The law of the Lord is perfect

[chair]

I won't engage in battle of scripture quotations. I agree with you that the law is presented that way in the Old testament. I agree with you that of course there was forgiveness for violating commandments in the Old testaments (one cannot read the prophets without noticing a rather generous divine forgiveness). I will rather approach this by setting forth a theological response...

This is one of the most thoughtful posts I have seen here in years. Not that agree with you, but you are making sense, and what you present looks far more reasonable than what I (as an outsider) mostly read here.

Thanks for investing the time to write it.

Chair

 

[Nihilo]

It is where the laws of man fails (this is why Traditio's Judge Dredd and philosopher king fantasies are so utterly naive according to Christian theology): A righteous man is condemned and executed on a cross. He is condemned and executed by Roman laws (for the temple event) and by Jewish law for a charge of blasphemy, he is charged by folk morality and popular opinion (the crowd who chooses the militarist rebel Barabbas over Jesus). Law and morality as well as folk opinion (democracy if you like) reveals its impotence when it in a systematic fashion falls under the power of human sin. The essence of sin according to Christian theology is not breaking one or more commandments, sin is structural, anthropological and even cosmological. Sin is that man is defined, in the words of Luther, as: homo incurvatus se: Man curved inwards towards himself.

God's law interacted with Israel to compel Israel to crucify the Lord from heaven, the Lord of glory. If He had not given His law, then the Lord wouldn't have been crucified. But the prophets and ultimately the Lord Himself revealed that that was the plan all along.

 

[Ben Masada]

What about our interpretation of the law of the Lord? The interpretation certainly is not perfect especially when it throws out the most important piece which is the soul.

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I didn't get it! How could the soul be thrown out? We ourselves are the souls. Each one of us is a soul. Why? Because when the Lord formed man from the dust of the earth, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. To become is to be. It means we are souls. The soul is only the combination of the body with the breath of life. (Genesis 2:7) At death, the body goes back to the dust and the breath of life goes back to God Who gave it. That's when that combination is undone and soul ceases to exist.