What is law?

In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas wrote that “law is a rule and measure of acts, according to which someone is led to act or to refrain from acting: law [lex] comes from ‘binding’ [ligando], because it obligates to act.”1 This was not exactly a revolutionary idea. It was consistent with the early church fathers and, we will argue, with Scripture itself. All it means is that law has a rational cause, a rational end, and therefore a rational character through and through. We might shorthand our definition by saying that law commands what we ought and forbids its opposite. But these words — “command” and “forbid” — are these just blind forces of material nature acting upon animals? Are they stimuli that cause fear or occasionally an impulse to reward? Is that all?

If so, then it is not clear what would be meant by “right” or “wrong.” In what sense could one be “disobedient” to a law if all law was nothing but material stimuli? There would be no way to argue that one “ought” to obey stimuli A over stimuli B, and yet all humans would be acting according to some stimuli (some law). There could be no real difference between praiseworthy obedience and blameworthy disobedience.

At any rate, the three key words here will be command and imperative and obligation. The first is what law does, the second is the form of speech this represents, and the third is what follows.

What does the law assume?

We all know what an assumption is. It is something that we are not presently thinking of, but which must be true if the thing we are thinking of is true. It is the idea behind the idea. Our biggest assumptions are sometimes called presuppositions. They have to do with what kind of a world this is in general. In our present study we will want to ask: What kind of a world is this that law would exist in it? And if we are under any obligation of law, then what does this say about the kind of beings we are? So law assumes a particular view of the world and of man’s place in the world.

The existence of law assumes that this world is a kind of moral stage and that human beings are like moral actors. The law is a kind of script for him to follow. But unlike the props and other scenery on the stage, this moral actor can actually deviate from the script.

When we speak of scientific laws we are speaking of something that describes. The law of gravity tells us how objects in fact behave. But the law of love tells us how persons ought to behave, whether they do behave that way or not.

Another definition of law that we could give is “God’s will for us.” As we get deeper into theology, however, this definition brings up more difficulties. There are various senses of God’s will. There is his will of decree and his will of permission. But when we are speaking of a law of God we are speaking of a kind of moral expectation: something God would have us do in order to better reflect his character. So Question 39 of the Shorter Catechism asks: “What is the duty which God requireth of man?” Duty is a synonym for obligation. The answer is this: “The duty which God requireth of man is obedience to his revealed will.”

All human morality presupposes that we have an obligation to an Ultimate Person. An ultimate standard by itself would not do. Nor would a finite person do, even if he was a very moral person. If the ultimate cause of the law were impersonal, then there is no reason, no design, no intention. On the other hand, if the person behind the law is not also an ultimate standard then there is no reason why the thing commanded by the person is right.

Now this is not to endorse what is called Divine Command Theory (DCT) in ethics. That a rule is right because God says so is actually not all that meets the eye in this theory. This comes to mean that God can “say so” or “desire so,” well, just so. In short, this theory of ethics, which looks at first to be out of reverence for divine sovereignty actually pits God’s will against God’s essence as a whole. DCT is a logical consequence of the theology of voluntarism, which views the world as a product of God’s will rather than as possessing an objective nature. The voluntarist sees objective nature as something that “binds” God. Nonsense! Against voluntarism and DCT, we assert realism and Natural Law Theory. Contrary to popular misconception, for God to create the world and command the moral actor according to objective natures does not bind him to some alien set of standards, but He himself is that standard! God has an objective “nature,” or way that he is. All else is what it is because of what it says about God.

Are there different kinds of law?

The majority Christian tradition has agreed that there is an eternal law, a divine law, a natural law, and a civil law. The exact meaning of these terms may not be so obvious at first glance. At the risk of oversimplification, but for a good cause, we could put things in the following way.

Kind of law Location of Law

eternal law God’s justice in himself

Divine law God’s law in Scripture

Natural law God’s law in nature

Civil law man’s law in government

Aquinas called “human law” what we are calling civil, but it is obvious enough from the context that this is what he means. As we are going to see, natural law is very closely associated with something we will introduce next time called the moral law.

