Walker Percy Interviews Himself

I'm already on a big and annoying Walker Percy kick, so why not keep it up a bit more?  This is from a longer post at Mockingbird.  Walker Percy interviewed himself.  Here is part of the exchange.
 
Q: I don’t understand. Would you exclude, for example, scientific humanism as a rational and honorable alternative?

A: Yes.

Q: Why?

A: It’s not good enough.

Q: Why not?

A: This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less. I don’t see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him.

Q: Grabbed aholt?

A: A Louisiana expression.

Peter Kreeft on Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos

Back in the 90s Peter Kreeft gave a talk at the C.S. Lewis Institute where he discussed C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man and compared it to Walker Percy's magnificent mock self-help book Lost in the Cosmos. Since I recently finished Percy's book, I was greatly interested in what Kreeft might have had to say.

At on point, Kreeft half-jokes with his audience that, in his opinion, Western Civilization could be saved if everyone read six books:

1. Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy
2. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
3. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
4. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
5. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
6. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

In the talk, Kreeft makes a strong case that the first two books form the preconditions for the other six, and Huxley's book shows us what a future full of "men without chests" would really look like. This talk may actually make Percy readers out of many of you, and it is a really tremendous discussion, and it comes with my highest recommendations. Since reading The Moviegoer and Lost in the Cosmos I have begun reading Percy's book Love in the Ruins, which envisions a dystopian future full of "men without chests" where humanity is trying to find its way out of the rubble. I'm only still in the first chapter, but it is a great book with perhaps the greatest opening sentence I've ever read in any novel.

NOW IN THESE DREAD LATTER DAYS of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last?

You can download Kreeft's talk in mp3 format here.

Free Geerhardus Vos eBook for Kindle

The Doctrine of the Covenant in Reformed Theology by Geerhardus Vos has been made available for free at Monergism for download in Kindle format. Even the first paragraph is a gem:

At present there is general agreement that the doctrine of the covenants is a peculiarly Reformed doctrine. It emerged in Reformed theology where it was assured of a permanent place and in a way that has also remained confined within these bounds. It is true that towards the end of the seventeenth century this doctrine was taken over by several Lutheran theologians,2 but this apparently took place by way of imitation, the doctrine being unknown within the genuine Lutheran framework. With the Reformed theologians, on the other hand, its emergence occurs in the period of richest development. With full force it lays hold of theological thinking, which in many cases it bends in a distinctive direction.

Get it here.

A Tribute to my Uncle Jerry

My family growing up was Christian. It was my father who kept our family's religious commitments together. When my father had a downtime spiritually, we would go weeks (months?) without attending church. When my father was feeling reinvigorated, we would find a new church and stick with it for a long time. I am quite convinced that my father was the spiritual center of my family, and even though he was a profoundly imperfect man, he still loved God and prayed for his children. He brought us up the best he could, and he sought to share his love for God with me as well.

When I was about 14 or 15, I had an experience at church camp where I was essentially forced to speak in tongues and I subsequently faked it because of the pressure that was put on me. After that experience, I drifted from God and became a self-styled atheist and skeptic. Around 17 or so, I started to study cosmology and history, eventually I devoted my life to Jesus and came back to the Church.

It was during these early and formative stages of my life that my Uncle Jerry came in and played a very important role in my spiritual development. Early on, during my atheist years, Uncle Jerry and I bonded over our love of Michael Crichton's technothrillers such as Sphere, Jurassic Park, and The Terminal Man. I felt him a kindred spirit who loved science and truth as much as I did. He was not an atheist like me, however. After I became a believer, the first thing that I remember my Uncle doing was that he gave me a book by J.I. Packer, Knowing God. I read the book, and it became basic and formative for me in my understanding of who God is and why He should matter to me. Every book that I read was built upon the foundation of Knowing God, and I have my Uncle Jerry to thank for laying that foundation by encouraging me to follow God, and not simply experiences of God. My father was much more experiential and charismatic in his spirituality. He loved to sing worship songs and to travel around to churches providing the special music in the middle of the service. In this respect, I am a near opposite of my father. Whereas my father was highly emotional and open to "movements of the Spirit," I am a skeptic by nature and distrust experience for the most part.

