bconway52
Puritan Board Freshman
Do you think this is a valid distinction he is making here? I can't seem to find support for this view either in the context, sentence structure or in any other author commenting on WCF 19.4. In the context of 19.4 the paragraphs speak of the entire moral law, entire ceremonial law...WHY would the divines then speak of only part of the judicial law to the exclusion of the "non-sundry" judicial laws?? It just doesn't make sense.
Quoted from "ARE THE MOSAIC LAWS FOR TODAY?"
Source: http://www.dr-fnlee.org/docs4/atmlft/atmlft.pdf
Quoted from "ARE THE MOSAIC LAWS FOR TODAY?"
Source: http://www.dr-fnlee.org/docs4/atmlft/atmlft.pdf
"Now the Westminster Confession does seem to distinguish very clearly – and very rightly – between the ceremonial and the judicial laws. For after describing the abiding “moral duties” held forth in the ceremonials, it further states that “all of the ceremonial laws are now abrogated [or recalled or repealed or rescinded] under the New Testament” – and that it was precisely at the cross that they were so abrogated.
But the Confession then also goes on to declare that only “sundry [or several] judicial laws...expired together with the State [or Politeia]”of the people of Israel – many decades after the cross, when the Romans destroyed the Israelitic body politic in A.D. 70. Moreover, the Confession implicitly teaches that even those “sundry judicial laws” still oblige all people to obey them – as far as “the general equity thereof may require.”
Hence, all the ceremonial laws have been abrogated at the cross. But sundry judicial laws were not abrogated at the cross at all; only expiring together with the State or Politeia of ancient Israel some four decades later.
Again, the ceremonial laws as such do not obtain at all under the New Testament economy. Yet the sundry judicial laws of ancient Israel still obtain among all nations – and oblige all people to obey them, as far as “the general equity thereof may require.”
Not surprisingly, the Confession then goes on to declare that “the Spirit of Christ” subdues and enables the will of man to do that “freely and cheerfully which the will of God revealed in the Law requireth to be done.” So God’s revealed will requires that all men keep the Moral Law; and the general equity in even the expired sundry judicial laws requires that all men be obliged to keep them to the full extent of that general equity. Moreover, as we shall demonstrate a few paragraphs later, the non-sundry judicial laws are Pre-Mosaic and indeed still binding."