January 24, 2008

• Question 36 - Comments from Mark Shea, Part 1

  Question 36 - Comments from Mark Shea, Part 1

  Robert,

  Mark Shea wrote some nasty comments about you regarding your essay that the Old Covenant has been revoked. Shea says that the Mosaic Covenant is not revoked. His proof text is Matthew 5:17-18 when Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Could you shed some light on this?

  Nicholas

  R. Sungenis: Nicholas, “nasty comments” are par for the course for Mark Shea. One read of his blog and one quickly comes to the conclusion that he is incapable of communicating any other way with those he considers his opponents. In reality, “nasty comments” are the tell-tale sign that the person does not have the necessary arguments to defend themselves, so they resort to personal attacks and offensive sarcasm. Be that as it may, Mark Shea is perpetuating one of the most serious heresies ever to infiltrate the Catholic Church – the idea that the Mosaic Covenant once made with the Jews is not revoked. Watching Shea for the past ten years, I’m coming to the conclusion that he simply does not have the intellectual capacity to understand these issues, and thus I don’t expect much from him. My essay is for those who want to learn the truth and have ears to hear. At this point, the only thing Mr. Shea does for us in his rebuttals is show the continual errors of his position so that we can continue to expose them, and thus teach the Catholic what he needs to avoid. As I point out in my essay, the most important concept one must understand in dealing with these covenant issues is the difference between the legal and the non-legal. I can tell by Shea’s writing that he doesn’t have a clue what the difference is, and thereby he falls into constant error. 

  For what it’s worth, his claim that Matthew 5:17-18 keeps the Mosaic Covenant in force is one of the oldest errors in Christendom. It occurs mainly because the interpreter isolates Matthew 5:17-18 from the rest of Scripture, as well as refuses to accept what both the Magisterium and Tradition has said about the issue. You’ll notice that Shea doesn’t quote any authoritative Catholic source to back up his view. The reason is simple. No such source in Catholic history has ever said that Matthew 5:17-18 teaches that the Mosaic covenant is still in force for the Jews. It is a heterodox concept held exclusively by Mark Shea.

  Shea’s error can be refuted very easily. The most basic concept one must understand when one interprets Scripture is that one must not take statements out of context, but this is precisely what Mr. Shea has done with Matthew 5:17-18.  There are two important contextual matters one must know in order to arrive at a safe interpretation of Matthew 5:17-18. First, he must realize that other Scriptures make it clear that the Law, the Mosaic Law, was annulled or abolished. I mention these passages in my essay, saying,

  If Shea is right, then why does the epistle to the Hebrews insist on the exact opposite, saying: “For…there is the abolishing[i][i][i] of the former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness, for the Law made nothing perfect” (Hb 7:18)? Or why does the same author insist that Jesus himself “takes away[ii][ii][ii] the first in order to establish the second” (Hb 10:9)? If Shea’s view is correct, we then have an obvious contradiction between what Shea says Jesus means in Mt 5:17 and what Jesus is said to have done in Hb 10:9.

  As we can see, the larger context that Scripture affords us in the epistle to the Hebrews reveals that the Law, the Mosaic covenant, was indeed abolished. In fact, Hebrews 10:9 tells us that it was Jesus himself, by his death, who took away the first covenant, the Old Covenant, to establish the second covenant, the New Covenant.

  So what is an exegete required to do when he sees two apparently contradicting passages: one in Matthew 5:17-18 that says Jesus did not come to abolish the law, yet another one in Hebrews 10:9 which says abolishing the Law is precisely what he did? The exegete is required to fine the reason for the apparent discrepancy, and the Tradition of the Church has shown us what that solution is. As I noted in my essay, there is one easy solution. Matthew 27:51 tells us that the temple curtain was not torn when Jesus was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, but when he died on the cross. The temple curtain represented the Mosaic law and the whole Judaistic religion. Hence, Scripture is telling us that the Law was annulled when Jesus died on the cross, not when he was preaching the Sermon on the Mount. Thus, there is no contradiction between Matthew 5:17-18 and Hebrews 10:9.

