Truth Changes Clothing
I’m a dyed-in-the-wool conservative but I’ve also lived through being the one to lead in bringing about change. Some of my readers have encouraged me to elaborate my thoughts on these things, traditions and change, so let’s survey the components of tradition and change in religious matters. (Secular matters are a slightly different concern.)
I believe in a God who doesn’t change. What He likes, the good, and what He hates, the evil, is eternal. His character and tastes are always the same—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. HE doesn’t change.
But people change. We were not made to be immutable. We are always learning and changing, constantly adapting to God’s world and finding new ways to use it and live in it. Every new discovery changes the way we live and behave and think. We change and we change the world, and the changing world changes us.
Though God Himself stays the same, He doesn’t hesitate to change His dealings with us. He is always good, faithful, and true to Himself, but there are points at which He will adapt to our changing understanding. The illustration I like to use is truth changing its clothes. There is unchanging truth from an unchanging God, but it expresses itself in different clothing to the changing understanding of people.
I think that’s true of the Law of Moses. Many think of the Law of Moses as the eternal and unchanging Law of God. But the book of Hebrews depicts all priestly rituals as temporary illustrations (or types) pointing to Christ. A planned obsolescence was built into them. They were of no further use once Christ appeared.
Kosher food laws are another example of the same principle. The New Testament makes clear they had no further use. I believe there are other commands in Moses’ Law that operate the same way. They fit in the original context in which they were issued but no longer fit in changing contexts, e.g. the commands to wear tassels or leave beards untrimmed. These laws in an ancient context expressed a truth of God’s eternal character, but as people changed, the expressions lost their relevance. Truth didn’t change, but its clothing did, and that was part of God’s design.
The final component in this discussion is man-made tradition built atop the Law of Moses. Originally, these traditions were “new clothing” for truth. Pharisaic tradition created detailed explanations of how to carry out Moses’ Law. For example, if I must cleanse myself after contact with something unclean, what is sufficient cleansing? The Pharisaic traditions described exactly how much and what kind of water to use and what parts of the body must be cleansed and so on.
Jesus’ clashes with the Pharisees were usually over this third component. The Pharisees, He argued, tied all three components together too tightly. They saw their traditions as the only proper execution of the Law of Moses, and the Law of Moses they saw as the perfect expression of the person of God. In theory they may have seen a distinction between these three things, but in practice, they treated their traditions as the voice of God that ought not be adjusted.
Jesus argued against this point repeatedly and on two fronts. First, some traditions were held mindlessly and for their own sake: We always did it this way, so it must be important (e.g. Matthew 23.23—tithing herbs). Trivial points were raised to importance and weighty truths were missed (i.e. straining at gnats and swallowing camels).
Second, some traditions undermined the spirit of the Law—the core truth of God’s unchanging person. The Law was twisted by tradition to avoid obedience to God (e.g. Mark 7.9-13—claiming family inheritance was dedicated to God and so couldn’t be used to “honor” and care for aging parents; when the parents died, the money was recharacterized as personal inheritance).
The problem, according to Jesus, was not God’s will, the Law of Moses, or even the Pharisaic traditions themselves, but how men connected and used them. I believe that Jesus’ criticisms are on point and apply to today’s Christians, including and perhaps especially us conservatives.
For Christians there is a complex theological problem here. Jesus said He didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5.17-20) but that fulfillment appears to have, in some sense, abolished the Law (Ephesians 2.15; Colossians 2.13-23; Hebrews 8-10). I think the value of studying the Law is seeking to understand how an eternal truth was temporarily “clothed” in the ancient context so that I may understand proper ways to clothe the same truth in our own context. The core truth will be the same but will wear different dress. I can only flag this tension for now; it requires far more than a paragraph.
The second (and in practice, I believe, the more prominent) difficulty has to do with man-made traditions. The New Testament didn’t replace the Law of Moses with a clearly written code. Instead, the Spirit of God works in our hearts so we “sense” the first level of truth—the heart of God. Then we live based on what we know of His heart, and we construct our lives, both as individuals and as churches, on that foundation.
Do we ever perfectly understand the heart of God? Or are we always learning, growing, and changing? But if I can only live on the basis of what I know—if my understanding tomorrow will differ from today’s—how can we go about building our lives and the lives of our communities and churches in a way that truly pleases God?
