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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   5784 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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But no branch of Christianity claims the New Law supplanted the Mosaic covenant

I’m not sure about this. There is a natural law which is found in the Decalogue, and in this sense there is still a “law”; but this is still fulfilled in Christ, in the sense that faith / obedience will wind up satisfying the natural law.

https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2021/documents/papa-francesco_20210811_udienza-generale.html

Against those who urged the Galatians to obey the precepts of the Law of Moses, Paul replies that the Law was always in the service of God’s Covenant with his people. The Covenant was itself based not on the observance of the Law but on faith in the fulfilment of God’s promises. Now that God has definitively fulfilled those promises in the paschal mystery of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection, those who believe in the Gospel are set free from the demands of the Law. The newness of the Christian life, then, is born of our response to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who brings the Law to fulfilment in the new commandment of love.

AFAIK the majority of early Christians believed two things: that the law was given to Israel because of the hardness of their hearts, and that the law was a “tutor” until Christ came as a Law unto Himself. Eg, Justin Martyr:

we know that the ordinances imposed by reason of the hardness of your people's hearts contribute nothing to the performance of righteousness and of piety.

Regarding natural law:

"For [God] sets before every race of mankind that which is always and universally just, as well as all righteousness; and every race knows that adultery, and fornication, and homicide, and such like, are sinful; and though they all commit such practices, yet they do not escape from the knowledge that they act unrighteously whenever they so do

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