  But do we see any of this kind of detailed exegesis in Mr. Shea’s writings? No, not at all. Each time Shea has written on the Mosaic covenant he has failed to cite even one passage in the Hebrew, Corinthian, Colossian or Ephesian epistles that says the Old Covenant, the Mosaic law, has been nullified. This is why I said in my essay: “Perhaps this contradiction is the reason Shea never quotes from these particular passages in Hebrews when he is writing on the legal status of the Old Covenant.” At this point, I don’t expect Mr. Shea to do any soul searching on this question. He just doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to understand these finer points of biblical exegesis. 

  For those who haven’t read my recent article, below is the portion in which I deal with Mark Shea and his erroneous ideas.

  Mark Shea’s New Wrinkle in Dual Covenant Theology

  Without the benefit of correct theology on the Old Covenant, many Catholic lay teachers have succumbed to the concept of Dual Covenant theology. It is promoted as the new doctrine that all enlightened people should now embrace. For example, on his blog site a few months ago, Mark Shea, founder and writer for Catholic and Enjoying It! stated that “the Old Covenant remains in force for unbaptized Jews.” In a recent article for the National Catholic Register (NCR) Shea raised an alarm against what he sees as the: “…sweeping and highly problematic proposition: the notion that the covenant with Moses has been ‘revoked.’”[iii][iii][iii] Knowing that his view will raise the hackles of his critics (which he presently terms as “Reactionary Dissenters”), Shea attempts to smooth over his novel theology, on the one hand, by assuring us in NCR that “Christians are not bound by the Mosaic Law,” and does the same in an article for Crisis magazine’s new website venture, InsideCatholic, stating: “But it is loony for Christians…to now be putting themselves under the Law of Moses. As Paul hammers home again and again, those who are in Christ are no longer bound by the works of the law.”[iv][iv][iv]  On the other hand, Shea clarifies that he has not completely departed from the current liberal consensus, for he holds that “it does not follow from this that the Mosaic Covenant has therefore been ‘revoked.’”[v][v][v] Perhaps modeling the Puritans, Shea desires to introduce some sort of ‘halfway’ Mosaic covenant.

  As we might suspect, the proof Shea garners for the half of the Old Covenant he says is not revoked is the same one that many other Old Covenant advocates have used – the ambiguous phrase from John Paul II’s Mainz speech: “the Old Covenant, never revoked by God.”[vi][vi][vi] As such, Shea made the same mistake, namely, assuming John Paul II was referring to the Mosaic covenant when, as we noted above, the pope made it very clear in his 1986 Sydney speech that he was referring to the Abrahamic covenant. Shea is apparently unaware of John Paul II’s view since in the next few paragraphs of his NCR article he castigates those who insist that the irrevocable covenant applies only to the Abrahamic covenant. Inadvertently, he is also castigating John Paul II, the very authority he had hoped to use as his support.[vii][vii][vii]

  In another instance, Shea attempted to refute E. Michael Jones when the latter asserted in a recent article that the Old Covenant has been revoked. Shea retorted:

  Romans 7 knows absolutely nothing of a notion that the covenant with the Jews has been revoked. On the contrary, it insists that unbaptized Jews are "married" to the Law and that the only way they can get out of the marriage is by death – the death of baptism and rebirth in Christ. So, contrary to Jones, the notion that it is somehow newfangled or wimpy to reject the notion that the old covenant has been revoked is simply false. Paul believed exactly this, following his Master. The reality is that the Old Covenant has been *transcended*. A Jew cannot abandon the covenant even if he wants to, because God still holds it binding. However, he can transcend it through Christ and entry into the new and everlasting covenant. The old covenant cannot save – but then the Church has never said it can, despite Jones’ suggestion that John Paul was trying to suggest just this.

