Law, System, & Life-world

I’ve been working on a post for the last few weeks which looks the law in the Old Testament and considers some reason why greater attention isn’t being paid to some of the Old Testament books of the law in the Church today (at pew level) . There seems to be some incredibly valuable material there in the Levitical codes which a number of scholars have unpacked especially in the area of economics. (See for example Paul William’s wonderful talk over at the regent workplace) Generally in the pews of the church thought I don’t see too many Bible studies being done on Leviticus or Numbers.

Working through the issues has been slow going so it might be a while before I have something I’m ready to put out for people to read. In the mean time I thought I would throw out a very suggestive quote from Anthony Thiselton’s large and very dense volume “New Horizons in Hermeneutics”. Thiselton, drawing on the socio-critical theory of Habermas and John Rogersons and their work on systems and life-world writes:

“The human life-world of interactive communication is seen theologically as corporately fallible and structurally flawed by self-interest. Co-Operative interaction need not always be for good, by may serve corporate self-interest. On the other hand Paul sees the law simultaneously as fulfilling two systemic functions. On the one hand, it serves as an external transcendental value-frame, providing a critique of the human life-world. In this respect “if it had not been for the law, I should not have known sin” (Rom 7:7); i.e. my relation to sin would have remained at a pre-critical narrative level. “the law is holy… just and good” (Rom. 7:12); for it constitutes a necessary transcendental critical system. On the other hand, the system of law provokes conflict with the human life-world: “Apart from the law, sin lies dead… but when the commandment came, sin revived…The very commandment which promised life proved to be death to me” (Rom. 7:8-10).

In the face of this self-defeating, though necessary, system, Paul expounds the different basis and effects of the principle of grace which brings about new integration and new creation of the “one” (2 Cor 5:17). Repeatedly this is seen in terms of “freedom” from the system of the law (Rom 8:2; Gal 5:1). But this is not (as in a non-Pauline Pelagian view of freedom) a freedom to construct any kind of life-world. It is a creative transformation of the human life-world which brings about orrespondence through the Holy Sprit between the eschatological system of divine love and purpose and the corporate life-world of communicative interaction that is in the process of moving from mis-match to match. Whereas under the law, human life-world and legal system became split apart, divine grace does not destroy what the system represents, but integrates system and life-world within a new, transformed, whole. Herein lies the healing newness of the gospel as universal whole.” (p. 392-3 emphasis original)