Averbeck, Richard E. The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2022. xvii+382 pp.; Pb.; $40.00 Link to IVP Academic
As emeritus professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Richard Averbeck approaches the issue of the Old Testament Law from the perspective of an Old Testament scholar who is also interested in spiritual formation and how the Old Testament informs Christian worship. In addition, Averbeck is interested in the Jewish Messianic movement (an appendix in this book explains this connection).
In this monograph, Averbeck deals with the contentious issue of how Christianity relates to the practice of Old Testament Law. He suggests that a common misconception of the law is that the Christian is “free from the law” (Rom 7:6, Gal 5:13). Averbeck says that although this is true, it does not mean Christians are to pay no attention to the Law. Christians are free from condemnation under the law (Rom 8:1), but just a few verses earlier in Romans, Paul states that the law is holy, righteous, and good (Rom 7:12–14). The believer is obligated to fulfill the righteous standards of the law, which Averbeck suggests can be fully done through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Averbeck has three theses that guide the book. First, the law is good. He demonstrates that in both the Old and New Testaments, the law is always described as good, holy, and righteous, and it applies to the lives of God’s people in the Old Testament and two Christians today. Second, the law is weak, especially compared to the power of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit enables the Christian to live the Christian life, not the Law. Third, the law is a unified whole. He does not think that there are separate “kinds of laws.” The artificial division of the law into civil, ceremonial, or moral law needs to be abandoned since the Law can be separated into these categories. The law is always understood as the whole law. This means that the whole law was and is still good, profitable for the Christian, and applies to the life of Christians today (21).
The book is divided into three parts. In part one, Covenant and Context, Averbeck introduces the concept of redemptive covenants and focuses on renewing the mosaic covenant at several points (Exodus 24:1–11, Deut 26:16–17; Joshua 24; 1 Samuel 12). He suggests the Last Supper is “essentially a covenant oath and covenant meal” (53). Communion looks back on what Jesus did on the cross but also looks forward to fulfilling the obligations of the new covenant. Communion is, therefore, a covenant renewal ritual.
Redemptive covenants are not conditional or unconditional. This idea needs to be abandoned (57). Redemption covenants are based on promises and ongoing obligations. Each covenant functions under the umbrella of the previous covenant. Averbeck outlines his four covenants: Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and the New Covenant (58). Although Averbeck does not express it this way, the previous covenants are progressively narrowing. The Abrahamic Covenant is narrowed in the Mosaic Covenant, which is further narrowed in the Davidic Covenant. (Attentive readers, major echoes of a kind of progressive dispensationalism in this section, although this is not explicit in the book.) He points out that nothing in the previous covenants is eliminated; nothing from the previous covenant is “set aside.” Instead, the Mosaic Covenant expands and extends the Abrahamic covenant. “Essentially, the ‘law of Christ’ is how Jesus mediates the Old Testament law to us in the New Covenant in Christ” (77). The Old Testament law is now written on our hearts, the activity of the Holy Spirit. This is the nature of the new covenant community of faith.
In part two, he covers Old Testament law in context. These chapters aim to describe the purpose of the Mosaic Law, especially the sacrificial system. This includes a mini-commentary on the Ten Commandments and several detailed chapters on various aspects of Law, emphasizing how these aspects of the law can be applied to the New Covenant Christian community. In discussing the sacrifices and Leviticus, Averbeck observes that the Priestly conception embraces all of creation (cleanliness, food laws). Israel’s relationship with creation is that they are a nation with God dwelling in their midst. All the purification rituals force Israel to remember God’s visible, physical presence in their midst (221). Because God was present in the Old Testament in a physical and real way, he demanded physical purity from his people. This explains much of the purity code in Leviticus. But it is clear in the New Testament that food laws or other purity laws no longer bind (Gentile) believers. But that does not mean the Christian can be impure! Averbeck understands purity in a spiritual sense in the new covenant community of the New Testament. Sometimes, this reads like Averbeck argues for a spiritualized reading of the Law.