It is because of these differences between my father and I that this book from my Uncle was of such value. I was used to seeing authors like John Bevere and Bob Larson around which emphasized defeating the devil and overcoming demonic forces. What I found in Packer's writings was an emphasis on God Himself - the person of God. The next book, which I still read to this day, is John Stott's book Authentic Christianity, which is a collection of extended quotes from Stott. As before, this book took me to the next level in my commitment to God - yet in a way that did not primarily emphasize experience. I was grateful for the God-centeredness of Packer and Stott. I didn't know it yet, but it was the God of Packer and Stott which I was missing in my Free Methodist theological education I was getting. It was only years later when I found the writings of R.C. Sproul did I once again recognize the great and sovereign God which I had first encountered in the writings of these two books.

Throughout my life, my Uncle has been a spiritual inspiration to me, and I will never forget the special interest which he seemed to take in me during those formative and important years of my life. I only hope that when my nieces and nephews are at the right age, their uncle Adam will be remembered as a blessing and not as a nuisance (history is against me on that one, though!).

More Tree of Life FUN!

[The Tree of Life comes to DVD and Blu-Ray on October 11th]

Rushdoonsbury Gets Some Attention

The last week has been either completely embarrassing or very exciting for Theonomists of their various stripes. When has the mainstream media ever even uttered the name R.J. Rushdoony in the past, after all? On the other hand, do Theonomists even want the MSM to talk about their views? You have, however, some very measured and careful thoughts from Ross Douthat, who doesn't appear to see a terrifying threat on the horizon. On the other hand, you have people like Michelle Goldberg who think that Theonomy is some sort of secret cult-like conspiracy that is endemic to the right.

My interest is not in contributing to the political discussion since we here at Bring the Books do not identify ourselves with Theonomy in any sense. The fact is that our Two Kingdoms approach is no political threat to whatever nation we as Christians live in because the assumption is that we are to be in this world, wherever we find ourselves, to plant vineyards, to build houses, and to pray for the King, wherever we find outselves. Theonomists (R1Kers, you might call them) do not teach the terrifying things that Goldberg thinks they do, but their views are indeed a real threat to democracy-loving social libertarians - I don't think that can be denied. The defense that I keep seeing from Theonomists is that this transformation will happen via legitimate democratic political mechanisms and will come about because of mass conversions and not by a seizure of force. However, even if that is exactly what happens, not everyone who lives under this newly envisioned theocracy is going to be happy about it. They would live under it, but not willingly.

The threat that is felt nationwide at the mention of something as creepy-sounding as Dominionism or Theonomy is certainly an over-reaction. However, I would suggest that there is a seed of truth, and it causes one to pause and reflect - do our political ideals as Christians line up with Jesus when he said that His kingdom was a spiritual kingdom that is emphatically NOT "of this world," or are we building a kingdom of this world that even the staunchest secularists can see we are jockeying for control of?

Open Message to Derek Webb: Flea Stole Your Bass Part

Now Derek, I know you're not the litigious type. But if you were, you could probably receive enough royalties from the sale of the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album that you could get as weird and experimental with your music as you could ever desire. Getting to the point: here is your song "Jena & Jimmy" from your great album Stockholm Syndrome:

You like that bass part? Well I do. And so does Flea, apparently:

All I'm saying is that there is a STRONG similarity between the bass part of "Jena & Jimmy" and the one on "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie." I'm not personally a fan of lawsuits over these sorts of things, and I know you aren't either, Derek. But at the very least you can feel gratified that you came up with this great bass part before Flea did.

[Edit: It should also be pointed out that if you expand the video for the Chili Peppers song to full screen you can see that they took (one might say "borrowed liberally") U2's music video idea from "Where the Streets Have No Name."]

Letter to Christians

R2K?

I would like to take a moment and thank those who disagree with the Two Kingdoms view for at least calling it "R2K," which, as I recall from my Seminary days, means Reformed Two Kingdoms. I am thankful they grant that the Two Kingdom view is the Reformed view.

