St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology (Jul 2023)
Law in the New Testament
Abstract
This article explores the theme of law in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Law is almost ubiquitous in the twenty-seven books comprising the New Testament, being a main theme in the letters of Paul and several Gospels, as well as parts of Acts and the Catholic letters. In these sources, ‘law’ almost always signifies the law of Moses, that is, the Torah or Pentateuch, which is to be expected because most of the books comprising the New Testament were written by ancient Jews, for most of whom the law of Moses was holy scripture par excellence. But the apostolic message of the death and resurrection of Christ had, and still has, an ambiguous relation to the law of Moses. Christ is usually reckoned to be, in some sense, the fulfilment or end of the law, but whether it follows that the law is therefore abolished, superseded, or otherwise set aside is a point of dispute within the New Testament itself and, relatedly, in the long tradition of Christian theology and ethics. This article surveys all the New Testament texts that expressly discuss law: Paul first and foremost, then Hebrews, James, Matthew, Luke-Acts, and John. The article concludes by considering the challenge of law in Christian theology. The non-Marcionite church’s decision in favour of a two-testament Christian Bible built this problematic into the canon itself. Christ may be ‘the end of the law’, but this has certainly not prevented Christian theologians – any more than it did the apostles themselves – from using the law to think with.
