This thread may be used to comment on Graham Kings' article "Don't Throw Stones: Deuteronomy and the Prodigal Son"

Many thanks, Graham, for elucidating the Prodigal Son and the links with Leviticus. I know I am not the only one who has also seen a root of the same parable in the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau – the miraculous embrace.

Esau had come with four hundred men, maybe equivalent to the elders in Leviticus. Esau’s plan, it seems, was to punish Jacob. Jacob understood it that way, for when he heard about the men with Esau he was afraid and couldn’t / wouldn’t sleep. Yet when Jacob, limping, met Esau, Esau wept and embraced him – even before Jacob had time to give the gifts he had prepared. So the prodigal son was embraced before he had had time to give the (self-serving) confession he had prepared.

Perhaps here too we have Jesus reinterpreting Leviticus with Genesis in mind?

You write, Graham, that Jesus was free to reinterpret and change the emphasis of Scripture in this way, but we are not similarly free. That is clear and obvious. We cannot claim for ourselves the same authority that Jesus had. BUT is the Holy Spirit free today to reinterpret Scripture in a way similar to Jesus’ reinterpretations?

I would argue that the Holy Spirit, as Lord, does have the same authority today, speaking on behalf of Jesus to us, as Jesus spoke to his first disciples. The Holy Spirit takes the words and recorded actions of Jesus and speaks to us afresh about and through them, sometimes in ways that Jesus’ contemporaries could not bear.

The Holy Spirit does precisely this in Acts with regard to conversion of Gentiles. He takes a saying of Jesus about the priority of the heart over the stomach, and reinterprets it to mean that all foods are clean. He shows to Cornelius and co. the same acceptance and welcome of Jesus to Gentiles, but even more so, in giving Himself to Cornelius exactly as he gave Himself to the disciples at Pentecost. Through these and other ways, the Holy Spirit changes the interpretation and emphasis of Scripture away from strict and universal adherence to the Mosaic Law for all God’s people. (We could even maybe discern the Holy Spirit prioritising God’s love for all nations, as in Genesis, over His specific parental care for the people of Israel.) The apostles themselves make plain that it is the Holy Spirit who has brought about this reinterpretation, to which they give their more or less reluctant cooperation, announcing memorably, ‘It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us…’

Once we recognise that the Holy Spirit today does have the same authority that Jesus had in His earthly ministry, we are in difficult waters. For how can we know what the Holy Spirit is saying? Here too the book of Acts gives us some answers, including that He speaks through a council of the whole Church – which we have not been able to hold for many many years. But just because the open waters of recognising and looking for the Holy Spirit’s distinctive voice today are difficult, we should not instead stay in the calm harbour walls of Biblical doctrine. For the Holy Spirit is quite capable of moving the shore line, and we could find our nice secure harbour no longer connects with the sea at all.

Am I implying that welcome of ‘gay marriage’ is a reinterpretation that the Holy Spirit is leading us to today? No, I am not. I am not at all convinced that the evidence, not least the necessary unanimity, is there. But nor am I saying that this cannot possibly be of the Holy Spirit. Yes it does go against Leviticus by appealing to the principle of love and faithfulness over sexual specifics – ie the loving commitment of two people for life is more important than the gender of these people - but Jesus reinterpreted Leviticus in something like this way and the Holy Spirit COULD be doing something similar in our day. I, and many others, need to see more evidence, but we cannot rule out the possibility. Yes it makes it all more difficult, less certain. But this is a Biblical openness, open especially to the Holy Spirit of Jesus. It stops us from throwing stones.

Graham

Your question to me was: ‘what do you make of the interpretation of Deuteronomy 21 in my article, 'Don't Throw Stones: Deuteronomy and the Prodigal Son'? 

This is a serious question for you’.

This is my response.

I am not quite sure what the point or points are which your article is making. This uncertainty arises from the fact that I am not quite sure what exactly you mean by ‘reinterpret’ and what the import of your use of ‘abhorrent’ really is.

However I will make a reasoned assumption about your main line of thought and respond accordingly. No doubt you will set me right if my assumption is wrong.

I take it that you are saying that the punishment (Deut 21:21) is abhorrent and not that the sin is abhorrent and so deserves an abhorrent punishment. This, the general tone of your article, and the parallels you invoke from the Sermon on the Mount lead me to suppose that you are saying that in the Parable of the Prodigal Son Jesus is in some sense improving on or correcting (you may have a better word) the command given in Deuteronomy 21.

One of your key assertions is:

‘Jesus’ radical call to love our enemies (Luke 6:35) surely involved his reinterpreting this book (Deuteronomy) in some way’.

In that passage Jesus also (Luke 6:31) says: ‘And as ye wish that may do to you men, do ye to them likewise’ which echoes Matthew 7:12 which concludes ‘…for this is the law and the prophets’.