Perspectives on the Sabbath

Chris Donato was on Reformed Forum to talk about his book Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views. You can download the episode in podcast form here.

I reviewed Donato's book back in July, but I still have not shared it here at Bring the Books. And so here it is: my review of Perspectives on the Sabbath.

Review: Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views
ed. Christopher John Donato
Released: April 1, 2011
Publisher: B&H Academic
For Purchase at Westminster Books
420 Pages

I would venture to guess that most Christians have not thought about the issue of the Sabbath before. Many, like myself, have always assumed that they ought to attend worship on Sundays out of tradition, but maybe haven't considered what it really means, theologically speaking. A large contingent of the church thinks that Sabbath observance is fulfilled if one attends religious services.

Thankfully, if you're ignorant in this area, there is a solution. Chris Donato has edited a new volume devoted to letting the four major views on the Sabbath duke it out. The format is familiar, with the first chapter being devoted to the author defending his view. In the next chapter, each of the remaining three views have an opportunity to weigh in, and then of course, the original author is given a chance to respond to the other three in a few brief pages, wrapping things up. To the editor’s credit, enough space is given (400+ pages total) to deal substantially with each view. As a point of reference, other volumes from the same series are less than half the size of this one.

The four perspectives being shared in this book could be separated into two units: those who say that the Sabbath commandments are still binding, and those who say that the Sabbath commandments are no longer binding. The first half of the book covers the two views arguing for a continuing Sabbath. Skip MacCarty, as I mentioned before, begins by defending the Seventh Day Sabbath view. In Part II, Joseph Pipa defends what he calls (to the chagrin of the other contributors) the Christian Sabbath view. After this, we are introduced to the two views who say that Sabbath Commandments are no longer binding. In Part III Charles Arand spends his time laying out Luther’s view of the Sabbath. Finally in Part IV, Craig Blomberg lays out the Fulfilled Sabbath view.

Skip MacCarty: Seventh Day Sabbath View
MacCarty emphasizes the permanency of the Sabbath as being rooted in the opening chapters of Genesis and argues that it is a persistent observance instituted at the beginning of creation, rooted in the creative act and resting of God after that creation act. For MacCarty, it is significant that the Sabbath is never explicitly overturned, and that there is no explicit command in the NT for the Church to begin worshipping on Sundays.

A large amount of MacCarty's essay is devoted to establishing distinctions between the New and Old Covenant, since an obvious conclusion to draw from the smoother continuity found in MacCarty's view would be to suggest that MacCarty does not see a difference between the Old and New Covenants. MacCarty adeptly demonstrates that one can hold to the persistence of the Sabbath and still clearly distinguish Old and New.

The differences between MacCarty and Pipa's view are really very minimal, relative to the other contributors. However, the discussion over which day the worship ought to take place on was quite exegetically involved, as is appropriate for two views which differ in so few other respects. They are both arguing for the permanency and the persistence of the Sabbath as it is presented in the Ten Commandments. Their entire struggle is over the question of whether the command is to have a day or the (seventh) day for Sabbath rest. In the end, MacCarty ably defended the Seventh Day Adventist perspective on these matters and demonstrated that his is a view which is not to be dismissed out of hand.

Joseph Pipa: Christian Sabbath View
Joseph Pipa’s chapter set forth the view that the Sabbath is a permanent and persistent aspect of the creation. Hermeneutically speaking, the Christian Sabbath view determines what OT laws are still binding by using the threefold Civil/Ceremonial/Moral distinction and by accepting that the moral teachings of the OT are what still persist in the NT era, since the Apostles rescinded the civil/ceremonial aspects of the law in the book of Acts. According to Pipa, the Sabbath is a part of the persistent moral law, as are the other Ten Commandments. (Blomberg implies that this is legalistic/pharisaic on Pipa's part, but I see nothing legalistic about saying that one ought to obey God's revealed will.)