The basic difference is that while natural law is God’s duties to all mankind in general, we call “the moral law” that aspect of the law of Moses — revealed specially to the ancient Jews — that says the same thing as the natural law. It just says it more specific to God’s purposes with Israel.

So when the Catechism asks (Q.4o) “What did God at first reveal to man for the rule of his obedience?” it means by “first” that original stock that made up the entire human race. It is not simply talking about Israelites but all human beings. And yet the Puritans who wrote the confession used the term moral law in their answer as being of the same substance as natural law. So, “The rule which God at first revealed to man for his obedience was the moral law.”

In the generations following those Puritans, the term “light of nature” was increasingly used in the place of natural law. In some ways, this was because that the concept of “natural law” was already beginning to be distorted by theologians and jurists within the Arminian camp in Holland, most notably by Hugo Grotius (1583 - 1645). The new suggestion was that since God spoke both in nature and in Scripture (which all classical theologians held), and since man is willing by nature toward virtue and blessing (which Augustinian theologians denied), a ‘natural law’ held within it the seeds of an untarnished and inevitable social justice.

Since the law of God is rooted in his holy character, the law concerns equity. That means what is due to people. This is the real “fairness doctrine.” This equality before the law is manifest in natural law and civil law: “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you” (Ex. 12:49). That there is an eternal law is shown in the biblical rationale for the people’s conformity. At the very heart of the Levitical code is the command:

For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy (Lev. 11:44-45).

The reason given for the people’s holiness was God’s holiness. The whole of the law is what it is because of what it says about God. The commands to men are like copies of the attributes of God. That makes sense because the audience of those commands are like copies of God. They are his images (Gen. 1:26-27): faint analogies to be sure, but reflections of the divine nonetheless. But while the personal image is a moving descriptive copy of God, the commandments to that image are imperative copies of God. They command into action that which tells the truth about some divine perfection, and they forbid from the theater any deviation from the mind of the Scriptwriter.

What is Meant by Three Forms of the Law?

In the Bible the word “law” is used in various ways. In Hebrew torah (תּוֹרָה) may be used to mean the whole of God’s word, the “teaching” or “instruction,” the specific genre in the Hebrew canon where the law is introduced, or else simply the imperatives that come through the Mosaic administration.

When theologians speak of the “three forms” of the law, what they ordinarily have in mind is the division of the law of Moses — 1. moral law; 2. ceremonial law; 3. civil law. We should define our terms carefully about this.

The ‘moral law’ refers to that sense of the will of God that all human beings have in the form of conscience. It is the law given to human beings as moral agents.

For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them (Rom. 2:14-15).

That is the law for all mankind. And yet we speak of the moral law within the law of Moses, the law given specifically to the Jews. Question 41 of the Catechism asks, “Wherein is the moral law summarily comprehended?” Answer: “The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments.” If such had already been given in the conscience of all, why such an inscripturated moral law? Calvin answers that it “removes the obscurity of the law of nature.”2

The ‘ceremonial law’ is that body of rules dictating Israel’s worship. Rules for priests, sacrifices and offerings, the feast days, and then the exact architecture of the tabernacle while in the wilderness, and finally the temple, once in the land. All of this says something about God. But then so do the dictates of the moral and civil law. Here there is a clearer drama of the gospel. As the author of Hebrews said: “They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (8:5), and even more specifically,

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near (10:1).

It is in the ceremony, Calvin tells us, that the covenant of grace with God’s people is shown to still be moving along toward Jesus: “Moses was not appointed as Lawgiver, to do away with the blessing promised to the race of Abraham; no we see that he is constantly reminding the Jews of the free covenant which had been made with their fathers, and of which they were heirs.”3

The designation ‘civil law’ was already introduced as a synonym for “human law,” as Aquinas used that latter term. Here we will mean the same thing, except that the context is now the Mosaic instruction to the leadership of Israel’s theocratic government. While the civil law is for human use, yet in this case (because it is divine law), they are not of human origin. These are God's imperatives for civil society. In this class of laws we might think of all of the unpacking of Commandments Five through Ten that occur in the following chapters of Exodus. These deal with murderers and adulterers, thieves and false witnesses.

