There are three types of law in the OT. There is the moral law, the civil law and the ceremonial law. The one you quote above is the civil law regarding punishment for crimes in ancient Israel. Crimes and sin overlapped more under the Old Hebrew Theocracy, but under the New covenant, there is some overlap between crimes and sins but they are not all exactly the same thing. So what that law is saying that if a father commits a capital crime then his child will not be punished for it. And vice versa. As I stated earlier in the case of sin, we are all sinnners and deserve to die, so any life past birth is Gods grace and mercy toward us. God is Judge and executioner for sin, so He does follow the law for someone in His position and actually He is very merciful to us.
This is your response to me when I said,
The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
The English version has this listed as a universal imperative for all. It's not listed as a "thou shalt not." It's a "shall not." But God kills sons for sins of the father all the time.
I specifically said that it is a "shall not" and not a "thou shalt not." This suggests that it is a moral command for all, not just a moral command for humanity. Obviously, something like "give the soil a rest every seven years" is not something that applies to God.
But you brushed over this. You mention ceremonial and civil law, and I agree that the Old Testament laws can be partitioned this way. But what is this moral law category you're talking about if there is no distinction between "shall not" and "thou shalt not"?
Christ said if you love Him you will obey His moral commands. Christians should obey the moral law.
You need to define this term before you continue to use it.
Christ fulfilled the ceremonial law so we no longer need to follow those and the old Hebrew theocracy was destroyed by God in 73 AD so we no longer need to follow the civil laws, however since those civil laws were designed by God we can learn principles from them to use in our own civil laws.
The civil laws were designed by God? Hmm. It says that you may temporarily own Hebrew men as indentured servants, and that you may own foreigners as slaves. You may bequeath them to your children as inheritance, and you may beat them as long as they don't die. Rape is never explicitly forbidden. If you find a woman appealing, and you're willing to marry her and waive your right to divorce, you may rape her. You may rape your wife as often as you like.
A young woman could easily find herself in a situation where she's raped, and then her father forces her to marry her rapist because she has been "devalued", and then she lives a life of being raped every day by the same man.
Turns out that we did indeed adopt these laws, at least in the beginning. It's not an accident or an oversight. They just wanted to give themselves the right to rape women.
Let's not forget that this whole thread is about men slaughtering a whole village and then executing the hostages except for the virgin girls, so that the soldiers could take the virgin girls for themselves (minus a small portion of the virgin girls who were "the Lord's share).
My statement still stands, sin is disobeying Gods moral law. His moral law is the Ten Commandments and all the laws that deal with the topics of them. And of course the moral teachings of Christ and His apostles as revealed in the NT.
OK, thank you for finally defining it. You say that the Ten Commandments are among the moral laws. I take it you mean that moral laws are absolute, but that civil and ceremonial laws were just for the Jews (the old covenant).
This is already a jumbled mess because the commandment, "Rest on the Sabbath" is based on God resting after creation. So this absolute moral law didn't even exist until the seventh day of creation, meaning it is not absolute. To be absolute, it must apply in all circumstances no matter what.
I don't want to saddle you with this because you can see I'm still trying to figure out what it is that you are even talking about. This is just my best guess at what it is you believe. But I'm struggling to see how this is self consistent.
Furthermore, has the absolute morality of keeping the Sabbath holy transformed into the absolute morality of keeping Sunday holy instead? What about essential workers who have to work on Saturday, or Sunday, or whichever it is that is supposed to be holy? Should they be executed like the guy who was gathering sticks?
I see the Ten Commandments as being split into five ceremonial laws followed by five civil laws. You're saying they're all moral laws. Whether civil or moral, where's the "Thou shalt not kidnap," "Thou shalt not enslave," and "Thou shalt not rape"? That's a shocking omission. To be fair, kidnapping is forbidden later on, but slavery and rape never are.
I've told you that I don't believe in absolute morality. If I'm
somehow wrong about this, I still feel very confident that the true absolute morality would not allow for rape or slavery. If your system of morality allows for rape and slavery, and it provides rules for how it is right and appropriate to do such things, then your moral system is
broken.