Although the Apostles did move the Sabbath day to Sunday, Pipa argues that since the beginning, the command was always for a day of worship. Thus, when the Apostles began to institute worship on Sundays, Pipa finds no incompatibility with the Sabbath command of the Ten Commandments. As I said, this is the point of contention between Pipa/MacCarty. Pipa holds the Puritan view as expressed in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and quoted the Westminster to buttress the theological underpinnings of his view, but Blomberg, in his response, was put off by Pipa's repeated use of the Westminster Standards, though he mistakenly saw Pipa as depending on them when, in fact, he merely utilized them to articulate his view on Scripture's teaching.

For my own part, after reading the whole book, I came out favoring Pipa's view, though I'm a bit biased since we're both confessionally bound to Westminster. I did notice that near the end of the book, Pipa took a step a bit too far and basically accused Blomberg's view of leading towards Sabbath Day antinomianism (387). Blomberg responded violently to this, of course, calling his comments "inaccurate, unnecessary, offensive, and inappropriately polemical" (408). Blomberg is right, of course, since he does see Scriptural commands for weekly worship, though he doesn't equate Sabbath commands with commands to worship. This conflict was the only area of this volume where one detected even a hint of animus, however.

Charles Arand: Luther's Radical Reading of the Sabbath
Charles Arand’s chapter defending the Lutheran view was, in some ways, the odd one out. While the other contributors chose a more textually oriented and exegetical approach in dealing with their respective views, Arand chose a more historical theological approach. In his chapter, he helpfully discussed the historical situation regarding the Sabbath during Luther’s time. He curiously devotes at least half of his essay discussing Luther’s view of the entire Ten Commandments and then spends the remainder of the time dealing with the Sabbath Commandment in light of that. In a book devoted to Luther’s Sabbath views, such a thing would be welcome, perhaps even necessary; but I got the sense, in this volume, that Arand just ran out of space. In my opinion, there should have been less emphasis on the broader commandments as a whole in Arand’s chapter and more emphasis on NT teachings about the Sabbath, since I sensed that to be an area which needed more fleshing out.

The Lutheran view sees the Ten Commandments as ultimately reducing to one ("You shall have no other Gods"), and sees them as being specifically for the Jews in the form they were presented, although for Luther, a day of rest ought to be observed for devotion to the Word. Curiously (and MacCarty points this out in his response), Luther appears to have, in the name of Christian liberty, repealed the Sabbath, but then, in very strong terms, condemned those who did not participate in it. Whatever one might say about the Lutheran view, I didn't really feel like I got it. Arand's approach got in the way of his view, in my opinion.

Craig Blomberg: The Sabbath as Fulfilled In Christ
Craig Blomberg, finally, presents the “fulfilled Sabbath” view, which argues that Christ has "fulfilled" (read: transformed) the Sabbath and therefore reads the commandments through a filter of sorts, using Christ's New Testament teaching as a guide for what aspects of the OT are still valid in the NT. His hermeneutic says that an Old Testament law is still applicable if it is taught again in the New Testament. He is clear that the Sabbath is valid for Christians today, but that it is a spiritualized Sabbath that does not look at all like Sabbatarianism. The following statement fairly summarizes Blomberg’s take on things, after running the Sabbath through his NT framework:

We obey the Sabbath commandment of the Decalogue as we spiritually rest in Christ, letting Him bear our burdens, trusting for salvation and committing our lives to Him in service, and then remaining faithful in lifelong loyalty to Him rather than committing apostasy (351).

So we see that for Blomberg, the NT application is much more of a spiritualized version of the Sabbath. While Blomberg writes very well and very persuasively, I perceive a great weakness in Blomberg's overall view, and that is a lack of systematic coherence. By eschewing, as he sees it, both Covenant theology and Dispensationalism (though he says he leans more Covenant), he is left with a less systematic approach than the Adventist, Lutheran, and Reformed perspectives. He seems to admit as much in his concluding response to the other three:

My goal, at least, is always to let scriptural exegesis more than presuppositions, 'functional nonnegotiables,' or theological traditions determine my conclusions. And if that leaves me with a disparate conglomeration of beliefs on a variety of topics that don’t easily fit one well-known and existing label or branch of historical theology, then so be it (409).