Understanding the three forms of the law goes a long way toward explaining the sense in which we “are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). Listen to Calvin again on this point, “What Paul says, as to the abrogation of the Law, evidently applies not to the Law itself, but merely to its power of constraining the conscience.”4 There will be more clues about this as we proceed.

Does the Bible Clearly Teach that there are Three Forms of the Law?

The short answer is yes. However it does not teach it by giving us the same express words that we have just seen. The Scriptures divide up the duties of God’s people in three basic areas of their life. We have to use our minds to process the rationale. Some would point to the structure of some of the Pentateuch. For example Deuteronomy 5 gives us the moral law, restating the Ten Commandments, whereas chapters 6 through 31 draw out diverse aspects of that law. We have already cited Romans 2:14-15 in order to define the moral law. But we should take a closer look at why Paul’s words here demand the distinction between the moral law and the rest of the law of Moses.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others (Mat. 23:23).

Some parts of the law “weigh” more than others. But the ones that carry more weight are the attributes of God and not the items that the wealthier religious leaders could find in abundance on their spice racks. In other words, being like God takes deep moral reflection and courage. That makes it equally hard for everyone. It both levels the playing field between rich and poor in this world, and it forces everyone to always take inventory of their hearts (not that spice rack!). Now it is true that the words “ceremonial” and “moral” are not used here. Just as the word “Trinity” is nowhere found. Rational beings are not searching for mere ink patterns but for meaning. Consider this clue from the book of Hebrews.

For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well (Heb. 7:12).

Note first the immediate reason that there is a “change in the law.” There has been a change in the priesthood. The overall context of that New Testament book will make that quite clear. Christ has abolished what we might call shadow atoning sacrifices. He has not abolished ethical behavior, whether in the public square (civil law) or in general (moral law).

Some will say that love is sufficient as an alternative to the commandments. But that is not what verses about love being the sum of the law mean. Another clue passage is where Paul says, “neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God” (1 Cor 7:19). Here we see that “commandments” is in the plural — i. e. not simply reducible to the singular act of “love” — and that keeping these commandments is what is contrasted to the end of the ceremonial law. In other words, Paul sees the end of the ceremonial law to co-exist with the continuation of other larger portions of the law. This is an impossible statement unless there is the very division we have set forth.

Note also the higher reason given that the ceremonial shadows fade — they are insufficient and imperfect. But Dabney remarks of the moral law that it “could not be completed, because it is as perfect as God, of whose character it is the impress and transcript. It cannot be abrogated or relaxed, because it is as immutable as He.”5 We see that this is the case of truths of logic; it is time we see it of the truths of morality. The one is right thinking, the other is right action — and these reflect the divine thought and action respectively.

Vern Poythress is right to point out that our divisions here should not be too rigid.

The most important reason to allow flexibility — as well as multiple perspectives in toward each commandment — is that all three forms ultimately typify Christ. No commandments come with “special terminology neatly separating ceremonial and moral” and yet “Some laws do express divine standards in a universally binding way, while others are adapted in one way or another to special circumstances in Israel.”6

This is true, but I also find it to be understated. We are able to take things to another level of discernment.

The Logic (or Spirit) of the Three Forms of the Law

In 2 Corinthians 3, the Apostle Paul says that he is a minister “not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (v. 6). As the passage progresses there is a distinction made between the Jews in Paul’s day who read Moses with a “veil” over their hearts and minds, and a more spiritual reading. The implication is not that the letter of the law is bad in itself, but that there is an unspiritual reading by which that letter kills. In short, they missed its point.

This idea that the spirit of the law means its rational intent has influenced all subsequent Western law. We even see it in titles to classic works like Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws. But the idea is also a matter of common sense, as “there is always more in the requirements and prohibitions of the Law than is expressed in words.”7

Charles Hodge gives the most concise way of showing the difference between that which constitutes moral law and that which does not. These moral laws are “those which are founded on the permanent relations of men in their present state of existence … They are founded on the nature of things.”8 By contrast the priesthood foreshadows Christ’s work of atonement: the mediation between God and man of meritorious work. That mediation is only accomplished by Christ.

