I was by no means trying to be crappy. Merely restating your own arguments to show the inconsistency in which you're applying scripture to Christian practices.

I don't think it is inconsistent at all. You're asking different questions, getting different answers, and then saying that because the answers are different it is inconsistent.

"How does God want to be worshipped?" is a question with several answers. They include offering of incense, offering of sacrifices of various kinds, as well as praise and service. It is explicit in the scriptures that God commanded these things. It is explicit in the scriptures that incense burning and offerings will be done by the Gentiles as well as commanded to be done by the Israelites.

You asked about observing the Sabbath. This is a question that is a subset of "How does the Torah relate to gentiles?" It is explicit in the Torah that there are different commandments for the sons of Israel and those aliens and foreigners dwelling in the land. It is also explicit in the NT that those distinctions - on a very strict, literal reading - apply forward to Christians. It is also explicit in the NT that the gentiles can be a "Torah unto themselves" when they do what the Torah requires.

So if you ask - why do we burn incense in the Orthodox church services and at home, it is because
1) it is God pleasing to do so, it is one of the ways Israel was commanded to worship Him
2) the scriptures foretell gentiles doing it, along with offering sacrifices
3) it has been our practice to do so, and we are commanded in the scriptures to hold fast to the traditions and teachings that we were taught by the Apostles.

If you ask - why don't we keep the weekly sabbath the way Israel did, it is because
1) as gentiles we have a different relationship to the Torah than Israel did
2) the scriptures outline how gentiles relate to the Torah by a literal reading of the Torah, neither adding or taking away
3) we keep the weekly sabbath, as we keep ALL of the sabbaths and feasts, in a spiritual way - fulfilled in the knowledge of Christ
4) it has been our practice to do so, and we are commanded in the scriptures to hold fast to the traditions and teachings that we were taught by the Apostles

In both cases I am affirming a literal, and strict, and explicit application of the Holy Scriptures.

So I ask you - why do you want to keep the weekly sabbath as Israel was commanded to, but not burn incense?

Zobel summed it up before I could find time to reply. But again, look back at my first response. Priestly obligations of worship remained only changed in the sense of reflecting the messiah coming. Christ didn't create an change about incense. And it's still a form of worship that we are to do.

Any orthodox should have a prayer corner in your home. Americans can dedicate every nook and cranny to pottery barn, but struggle to cordon off a section dedicated to God. In your prayer corner, you have a small altar. On the altar are things associated with God. Icons, candles, incense, prayer books and lists. We have an ultrasound of our miscarried children on ours as well. You replicate what the priests do in church at home because you as the married man are the priest of your home. So we (try) to offer incense and prayers morning and night. I will admit to having a less than perfect record here. Every night is prayers, most nights are incense. Mornings are more chaotic.

But again, this is about the fullness of the faith. The action of worship. Again, Protestant brain is all about cut cut cut, reject reject reject. You gotta start thinking in terms of maximalism.

No you're still being inconsistent. Incense burning not Torah. Ten Commandments Torah. That's your initial breakdown and your conclusions are being derived from those distinctions.

Well I'm asking why keeping the sabbath has been seemingly cut by not just Protestants but all modern forms of Christianity. When it wasn't in the early church. So quite the opposite of cut cut cut

No, my position is they're both in the Torah, and we should do what the Scriptures say.

You've presented no scripture, and no argument, so this amounts to "nuh uh". Not much to discuss at that point.

Then you agree we should Keep the Sabbath

No, not in a physical way because I am not a son of Israel. Read the scripture:

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Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

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Based on the scripture, was this commandment given to gentiles?

Nevertheless, Christians keep the whole Torah, in a spiritual way. And we keep the cycle of feasts and fasts, AND the weekly cycle, with the sabbath on the seventh day and the Lord's day on the first.

Again, why stop there?

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"For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.:

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"Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed."

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"Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Three times in the year shall all your males appear before the Lord God."

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And how about this one?

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This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."

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"If a woman conceives and bears a male child...on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised."

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Why the sabbath and not circumcision?

So by that reasoning the 10 commandments are only applicable in the physical sense to sons of Israel because it was only given to the Sons of Israel…

Which technically isn't true because gentiles like Caleb were there with them.

1 Corinthians 7:1720 (ESV): This is my rule in all the churches. 18 Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. 19 For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. 20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.

Caleb became an Israelite when he ate the Passover. He joined into the tribe of Judah (Josh 15:14)

Ok so you think St Paul arbitrarily canceled a commandment of God? The Lord teaches that is wrong - "So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

Is He talking about St Paul?

