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The law of love

In heaven, doing what God wants will be second nature. Till then, reflection on God’s law is an indispensable part of discerning what it means in practice to love God and to love our neighbour.

By: David McIlroy, Cambridge Papers
Posted:
Friday, 25 July 2008, 21:39 (MYT)
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[1]William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, Passus I, line 161. Everyman 2nd edition, London: J. M. Dent, 1995, p.22.

[2]P. G. Nelson, in ‘Christian Morality: Jesus’ Teaching on the Law’, Themelios 31, 2006, pp.4–17, explores how Jesus insisted on a strict interpretation of God’s will regarding divorce and a radically different understanding of the Sabbath from the rigid pharisaical approach.

[3]Rom. 6:14; Gal. 3:25.

[4]A suggested approach to answering these last two questions is available at www.jubilee-centre.org

[5]Christ’s fulfilment of the moral, ceremonial and civil aspects of the Torah is not the subject of this paper. I have explored how he did so in McIlroy, A Biblical View of Law and Justice, Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004, pp.122–130.

[6]There is a longstanding debate about the status of the Torah for Christians: see Greg L. Bahnsen, Walter C. Kaiser, Douglas J. Moo, Wayne G. Strickland and Willem A. Van Gemeren, Five Views on Law and Gospel, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996. The argument of this paper is that a trinitarian perspective re-frames that debate.

[7]Gen. 3:8.

[8]Gen. 1:28; 2:17.

[9]This is true in both the Old and New Testaments, though the understanding of God’s law changes. The position taken in this paper is opposite to that of Anders Nygren who, in Agape and Eros, London: SPCK, 1953, argued that the Old Testament revealed a God of law and justice and the New Testament the God of love not law.

[10]On the complexities of the meaning of Torah, see Jonathan Burnside, God, Justice and Society, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2009.

[11]Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, IVP, 2004, pp.65–73.

[12]Deut. 6:6–9; Pss. 19, 119.

[13]J. Burnside, ‘Criminal Justice’, in M. Schluter and J. Ashcroft (eds.), Jubilee Manifesto, IVP, 2005, pp.234–54, at pp.245–36.

[14] Articles by Cambridge Papers authors with a clear Trinitarian theme include Michael Ovey, ‘The human identity crisis: can we do without the Trinity?’, Cambridge Papers, Vol. 4 No. 2, June 1995; Michael Schluter, ‘The relationships option’, Engage 1, Spring 2003; and ‘Three relational dimensions of justice: defining the moral order, upholding the moral order, and putting things right’, in Paul Beaumont and Keith Wotherspoon (eds.) Christian Perspectives on Law and Relationism, Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000, pp.1–18; as well as McIlroy, ‘The Trinity, Politics and the Law’, Whitefield Briefing 10(1), 2005, and ‘A Trinitarian Reading of Aquinas’s Treatise on Law’, Angelicum 84, 2007, pp.277–292.

[15]Ezek. 36:27.

[16] C. J. H. Wright, Knowing the Holy Spirit through the Old Testament, Oxford: Monarch, 2006, pp.129–31.

[17]John 13:34; 15:12, 17. Of course, Jesus gave other commands too, not least the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19, but the command to love one another is the one which appears repeatedly in John’s account of the Last Supper which I am exploring here.

[18]John Ermisch and Marco Francesconi, ‘Patterns of Household and Family Formation’, in Richard Berthoud and Jonathan Gershuny, (eds.), Seven Years in the Lives of British Families, Bristol: The Policy Press, 2000, pp.21–44.

[19]Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians, SPCK, 2004, p.67.

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