So in the middle of what you call a ‘radical call’ (Luke 6:27-36) Jesus is saying that ‘….do ye to them likewise’ is (following Matthew7:12) ‘the law and the prophets’. This is significant in assessing whether this ‘radical call’  ‘surely involved his reinterpreting this book (Deuteronomy) in some way’. Another significant fact is that in Matthew 15:4, in criticizing the Pharisees, Jesus says ‘For God said: Honour the father and the mother, and: The [one] speaking evil of father or mother by death let him die’ (Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9). This latter command is similar to Deuteronomy 21:21 and there is no hint that Jesus would have wanted to reinterpret it. There is also the distinction to be considered between judicial sentences and how we should behave to one another on a personal level.

Also in Luke 6:35-36, ‘….and will be the reward of you much, and ye will be sons of [the] Most High, because he kind is to the unthankful and evil. Be ye compassionate as the Father of you compassionate is’. And there is a similar link between loving enemies and being children of your Father in Matthew 5:43-48.

So behind the ‘radical call’ lies Jesus statement about what God is like. I take it that part of your thought is that this statement about what God is like contrasts with the God who utters the command (Deuteronomy 6:1) of Deuteronomy 21:18-21. If so, then we are on territory similar to that debated between Clare and me.

As I see it we have to seek to understand Deuteronomy 21, and all the other parts of the OT which have to do with wrath, judgment, punishment, cursing, and all the hard sayings, in the light of all that the Bible says, including what the Bible asserts Jesus Christ said and did and will say and will do.

Obviously, among those OT instances, besides Deuteronomy 21 and all the punishments in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, there are such things as (this is not a comprehensive list) the destruction of all human and air breathing life except Noah and his family and the creatures in the ark, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the judgment on the Egyptians, the judgment on Achan and his family and livestock, God’s command to totally destroy the nations across the Jordan because of their wickedness, including all the children, God’s command to take vengeance on the Midianites, God’s command to blot out Amalek from under heaven, the cursing psalms.

My case against Clare and possibly (if my assumptions as to your meaning are right) against you is that the language that Jesus uses or is used about Jesus, and Jesus' actions, in such passages as (in no particular order):

Rev 6:12-17

Rev 14: 4-20

Rev 19:11-21

Luke 17: 20-37 (The OT portrays these events as acts of God’s judgment. I agree that Jesus does not explicitly confirm that they are. But he does not deny that they are either. The position that Jesus’ said these words but in Jesus’ view they were not the acts of God, or in Jesus’ view they were the acts of God but were immoral, is incredible to me.

It is a reasonable assumption, although I agree we are not explicitly told, that children were among those destroyed by the flood and among those destroyed in the overthrow of Sodom).

Luke 13:1-5

Luke 19:27

Matthew 13:36-43

Matthew 7:21-23

Matthew 25:40-46

Matthew 15:4

are very terrible. And this language and these actions refer mostly to final judgment. Clearly sin is dreadful in Christ’s eyes and deserves dreadful judgment. Is this judgment any less dreadful than the judgment on Achan, the Canaanites, Midian, Amalek, the unruly son in Deuteronomy 21:21, the nations of Israel and Judah?

Paul in Romans helps us to understand how God can be simultaneously kind to the unthankful and evil and the God whose wrath is revealed from heaven against all impiety and unrighteousness of men:

‘And reckonest thou this, O man the[one] judging the[ones] practicing such things and doing them, that thou wilt escape the judgment of God? Or the riches of the kindness of him and the forbearance and the longsuffering despisest thou, not knowing that the kindness of God leads thee to repentance? But according to the hardness of thee and impenitent heart treasurest up for thyself wrath in a day of wrath and of revelation of a righteous judgment of God’

On your surmise that

‘Jesus did indeed reinterpret the law of Deuteronomy 21:18-21 with his parable of the prodigal son’.

as I see it, as I said in a reply to Clare:

‘In both Testaments God and Christ are revealed as angry towards sinners and merciful and seeking to save while the day of grace lasts. Both pictures are simultaneously true. The Bible interweaves throughout the painting of both pictures. Some passages emphasize one picture, some the other. We should not look for any one passage to necessarily give us the whole truth. So the main point of the parable of the Prodigal Son is the tremendous truth, as someone has said, that there is no state of sin, rebellion and degradation from which a penitent return will not be welcomed by God’.

Furthermore, as Warfield pointed out somewhere, there is a danger (I am not saying you are unaware of the danger!) that the parable is viewed as the whole gospel. But it isn’t the whole gospel because, among other things, there is no atonement in it. All the penalties set out in the OT, which we deserve, were about to fall on Christ, as you point out, ‘becoming a curse on behalf of us’.

Looked at like that it may be that Jesus had Deuteronomy 21:21 in mind when he told the parable. But the link is not to reinterpret (if by reinterpret is meant ‘correct’), but to die for, and in that death make possible the welcome of God of which, as you say, the parable so poignantly speaks.

Phil Almond