 The Tripartite Distinction of the Law by Drake Shelton Part 1 After speaking to men at the Clifton Baptist Church here in Louisville, Ky and after reading The Gospel Coalition's Justin Taylor on the Tripartite Division and Andy Nasseli's Carson: “Mystery and Fulfillment I found it pertinent to write something on this issue. It is popular among the patrons of Southern Baptist Seminary here in Louisville, Ky to proclaim themselves "Reformed" while rejecting some of the fundamental articles of Reformed Theology as a whole. I have spoken to a number of people here who think they are Reformed because they believe in Unconditional Election. I know of none here in Louisville who practice the Regulative Principle of Worship and after speaking with Clifton Baptist Church's Oren Martin, I learn that Tom Schreiner and DA Carson reject the Tripartite Distinction of the Law. Lions and Tigers and Bears, right? The four questions then for the reader are these: 1. Is the Tripartite distinction scriptural? 2. Does Carson understand the Tripartite distinction in Scripture and as it is applied in Christian Theology historically, before he criticizes it? 3. Does Carson provide scriptural or logical warrant for Christians to abandon the Tripartite distinction? 4. Does Carson provide a consistent alternative to the Tripartite? Justin Taylor has written an article in an expose' of this rejection and I wanted to address his quotation from DA Carson: DA Carson says, "In short, the problem with the tripartite division of law, which as a device for explaining continuity and discontinuity between the Testaments, goes back to Thomas Aquinas,* is that it attempts to construct an a priori grid to sort out what parts of the law Christians must keep or do, and holds that Paul must have adopted some such grid, even if he does not explicitly identify it. If instead we adhere more closely to Pauline terminology in this regard, we may still usefully speak of the tripartitc division from an a posteriori perspective: after we have observe the patterns of continuities and discontinuities that Paul establishes, those old covenant laws which Christians “fulfill” in a fashion most closely aligned with their function within the old covenant may safely be labeled “moral,” without fear that an a priori definition is domesticating Paul’s thought. This is not to deny that one can find the tripartite distinction in Origen, Jerome, and others. But Thomas was the one who fleshed out the tripartite structure as the fundamental basis for establishing the lines of continuity and discontinuity between the Testaments. (p. 429)" http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/09/27/on-the-tripartite-division-of-the-law/
The following quotes are from Tertullian in Schaff's, Ante Nicene Fathers Volume 3 [http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf03]
Tertullian An Answer to the Jews: The Law Anterior to Moses “I contend that there was a law unwritten, which was habitually understood naturally, and by the fathers was habitually kept. For whence was Noah “found righteous” if in his case the righteousness of a natural law had not preceded? Whence was Abraham accounted “a friend of God,” if not on the ground of equity and righteousness, (in the observance) of a natural law? Whence was Melchizedek named “priest of the most high God if, before the priesthood of the Levitical law, there were not levites who were wont to offer sacrifices to God? For thus, after the above-mentioned patriarchs, was the Law given to Moses, at that (well-known) time after their exode from Egypt, after the interval and spaces of four hundred years. In fact, it was after Abraham’s “four hundred and thirty years” that the Law was given. Whence we understand that God’s law was anterior even to Moses, and was not first (given) in Horeb, nor in Sinai and in the desert, but was more ancient; (existing) first in paradise, subsequently reformed for the patriarchs, and so again for the Jews, at definite periods: so that we are not to give heed to Moses’ Law as to the primitive law, but as to a subsequent, which at a definite period God has set forth to the Gentiles too and, after repeatedly promising so to do through the prophets, has reformed for the better;” Of Sacrifices “From this proceeding we gather that the twofold sacrifices of “the peoples” were even from the very beginning foreshown. In short, when the sacerdotal law was being drawn up, through Moses, in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to the people of Israel that sacrifices should in no other place be offered to God than in the land of promise; which the Lord God was about to give to “the people” Israel and to their brethren, in order that, on Israel’s introduction thither, there should there be celebrated sacrifices and holocausts, as well for sins as for souls; and nowhere else but in the holy land.” Tertullian, Against Marcian, Book 2 Trace God’s Government in History and in His Precepts and You Will find it Full of His Goodness