I must leave you with these unanswered questions and tensions for now…
I believe in a God who doesn’t change. What He likes, the good, and what He hates, the evil, is eternal. His character and tastes are always the same—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. HE doesn’t change.
But people change. We were not made to be immutable. We are always learning and changing, constantly adapting to God’s world and finding new ways to use it and live in it. Every new discovery changes the way we live and behave and think. We change and we change the world, and the changing world changes us.
Though God Himself stays the same, He doesn’t hesitate to change His dealings with us. He is always good, faithful, and true to Himself, but there are points at which He will adapt to our changing understanding. The illustration I like to use is truth changing its clothes. There is unchanging truth from an unchanging God, but it expresses itself in different clothing to the changing understanding of people.
I think that’s true of the Law of Moses. Many think of the Law of Moses as the eternal and unchanging Law of God. But the book of Hebrews depicts all priestly rituals as temporary illustrations (or types) pointing to Christ. A planned obsolescence was built into them. They were of no further use once Christ appeared.
Kosher food laws are another example of the same principle. The New Testament makes clear they had no further use. I believe there are other commands in Moses’ Law that operate the same way. They fit in the original context in which they were issued but no longer fit in changing contexts, e.g. the commands to wear tassels or leave beards untrimmed. These laws in an ancient context expressed a truth of God’s eternal character, but as people changed, the expressions lost their relevance. Truth didn’t change, but its clothing did, and that was part of God’s design.
The final component in this discussion is man-made tradition built atop the Law of Moses. Originally, these traditions were “new clothing” for truth. Pharisaic tradition created detailed explanations of how to carry out Moses’ Law. For example, if I must cleanse myself after contact with something unclean, what is sufficient cleansing? The Pharisaic traditions described exactly how much and what kind of water to use and what parts of the body must be cleansed and so on.
Jesus’ clashes with the Pharisees were usually over this third component. The Pharisees, He argued, tied all three components together too tightly. They saw their traditions as the only proper execution of the Law of Moses, and the Law of Moses they saw as the perfect expression of the person of God. In theory they may have seen a distinction between these three things, but in practice, they treated their traditions as the voice of God that ought not be adjusted.
Jesus argued against this point repeatedly and on two fronts. First, some traditions were held mindlessly and for their own sake: We always did it this way, so it must be important (e.g. Matthew 23.23—tithing herbs). Trivial points were raised to importance and weighty truths were missed (i.e. straining at gnats and swallowing camels).
Second, some traditions undermined the spirit of the Law—the core truth of God’s unchanging person. The Law was twisted by tradition to avoid obedience to God (e.g. Mark 7.9-13—claiming family inheritance was dedicated to God and so couldn’t be used to “honor” and care for aging parents; when the parents died, the money was recharacterized as personal inheritance).
The problem, according to Jesus, was not God’s will, the Law of Moses, or even the Pharisaic traditions themselves, but how men connected and used them. I believe that Jesus’ criticisms are on point and apply to today’s Christians, including and perhaps especially us conservatives.
For Christians there is a complex theological problem here. Jesus said He didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5.17-20) but that fulfillment appears to have, in some sense, abolished the Law (Ephesians 2.15; Colossians 2.13-23; Hebrews 8-10). I think the value of studying the Law is seeking to understand how an eternal truth was temporarily “clothed” in the ancient context so that I may understand proper ways to clothe the same truth in our own context. The core truth will be the same but will wear different dress. I can only flag this tension for now; it requires far more than a paragraph.
The second (and in practice, I believe, the more prominent) difficulty has to do with man-made traditions. The New Testament didn’t replace the Law of Moses with a clearly written code. Instead, the Spirit of God works in our hearts so we “sense” the first level of truth—the heart of God. Then we live based on what we know of His heart, and we construct our lives, both as individuals and as churches, on that foundation.
Do we ever perfectly understand the heart of God? Or are we always learning, growing, and changing? But if I can only live on the basis of what I know—if my understanding tomorrow will differ from today’s—how can we go about building our lives and the lives of our communities and churches in a way that truly pleases God?
I must leave you with these unanswered questions and tensions for now…