The Final Law and Covenant

“It makes no difference to me whether Plato held such views, or Pythagoras, or, quite simply, anyone else at all. The truth is as I say, and you can learn it from this. The soul either is life, or it has life. If it is life, then it would make something else live and not itself, just as motion moves something other than itself. That the soul lives, no one would deny. But if it lives, it does not live by being life; it lives by sharing in life. And whatever shares in something is one thing, and the thing it shares in is another. The soul shares in life because God wants it to live. [a]

“So in the same way there will come a time when it does not share in life at all — whenever God does not want it to live. Living is not the soul’s own property, the way it is God’s. A man does not last forever, and the body is not joined to the soul forever: when this harmony has to be broken up, the soul leaves the body, and the man no longer exists. It is the same when the soul must stop existing. The life-giving spirit departs from it, and the soul is no more; it too goes back again to the place it was taken from.”

“Then whom should a person still take as a teacher,” I said, “or where can anyone get help, if the truth is not even in these men?” [c]

“Long ago there were certain men, older than all of these who pass for philosophers — men who were blessed and righteous and loved by God. They spoke by the divine Spirit and foretold what was to come, which is happening now. They are called prophets. They alone both saw the truth and said it out loud to people. They feared no one and were shamed into silence by no one, and they were not beaten by the love of reputation. They said only what they heard and what they saw, filled with the Holy Spirit.

“Their writings are still with us today, and anyone who reads them is helped a great deal — about first beginnings and about the end, and about the things a philosopher ought to know — provided he has trusted them. They did not build their words on proof, since they were witnesses to the truth who stood above every proof and deserved to be believed; and what has already happened, and what is happening now, forces you to agree with what was spoken through them.

“Even so, they also deserved to be believed for the powerful acts they performed, since they gave glory to God the maker of all things, the Father, and announced his Son, the Christ who comes from him. The false prophets, filled with the unclean spirit of error, have never done that and do not do it. They dare to work certain powerful acts to astound people, and they give glory to the spirits of error and to demons. Above everything else, pray that the gates of light may be opened for you. These things cannot be seen or understood by everyone — only by the person to whom God and his Christ have granted understanding.”

He said this and much else besides, which there is no time to go into now, and then he went away, telling me to pursue these things. I never saw him again. But a fire was kindled in my soul at once, and a love took hold of me for the prophets and for those men who are friends of Christ. As I turned his words over in my own mind, I found this to be the only philosophy that is safe and worth having. [g]

That is how, and that is why, I am a philosopher. And I would want everyone to make the same resolve I made, and not to stand off from the words of the Savior. There is something in them that makes a man afraid, and they are enough to shame anyone who has turned off the straight road, while the sweetest rest comes to those who work at them. So if you have any concern for yourself, and you are laying claim to salvation, and you trust in God — and none of this is foreign to you — then, once you have come to know the Christ of God and have become complete, it is open to you to be happy.

When I had said this, my dear friend, the men with Trypho burst out laughing; but he himself gave a slight smile and said: “The rest of what you say I accept, and I admire the drive in you toward what is divine. But it would have been better for you to go on doing philosophy — Plato’s, or someone else’s — training yourself in steadfastness and self-control and moderation, than to be taken in by false words and to follow men who are worth nothing. If you had stayed in that way of philosophy and lived blamelessly, some hope of a better lot would have been left to you. But now that you have abandoned God and set your hope on a man, what salvation is left for you?

“So if you are willing to listen to me too — for I already count you a friend — first be circumcised. Then keep the sabbath, as the custom is, and the feasts and the new moons of God; in short, do everything written in the law, and then perhaps God will have mercy on you. As for Christ — even if he has been born and is somewhere — he is unknown, and does not yet even know himself, and has no power at all, until Elijah comes and anoints him and makes him plain to everyone. You people have taken up an empty rumor and molded a Christ of your own, and for his sake you are throwing your lives away for nothing.”