[http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1406.htm] 6.2 "2. Augustine replied: How and for what purpose the Old Testament is received by the heirs of the New Testament has been already explained. But as the remarks of Faustus were then about the promises of the Old Testament, and now he speaks of the precepts, I reply that he displays ignorance of the difference between moral and symbolic precepts. For example, "You shall not covet" is a moral precept; "You shall circumcise every male on the eighth day" is a symbolic precept. From not making this distinction, the Manichæans, and all who find fault with the writings of the Old Testament, not seeing that whatever observance God appointed for the former dispensation was a shadow of future things, because these observances are now discontinued, condemn them, though no doubt what is unsuitable now was perfectly suitable then as prefiguring the things now revealed. In this they contradict the apostle who says, "All these things happened to them for an example, and they were written for our learning, on whom the end of the world has come." 1 Corinthians 10:6 The apostle here explains why these writings are to be received, and why it is no longer necessary to continue the symbolic observances. For when he says, "They were written for our learning," he clearly shows that we should be very diligent in reading and in discovering the meaning of the Old Testament Scriptures, and that we should have great veneration for them, since it was for us that they were written. Again, when he says, "They are our examples," and "these things happened to them for an example," he shows that, now that the things themselves are clearly revealed, the observance of the actions by which these things were prefigured is no longer binding. So he says elsewhere, "Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon or of the sabbath-days, which are a shadow of things to come." Colossians 2:16-17 Here also, when he says, "Let no one judge you" in these things, he shows that we are no longer bound to observe them. And when he says, "which are a shadow of things to come," he explains how these observances were binding at the time when the things fully disclosed to us were symbolized by these shadows of future things.”
10.2 "Augustine replied: Faustus is not ashamed to repeat the same nonsense again and again. But it is tiresome to repeat the same answers, though it is to repeat truth. What Faustus says here has already been answered. But if a Jew asks me why I profess to believe the Old Testament while I do not observe its precepts, my reply is this: The moral precepts of the law are observed by Christians; the symbolic precepts were properly observed during the time that the things now revealed were prefigured. Accordingly, those observances, which I regard as no longer binding, I still look upon as a testimony, as I do also the carnal promises from which the Old Testament derives its name. For although the gospel teaches me to hope for eternal blessings, I also find a confirmation of the gospel in those things which "happened to them for an example, and were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world have come." So much for our answer to the Jews. And now we have something to say to the Manichæans." Aquinas in Summa 2.6.99.3 and 2.6.99.4 is simply repeating an ancient established article of Christian Theology. Second, Carson implies that we are using an isogetical approach to interpret Paul with no scriptural warrant when he posits that we have an apriori assumption interpreting Paul. I reject this and assert that these distinctions were in the Old Testament. The Threefold Division of the Law by Jonathan Bayes is an excellent article on this issue. Bayes says of the Old Testament evidence for the Tripartite Distinction, "We take as our starting point the words of Samuel to Saul in I Samuel 15:22: LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams. Has the These words are echoed by Hosea 6:6, where God protests: I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings, The same sentiment appears also in Proverbs 21:3: LORD than sacrifice. To do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. Such verses give the lie to Jakob Jocz’s assertion that ‘the division between the strictly moral and the ‘ceremonial’ in our sense was entirely unknown to the Jews’. Here are affirmations both of the distinction between the moral and the ceremonial law and of the primacy of the former. The Proverbs text, with its dual reference to ‘righteousness and justice’ probably indicates the further analysis of the former part of the law into both strictly moral and civil components. These verses also teach the primacy of the moral law and its civil application over the ceremonial. This was a theme which was to become dominant in the writings of the prophets. Alec Motyer summarises the prophetic message as follows: 'The nation has missed the divine priority by its concentration on the mere operation of a cult, for the cult is not a thing which exists on its own but rather for the sake of the spiritual needs of a people committed to the moral law of God.' This prophetic concern may be illustrated by reference to a number of passages. In Isaiah 1:11-17 God denounces the sacrifices as purposeless. He has had enough of them, and finds no delight in them. The reason is the uncleanness of the people. The solution to the distastefulness of the sacrificial ritual is not its abolition, but rather that the people should: 'Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.' Fastidiousness in ceremonial observation is invalidated unless it goes hand-in-hand with obedience to the moral law and its social application in the civil law. Later, in Isaiah 43:22-24, we find God