A Law Older Than Moses

An Answer to the Jews

Not long ago a debate was held between a Christian and a convert to Judaism. Back and forth, like two men hauling on a rope, they dragged the day out until evening. On top of that, the supporters on either side set up such a din against each other that the truth began to be lost in a kind of fog. So we thought it good that whatever the confused noise of the argument had left half-explained, point by point, should be looked into more carefully, and that the pen should settle in writing the questions they had been handling. [b]

There could hardly have been a better occasion for claiming God’s grace for the nations as well. The man who stood up to defend God’s Law as his own property came from the nations himself; he was no Jew “of the stock of Israel.” The bare fact that people out of the nations may be admitted to God’s Law is enough to keep Israel from priding himself on the notion that “the nations are counted as a drop from a bucket,” or else as “dust off a threshing floor.” And that is quite apart from having God himself as an adequate surety and a faithful promiser, since he promised Abraham that “in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed,” and that out of Rebecca’s womb “two peoples and two nations” were about to come — those of the Jews, that is of Israel, and those of the nations, that is ours.

Each of them, then, was called a people and a nation, so that no one could seize on the mere name and claim the privilege of grace for himself. For God appointed “two peoples and two nations” to come out of the womb of one woman, and grace drew no distinction in the name given them, but in the order of their birth: whichever of them came out of the womb first was to be put under “the lesser,” that is, the one born after. This is how God spoke to Rebecca: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will be divided out of your body; and people will overcome people, and the greater will serve the lesser.”

Now the people or nation of the Jews comes first in time, and is “greater” by the grace of being favored first in the Law, while ours is understood to be “the lesser” in the order of the ages, since it came to the knowledge of God’s mercy only in the world’s last era. So beyond all doubt, by the terms of that divine decree, the earlier and “greater” people — the Jewish — must serve the “lesser,” and the “lesser” people — the Christian — must overcome the “greater.”

And in fact, by the record of the divine Scriptures, the Jewish people — the older one — abandoned God outright and gave itself to the degrading service of idols. It let go of the Divinity and was handed over to images, when “the people” said to Aaron, “Make us gods to go ahead of us.”

And when the gold from the women’s necklaces and the men’s rings had all been melted down in the fire, and a calf’s head had come out of it, Israel with one consent abandoned God and gave this thing they had made their honor, saying, “These are the gods who brought us out of the land of Egypt.”

Later on, in the times when kings were governing them, they did it again: with Jeroboam they worshiped golden heifers and sacred groves, and made themselves slaves to Baal. This proves that all through the volume of the divine Scriptures they are shown guilty of the crime of idolatry, while our “lesser” — that is, later — people left the idols it once served as a slave and turned to the very God from whom Israel, as I have described above, had gone away. That is how the “lesser,” later people has overcome the “greater” people: by reaching the grace of God’s favor, from which Israel has been divorced.

So let us stand toe to toe, and settle the whole substance of the question inside a marked-out ring. [j]

Why should God — the founder of the universe, the governor of the whole world, the fashioner of humanity, the sower of all the nations — be believed to have given a law through Moses to one people, and not be said to have assigned it to every nation? If he had not given it to all, he would never have gone on allowing even converts out of the nations to have access to it. But — as fits the goodness of God, and his fairness as the fashioner of humankind — he gave all the nations the very same law, and ordered that it be observed at definite and stated times: when he willed, through whom he willed, and as he willed.

At the beginning of the world he gave Adam himself and Eve a law: they were not to eat the fruit of the tree planted in the middle of the garden, and if they did the opposite, by death they would die. That law would have been enough for them, had it been kept. For in this law given to Adam we can recognize, folded up inside it, all the commands that afterward sprouted out when they were given through Moses — that is: you are to love the Lord your God out of your whole heart and out of your whole soul; you are to love your neighbor as yourself; you are not to kill; you are not to commit adultery; you are not to steal; you are not to give false testimony; honor your father and mother; and, what belongs to another you are not to covet. For the first law of all was given to Adam and Eve in the garden, as the womb of all God’s commands.

