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From: tblake@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Thomas Blake)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: "Laws that are not Good"  (Ezekiel 20)
Message-ID: <May.10.02.59.28.1991.6197@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 10 May 91 06:59:30 GMT
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Organization: State University of New York at Binghamton
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[Thomas Blake reads Lk 16:16-18 as implying a distinction between the
laws of Moses and God.
>  16 "The Law of Moses and the writings of the prophets were in effect
>up to the time of John the Baptist; since then the Good News about the
>Kingdom of God is being told, and everyone forces his way in.  17 But it
>is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the smallest detail
>of the Law to be done away with.
He reads 16 as saying the the law of Moses is not in effect, but the Law
of God still is.  I commented that this is an "unusual" interpretation of
this passage.  --clh]

Boy, I'll say it's unusual!  But let's look at it the other way.  First
Jesus says that the law was in effect until John, then after John
everybody's getting in.  Then Jesus says it's incredibly hard to change
the law, and then he goes ahead and changes it!  (But since it
apparantly isn't in effect anymore what's the point in changing it?)

These three verses seem to me to represent in microcosm the seeming
underlying contradiction in Jesus' teachings on the law.  I'm not trying
to present my interpretation (now almost a day old) as the only valid
interpretation, I am trying (as with my original Ezekiel post), to
stimulate conversation on this matter.

					Tom Blake
					SUNY-Binghamton