complaining that it is not to Him that Israel has brought its numerous sacrifices; He has remained unsatisfied. The reason is that their sins have become a wearisome burden to the Lord. The words ‘sins’ and ‘iniquities’ used in verse 24 clearly have moral and social connotations in this context, where compliance with the LORD’S ceremonial requirements alone is insufficient to count as obedience to the law. In similar vein, Jeremiah 6:19-20 gives God’s pronouncement of impending calamity on the people ‘because they have not heeded my words, nor my law, but rejected it’. This is not a complaint against a failure in ceremonial observation, because the LORD immediately refers to their burnt offerings and sacrifices. However, their law-breaking makes these unacceptable. Clearly here, ‘law’ refers to ethical demand in distinction from the ritual requirements, which have been carefully followed: ‘Ritual performances divorced from a proper moral attitude are worthless in God’s sight.’22 Amos, too takes up this theme 'Though you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. them, nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.' The word ‘fattened’ seems designed to highlight the people’s ardour in observance of these ceremonial requirements. However, they are of no avail, because justice and righteousness are missing (Amos 5:22-24). God’s moral requirements, and their application to civil society, are paramount. Micah 6:6-8 makes the same point:
'To a generation preoccupied with things ceremonial to the neglect of weightier matters of the law, Micah needs to bring a counterstress on the impact of the covenant upon all of life’s concerns. … To keep Yahweh confined in a gilded cultic cage was a travesty of faith in a moral God.23'
Perhaps all this may be summed up by the statement of Proverbs 15:8: ‘The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD.’ The same emphasis is found in the words of the Psalmist. Psalm 40:6 reads: 'Sacrifice and offering you did not desire; ... burnt offering and sin offering you did not require.' The explanation of this apparent rejection of God’s ceremonial instructions is that it is the person who delights to do God’s will because his law is written in the heart who genuinely fulfils his will. If we must emphasise one or the other, the moral demands of God must always take precedence over the ritual." pg. 11-13 Therefore, it may be true that we read Paul assuming upon this distinction, but this is because it is taught in the Old Testamtent. In Andy Nasseli's Carson: “Mystery and Fulfillment”, he quotes Carson, "So the problem is this: How can the very things that are said, on the one hand, to be predicted in the past and now fulfilled [e.g., the OT's testifying to Jesus' death and resurrection and what flows from that], be said, on the other, to be hidden in the past and only now, in the fullness of time, revealed? On the surface, at least, the former polarity envisages certain kinds of continuity; the latter presupposes discontinuity (397–98)." Carson's alleged problem is the same issue that Owen dealt with in Hebrews 11 of those who in vs. 13 "died in faith, without receiving the promises", yet in vs. 17 " had received the promises." Which one is it? John Owen commenting on Hebrews 11: 13-18 says, "3. That which he denies concerning them, is the receiving of the promise: " They received not the promise." And what promise this was we must inquire. (1.) It is affirmed of Abraham, that " he received the promise," verse 17. And that promise which was given, which was made unto him, is declared by the apostle to be the great fundamental promise of the gospel, Heb. 1l 13-18; the same promise which is the object of the faith of the church in all ages. Whereas, therefore, it is said here that " they received not the promise," the promise formally considered, as a promise, must in the first place be intended; and in the latter it is considered materially, as unto the thing itself promised. The promise, as a faithful engagement of future good, they received; but the good thing itself was not in their days exhibited. (2.) Some say, the promise here intended is the promise of eternal life. Hereof, they say, believers under the old testament had no promise; none made unto them, none believed by them. So judgeth Schlichtingius; who is forsaken herein by Grotius and his follower. But this we have before rejected, and the folly of the imagination hath been sufficiently detected. (3.) Others, as these two mentioned, fix on such an account of the promise as I would not say I cannot understand, but that I am -sure enough they did not understand themselves, nor what they intended ; though they did so as to what they disallowed. So one of them explains, or rather involves himself, on verse 40, after he had referred this promise which they received not unto deliverance from their persecutors: " God having determined this as the most congruous time, in his wisdom, to give the utmost completion to all those prophecies and promises, to send the Messiah into the world, and, as a consequent of his resurrection from the dead, to grant us those privileges and advantages that the fathers had not enjoyed,— a rest after long persecution, a victory over all opposers of Christ's church; that so what was promised unto Abraham's seed, Gen. xxii. 17, that "they should possess the gates of their enemies," being but