Case Laws in Leviticus

[C. Matthew McMahon]

What do you think are the importance of the case laws given in Leviticus? How do you think they apply to us today?

 

[Texas Aggie]

If it is good enough for the Jews, it's good enough for us. Are you going to tell me, that we have a better way of providing justice than what God has prescribed for His people?

 

[crhoades]

WCF 19.4. To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

Okay - define "general equity".

 

[crhoades]

Originally posted by webmaster
Okay - define "general equity".

Paul defined general equity of ox muzzling with not paying pastors. He looked at the principle taught and then applied it to similar situations.

My question is if someone *today* had a flat roof on their house and slept up there as well as entertained would the exact case law still apply? I would hasten to say yes.

But in this case the general equity principle would apply to fences around pools, hand rails for stairs, sprinkler systems in buildings etc.

 

[alwaysreforming]

I interpret "general equity" in this case to mean what is fair, just, and right in these laws; the "principles" of justice behind the prescribed behavior.

For example, if you were to pull someone's donkey out of a well if the owner wasn't around, today we must do what we can to minimize our neighbor's loss, even though we might think we have no obligation to the whole thing. To not do so is sin.

<whoops, sorry, Chris. Your post went in right before mine. If I would have seen it, I would have left well enough alone.>

[Edited on 8-3-2005 by alwaysreforming]

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Sherman Isbell has a paper on the meaning of general equity at the link below.
http://members.aol.com/RSICHURCH/expire1.html

 

[satz]

I would agree with everyone else that they give us good general principles for which to live our lives and especially how to rule for those in power.

I am open to correction, but i feel that it is dangerous to apply the 'case law' to each and every modern day situation we may see a parrallel to. The laws, i think, were given in the context of an entire system of civil and religious government assigned to israel.

Thus given that modern societies no longer follow the whole law, to apply select parts of it directly and without regard for the circumstances may not always be the wisest thing to do.

 

[JohnV]

I would think that general equity has to do with the equitibility of the law as applied to a particular case. What may in one case be just may not be just in another case. In other words, it takes into account the exceptions in the case law. A law is meant to cover as wide a range as possible for the particular instance for which the law is instituted.

That is, a law is a generalization of justiice upon a certain set of givens. But there would be cases where that generalization is inadequate, or that the generalization of one law encroaches upon the realm of another. In such cases there must be an appeal to general equity, the unified basis upon which laws, all laws, are founded, so that it is not the letter of the law but the intent of the law that governs the case.

 

[Me Died Blue]

Originally posted by crhoades

Originally posted by webmaster
Okay - define "general equity".

Paul defined general equity of ox muzzling with not paying pastors. He looked at the principle taught and then applied it to similar situations.

 

[toddpedlar]

Originally posted by webmaster
Okay - define "general equity".

a couple ferinstances to get the discussion rolling

a brief case: prisons. We have a ridiculous prison system, that has no warrant in the Scriptures. The stated purpose of prisons is in part to keep criminals off the streets - but also to rehabilitate them, make them productive citizens. The Bible teaches different means of dealing with crimes, but our judicial system pays little attention (any more).

a briefer second case: retribution. We have a judicial system that has no sense of proper retribution in cases of theft, property damage, etc. The Bible teaches that repayment of loss + penalty to the person who suffered the loss is just. We just (no pun) don't do that.

"General equity" essentially takes the Law to provide us with instruction about what kinds of penalties are appropriate for various crimes - we are to apply them with a general view to the justice taught in the Law. My house doesn't have a railing on the roof, but it would be appropriate to require people with pools to have fences around them for reasons that respect the same principles as the law for railings on houses.

Todd

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

I'm down with the general equity answer as a prima facie answer to your question.

Paul, How would you define "general equity?" This seems to be the "leading point" in which theonomy rests on the WCF, so I find it intriguing.

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

What does that "mean?"

 

[crhoades]

Ex. 22:18
(ESV) You shall not permit a sorceress to live.
(KJV) Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live

WCF 19.4
IV. To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

Exod. 21:1-23:19; Gen. 49:10 with I Peter 2:13-14; I Cor. 9:8-10

Not a levitical case law but it is in the proof texts of the portion of the WCF in question.

What would be the general equity of this verse? What requirements are we obliged to? I think the verse could be summed up to kill witches. Underlying principles? Punish witches? Witchcraft is bad?

Before we could seek to apply the general equity of this verse we first have to agree on what it is...Thoughts?

 

[Texas Aggie]

The verse could be summed up to kill witches... this is His law. There was once a time in this country when our forefathers pursued such a matter; however, this is now embellished as a shameful, barbaric act of our history. Arthur Miller's book is now common teaching (required reading) in almost every high school.

This nation has digressed from the law and we will see the result (if not already). A rise in witchcraft is only the beginning. When you throw out the law, the unholy will rule over the masses and iniquity can only increase in both frequency and severity. The judgment of God befalls upon all those who ignore the law (the people, the country and all Christians included).