  Shea says much the same in his November 2007 piece for the National Catholic Register: “So far from saying the Law of Moses is revoked, which would necessarily mean that it no longer has the power to condemn, Jesus, John and Paul assume unbaptized Jews are still bound by the Law.” He concludes with: “The Covenant of Moses cannot save – but it is well within the pale of Catholic orthodoxy to regard it as still binding upon unbaptized children of the Old Covenant…”[viii][viii][viii]

  Interestingly enough, we note here that Shea’s purpose in resurrecting the Mosaic covenant is different than that proposed by Rosen, the ADL, Keeler, Fisher and the USCCB. The latter group believes the Old Covenant can be employed to save or condemn the Jew, but Shea holds that the Old Covenant only condemns the Jew. Nevertheless, in order to condemn, Shea must also believe that the Old Covenant must still be valid and unrevoked. As it were, Shea has the Old Covenant walking on one leg while his more liberal contemporaries have it walking on two. As Shea sees it, “if the Law of Moses has been revoked, its penalties cannot apply to those who seek salvation through it.” Hoping to prove his case by an appeal to Paul’s analogy between marriage and law in Romans 7:1-4, Shea concludes:

  Paul’s entire point is that unbaptized Jews are ‘married to the Law of Moses…and cannot escape that covenant….So, contrary to Reactionary Dissent, the notion that the Mosaic Covenant has been revoked is false according to both Our Lord and the Apostle to the Gentiles. Apart from Christ, says Paul, the Law of Moses still has the power to condemn and has therefore not been rendered null and void.[ix][ix][ix]

  Shea’s view is certainly a new twist on the Old Covenant, but it is erroneous, nonetheless. As we noted earlier, when the New Testament speaks of the revocation of the Old Covenant (Heb 7:18; 8:7-13; 10:9; 2Cor 3:6-14) it makes no distinction between a salvific and a condemnatory Old Covenant, and neither did any of the magisterial Catholic teachings we cited earlier. These authorities simply and correctly state that the Old Covenant is revoked, period. There is a good reason for their absolutism: the New Testament makes no claim that the Old Covenant remains in force to condemn anyone, much less “unbaptized Jews.” The reason is as follows: in matters of both salvation and damnation, Jews and Gentiles are under the jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, his Church and the New Covenant, not the Old Covenant. It is Christ, not Moses, who is the “Lawgiver and Judge, the One who is able to save and to destroy,” and his judging applies to Jews and Gentiles (cf. James 4:8; Mt 12:36-37; Rm 2:16). Similarly, as Heb. 10:28-31 teaches, it is no longer the “two or three witnesses of the Mosaic law” that condemn the sinner, but the three witnesses of the Trinity: “the Son of God,” “the Spirit of grace,” and “the living God,” which is manifested through the Church in the New Covenant (cf. Mt 16:18-19; 18:17-18; 1Tim 3:15; 1Cor 5:1-5; Acts 5:1-11).

  Shea’s mistake is a common one. Merely because St. Paul alludes to “law” in Romans 7:1-4 does not mean that he is either referring to the Mosaic Law or that the Mosaic Law is still legally in force. In 1 Cor 9:9, for example, Paul says, “It is written in the Law of Moses: You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.” Obviously, Paul is not saying that the Mosaic law concerning oxen still has legal force; rather, Paul is merely extracting the Mosaic principle of providing for the needs of the worker, in this case, the Gospel preacher. Likewise, whatever law is cited or practiced today in Christianity, whether it is natural law, Mosaic law, canonical law, etc., it is only because the Church, under its own legal authority, decided to incorporate those particular principles into the New Covenant. The Church, under the New Covenant, has the power to decide which doctrine and practices are most beneficial for the Christian community, leading her to incorporate various laws from the Old Covenant, albeit with her own modifications (e.g., Rom 13:1-10; Acts 15:28); while discarding others as useless (Col 2:16; Acts 15:10-12). But whatever law is utilized, it will be legalized and controlled by the New Covenant, not the Old. At the present time, the Old Covenant’s purpose is to serve as a model, a precedent, a teacher, for the divine principles that will be needed to allow the New Covenant to function as efficiently as it possibly can. But there is only one covenant that has legal force; there is only one covenant that can save and condemn; there is only one covenant that God recognizes today, and that is the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

