Saturday, August 2, 2014

Where’s the Target?

Subj: Where's the Target?
 
Where’s the Target?
Posted on August 2, 2014, updated on July 26, 2014 by Skip Moen
 
Now flee youthful lusts, and pursue after righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord with a pure heart. 2 Timothy 2:22 NASB
Righteousness – How can you pursue something, if you don’t know where it is? That’s pretty much the situation in spiritual discipline, today. We want to follow Paul’s exhortation. We want to pursue righteousness. But, when we look for the goal, we have no idea where it is, so we just keep kicking the ball down the road.
What in the world did Paul mean by the term dikaiosyne? Did he mean, “Love people and do good”? That’s just vague enough so it loses any real meaning. That view turns out to be a product of the culture, and I am quite sure Paul was not advocating a cultural ethics. So, maybe Paul meant, “Love Jesus and do what He did.” Same problem. First, there is no “Jesus.” “Jesus” is an invention of the Church. He is the universal Christ, a non-human, since he has no ethnicity. Paul would not recognize him. But he would recognize Yeshua, the Torah-observant Jewish Messiah who came to establish the Kingdom of YHVH on earth. That Kingdom has a definition of righteousness, one that Paul himself embraced. The prophets tell us that when the Kingdom is finally established, righteousness will pour forth from Zion, but instead of using the word dikaiosyne, they used the word torahRighteousness is Torah, God’s instructions for human life on this planet.
Don’t think for a moment that Christian theologians don’t recognize this connection. Quell couldn’t make it clearer:
The Concept of Law in the OT. This concept influenced all social relationships so strongly that it affected theological reflection on the fellowship between God and man. Law is the basis of the OT view of God, and the religious use of legal concepts helps in turn to ethicize the law. Many terms are used to express the relations between God and man, and the conduct governed by these relations. 1. The richness of the Hebrew usage is well expressed by the díkē group, especially dikaiosýnē and díkaios. (For the relevant Hebrew terms, the statistical distribution, and the equivalents,[1]
There is absolutely no doubt that righteousness is Torah. “All law comes from God, and hence God’s authority extends to all Israel’s historical relationships. God’s law is an order of life that cannot be changed or challenged. It is righteous because he is righteous.” [2]
Did you catch that? Here is a German Christian theologian, writing in the most definitive Greek lexicon of the Christian world, telling us that righteousness is Torah. That should make you ask the most obvious question, “If this is true, why does Christianity claim that Torah is no longer relevant?” Why does the Church teach that achieving righteousness “is impossible” (Quell in the same lexicon entry) and for Paul is “legalistic Judaism”? Is that what Moses said? Torah is impossible to keep? How did dikaiosyne suddenly become something so alien? Pursue righteousness? How? How can I pursue something that is impossible and legalistic? Paul must have been delusional when he suggested this. Wasn’t he writing Christian theology? Didn’t he know that keeping Torah doesn’t matter anymore?
Apparently, he didn’t.
Topical Index: righteousness, dikaiosyne, Torah, 2 Timothy 2:22

[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (168). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
[2] Ibid.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The part about "the Christ" being "universal," "non-human," and without ethnicity is, IMHO, completely wrong. Still, I'll comment as follows: YES, TORAH is righteousness, but that righteousness is ultimately personified in Yahushua, Messiah (the author is correct in that no one ever called Messiah "Jesus" while He was here on earth). What did Messiah Himself say concerning his relationship to Torah ("righteousness," ie, the Law)? "Do not think that I came to destroy the Torah or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to complete." (Matthew 5:17, The Scriptures 1998+). Our righteousness is indeed found in Messiah through faith.