Are we to kill witches? The commandment declares yes. The U.S. government does not agree with such a law and you will be tried and found guilty upon committing such an act.

As for your responsibility (as a law abiding Christian citizen), God has not placed you in a position of authority to judge such a matter (there may come a day however). You do have the ability to discern matters pertaining to witchcraft and you are commanded to flee from such as well as shield your family from the influence.

Kill witches in this country?.... not now anyway. After all, we all just love little Harry Potter. What a wonderful gift for our children.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Theodore Beza, De Haereticis a Civili Magistratu Puniendis Libellus (Geneva, Switzerland: Robert Stephanus, 1554), pages 222-223:

Although we do not hold to the forms of the Mosaic polity, yet when such judicial laws prescribe equity in judgments, which is part of the decalogue, we, not being under obligation to them insofar as they were prescribed by Moses to only one people, are nevertheless bound to observe them to the extent that they embrace that general equity which should everywhere be in force.... The Lord commands that a deposit be returned, and that thieves be punished.... Because it follows natural equity, and expounds that perpetual precept of the decalogue, Thou shalt not steal, to this extent all are bound to fulfill them both. The thief is sentenced to make restitution for the theft, sometimes twice as much, sometimes four times as much.... This penalty is purely political, and it binds the one nation of the Israelites, to whom alone it was adapted. Therefore it is permitted for the magistrate, in his exercise of sovereignty and for definite and good causes, to prescribe a more severe manner of punishment.... And to be sure, if anyone compares several of the laws of the Greeks, and many of the laws of the Romans, with the Mosaic, he will find a similarity among them in establishing penalties, so that it is sufficiently plain that all were adapted to the same goal of natural equity.

Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, (London : Andrew Crook, 1649), pages 298-299:

Judicial laws may be judicial and Mosaical, and so not obligatory to us, according to the degree and quality of punishment.... No man but sees the punishment of theft is of common moral equity, and obligeth all nations, but the manner or degree of punishment is more positive: as to punish theft by restoring four oxen for the stealing of one ox, doth not so oblige all nations, but some other bodily punishment, as whipping, may be used against thieves.

Samuel Rutherford, Divine Right of Church Government, (1646), pages 493-494:

But sure Erastus erreth, who will have all such to be killed by the magistrate under the New Testament, because they were killed by him in the Old: Why, but then the whole judicial law of God shall oblige us Christians as Carolostadius and others teach? I humbly conceive that the putting of some to death in the Old Testament, as it was a punishment to them, so was it a mysterious teaching of us, how God hated such and such sins, and mysteries of that kind are gone with other shadows. "œBut we read not" (saith Erastus) "œwhere Christ hath changed those laws in the New Testament." It is true, Christ hath not said in particular, I abolish the debarring of the leper seven days, and he that is thus and thus unclean shall be separated till the evening; nor hath he said particularly of every carnal ordinance and judicial law, it is abolished. "˜But we conceive, the whole bulk of the judicial law, as judicial, and as it concerned the Republic of the Jews only, is abolished, though the moral equity of all those be not abolished; also some punishments were merely symbolical, to teach the detestation of such a vice, as the boring with an aul the ear of him that loved his master, and desired still to serve him, and the making of him his perpetual servant. I should think the punishing with death the man that gathered sticks on the Sabbath was such; and in all these, the punishing of a sin against the Moral Law by the magistrate, is moral and perpetual; but the punishing of every sin against the Moral Law, tali modo, so and so, with death, with spitting on the face: I much doubt if these punishments in particular, and in their positive determination to the people of the Jews, be moral and perpetual: As he that would marry a captive woman of another religion, is to cause her first to pare her nails, and wash herself, and give her a month, or less time to mourn the death of her parents, which was a judicial, not a ceremonial law; that this should be perpetual because Christ in particular hath not abolished it, to me seems most unjust; for as Paul saith, He that is circumcised becomes debtor to the whole law, sure to all the ceremonies of Moses his law: So I argue, a peri, from the like: He that will keep one judicial law, because judicial and given by Moses, becometh debtor to keep the whole judicial law under pain of God´s eternal wrath.

William Perkins, A Discourse of Conscience, 1596, I:514:

Therefore the judicial laws of Moses according to the substance and scope thereof must be distinguished.... Some of them are laws of particular equity, some of common equity. Laws of particular equity, are such as prescribe justice according to the particular estate and condition of the Jews' Commonwealth and to the circumstances thereof.... Of this kind was the law, that the brother should raise up seed to his brother, and many such like: and none of them bind us, because they were framed and tempered to a particular people. Judicials of common equity, are such as are made according to the law or instinct of nature common to all men: and these in respect of their substance, bind the consciences not only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles: for they were not given to the Jews as they were Jews, that is, a people received into the Covenant above all other nations, brought from Egypt to the land of Canaan,... but they were given to them as they were mortal men subject to the order and laws of nature as all other nations are.