“You have my pardon, sir,” I said, “and may you be forgiven. You do not know what you are saying. You have been talked into it by teachers who do not understand the scriptures, and you speak like a diviner, saying whatever comes into your head. But if you are willing to hear an account of him — how we have not been led astray, and will not stop confessing him, even if men heap insults on us, even if the most terrible tyrant forces us to deny him — then I will show you, right where you stand, that we have not trusted empty myths or arguments without proof, but words full of the divine Spirit, overflowing with power and in full bloom with grace.” [k]

Again the men with him laughed out loud and shouted things that were out of place. I stood up and was ready to leave, but he took hold of my cloak and said he would not let go until I had finished what I promised. “Then your friends must not make an uproar,” I said, “or behave so disgracefully. If they want to, let them listen quietly; and if some more pressing business is in their way, let them go. As for us, let us withdraw somewhere, sit down and rest, and finish the discussion.”

Trypho thought we should do this too, so we turned aside and went to the middle track of the Xystus. Two of the men with him jeered and made fun of how much in earnest we were, and left. When we came to the place where there are stone benches on both sides, the men with Trypho sat down on one of them, and one of them brought up the war in Judea; and they talked it over among themselves.

When they had finished, I began with them again like this. “Is there anything else you blame us for, friends, besides this — that we do not live by the law, that we are not circumcised in the flesh as your ancestors were, and that we do not keep the sabbath as you do? Or are our lives and our character slandered among you as well? This is what I mean: have you too believed about us that we eat human beings, and that after the feast we put out the lamps and roll about in forbidden couplings? Or is this the only thing you condemn us for — that we hold to teachings like these and believe an opinion that you think is untrue?” [m]

Trypho said: “That is what amazes us. What the crowd says is not worth believing; it is a long way from human nature. And I know that the commands in what you call the Gospel are so remarkable and so great that I suppose no one can keep them — for I took the trouble to read them.

“But here is what puzzles us most. You say you are devout and think you are better than everyone else, and yet in nothing are you set apart from them; you do not make your way of life any different from the nations’, since you keep neither the feasts nor the sabbaths and you do not have circumcision. And on top of that, you rest your hopes on a man who was crucified, and still you expect to get something good from God, when you do not do his commands. Have you not read this? ‘That soul shall be cut off from its people, whoever is not circumcised on the eighth day.’ And the same has been laid down for foreigners and for men bought with silver.

“So you have thought nothing of this covenant from the start, and you neglect what follows from it, and you try to persuade us that you know God — while you do none of the things that people who fear God do. If you can make a defense on these points, and show in what way you hope for anything at all while not keeping the law, we would be very glad indeed to hear it; and then let us look into the other questions together in the same way.”

There will never be another God, Trypho — this is how I answered him — and there never was one from the beginning of the age, except the one who made this whole universe and set it in order. We do not think there is one God for us and another for you. It is that very God who brought your fathers out of the land of Egypt with a strong hand and an uplifted arm. We have not set our hope on anyone else, since there is no one else, but on the same one you have: the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. But we did not come to that hope through Moses or through the law. If we had, we would be doing the same as you. [p]

But now — for I have read, Trypho, that there would be a final law, and a covenant with more authority than all the rest, one that everyone must now keep, everyone who lays claim to God’s inheritance. The law given at Horeb is old by now, and it belongs to you alone; this one belongs to everybody without exception. A law laid down against a law puts an end to the one before it, and a covenant made later brings the earlier one to a stop in the same way. And Christ has been given to us as an everlasting and final law, and as the trustworthy covenant, after which there is no law, no decree, no command.

Or have you not read this, which Isaiah says? “Listen to me, listen to me, my people; and you kings, give ear to me. For a law will go out from me, and my judgment as a light for the nations. My righteousness comes near quickly, and my salvation will go out, and the nations will set their hope on my arm.” And through Jeremiah he speaks this way about this same new covenant: “Look, days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not the covenant I made with their fathers, on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.”

So God announced that a new covenant was going to be established, and that it would be a light for the nations. And we see, and are convinced, that through the name of that crucified Jesus Christ people have come to God, leaving their idols and the rest of their wrongdoing behind, and that they hold to their confession and their reverence for God right up to death. From the works, and from the power that goes along with them, anyone can understand that he is the new law and the new covenant and the expectation of those from every nation who wait for the good things that come from God.

For we are the true Israelite people, the spiritual one — the family of Judah and Jacob and Isaac and Abraham, the man God bore witness to for his faith while he was still uncircumcised, and blessed, and called the father of many nations. We are the ones who have been brought to God through this crucified Christ, as will be shown as our discussion goes forward.

