Morality in OT vs NT

[jesusmademe]

In the OT it seems that God allowed men to live with two women. When Jesus came suddenly this wasnt allowed anymore. Some people say that people were different in the OT days then in the NT but…just take a look at the news on telly and people dont seem to have changed.
How does the Church view this?

 

[stpurl]

Actually, you’re over-generalizing and over-simplifying.

God ‘allows’ many things in that if, for example, somebody shot a bullet and killed you (a mortal sin), God Himself wouldn’t be causing you to be killed (that would be on the person who murdered you) but allowing that person’s free will (in killing you) to occur. Since physics postulate that a bullet’s trajectory into a person’s body if said bullet hits a vital organ and causes that failure, resulting in death, God is ‘allowing’ the action of the law of physics to pretty much ‘follow the law’.

So yes, in the OT there were quite a few cultural practices that God allowed to exist based on the ‘free will’ of persons. He didn’t just decide that “OK, here’s David, married once, now he’s marrying somebody else, the law of the universe is if that happens, he goes up in smoke” because that isn’t what normally happens if a person goes through two, three, or more marriage ceremonies. It’s not the same as physics.

BUT God did tell the people even then what marriage SHOULD be. Because people were ‘hard of heart’, He even allowed them to have secular laws that permitted two wives, or divorce, because the ‘real law’ was there, and He hoped people would come ‘on their own’ to see how badly their ‘secular laws’ worked out. And they did work out badly.

And when Jesus came to fulfill the law He simply told them what God had already said in the OT, and why He had ‘allowed’ difference, and how badly it had worked, and what they SHOULD do (which is what God had said all along, one man/one woman, till death do they part).

Thing is, people are still ignoring him.

God’s morality didn’t change from OT to NT, and things weren’t OK with Him in one century and ‘not OK’ in another.

 

[Wesrock]

Marriage was established as one man and one woman with Adam and Eve. Through sin, the spread of cultural degeneracy, and other such things, God permitted future generations to have polygamy due to the hardness of people’s hearts, similar to how Jesus says certificates of divorce were given due to the hardness of men’s hearts, but that is not what God intends for marriage. The expectation was raised over time to help people attain to the true meaning of marriage again.

[Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one.

 

[jesusmademe]

I think people often ask: today the Church does not allow a man who live with two women to recieve communion. NT condemns but OT dont.
This my experiemce.
According to Pater Mitch Pacwa people were different in the OT times (they were barbarians).
But I argue that people havent changed a bit just becasue of the Incarnation.
I say, people didnt change but God’s way of teaching changed.

The argument is often that people has matutred but according to the news on telly this is not correct at all. How can Mitch Pacwa use this as an argument or did I missunderstand?

How could a saint accept and live polygamy? Didnt the prophets saints have many women? How could they live what was not God’s intention and still be called saints? I you dont live in according.to God’s intentions today you will never be called a saint. I am confused.

 

[Dan_Defender]

‘He said to them, "For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.’ - Matt 19:8

 

[Richca]

The people and the Israelites in OT times were human beings just like us so in this respect we are no different than them. The ancient Israelites worshiped the true God and they also had the moral precepts and commandments of the Law God gave them for right and virtuous living. Those Israelites who observed the Law in the OT were good and holy people which as you say cannot be said for many of the people of today. Jesus said that he came not to destroy the Law but to fulfill it and that whoever breaks one of the least commandments of the Law and teaches others to do the same shall be called least in the Kingdom of God. So, in regard to the moral precepts of the Old Law such as the Ten Commandments, christians are under the same obligation of fulfilling these as were the OT Israelites. Jesus perfected the Old Law by directing it to the internal acts of the mind and heart and not just to external actions and so it is said in a certain fashion that the Old Law restrained the hand but not the will. Jesus also perfected the Old Law by conferring the grace and other supernatural gifts to keep it, such as the institution of the sacraments of the Church, as St John says that the Law came from Moses but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.

Today at Mass, the responsorial psalm was from psalm 19 “The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul…”. Perfect in a sense and in substance as it were in its moral precepts (the Ten Commandments) but imperfect in another sense for the reasons given above and also as the Old Law looked forward to the coming of Jesus Christ who perfected it just as the figure of what is to come is not the reality accomplished in Jesus Christ. The recitation of the psalms are a part of the divine liturgy of the Church in the Liturgy of the Hours. They are very beautiful and a number of them are said to be composed by King David himself. They are all divinely inspired by God as is the whole Bible. The psalms reveal the holiness of their human authors, their faith and trust in God and plea for help and deliverance in the myriad circumstances of human life in which we all can relate, sorrow for sin and the battle against evil and sin, and the praise of God.