In short: if they had loved the Lord their God, they would not have gone against his command. If they had gone on loving their neighbor — that is, each other — they would not have believed the serpent’s persuasion, and so would not have committed murder on themselves by cutting themselves off from immortality when they broke God’s command. They would have kept clear of theft as well, if they had not secretly tasted the fruit of the tree, nor been anxious to skulk under a tree out of the sight of the Lord their God. They would not have been made partners of the devil, who swears to what is false, by believing him when he said they would be “like God.” And so they would not have insulted God as their Father either — the God who had shaped them out of the clay of the earth as though out of a mother’s womb. If they had not coveted what belonged to another, they would not have tasted the forbidden fruit.

So in this general and original law of God, whose keeping he attached to the fruit of the tree, we recognize that all the particular commands of the later Law were already enclosed, and that they germinated when they were disclosed at their proper times. Bringing a law in afterward is the work of the same one who laid down a command before, since the one who had already resolved to form righteous creatures is also the one whose business it is to train them afterward. What is surprising about a man carrying a discipline further, when he is the one who set it up — or about his taking a thing forward, when he is the one who began it?

In short: before the Law of Moses, written on tablets of stone, I maintain that there was an unwritten law, understood by nature as a matter of course, and habitually kept by the fathers. How else was Noah “found righteous,” if the righteousness of a natural law had not come first in his case? How else was Abraham reckoned “a friend of God,” if not on the ground of fairness and righteousness under a natural law? How else was Melchizedek named “priest of the Most High God,” if before the priesthood of the Levitical law there were no Levites who used to offer sacrifices to God? For it was after the patriarchs just named that the Law was given to Moses, at that well-known time after their exodus from Egypt, once an interval of four hundred years had passed. In fact it was after Abraham’s “four hundred and thirty years” that the Law was given.

From this we understand that God’s law was older even than Moses, and was not first given at Horeb, nor at Sinai and in the desert, but is more ancient: it existed first in the garden, was afterward reformed for the patriarchs, and so again for the Jews, at definite periods. We are not, then, to attend to the Law of Moses as if it were the primitive law, but as a later one, which at a definite time God set forth to the nations too, and which — after promising over and over through the prophets that he would — he has reformed for the better. He gave warning beforehand that it would turn out this way: that just as “the law was given through Moses” at a definite time, so it should be believed to have been observed and kept only for a time. And let us not cancel this power God has, which reforms the law’s commands to answer the circumstances of the times, with a view to human salvation.

Finally: let the man who argues that the sabbath is still to be kept as a remedy that saves, and circumcision performed on the eighth day because death is threatened otherwise, show us that in the time gone by righteous men kept the sabbath, or practiced circumcision, and were made “friends of God” that way. For if circumcision cleanses a man — God made Adam uncircumcised; why did he not circumcise him even after he had sinned, if circumcision cleanses? At any rate, in settling him in the garden, he appointed an uncircumcised man as the garden’s tenant.

So then: since God brought Adam into being uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, his offspring Abel too, offering him sacrifices uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, was commended by him; for he accepted what Abel was offering in simplicity of heart, and rejected the sacrifice of his brother Cain, who was not rightly dividing what he offered. Noah as well, uncircumcised — yes, and not keeping the sabbath — God freed from the flood. Enoch too, a most righteous man, uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, he moved out of this world; and Enoch has not yet tasted death, so that, as a candidate for eternity, he might by now show us that we also may please God without the burden of the law of Moses. Melchizedek too, “the priest of the Most High God,” uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, was chosen for the priesthood of God. And Lot, Abraham’s brother, proves that it was for the merits of righteousness, with no keeping of the law at all, that he was freed from the burning of the men of Sodom.

“But Abraham was circumcised.” Yes — but he pleased God before his circumcision, and he did not keep the sabbath either. He had “received” circumcision, but as something that was to be “a sign” of that time, not a title of privilege for salvation. In fact the patriarchs who came later were uncircumcised, like Melchizedek, who was uncircumcised when he brought out bread and wine to Abraham himself, already circumcised, as he came back from the battle. [v]

“But again: the son of Moses would once have been choked to death by an angel, if Zipporah had not cut off the infant’s foreskin with a stone. So there is the greatest danger if anyone fails to circumcise the foreskin of his flesh.”

