A depiction of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus commented on the Old Covenant. Painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch, Danish painter, d. 1890.

The Mosaic covenant or Law of Moses, which Christians generally call the "Old Covenant" (in contrast to the New Covenant), played an important role in the origins of Christianity and has occasioned serious dispute and controversy since the beginnings of Christianity: note for example Jesus' teaching of the Law during his Sermon on the Mount and the circumcision controversy in early Christianity.

Rabbinic Jews[1] assert that Moses presented the Jewish religious laws to the Jewish people and that those laws do not apply to Gentiles (including Christians), with the exception of the Seven Laws of Noah, which (according to Rabbinic teachings) apply to all people.

Most Christians (including Catholics, Lutherans and Reformed Christians) believe that of the Old Covenant, only parts dealing with the moral law (as opposed to ceremonial law) are still applicable (cf. covenant theology),[2][3][4][5] a minority believe that none apply (cf. dispensationalism), and dual-covenant theologians believe that the Old Covenant remains valid only for Jews. Messianic Jews hold the view that all parts still apply to believers in Jesus and in the New Covenant.

Catholic and Orthodox views

Catholic

The Ten Commandments on a monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol which includes: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy".

Theologian Thomas Aquinas explained that there are three types of biblical precepts: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. He holds that moral precepts are permanent, having held even before the Law was given, since they are part of the law of nature.[5] Ceremonial precepts (the "ceremonial law", dealing with forms of worshiping God and with ritual cleanness) and judicial precepts (such as those in Exodus 21)[6] came into existence only with the Law of Moses[5] and were only temporary. The ceremonial commands were "ordained to the Divine worship for that particular time and to the foreshadowing of Christ".[7] Accordingly, upon the coming of Christ they ceased to bind,[8] and to observe them now would, Aquinas thought, be equivalent to declaring falsely that Christ has not yet come, for Christians a mortal sin.[8]

However, while the judicial laws ceased to bind with the advent of Christ, it was not a mortal sin to enforce them. Aquinas says, "If a sovereign were to order these judicial precepts to be observed in his kingdom, he would not sin."[9] Although Aquinas believed the specifics of the Old Testament judicial laws were no longer binding, he taught that the judicial precepts contained universal principles of justice that reflected natural law. Thus some scholars refer to his views on government as "General Equity Theonomy".[10][date missing]

Unlike the ceremonial and judicial precepts, moral commands continue to bind, and are summed up in the Ten Commandments (though the assigning of the weekly holiday to Saturday is ceremonial). The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the Decalogue.

— St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 4, 15, 1: PG 7/1, 1012.

  • ...
  • Since they express man's fundamental duties towards God and towards his neighbour, the Ten Commandments reveal, in their primordial content, grave obligations. They are fundamentally immutable, and they oblige always and everywhere. No one can dispense from them. The Ten Commandments are engraved by God in the human heart.[11]

    • The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the Apostles[12] instituted the religious celebration of Sunday without transferring to it the ceremonial obligations associated with the Jewish Sabbath,[note 1] although later some of these obligations became attached to Sunday, not without opposition within the Church.[13] The Roman Catholic Church thus applies to Sunday, the Lord's Day, the Third Commandment.[note 2]