imperfectly fulfilled to the fathers, might have the utmost completion in the victory and flourishing of the Christian faith over all the enemies thereof." Besides what is insinuated about the effects of Christ's mediation, or consequent of his resurrection,—which whose shop it comes from we well know,—the promise here intended is expounded not to be the promise made to Abraham, which it was, but that made to his seed, of victory over all their enemies in this world; which, as it seems, they received not, because it was not completely fulfilled towards them, but is to be so unto the Christian church in the conquest of all their adversaries. And this in the verse foregoing is called a deliverance from their persecutors. But whatever this promise be, the apostle is positive that they did not receive it, but that the Christians or believers in Christ in those days had received it But we know, that not only then, but nearly three hundred years after, Christians were more exposed to persecutions than ever the church of the Jews was; and so did less receive that promise, if any such there were, than they. Something is indeed interposed about the coming of Christ, further to cloud the business; but this is referred only unto the time and season of the accomplishment of this promise, not unto the promise itself. Wherefore such paraphrases are suited only to lead the mind of the readers from a due consideration of the design of the Holy Ghost (4.) It is therefore not only untrue and unsafe, but contrary unto the fundamental principles of our religion, the faith of Christians in all ages, and the design of the apostle in this whole epistle, to interpret this promise of any thing but that of the coming of Christ in the flesh, of his accomplishment of the work of our redemption, with the unspeakable privileges and advantages that the church received thereby. That this promise was made unto the elders from the beginning of the world; that it was not actually accomplished unto them, being necessarily confined unto one season, called " the fulness of time," only they had by faith the benefit of it communicated unto them; and that herein lies the great difference of the two states of the church, that under the old testament, and that under the new, with the prerogative of the latter above the former; are such sacred truths, that without an acknowledgment of them, nothing of the Old Testament or the New can be rightly understood. This, then, was the state of believers under the old testament, as it is here represented unto us by the apostle: They had the promise of the exhibition of Christ, the Son of God, in the flesh, for the redemption of the church. This promise they received, saw afar off as to its actual accomplishment, were persuaded of the truth of it, and embraced it, verse 13. The actual accomplishment of it they desired, longed for, looked after and expected, Luke x. 24; inquiring diligently into the grace of God contained therein, 1 Pet. i. 10, 11. Hereby they enjoyed the benefits of it, even as we, Acts xv. 11. Howbeit they received it not as unto its actual accomplishment in the coming of Christ. And the reason hereof the apostle gives in the next verse." pg. 213-214, Works, Volume 24 There is no problem here. The Old Covenant promises were of salvation and concealed to the OT believer in types and shadows, i.e. unexhibited, but to us in the NT these SAME PROMISES are presented to us in their fullness. That is, we have the substance of these shadows and types with all of the deeds and actions of the Jesus the Messiah. So Abraham had received the promises of the gospel unexhibited, but had not received the promises exhibited. Methinks Owen's explanation is right on point in the context of the whole Chapter and with Redemptive History and posits a strong unity in the covenants.
The NT Arguments for the Tripartite Distinction 1. 1 Cor 7:19 Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God. However, if our opponents are correct this statement makes no sense. He could not distinguish circumcision from “the commandments of God” if there was no moral and ceremonial distinction. The fact is God did command circumcision, but Paul here refers to the moral law as “the commandments of God” and circumcision as ceremonial. 2. Rom 2:25 For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. 26 So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? 27And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? The point is the same here. How could Paul distinguish circumcision from the commandments of God if there was no moral and ceremonial distinction? 3. Mat 12:3 But He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions, 4 how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone? Calvin says, “Have you not read what David did? First, David, .) While David was fleeing from the rage of Saul, he applied for provisions to the high-priest Ahimelech; and there being no ordinary food at hand, he succeeded in obtaining a part of the holy bread. If David’s necessity excused him, the same argument ought to be admitted in the case of others. Hence it follows, that the ceremonies of the Law are not violated where there is no infringement of godliness.1 Samuel 21:6 “ If there is no distinction the allowance does not make any sense. David broke a ceremonial law to obey a moral one.
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