On the contrary. If circumcision brought salvation at all, Moses himself would not have failed to circumcise his own son on the eighth day; whereas it is agreed that Zipporah did it on the journey, forced to it by the angel. So let us consider that one single infant’s compulsory circumcision cannot have laid down a rule for every people, and founded something like a law for keeping this command. God foresaw that he was about to give this circumcision to the people of Israel for “a sign,” not for salvation, and he pressed for the circumcision of the son of Moses, their future leader, for this reason: since he had begun, through Moses, to give the People the command of circumcision, the people were not to think lightly of it after seeing an example of neglect already on conspicuous display in their leader’s son.

Circumcision had to be given — but as “a sign,” by which Israel in the last time would have to be marked out, when, as they deserved, they would be barred from entering the holy city. We see this through the words of the prophets, who say: “Your land is a desert; your cities burned to the ground with fire; your country, right in front of you, strangers will eat up; and, deserted and overthrown by foreign peoples, the daughter of Zion will be left behind, like a shed in a vineyard, like a watchman’s hut in a cucumber field, like a city being stormed.”

Why so? Because the prophet’s discourse goes on to reproach them, saying: “Sons I have fathered and brought up, but they have rejected me.” And again: “If you stretch out your hands, I will turn my face away from you; and if you multiply prayers, I will not hear you — for your hands are full of blood.” And again: “Woe, sinful nation! A people full of sins, wicked sons. You have quite forsaken God, and provoked the Holy One of Israel to indignation.”

This, then, was God’s foresight: to give circumcision to Israel for a sign by which they might be marked out when the time arrived in which what they had just been charged with would forbid their admission into Jerusalem. Because it was going to happen, it used to be announced; and because we see it accomplished, we recognize it. For just as the circumcision of the flesh, which was temporary, was worked in as “a sign” on a stubborn people, so the circumcision of the spirit has been given for salvation to an obedient people. Jeremiah the prophet says: “Make a fresh start for yourselves, and do not sow among thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart.” And in another place he says: “Look, days are coming, says the Lord, and I will draw up a new covenant for the house of Judah and for the house of Jacob — not the one I once gave their fathers on the day when I led them out of the land of Egypt.”

From this we understand that two things are announced: the coming end of the former circumcision then given, and the coming issue of a new law, unlike the one he had already given to the fathers. Isaiah foretold the same, saying that in the last days the mountain of the Lord and the house of God were to be made plain above the tops of the mountains: “And it will be raised high above the hills; and all nations will come over it; and many will walk, and will say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob.”

Not of Esau, the elder son, but of Jacob, the second — that is, of our “people,” whose “mountain” is Christ, “cut out without the hands of any cutter, filling every land,” as the book of Daniel shows. And in the words that follow, Isaiah announces the coming issue of a new law out of this “house of the God of Jacob”: “For out of Zion a law will go out, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem, and it will judge among the nations” — that is, among us, who have been called out of the nations — “and they will join to beat their swords into ploughs, and their lances into sickles; and nation will not take up a sword against nation, and they will learn to fight no more.”

Who else, then, are meant but we, who have been fully taught by the new law and keep these practices — the old law being wiped out, the coming of whose abolition the act itself demonstrates? For the old law’s habit was to avenge itself by the vengeance of the sword, to pluck out “eye for eye,” and to inflict retaliation for an injury. But the new law’s habit is to point to leniency, to turn the old ferocity of “swords” and “lances” into quietness, and to remodel the old business of “war” against the law’s rivals and enemies into the peaceable work of ploughing and tilling the land.

So, just as we showed above that the coming end of the old law and of the circumcision of the flesh was declared, so too the keeping of the new law and the circumcision of the spirit has shone out in the willing obedience of peace. “A people I did not know,” he says, “has served me; at the hearing of the ear it obeyed me.” The prophets made the announcement. But what is this “people” that did not know God, if not ours, who in days gone by did not know God? And who gave heed to him at the hearing of the ear, if not we, who left the idols and turned to God?

For Israel — who had been known to God, and had been “brought up” by him in Egypt, and was carried through the Red Sea, and in the desert was fed forty years with manna, and was shaped into a likeness of eternity, untouched by human decay, not fed on the food of this age but on “the bread of angels,” which is the manna, and bound to God tightly enough by his benefits — forgot his Lord and God, saying to Aaron: “Make us gods to go ahead of us; for that Moses, who threw us out of the land of Egypt, has quite forsaken us, and what has become of him we do not know.”

And so we, who “were not the people of God” in days gone by, have been made his people, by accepting the new law spoken of above and the new circumcision foretold long since.