In the OT, God permitted polygamy by it seems a dispensation from the natural law for various reasons but he did not command it. With the coming of Jesus and the perfection of the Divine Law which includes the natural law, Jesus brought back the perfection of marriage which is a monogamous relationship between one man and one woman as he said ‘have you not read that from the beginning, God created them male and female and therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and the two shall become one flesh, so they are no longer two but one flesh’.

 

[Richca]

(continued)

Various of the ancient patriarchs had more than one wife yet they were good, virtuous, and holy people as even Jesus mentions them dining in the Kingdom of God and other NT writers. God’s chosen people were founded on the patriarchs and through which Jesus came in the flesh. Abraham went into Hagar as Sarah was barren. Jacob had two wives and David had a number of them. God called David a man after his own heart. Moses was called the most meek man on the face of the earth. The hardness of heart Jesus mentions was about the bill of divorce Moses permitted not about the number of wives some of the patriarchs had. The holy patriarchs who had more than one wife did not put any of them away by divorcing them as far as I know. Actually, I don’t think very many people are mentioned among the Israelites of the OT who had more than one wife and it probably would have been more common among the wealthy who could afford it and not among the poorer people. I’m not sure any of the prophets of the prophetical writings had more than one wife if any or it may not just be mentioned whether they had a wife or not.

 

[Vico]

,

Jesus raised matrimony of the baptised to a sacrament and through that it acquired a special firmness by reason of the sacrament.
Latin canon law:

Can. 1055 §1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized.
§2. For this reason, a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament.
Can. 1056 The essential properties of marriage are unity and indissolubility, which in Christian marriage obtain a special firmness by reason of the sacrament.

 

[stpurl]

I thought you were asking for guidance about what the Church taught, not about what’s on the telly, what you think, or even your interpretation of what Father Mitch Pacwa said which you disagree with (I am not going to even try to discuss anything based on what you ‘say’ Father Pacwa said which is simply’ people were different in olden times’, six words completely without a context). So yes, I think you did misunderstand. Your understanding of saints and the whole teaching is not correct based on what you said in the post I’m responding to, but if you’ll try reading (English isn’t your first language, is it? That’s all right, no criticism, I’m sure) through perhaps some of the articles here in the library (look up saints, polygamy, etc.) which might be easier than listening to a person without the chance to stop and check up on words or go back and re-read something confusing) will help make it clear to you.

 

[jesusmademe]

I read English without a problem.
So we the people didnt change? God just deal with us in a different way now when we have the sacraments?
On the other hand, we have the annulment process today. We were not made for living with many women so Jesus gave us help eg annulment. He just dealt with it in a different when they had no sacrament?
Is this a correct way of understsnding it?

 

[stpurl]

Actually, no. Again, you have a lot of misunderstandings apparently. That isn’t surprising, there are a lot of people who comment (even church leaders) and who do so correctly in many cases but, because the people reading what is said have an imperfect knowledge, they misunderstand.

God does not ‘deal with us in a different way’ in the sense that He had different rules for good for humans living at one time than He does now, such that:
In 1000 B.C. God thought it fine for men to have many wives.
in AD 33, Jesus tells us “only one wife from now on”.

People living in different times have different understanding of God’s teachings.

And it’s not always the case that people living ‘now’ are better informed, either.

Look at abortion. In many parts of the world abortion is known and has been known to be a great evil, both before and after Jesus came to earth. Even 50 years ago here in the U.S. it was a great evil and had not just God’s moral law but secular law against it.

Now, abortion is ‘the law of the land’ (secular). So whose understanding of the evil abortion is better, the poor barely literate people of the U.S. frontier 150 years ago, who knew the evil of abortion as evil, or the smart, literate, cultured, incredibly sympathetic people of today who are oh-so-concerned about the mother and dismiss the child as a blob?

Annulments aren’t "Catholic divorce’ and the whole POINT (which Jesus gave) is that back when He appeared to those scribes and Pharisees, many of them were living with their 2nd, 3rd, 4th wives etc having divorced their true wives. So when Jesus talked about separation due to ‘lewd conduct’, He meant, "You who have abandoned your wives and married another or others must separate yourselves from those women you have wrongly attempted to marry when you were not free to do so by God’s law.

As for the people who lived ‘before’, in having more than one wife they were morally wrong. We are all sinners, right? But since they had leaders who themselves made errors in allowing legal divorce, those people aren’t as much ‘at fault’ as those who now have no excuse for NOT knowing God’s will.

Will there still be people who are Catholic and claim that it’s ‘ok’ to be divorced and remarried, just as they did in Moses’ time? Sure. People are still free to make errors and go against God’s teaching. Will you find even priests who agree with these people? Sure. Priests aren’t infallible.

Does that make the teachings wrong? Nope.