I went on, and brought this forward as well: that in another passage Isaiah cries out, “Listen to my words, and your soul will live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you — the holy things of David that are sure. Look, I have given him as a witness to the nations. Nations that do not know you will call on you; peoples that do not understand you will run to you for refuge, because of your God, the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you.” [s]

This is the very law you dishonored, and his new holy covenant you treated as worthless; and even now you do not accept it, and you do not repent, though you have done wrong. For your ears are still stopped up, your eyes are blinded, and the heart has grown thick. Jeremiah has cried out, and even so you do not listen. The lawgiver is here, and you do not see him. Good news is announced to the poor, the blind see — and you do not understand.

By now there is need of a second circumcision, and you think a great deal of yourselves over the flesh. The new law wants you to keep sabbath all the time, and you, idle for a single day, suppose you are devout, without grasping why it was commanded you; and if you eat unleavened bread you say God’s will has been fulfilled. The Lord our God does not take pleasure in things like these. If there is a perjurer or a thief among you, let him stop. If there is an adulterer, let him repent — and he has kept the delightful and true sabbaths of God. If anyone’s hands are not clean, let him wash, and he is clean.

For Isaiah was certainly not sending you to a bathhouse to wash off murder and your other sins there — sins that all the water of the sea could not make clean. As you would expect, this was, long ago, that saving washing he spoke of: the washing for those who repent and are no longer cleansed by the blood of goats and sheep, or by the ashes of a heifer, or by offerings of fine flour, but by faith, through the blood of Christ and through his death. That is why he died, as Isaiah himself said, speaking this way: [v]

“The Lord will bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the nations and the ends of the earth will see the salvation that comes from God. Depart, depart, depart, go out from there and touch nothing unclean. Go out from her midst; set yourselves apart, you who carry the vessels of the Lord, for you are not going out in confusion. For the Lord will go before your face, and the one who gathers you is the Lord, the God of Israel. Look, my servant will understand, and he will be lifted high and greatly glorified.

“Just as many will be astonished at you, so your appearance and your glory will lose their honor before people — and so many nations will marvel at him, and kings will shut their mouths; for those who were told nothing about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced him before him like a little child, like a root in thirsty ground. He has no form and no glory. We saw him, and he had no form or beauty; his form was without honor, falling short of the sons of men. He was a man under a blow, one who knew how to bear sickness; and because his face was turned away, he was dishonored, and we thought nothing of him. This is the one who bears our sins and is in pain for us, and we counted him to be in trouble and under a blow and in misery.

“But he was wounded because of our sins and made sick because of our lawless acts. The discipline that brought our peace was on him; by his bruise we were healed. All of us went astray like sheep; each man went astray in his own way. And the Lord handed him over for our sins, and because he was being mistreated he does not open his mouth. He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb that is silent before the one who shears it, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away. And who will tell of his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth; because of the lawless acts of my people he has come to death. And I will give the wicked in exchange for his burial, and the rich in exchange for his death, because he did nothing lawless and no deceit was found in his mouth. And the Lord wants to cleanse him of the blow. If you give an offering for sin, your soul will see long-lived offspring.

“And the Lord wants to take away the trouble of his soul, to show him light, and to shape him in understanding, to count righteous the righteous one who serves many well. And he will carry up our sins. That is why he will inherit many and will divide the spoils of the strong — because his soul was handed over to death, and he was counted among the lawless, and he carried up the sins of many and was handed over because of their lawless acts.

“Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear; break out and shout, you who do not go into labor, for the children of the deserted woman are more than the children of the woman who has a husband. For the Lord said: Widen the space of your tent and of your curtains; drive in the stakes, do not hold back; lengthen your ropes and make your pegs strong; spread out to the right and to the left. Your offspring will inherit nations, and you will settle cities that have been left desolate.

“Do not be afraid because you were put to shame, and do not be humiliated because you were insulted; for you will forget your lasting shame, and you will not remember the reproach of your widowhood. For the Lord has made a name for himself, and the one who rescued you — he, the God of Israel — will be called that in all the earth. The Lord has called you like a woman abandoned and faint of heart, like a woman hated from her youth.”