If you are like me and value historical pedigree and overall systematic approaches to theology, then you may follow me in leaning away from Blomberg's clear and well-stated fulfillment view. One text which Blomberg's view hinges on is Colossians 2:16, which is a very difficult text for Sabbatarians of all stripes. It's texts like these that the reader will have to meditate on and study long after they are done reading this volume.

Conclusion
After reading the whole book, I went back to the editor's introduction, and I want to share one section, because Chris Donato sums up my overall impression quite well:

[T]he Sabbath...serves as a microcosm of much larger questions fundamental to the nature of the worshipping community of Christ itself. Hermeneutical presuppositions and the covenantal (dis)continuity of God’s redemptive plan, among a great many other elements, are at once exposed when discussing this question (3).

It's really the strength of a book like Perspectives on the Sabbath: Four Views that in one succinct volume most of the issues related to the topic have been laid out neatly so that the undecided reader knows what it is he needs to study on his own time in order to grasp the issues that are at stake. At the end of the day, this is a rewarding, scholarly book about hermeneutics in action that will stick with you long after you've physically read it.

New Christian Cliche: "Monopoly on Truth"

I was reading a blog this morning where the author was broadly lamenting how clumsy the Reformed response was to Rob Bell's book from earlier this year. In the comments section, someone named Rob Auld commented: "Maybe we should be less certain we have the monopoly on truth, then the books wouldn't be a big deal." This is just such an ignorant thing to say that I had to respond. (Aside from the incomprehensibility of being "less certain" about truth.) And let me also quickly insert that this "monopoly on truth" phrase which keeps getting pulled out is becoming such a meme in the Christian world that it may actually surpass "my smokin' hot wife" as most annoying thing out there. So what follows was my response to him. I wrote enough that I thought it was worth sharing here:

Rob, this phrase "monopoly on truth" is a worn out cliche. It's becoming meaningless because it ultimately represents skepticism even about ourselves. Everyone believes they have a monopoly on truth, or else they don't really believe what they're saying. Yes, Rob, even you in your above quote. Just for effect, let me throw in a little Chesterton:

At any street corner we may meet a man who utters the frantic and blasphemous statement that he may be wrong. Every day one comes across somebody who says that of course his view may not be the right one. Of course his view must be the right one, or it is not his view. We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table. We are in danger of seeing philosophers who doubt the law of gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. Scoffers of old time were too proud to be convinced; but these are too humble to be convinced. The meek do inherit the earth; but the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual helplessness which is our second problem.

And let me suggest that this same intellectual helplessness is endemic in modern Protestant Christianity today, as well. We've made a virtue out of being able to sentimentally say, "I don't really know, and that make me humble." But we're too skeptical to know whether humility is really virtuous. Either own your beliefs, Rob, or don't. But if you don't think it's true, then don't waste someone's time by saying it out loud.

VanDrunen on the Continuing Applicability of the Mosaic Civil Code

In his magnificent volume Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, David VanDrunen spends the fifth chapter of his book examining the view of men during the time of high orthodoxy like Turretin and Rutherford regarding the natural law and its relationship to the Mosaic civil law. One argument that VanDrunen spends a great deal of time substantiating is that the orthodox Reformed theologians saw the civil law as remaining in effect insofar as it conformed to the Natural Law. At one point, Turretin even says that (in VanDrunen's words) "equity is the mind of the law as well as the aim, rule, and end of all law." Then, in Turretin's words, "the law of nature (the fountain of all other laws, because it is the most equitable) is also the most majestic" (Institutes 2.137-138). I quote these words with an eye on our contemporary environment where, especially those who have been influenced by Van Til (and I count myself among them, to a degree) by and large tend to reject Natural Law.