How can St Paul - speaking to a bunch of uncircumcised gentiles - in same letter you just quoted - say that OUR fathers were under the cloud and passed through the sea? They have Israelite fathers but he teaches them not to be circumcised?

So you say I'm inconsistent, then accuse St Paul of sin to justify your own inconsistencies toward the text??

St Paul denies that he ever teaches against Torah. Is he lying?

Why does St Paul have St Timothy circumcised?

So one could say he was grafted in?

I haven't accused Paul of anything. I merely quoted scripture to answer your question.

No, he was not. If he were grafted in, he would remain what he was - a Kenizzite. when you graft something onto a plant it doesn't become that plant or strain, it stays what it is.

He became an Israelite of the tribe of Judah. He was no longer a Kenizzite.

But in doing so, you are suggesting that St Paul was teaching people to break commandments. He has no authority to do that. He never taught Jews to not be circumcised. He was accused of doing that by the Jews and denied it. He had St Timothy circumcised.

So either St Paul is inconsistent, or he is a liar, or there is something else going on.

"For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well."

ramblin_ag02 said:

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I know this is just a discussion forum, so people are going to disagree. That's almost the point. However, I don't see that anyone here is wrong. If Yukon wants to celebrate the Sabbath, then great. If no one else wants to, that's great too. Isn't that the whole point of Romans 14?

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Amen.

Maybe. What if someone wants to be circumcised?

Zobel said:

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Maybe. What if someone wants to be circumcised?

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Then get circumcised? 80% of US men are circumised but only 1.5% are Jewish. So clearly circumcision no longer has an identity relationship with Judaism. They are also many people that have to get circumised for medical reasons, and plenty of adult men choose to be circumcised for aesthetic or medical issues.

I'm pretty sure that Paul was referring to circumicision as a placeholder for conversion to Judaism, since the only people circumcised at that time were Jewish people. Circumcision is also an integral part of conversion to Judaism. So my interpretation of that would be, "If you convert to Judaism, then you have to follow the entire Torah." Which makes sense, because conversion to Judaism involves a vow to follow the Torah in addition to getting circumcised. The interpretation that circumcision obligates one to the entire Torah doesn't make any sense to me. I've seen plenty of older men with phimosis require medical circumcisions, and I don't think a single one is obligated to the Torah.

As an aside, I think someone wanted to get circumcised for their faith is a lot better than going the Origen route any day. Now that I think about it, I would put more stock in the early Church's universal condemnation of self mutilation as a method of worship. You could make an easy argument that circumcision is prohibited due to it being an unnecessary self mutilation, such as a castration or an ampution. Those sorts of things were big issues in the early Church; those guys were hardcore

I agree that St Paul is using "circumcision" as shorthand if "become Jewish". But what if a person - well meaning - says it says right here Abraham's descendants are to be circumcised and that's before the Torah, so I should be circumcised? And that's it, not become Jewish. Just trying to follow what they view as the Law. I think we would rightly tell them that is not necessary or even necessarily God pleasing.

What I'm getting at is "becoming Jewish" is 100% synonymous and exactly the same as "following the Torah". That is what made you Jewish.

And St Paul says that can be a harmful understanding.

So why is it good to be a "little bit Jewish" and follow one part of the Torah but not the rest? Why not dietary laws? Why not laws about clothing?

I guess I just don't get the idea. Every decent person follows at least some of the Torah, knowingly or unknowingly. Vegetarians and vegans are following dietary Torah. Hippies follow clothing Torah. Everyone that donates money to charity for the needy is following Torah. Seventh Day Adventists follow Torah when they keep the Sabbath. Not to mention all the examples above in the thread about honoring your parents and loving your neighbor. Are those people all acting like Jews? Yes and no. Is there some threshold where following Torah becomes "too Jewish"? I don't think so unless someone is intentionally converting to Judaism.

I agree. Like St Paul says, when the nations (non Jews by definition) follow the Torah they are a Torah unto themselves. Yet we are explicitly told not to follow the Torah ie not to become Jewish… when following the Torah is precisely what makes you Jewish in the first place.

So to me, we should live righteously - love God, love man. The Torah is a specific instance of that with a purpose, given to hedge and safeguard a group of people as a bastion of godliness and righteousness in a sea of godless pagans because of their own sinfulness.

Why was the sabbath given? For man. So those people would not work themselves and each other to death. So they'd remember God and not rely on their own strength. So they'd live for the kingdom and not their own bellies and power. It was a weekly reminder. Do Christians need this? Not if they're living righteously - they should be doing all of those things every day. And if you do, you will not sin OR sin against the Torah. That's what the prophecies about a new covenant written on our hearts are about, why we won't be taught the Torah but instead know it.

