Rebuttal #4 to Reason #4

After a while it becomes frustrating to respond to all 26 Reasons opined by Asher Norman.  Frustration begins to set in and there is a desire to go onto other topics and leave reasons 4-26 unanswered.  However, this cannot be done as it is imperative to the Jewish soul that these reasons be rebutted and the truth of Jesus’ Messiahship be revealed to all who are seeking the truth of the Jewish Messiah.

Perhaps this is the point of Norman’s book.  If one can be distracted by the tedium of hyperbole and minutae than perhaps one will go away.  I have no doubt that the writer of 26 Reasons is a talented attorney as he is very gifted at spin, double-talk and ad hominem arguments (please no lawyer jokes!!!).  However, the souls of God’s Chosen Ones give me the strength to persevere and to bring light to the fallacious arguments of the writer.  So let’s go on to Rebuttal #4.

The purpose of Reason #4 is to claim that believe in Jesus diminishes the truth of the Torah.  Nothing could be further from the truth which Norman would realize if his Christian source material was more than from (and this is a paraphrase of his own words) the Christian liberal theological perspective (p. xx).

Norman attempts to state once again that Matthew 5:17-20 is a Christian claim that Jesus obliterated the Law.  He uses his own connotative definition of “fulfilled” to assert that we who believe in Jesus believe the Torah has diminished or terminated.  And this is his primary problem of argument, he attempts to define “fulfilled” to set his own agenda.  I teach speech at a local college (Arlington Baptist College) and one of the instructions I give to my class when they are preparing to debate for the first time is to try to force the opponent to debate the topic from your terms and not theirs.  For if you can, you will win 99% of the time. 

However, I am not going to allow the writer of 26 Reasons to define fulfilled for me or for the Jewish people who need to hear the truth of Jesus.  I would like to propose some alternate definitions which are more in keeping with Jesus’ intent (in other words from the original biblical language). The fulfilled of Matthew 5:17 (plerosai) in the Greek is a Aorist Active Infinitive of Purpose which should seen in connection to “I have come not to destroy but to fulfill.”  This is a parallel of emphasis which shows that Jesus was not about destruction but about bringing it to a full expression of its meaning.  Ultimately Matthew 5:17 should be understood that Jesus is all about Torah because Torah is all about Him.  Paul reinforces the believer in Jesus’ honor of Torah (and all the Tanakh) in 2 Timothy 3:15-17.  Peter states this truth in 2 Peter 1:20-21 as well.  Therefore, Norman is correct when he cites Psalm 19:8-10 about the perfection of the Word of God.  Unfortunately, Norman does not have all of the Word of God because if he did he would have Jesus.

Norman in the remainder of Reason #4 and his summation of his part one attempts to again categorize the Christian faith in ways that it should not be understood.  First, he attempts to argue that Christians add to and/or take away from Scripture.  If he understood Revelation 22:19, he would know that true Christian scholars and not his liberal sources would never do such a thing.  Second, he offers an incorrect explanation of the doctrine of the Incarnation and Trinity but those will come up again and so I will leave a detailed rebuttal for another day.  However, it should be noted that Christians do not believe that God is finite or that God is a man but that He became a man so that we could reach Him.  That is the depth of His love for us.

God bless.  Shalom!