In VanDrunen's conclusion in this section, he discusses how we ought to understand the reference to equity in WCF 19.4, which reads as follows:

To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

Here is the conclusion VanDrunen reaches:

In light of this evidence, I suggest that the most plausible reading of WCF 19.4 [with regard to its reference to equity] concurs with the general sentiments of the Reformed orthodox writers being studied in this chapter. The civil or judicial law of Moses has been abrogated in the coming of Christ, yet has continuing applicability insofar as it reflects the natural law. For Reformed orthodoxy, as for the Reformation and medieval traditions of the past, civil magistrates ought not to impose the Mosaic civil law as such upon contemporary societies. Yet at times they will implement Mosaic civil laws, not because they are Mosaic laws, but because they are particular applications of the natural law still appropriate under present circumstances. (p. 170-171)

Living as an Ex-Suicide

Walker Percy, writing in 1980, penned the following words:

The fact is that, by virtue of its peculiar relationship to the world, to others, and to its own organism, the autonomous self in a modern technological society is possessed. It is possessed by the spirit of the erotic and the secret love of violence. The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages. As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Some very prescient thoughts from Walker Percy in his book Lost in the Cosmos. A Roman Catholic writer, Percy not only wrote novels, but he also wrote this book - billed as a sort of farcical self-help book where he attempts to force his readers to consider themselves and their own lostness for just one moment. I love this book. I share one more paragraph which is not related, but which I have found very insightful, nevertheless.

As a minor introductory note, I have noticed that for Percy, entertaining the thought of suicide is quite important. In The Moviegoer, it is only in realizing the possibility of suicide that Kate is set free from her bondage. His book The Second Coming opens with a man who realizes how farcical the world is and hence decides to kill himself only to find liberation in the notion that suicide is always there, hovering in the background. In the paragraph (also from Lost in the Cosmos), when Percy uses the term "ex-suicide," he means someone who, like Kate, stepped to the abyss, saw the possibility, and decided life was worth living after all. Enough introduction; here is what Percy says:

The consequences of entertainable suicide? Lying on the beach, you are free for the first time in your life to pick up a coquina and look at it. You are even free to go home and, like the man from Chicago, dance with your wife. The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o’clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn’t have to.

As one more rejoinder, lets consider the close proximity of what Percy says here and what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 6 about being dead to sin and now being alive to Christ.

One Less Quiver in the Preacher's Arrow

In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark from the NIGTC series, R.T. France (on pg 430), speaking about the composition of the crowd at the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem in Mark 11, points out that the crowd which praised Jesus, singing "Hosanna" is not the same crowd who would later crucify him. He bases this on the fact that the processional following Jesus to Jerusalem began in Jericho. The Greek phrase, putting their identities beyond doubt, according to France, is proagontes kai oi akolouthountes - the ones going before and the ones following. This is the same pilgrim group that has been traveling with Jesus throughout Act Two of Mark's Gospel.

There is no warrant here for the preacher's favorite comment on the fickleness of a crowd which could shout 'Hosanna' one day and 'Crucify him' a few days later. They are not the same crowd. The Galilean pilgrims shouted 'Hosanna' as they approached the city; the Jerusalem crowd shouted, 'Crucify him'.

A Prooftext for the Threefold Division?

I have read and loved Philip Ross' book From the Finger of God: The Biblical and Theological Basis for the Threefold Division of the Law. I am now reading it through for the second time more slowly because I am helping teach a class at our church on the Ten Commandments and am finding Ross' work to be extremely helpful. I am drastically over-preparing for the class and almost certainly my leftovers and notes will become posts here at BTB in the future.

What was of interest to me was that Ross includes in the book a prooftext which Aquinas was fond of using to show that the threefold division of the law into moral, civil, and ceremonial may be more than just a helpful convention. He points to Deuteronomy 6:1:

These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.

Ross examines the three words for "decrees," "commands" and "laws" and comes to this conclusion:

...[T]he individual Hebrew words for law do not divide the law into cast-iron categories. Even so, the [sic] Deuteronomy's use of the words sometimes makes a distinction between the Decalogue and the rest of the Mosaic code. That distinction does not force the practical-theological conclusion that the Decalogue 'doth for ever bind all'. It does, however, further challenge the view that the Old Testament law was written, and always viewed, as an indivisible whole.