## I was claiming the law was abolished.
Jose said he looked up 'abolished' in the Bible and found it did not apply to the law.

Rick wrote:
"By give a new commandment he didn't abolish the others. The new commandment stress the importance of Love as the key to our worship of God. "

I agree, the Bible does not say the law is abolished.

## I was claiming the Bible says the law is bad.
Many people posted texts from the Bible saying the law is good.

I agree, the Bible says many times the law is good.

## I was claiming the Ten Commandments don't exist.
Some postings simply quoted the Ten Commandments being given to Moses.

I will state now, the Ten Commandments are in the Bible.

## I am carnally minded and against God

Rick writes:

<<
"For to be carnally minded is DEATH; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the CARNAL MIND IS ENMITY AGAINST GOD: FOR IT IS NOT SUBJECT TO THE LAW OF GOD, neither indeed can be." Romans 8:6,7

John, are you perfect? Have you some time in your past commited the last sin that you ever will commit? >>

I am not against God, nor carnally minded. I am only seeking to follow Scripture.

## That I am writing "nonsense"

Rick sometimes just says I am writing nonsense.

I don't know if this is a misunderstanding or an argument, but I'll treat it as a misunderstanding. I think I know what Rick is saying. Many times I have had conversations with "cranks" - people who try to convince you about the Wednesday Crucifixion Theory or Jesus came from India or whatever. What I am claiming about the law is not some personal idiosyncrasy but a fairly widespread view. Certainly many Bible scholars take this view, and if you read the Dead Sea Scrolls these writings treat the TORAH as the Law, and they are roughly contemporary to the New Testament (either two centuries before the NT or contemporary with it, depending on which DSS experts you read). So I think you'll probably come across intelligent, sensible Christians who take this position at some point, whether you choose to debate it now or not.

## That it is not important

Some people have said, 'what does it matter'? Do we really need to know what the Bible means by this phrase?

That is the end of the arguments presented.

Look at it this way. The Old Testament has 239 references to law, and according to my NIV 1104 pages. The New Testament has 198 references to law (nearly as many), and only 321 pages. The Old Testament can go through whole books without mentioning the law, in other books it appears occasionally, in some books it is mentioned a lot. In the New Testament every book is full of the law. There is discussion on whether the law needs to be kept by the gentiles, or what laws need to be kept, what is the purpose of the law, what is the status of the law for Christians. In all these discussions, the solution proposed by Traditional Adventists - the Ten Commandments need to be kept by Christians - is never mentioned. Why? Because the Ten Commandments were not treated differently to the rest of "the law", they were part of the covenant, the same as the rest of the law.

## That it is just playing with words - what does it matter if there are one or two laws?

The idea here is that it is still the law, whether one or two laws.

I agree that if we are still referring to the same thing, whether we call that thing "one" or "two" it doesn't matter. However whether "the law" is the TORAH, the whole law of Moses, is quite different to saying it is just the Ten Commandments. So we aren't using different words for the same thing, we are discussing different objects.

## It is not important for SDAs

It is often acknowledged that Adventism struggles to maintain the correct balance between faith and works. I remember a _The Ministry_ that came out in the 1970s which showed a graph of Justification and Sanctification, with Justification and Sanctification on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. It showed that when we are converted we need no Sanctification, but 100% justification (so the line was on (0,0)), but as we develop as Christians we need gradually less Justification and more Sanctification (it was a y = 2x type of graph), until in the end we need no Justification and all Sanctification. Needless to say they had to "withdraw" the graph in the next issue and were full of apologies!

What is the cause of all these woes? I think it is simple - we still have a Catholic view of the law based on tradition and not on the Bible. So if we want to get a correct understanding of faith and works, we need to go back to Scripture. On that basis, I believe this issue is important.