Part three begins with two chapters on the law in Jesus’s ministry and within the early church (Acts and Epistles). Averbeck traces the shift in scholarly reading of Jesus after the New Perspective on Paul was applied to the gospels. Scholars stopped reading Jesus through the lens of Paul (229). Jesus has three main goals in Matthew 5:17–48. First, he did not come to undermine the law. Two2, the way the Pharisees were teaching the law did not produce righteousness. Third, Jesus declared his own reading of the law, and his authority is a teacher of the law 241. As an example, Averbeck cites Jesus’s teaching on the Sabbath. “Jesus was not denying the importance of the Sabbath, and, in fact, he did not violate it. But neither did he bow to the casuistry that the Pharisees added to its regulation” (250). With the inauguration of the church in Acts, he sees both discontinuity and continuity with the law in the new covenant redemptive community as the church shifted from Jewish to a mix of Jews and Gentiles (254).
Initially, Jewish Christians saw themselves as a movement within Judaism. Regulations that separated Israel from the Gentile nations could not continue in a mixed Jew-Gentile church (269). But there is no less interest in holiness and purity in the church than in ancient Israel (220). “The covenant kingdom in the New Testament is a continuation of this kingdom with Jewish roots, but it is now largely made up of Gentiles (274).
The book’s final two chapters describe how the moa functions in the new covenant, the gentile church. He reminds his readers of his three theses. What the Law was powerless to do, the Holy Spirit can. Now that the law is written on the heart, the power of the Holy Spirit enables believers to be holy. Holiness was always the goal in the Old Testament Law. God wanted a transformation of the heart, often referred to as “circumcision of the heart” (Lev 26:40-41; Jer 4:4).
Nevertheless, Paul certainly states that Gentile Christians are not under the law (Gal 3:21). Paul compares the law to a tutor. The time of the tutor is over, so believers in Christ are no longer “under the curse of the law” (Gal 3:13). For Averbeck, this does not mean ignoring the Mosaic Law as useless for the church. The Christian should understand the weakness of the law, in contrast to the power of the Holy Spirit, to live life in the new covenant. This tracks well with Romans 6-8 and other Pauline texts, which demand holiness for those who are in Christ.
Conclusion. Compared to classic Protestant approaches to the Law, Averbeck charts a different course. Rather than take some parts of the Laws as “fulfilled” in Christ and no longer applicable and others as still valid, he argues the whole Law is good, holy, and righteous and still of great importance for the church today. Paying attention to the Old Testament will guide a new covenant believer today as they seek to live a life of holiness. Although some readers will not agree with his application of the Law as a guide for holiness, this book challenges Christians to take the Old Testament seriously, even though most would rather ignore it as “for the Old Testament Jews and not us.”
NB: I appreciate IVP Academic’s generous offer of a review copy of this book, but this did not influence my thoughts about the work.
Good to know of this book, Philip. Thanks.
With copyright of 2022, Averbeck may not have been as aware as we are now, of the serious distortion (imo) of Jesus’ teaching and attitude toward Hebrew Scripture as to a “believer’s” (not yet “Christian” for another century or so) posture toward civil government.
You can tell me/us, but I’d hope he deals some with this, as it has become a critical issue (in a sort of “second round” for 2024 election, POTUS and broader): Israel (or “Palestine”) was basically a theocracy, even to a degree under Greek/Selucid/Roman control. “The Church” did not and should not attempt to step into a similar role. (At least it didn’t until the mid-to-late 4th century.)
After the first century there was no basic equivalent of what Israel had been. And even aside from that, there seems a pretty strong case that the prophets of the post-exilic era may have NOT believed in the sacrificial system, and portrayed God as diminishing it in relation to the way the marginalized and needy were to be treated…. Matters, we might say, of the heart more than religious ritual and symbolism.
How does he deal with this kind of issue, and the propensity of a lot of “smart” theologians to use OT law as the basis for a modern form of “theonomy” (basically theocracy) or implementation of biblical law as “law of the land” here and now? Whether in more developed or crude basic forms, this seems to have captured a majority of Evangelicalism and I believe, with many others, is a serious threat to even our very imperfect current form of “democracy”.