John Calvin, Institutes, Book IV, Chap. 20, sec. 15-16:

The judicial law, given [the Jews] as a kind of polity, delivered certain forms of equity and justice, by which they might live together innocently and quietly. And as that exercise in ceremonies properly pertained to the doctrine of piety, inasmuch as it kept the Jewish Church in the worship and religion of God, yet was still distinguishable from piety itself, so the judicial form, though it looked only to the best method of preserving that charity which is enjoined by the eternal law of God, was still something distinct from the precept of love itself. Therefore, as ceremonies might be abrogated without at all interfering with piety, so, also, when these judicial arrangements are removed, the duties and precepts of charity can still remain perpetual. But if it is true that each nation has been left at liberty to enact the laws which it judges to be beneficial, still these are always to be tested by the rule of charity, so that while they vary in form, they must proceed on the same principle....

What I have said will become plain if we attend, as we ought, to two things connected with all laws "” viz. the enactment of the law, and the equity on which the enactment is founded and rests. Equity, as it is natural, cannot be the same in all, and therefore ought to be proposed by all laws, according to the nature of the thing enacted. As constitutions have some circumstances on which they partly depend, there is nothing to prevent their diversity, provided they all alike aim at equity as their end. Now, as it is evident that the law of God which we call moral, is nothing else than the testimony of natural law, and of that conscience which God has engraven on the minds of men, the whole of this equity of which we not speak is prescribed in it. Hence it alone ought to be the aim, the rule, and the end of all laws. Wherever laws are formed after this rule, directed to this aim, and restricted to this end, there is no reason why they should be disapproved by us, however much they may differ from the Jewish law, or from each other (August. de Civit. Dei, Lib. xix.c.17).

The law of God forbids to steal. The punishment appointed for theft in the civil polity of the Jews may be seen in Exodus 22. Very ancient laws of other nations punished theft by exacting the double of what was stolen, while subsequent laws made a distinction between theft manifest and not manifest. Other laws went the length of punishing with exile, or with branding, while others made the punishment capital. Among the Jews, the punishment of the false witness was to "do unto him as he had thought to have done with his brothers" (Deut. 19: 19.) In some countries, the punishment is infamy, in others, hanging; in others, crucifixion. All laws alike avenge murder with blood, but the kinds of death are different. In some countries, adultery was punished more severely, in others more leniently. Yet we see that amid this diversity they all tend to the same end. For they all with one mouth declare against those crimes which are condemned by the eternal law at God, viz., murder, theft, adultery, and false witness; though they agree not as to the mode of punishment. This is not necessary, nor even expedient. There may be a country which, if murder were not visited with fearful punishments, would instantly become a prey to robbery and slaughter. There may be an age requiring that the severity of punishments should be increased. If the state is in a troubled condition, those things from which disturbances usually arise must be corrected by new edicts. In time of war, civilisation would disappear amid the noise of arms, were not men overawed by an unwonted severity of punishment. In sterility, in pestilence, were not stricter discipline employed, all things would grow worse. One nation might be more prone to a particular vice, were it not most severely repressed. How malignant were it, and invidious of the public good, to be offended at this diversity, which is admirably adapted to retain the observance of the divine law.

The allegation, that insult is offered to the law of God enacted by Moses, where it is abrogated and other new laws are preferred to it, is most absurd. Others are not preferred when they are more approved, not absolutely, but from regard to time and place, and the condition of the people, or when those things are abrogated which were never enacted for us. The Lord did not deliver it by the hand of Moses to be promulgated in all countries, and to be everywhere enforced; but having taken the Jewish nation under his special care, patronage, and guardianship, he was pleased to be specially its legislator, and as became a wise legislator, he had special regard to it in enacting laws.

 

[Puritanhead]

Christ preached equity in judgment:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. (Matt. 23:23)

 

[WrittenFromUtopia]

The case laws are binding 100% today, no exceptions. The application and administration is flexible. Paul applied case laws to the New Covenant people twice, perhaps more, in the NT (don't muzzle an ox- pay pastors; don't be unequally yoked- don't marry unbelievers). Jesus applied them as well.

The substance of the ceremonial laws are binding as well, but not in administration.

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

Originally posted by Paul manata

Originally posted by webmaster
What does that "mean?"

what didn't you understand?

When a theonomist says that the WCF in general equity means XYZ, how does the theonomist interpret "general equity?"

Does that mean that justice is applied in circumstances covered by law yet influenced by principles of ethics and fairness?

If it does mean this, who establishes "fairness"?

 

[Puritanhead]

My favorite case is the landmark Jewish Supreme Court Case Moses v. Aaron and Miriam, et al..

Yahweh inspired the amicus curiae brief for Moses.