There is a thornier question than distinguishing between the three as to their identity. That is when we must choose between them in determining which is the right thing to do. Hodge continues, “It is often difficult to determine to which of the last two classes certain laws of the Old Testament belong; and therefore to decide whether they are still obligatory or not.” Moreover, “they differ in their relative dignity and importance. Hence when they come into conflict the lower must yield to the higher.”9 He cites two sayings of our Lord to make the point: “I desire mercy and not a sacrifice” (Mat. 9:13) and “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mk. 2:27).

This same question becomes more controversial when the question is how to apply any of these laws to modern society. However this is not as difficult as many people think. In the first place, it is the historical circumstance, and therefore much of the application, that is now irrelevant. But the spirit of the moral law may be called “general equity.” In other words, that which is due per se. The specifics will vary in time and place. But the principle of right and wrong remains.

In other words, when an Israelite was commanded something like “You shall make a lampstand of pure gold” (Ex. 25:31), he was being commanded as an Israelite. The duty had an “Israelite-shaped” character, because Israel had a “worship-assembly-shaped” character. They were God’s kingdom of priests. Non-Israelites do not bear that character in the same redemptive-historical setting.

What is fulfilled can also be seen in what is now forbidden with the coming of Christ. Which is forbidden us — submitting ourselves under a priesthood (Priest) or under a teacher (Prophet) or under a government (King)? The answer is crystal clear; and so are the implications which follow. It is not that Christ does not fulfill all three offices of Israel and therefore all three corresponding human needs. It is that the way that he fulfills the ceremony of the priests is fundamentally different than the way that he fulfills the need to hear truth in a teaching office or to maintain peace in a civil office. There is a clarifying logic and spirit to the difference between the ceremonial form and the other two.

An all-important footnote should be made at this point. That the ceremonial law was fulfilled in a radical way, in the sense of “root” (radux) way, more so than the other two forms does not imply the principle of equal ultimacy. There is an extent to which the civil law was also fulfilled in the work of Christ, at his first coming, since his resurrection was followed by his ascension to the throne. Christ rules as a consequence, and portion, of the First Advent, and thus the theocracy of old Israel is as obsolete as the old priesthood. Thus the letter of that civil law is abrogated. However, such laws teach us via the spirit of the law.

We are not stuck with the simple-minded choice between a Reconstructionist Theonomy and an Anabaptist-like recasting of otherwise historic Two Kingdom thinking. The one is a historical monism, the other an ethical pluralism. Both are beneath the dignity of thinking Christians. There is a third way: the biblical way. The majority, historic Christian position in the West. To put it another way, the old civil law informs subsequent civil justice without replicating the law of Israel as to immediate audience, application and circumstance. This again is called the general equity principle. And it was originally the classical Reformed position.

Biblical ethics flows from the image of God to the people of God to the coming of the Word of God. As to his divinity, there is only one kingdom (Psa. 24:1). As to the story that flows from left to right, with its war between the two seeds (Gen. 3:15), there are two kingdoms. Thus the Son rules all as God, and is head over the church as Christ. But his meditatorial reign over the church (Col. 1:18) is no license to water down his reign over the whole of the secular (Mat. 28:18). And his law to respect the image is all-encompassing.

A most clear demonstration of this may be found in Genesis 9:5-6. God gives the reason in the text itself for why murder is punishable by death.

From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

“Whoever sheds the blood of man,

by man shall his blood be shed,

for God made man in his own image.

Why is the sixth commandment (for example) both moral law and Mosaic? It is that all men were made in God’s image. Murder is not violent against a Jew without first being violent against a human being, as the Jew was first a Gentile. How easily we forget, or perhaps never consider the implications of the fact, that God invented the Jew. He did so by calling Abram out of the non-Jewish population. Before Abraham there was no Jewish population. The law was given to man as man. It was not until the priesthood was assembled at Sinai that the ceremonial law took its shape. Its shape was their shape. All that is outside of that shape is already human-shaped. The Jew was not invented to distort that shape but to refine it and her Messiah to redeem it.

