The Mosaic Law identified that as cruel and ungenerous. Landowners muzzling an ox that was treading on the corn were forbidding the ox to eat any of the profits that the animal was producing. For example, in 1 Corinthians 9:8-10 Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4 (“Don’t muzzle the ox as it is treading out the corn”). At this point the WCF cites New Testament passages where Paul quotes a civil law of Israel and then applies the principle behind the law to Christians. The Confession concludes that these laws are also “not obliging any other now” but then adds with remarkable nuance, “further than the general equity thereof may require.” That is, while the details of the civil law are not binding on us, yet there are principles of “equity” and justice these laws reflect that Christians may not ignore, because they are rooted in the moral law. This does not mean that the Jewish people no longer exist, but that the specific social-political form-a monarchy using the Mosaic Law as its constitution-is no more. The Confession says that these laws were given to Israel “as a body politic, which expired together with the State of that people” (WCF 19:4). laws of gleaning, sabbath years) in which the moral laws were applied to Israel through regulations of its national commerce, agriculture, government, and jurisprudence. Finally, it speaks of the civil or judicial laws (e.g. sacrifices, clean laws) having to do with the tabernacle and temple worship are fulfilled in Christ and “now abrogated” for the Christian. Then it shows that the ceremonial law (e.g. Ten Commandments) is still binding on the Christian, citing Romans 13:8-10, 1 John 2:3-4,7. Both the Anglican Church’s Thirty-Nine Articles (Article VII) and the reformed Westminster Confession of Faith (Chapter 19) divide the Old Testament law into three categories-the moral, the ceremonial, and the civil or judicial law. There is both a substantial older theological tradition as well as much newer biblical scholarship holding that the ethical teaching of the Old Testament has abiding validity for Christians. How the Old Testament contributes to Christian ethics. (Note: My essay assumes the abiding relevance of the Old Testament, In this article, I lay out in greater detail what biblical justice is. Only biblical justice is comprehensive enough to address the needs of the human condition. If there is no morality apart from that produced by social structure, how can we ever judge that one structure is more “unjust” or immoral than another? Christians should not ignore any of the rightful concerns that they raise, but also should not wholly align themselves with any of them. Lukes is quite sympathetic to Marxism, but he is ruthlessly candid about the problems posed by Marxism’s insistence that everything-even morality-is structural, the product of social forces. For a fascinating look at the problems that Marxism and its successors have with morality and its inherent relativism, see Steven Lukes, Marxism and Morality, Oxford, 1985. For a critique of Marxism and its progressive derivatives, see Carlo Lancellotti, “The Dead End of the Left? Augusto Del Noce’s Critique of Modern Politics”, in Commonweal, Apas well as Augusto Del Noce, The Crisis of Modernity. Koyzis, Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Critique of Contemporary Ideologies, 2 nd edition, IVP, 2019. For a critique of all the more political manifestations of these secular justice theories, see David T. For a critique of the secular, individualistic “social contract theory” of government on which Libertarianism and Liberalism rely, see Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity, Crossway, 2004, 138-140 279-283.
For a critique of Liberalism see Patrick Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed, Yale, 2019 and Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, University of Chicago, 1966. For more thorough critiques of Libertarianism and Utilitarianism, see Robert Bellah, et al, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, With a New Preface, University of California, 2007. My critiques of these secular justice theories are deliberately short and somewhat over-simplified for pedagogical purposes.
And as a result they all have severe weaknesses. However, they do rest on elements of worldview, that are, on underlying accounts of human nature (individualistic or collectivistic) of epistemology-how we know truth-and of ethics that leave out the existence of God. I am not saying that any of these ideologies or theories are themselves fully coherent “worldviews” (see footnote 3 below). Introductory note: In a previous article I argued that all the secular political options and justice theories, from “right” to “left”-Libertarianism, Liberalism, Utilitarianism, Progressivism-are grounded in reductionistic worldviews.
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