That doesn't mean the cycles of the calendar or week are bad - no, they're good. Or the Torah. It just means that what was spiritual medicine given to one people to save the world isn't and wasn't ever applied to all. And it isn't and wasn't ever given to them for their eternal salvation.

So why follow sabbath laws given to Israel but not their dietary or clothing restrictions? Because the latter is for Jews right? Well…??

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So why follow sabbath laws given to Israel but not their dietary or clothing restrictions? Because the latter is for Jews right? Well…??

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Your words not mine. There's a long history of pious Christian vegetarians. Those people are following dietary laws even stricter than the Torah. So therefore they should be required to follow Torah instructions regarding clothing? I still don't follow.

I like your analogy of the Torah as spiritual medicine, but I would expand that to an entire course of treatment for something like cancer. With cancer treatment you have chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, palliative care, and psychological care. These are all very important to someone with cancer, but not everyone needs every treatment. Some people only need surgery. Others only need chemotherapy and radiation and so on. Maybe a person is overworked and wrung out, and Sabbath observance would be a great way to fix that. But maybe they don't feel a need to follow the dietary laws or clothing restrictions. There's any number of reasons why a Christian would do some parts of the Torah and not others

Yeah. I mean, I completely have no issue with that. What I think is the mistake is pointing to the scripture and saying "we have to do this" or "the church is missing something".

Zobel said:

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Yeah. I mean, I completely have no issue with that. What I think is the mistake is pointing to the scripture and saying "we have to do this" or "the church is missing something".

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Agreed and I'm probably more radical about that than you. To me the whole overarching point of Romans is that we are dead to the world. So neither the Torah nor any earthly law really has any power over us, because the worst they can do is sentence us to death. And we're already dead in that sense. So there really is nothing that we are required to do, and no law of any kind that we are required to follow.

Now, the rest of Romans wrestles with the question of what should we do now that we are completely unfettered, but I think that's a bit tangent to the point.

You might like this video.

This is just the trailer here:

The Way Documentary

The full documentary can be ordered here (well worth the $30)

https://www.thewaydoc.com/

This is not connected with the Hollywood movie from 2011 with the same name. The book is not bad as an apologetic work, but the one I posted earlier is far better at it, IMO.

Zobel said:

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No, I don't think that's the takeaway. I think the takeaway is that there is always right and wrong - sin and righteousness. The Patriarchs practiced the faith before the giving of the Torah to Moses on Sinai. Adultery and murder, for example, are clearly taught as wrong in Genesis.

But the pattern of Genesis is a series of declines. Things become worse and worse until God acts. First the flood, then Babel, and then the giving of the Torah. Even in the patriarchal narratives you can see the decline beginning. Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph goes from God appearing to Abraham and speaking to him multiple times and eating with him to rarely appearing to Jacob and never directly to Joseph. Jacob struggled with God and righteousness in a way Abraham didn't, and at least some of his sons were becoming pagan again… committing brutal murder (Simeon and Ruben) and participating in pagan rituals and intermarrying with pagans (Judah). This is why St Paul says the Torah was given because of transgressions - to rein in the sin and decline that was beginning.

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This is super interesting but also takes you down the path of human nature vs. Jesus actual teachings, which is an interesting study in human nature and the nature of sin. Our human nature (need to be on a team, to be included) pulls toward using legalism to create ongoing judgement of others. We are drawn to pointing how who does what as we interpret the scriptures, in this case the Old Testament but Jesus said the Love God and Love People. In practice, that is way less attractive and far harder vs. legalism.

I think this is a false binary. A St Paul said, the entire Torah is summed up as love your neighbor as yourself, while Christ says that this commandment is like loving God. The Torah teaches how to love your neighbor, which is loving God. The Torah teaches how to love God, which is loving your neighbor. These things are tied together in interpersonal relationships because men are created in the image of God.

When you pay honor to the image, that honor passes to the prototype. People have read this because it was the defense given by the Orthodox for the veneration of icons. But that's not a novel application. This is the exact same understanding of why we worship one God and not two (Christ is the perfect image, and the honor paid to the image passes to the prototype) and why it matters so much how we treat each other (they are created in the image of Christ).

So the Torah gives us patterns to understand how to honor and worship God, and how to honor and love each other. It also gives us an understanding of what righteousness looks like. The Psalmist says that God will show salvation to the person who rights his way, but the wicked have no right to recite His statues. The Torah reveals sin and guards against it, it is a teacher.

I don't think anyone here in this thread is advocating for legalism.

Faith that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for us.

I believe the act itself is less important than the rationale. Sabbath, fasting, etc. are all acts of faith if done to honor the Father.