There is an important sense in which all of the ceremonial law and all of the civil law are inside of the moral law. The three are distinguished, but not divorced. Once we understand what is meant by the “spirit of the law,” we will be in a better position to see this. Every divine law in Scripture, as well as every just human law, shares predicates (attributes) with the eternal law of God. We will remember the statement of Martin Luther King Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, that “A just law is a law that conforms to the law of God Almighty.” For anyone who has never read that letter, King quotes Aquinas along the lines of his four-fold distinction of the law. So, a just human law is seen to be just in how it conforms to that justice which transcends all human laws.

How so? The answer is that the attributes of such a law are just as a reflection of the eternal justice of God. Once we grasp this, we are ready to move to the next step. What made for a good ceremonial law or civil law in ancient Israel? Nothing or something? If nothing, then it was not good; and if good then there was something Good for it to be good about. Hence every law has a moral character. Even those things which seem most senseless and obsolete, like not eating unclean foods, are commanded for a reason in God (cf. Lev. 11:44-45).

Some may object to this because it may seem to erase the distinction between natural and positive law. Positive law is a term used to denote those commands of God that are arbitrary, at least with respect to our ability to know the reason for them. In such a case, God did not give the command according to the nature of the thing, but by will alone. So to collapse the whole law into its “moral” nature would seem to imply that there is no such thing as “positive law” in God’s commandments. To see more clearly the reservation, consider this logical argument:

No moral law is positive law.

All the Mosaic laws are moral law.

∴ No Mosaic laws are positive law.

The whole thing looks fishy, and yet this is a perfectly valid syllogism as far as it goes. However, note that it assumes that moral law equals natural law in every sense. Valid though its form may be, it is unsound. There is a problem in both premises. Premise 1 commits the fallacy of equivocation. The sense in which the term “moral” stands for “natural” (and thus opposes “positive”) is not the same sense in which the term “moral” is a general predicate for any just law: and all of God’s laws are just! So there is a vast difference between affirming the “moral aspect” of the ceremonial laws and denying the distinction between them and the “moral law.” Premise 2 states it as if the two are equivalent. They are not. A better way to say all of this could be:

All the Mosaic laws find their logic (their spirit) in the moral law. And that is only another way to say that all the Mosaic laws have a moral quality, or, some principle of righteousness that excels the circumstances of their observance, or their “letter.”

The distinction between positive law and natural law is proper ethics. As a statement of metaphysics, on the other hand, it may lead to error. Did God really ever command a thing for no reason? Or when we assert God’s will against either 1. the inherent nature of the thing or 2. our knowledge of that nature, is it not the case that God still commanded according to something in his nature, his reason, forever hidden though it may be? Thus the distinction between natural law and positive law must be confined to a relative distinction of ethics.

There are ten commandments, or “ten words” (deca logoi), that summarize the moral law of God. This explains why the terms “Ten Commandments” and “Decalogue” have endured. These commandments are divided differently by the Jews, as to number and exact rationale, as well as by the Roman Church and the Protestant churches. But if anyone wishes to quibble with the special place of these in the Law, the Scripture itself is given: “And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” (Ex. 34:28).10

The Belgic Confession (Chapter 25) perfectly summarizes form, fulfillment, and use in this way.

“We believe, that the ceremonies and figures of the law ceased at the coming of Christ, and that all the shadows are accomplished; so that the use of them must be abolished amongst Christian; yet the truth and substance of them remain with us in Jesus Christ, in whom they have their completion. In the meantime, we still use the testimonies taken out of the law and the prophets, to confirm us in the doctrine of the gospel, and to regulate our life in all honesty, to the glory of God, according to his will.”

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1. Thomas Aquinas. Selected Writings. New York: Penguin, 1998. 613

2. John Calvin. Institutes. II.8.1

3. Calvin. Institutes. II.7.1

4. Calvin. Institutes. II.7.15

5. R. L. Dabney. Systematic Theology. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002. 357

6. Vern Poythress. The Shadows of Christ in the Law of Moses. Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991. 101

7. Calvin. Institutes. II.8.8

8. Charles Hodge. Systematic Theology. III.19.1

9. Hodge. Systematic Theology. III.19.1

10. cf. Deuteronomy 4:13, 10:4 for the same phrase.