the Jewish way of life as an attempt to earn righteousness.  It viewed Torah as “salvation by works.”  Misunderstanding the connection between ḥēn and ḥesed, the Church threw the baby out with the bathwater.  By rejecting everything associated with the Jewish way of life as “works righteousness,” the Church was left with only the writings of the New Testament as its foundation for ethical justification.  But the New Testament gospels are entirely Jewish.  Jesus was a Jew and he lived according to Jewish standards, so none of his “Jewishness” could be incorporated into Christian doctrine since Christianity rejected the Jewish way of life.  The Church argued that after the crucifixion Jesus established a “new” covenant of grace, but any accurate examination of the life of Jesus clearly shows that he not only practiced the Jewish way of life but actually endorsed it.  Whatever occurred after the resurrection was insufficient to build an ethical foundation.

That left Paul.  Christianity, following Augustine, viewed Paul as a convert and an ideal model for God’s intention for all Jews.  Christianity taught that Paul overturned the need for Torah observance by introducing the radical concept of grace (as interpreted by Luther).  Grace was free of any and all conditions.  It had to be because the Church adopted Augustine’s (and subsequently Luther’s) idea of total depravity expressed in the doctrine of sinful nature.  Since Man was incapable of any righteous act in his unrepentant state, no human effort carried any heavenly consequence.  It had to be all God’s work.  Augustine was also a Platonist.  His Platonic dualism created a split in the universe.  The spiritual realm existed in heaven, a place where there was no corruption, no decay and no moral impurity.  Only the Good, the True and the Beautiful were found in Heaven.  But earth was a different matter.  The very existence of physical matter on earth entailed decay, corruption and sin.  The physical world was not only essentially flawed, it was also the prison of the true essence of Man, the soul.  The objective of life on earth was to escape with decaying world by transitioning to the perfect spiritual realm.  Since the body was physical, it was also flawed.  It would be left behind when the soul immigrated to heaven.

Augustine’s view of sinful nature coupled with his Platonic dualism set the stage for the Church’s declaration that heaven was the real goal of human beings and that no human effort on earth had any effect on the soul’s migration to heaven.  When the Church claimed Paul as the biblical proponent of these Platonic ideas, it found a Scriptural justification for bifurcated reality.

But now the Church was left with a terrible consequence.  Christianity threw out Torah on the grounds that it was Jewish (and therefore superseded) and it was anchored in human effort in this world.  This left the Church with the logical consequence that if only the spiritual realm mattered, life on earth really had no eternal consequences.  This meant that life on earth was whatever men made it to be.  Life here was merely a test and all that was really required was to get through it.  This logically entailed that the Church became a proponent of lawlessness.  With regard to Judaism and pagans, the historical record actually confirms the Church’s disregard for any sort of ethical behavior.  But, of course, this leads directly to chaos.  Therefore, Christianity was forced to proclaim the necessity of proper ethical behavior without a biblical foundation.  You might recognize this in Kant’s effort to establish religion on the basis of reason alone.  Eventually, this problem was resolved in the “love” ethics, but under the surface the idea that ethics can be based on loving others is nothing more than a reflection of the current society.  The reason such a claim works is because the society requires some form of respect for other human beings in order to operate, but history clearly shows that this loose view of ethical behavior is subject to societal pressures and altered accordingly.  Consider the Church’s role in the Inquisition or the Holocaust.  “Loving others” became the justification for torture and genocide.

Today the Church teaches its parishioners that they should live upright and moral lives.  But if we press hard, we soon discover that “upright and moral” is a function of social mores and is altered according to society’s needs.  For example, what is the proper ethical stance regarding homosexuality or same-sex marriages?  The Church has no uniform voice in the matter.  In fact, some churches actively endorse these behaviors.  Abortion is another example of the same disparity.  Christianity has no uniform ethics because it no longer has a revealed code of conduct.  In fact, even if the Church claims endorsement of the “fundamentals” in the Ten Commandments, it reveals immediately its own arbitrary posture.  After all, it systematically ignores the fourth commandment.  If this is the Church’s posture, why are the others “eternal” requirements?  Logically, if one is no longer needed, the others fall into the same category.  Because the Church reflects the cultural ethical bias, it endorses some of the biblical commandments but not all of them.  The Church is ethically pragmatic just as society is ethically pragmatic.  It endorses what works, but its own theology screams that none of this really matters in the long run.

What may we conclude?  Both historically and biblically, once Torah was abandoned by Christian theology, the code of conduct for life on earth was reconstructed according to the culture of the time.  Coupled with Platonic dualism, Christianity taught that life on earth was merely the precursor to the perfect world of heaven and consequently ethical behavior here was arbitrary and pragmatic.  Here’s the challenge.  Ask an ordinary Christian believer why he should keep the Ten Commandments.  Point out the keeping the Sabbath is one of the eternal requirements.  Then ask him if keeping the commandments is a requirement for favor with God.  If he responds that God’s grace is the only necessary and sufficient condition for the favor of heaven, ask why he claims the commandments are needed.  If he suggests that the world wouldn’t work well without them, point out that this justification is entirely pragmatic and arbitrary and therefore subject to the cultural views of the age.  Ask for some biblical justification, some God-given reason why I should live now according to His will.  If he provides any justification at all, ask him why these behaviors are necessary if he is under “grace.”  See what happens.