Section III: The Reasons for the Solemn Promulgation or Repetition, § 25.
SECTION III: THE REASONS FOR THE SOLEMN PROMULGATION OR REPETITION
The solemn repetition of the moral Law.
§ 25. Based on this study, it is quite apparent that knowledge of the divine Law was not only naturally inherent in people’s minds but also was, before Moses, repeated frequently by God’s voice both immediately and through the patriarchs. In fact, the rewards given to the obedient and the punishments called down upon the transgressors of the Law are an obvious sign of the divine judgment by which God revealed that He is the author and defender of His Law. Even so, it pleased divine Wisdom to establish the solemn, public promulgation of the Law on Mount Sinai and to give it to the people of Israel amid the blare of trumpets and roll of thunder after they had been led out of Egypt. This promulgation of the Law is described in Exodus 19 and 20. This solemn proclamation and sanctioning of the promulgated Law, memorable to all posterity, occurred in the year of the world 2454 (according to the computation of Funccius, Chronolog., p. 32, and others), that is, the third month, the fiftieth day after the exodus of the Israelites (Exod. 19:1). That was also the 430th year after the promise was given to Abraham, and the year 1516 before the birth of Christ.
The reasons the Law was given.
§ 26. The more significant reasons why that solemn promulgation and repetition of the Law occurred are these: (1) Because through sin the knowledge of the Law given to the minds of men in the first creation was erased and dimmed. In fact, that full and perfect light of knowledge was part of the divine image. Therefore when man lost the image of God through the fall, that light of natural knowledge was also extinguished so that barely a tiny remnant and trace remains. Eph. 5:8: “For once you were darkness.” Natural knowledge is aware that the more serious outward sins are forbidden by the Law. But it does not understand that the inner corruption of our nature and the first impulses of concupiscence are sin. Therefore God wanted to restore, so to speak, the full and genuine meaning of the Law and to repair the defectiveness of our natural light by that solemn publication of the Law. Ambrose (on Romans 5): “Because the seeds of justice were, in a way, grafted into our very nature, the Law was added so that by its authority and tutelage the character of our nature would move toward producing the fruit of justice. For just as the power of birth fails unless it has nourishment to foster growth, so also the natural quality of justice does not advance easily but sickens and falls prey to the sins which overtake it unless it has something to look to and revere.”
** Ambrose again (Letter 71): “Because the privilege of natural Law was corrupted and banished through disobedience, the written testimony of the Law is necessary so that man might have a part of the whole he had lost; by learning, he, to whom it had perished, should at least know what he had received by birth and keep it.” Augustine (on Psalm 139): “Because the sinner had forgotten himself and did not see himself [as such], the Law was given to him that he might discern himself.” Augustine again (on Psalm 57, q. 2): “The written Law was given not because it had not been written on your heart, but because you were a runaway from your heart.” QQ. V. et N. T. (q. 4): “When the natural Law disappeared and the habit of sinning became ingrained, it then became necessary for the Law to be made manifest—not because it had been totally erased but because they lacked its great authority. They grew eager for idolatry, the fear of God was not on earth, fornication was being practiced, there was coveting of one’s neighbor’s property,” etc. **
(2) The second reason is that among the Canaanites and other peoples many depraved practices had been accepted into their bad behavior and had been confirmed by long custom. The people considered these as the law of nature. Therefore it had to be made manifest by the public repetition of the moral Law so that natural ideas would be congruent with the eternal rule of righteousness, which is in God. It also had to be shown that the norm of God-pleasing righteousness is not what pleases corrupt reason nor is it the example of the heathen. Rather, it is the Commandments of the living God. Lev. 18:3–4: “You shall not do according to the work of the land of Egypt nor according to the work of the land of Canaan. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall do My judgments and observe My statutes.” Augustine (QQ. V. et N. T., q. 4):
When the natural law disappeared because the habit of sinning became ingrained, it then became necessary for the Law to be made manifest that all might hear it among the Jews. This was not because it had been totally erased but because they lacked its great authority. They grew eager for idolatry, the fear of God was not on earth, fornication was being practiced, there was coveting of one’s neighbor’s property. Therefore the Law had to be given so that the things they already knew might become authoritative and so that what had begun to disappear might become plain.
Sedulius (commentary on Romans 3): “One learns what sin is through the Law, for the law of nature had been forgotten.”
(3) It is because a large crop of corrupt inclinations clings to human nature, which has been corrupted and depraved so wretchedly by sin. By their assault, as if by a whirlwind, we are too often caught up and thrown headlong into very serious sins. As a result, God wanted a public testimony to exist that the natural knowledge of the Law has been engrafted divinely into our minds, so that the mind may be fortified thereby in its resistance against those corrupt inclinations. In this way also one has a greater respect for the conscience. Rom. 7:23: “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind.”
(4) It is because people do not recognize the inner filthiness of their nature but are fascinated by their admiration of outward discipline and “try to establish their own righteousness before God” (Rom. 10:3). Therefore the solemn publication of the Law was to show God’s judgment against sin “so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world be made accountable before God” (Rom. 3:19), and so that we, acknowledging our wretchedness, may hurry to Christ, the true Physician of the soul.
Those are the more important reasons for that solemn publication; the other reasons coincide with them.