  The idea that the New Covenant would borrow principles from the Old Covenant should not be hard for us to understand. We have many good examples from which to appeal, such as the relationship between the US Constitution and the Magna Carta. The Magna Carta had some very beneficial insights concerning law and life. These were incorporated into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.[x][x][x] The Magna Carta itself became obsolete and was revoked, but whatever principles were borrowed from it, they became part of the Constitution, and it was only from the Constitution that those principles acquired legal force. In the same way, Scripture declares that the Old Covenant was legally revoked (Heb 7:18; 10:9) but its spiritual and moral principles were utilized in the New Covenant (Heb 10:16-18; Gal 5:14; 1Co 9:9; Rm 7:7-12). It is the same reason that the 1994 Catholic Catechism spends most of Part Three on the Ten Commandments – not because the Mosaic Law still has legal force but because the Church adopted the principles of the Mosaic Law into the New Covenant.

  As for Shea’s contention that in Romans 7:1-4 St. Paul is specifically referring to “unbaptized Jews,” the reality is, Paul does not even mention the Jews in Romans 7. Paul himself was a baptized Jew yet he is applying Romans 7 to himself and every other baptized Jew and Gentile Christian to whom he is writing. It is precisely because Paul’s audience in Romans 7 includes all people that he appeals to universal marriage law in verses 1-4, since all societies, especially the Roman society to whom he is writing, had strict laws stipulating that marriage was terminated upon the death of a spouse. The Roman citizenry was steeped in the study of law, as were the Greeks before them, and this is why Paul says in verse 1: “for I am speaking to those who know the law.” Hence, the Romans would have easily understood Paul’s analogy, but his analogy does not mean that Roman law or Jewish law would have any legal force in determining the laws of the Christian faith. Similarly, in Romans 7:7-8, Paul appeals to one of the laws of the Decalogue (“I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’”) but this does not mean that the Mosaic Law still had legal force to damn the sinner; rather, Paul merely says the Law makes a person conscious of the coveting latent in the human heart. What he now does with the information will be decided by the New Covenant, not the Old. The law can perform the task of conviction whether it is in legal force or not, just as the Magna Carta could stipulate that all men are created equal even though the Magna Carta has no legal force today. 

  Shea also appeals to Jesus’ statement in Mt 5:17 to support the idea that the Old Covenant is not revoked: “Think not that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets: I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.” He then makes the following anachronistic conclusion: “According to Matthew, the Law and the Prophets have not been abolished.”[xi][xi][xi] If Shea is right, then why does the epistle to the Hebrews insist on the exact opposite, saying: “For…there is the abolishing[xii][xii][xii] of the former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness, for the Law made nothing perfect” (Hb 7:18)? Or why does the same author insist that Jesus himself “takes away[xiii][xiii][xiii] the first in order to establish the second” (Hb 10:9)? If Shea’s view is correct, we then have an obvious contradiction between what Shea says Jesus means in Mt 5:17 and what Jesus is said to have done in Hb 10:9. Perhaps this contradiction is the reason Shea never quotes from these particular passages in Hebrews when he is writing on the legal status of the Old Covenant.

  The matter is easily solved if we realize two important things: First, Jesus uttered the words of Matthew 5:17-18 when he was on the Old Testament side of the cross. At that particular time, he could not abolish the Old Covenant, for he and every other Jew were required to fulfill it to the letter until the New Covenant was established. Not until he died on the cross did the proper time come for the abolition of the Old Covenant, for it was only then that the temple curtain was torn in two to indicate that the Old Covenant had reached its fulfillment and ceased to be legally valid (Mt 27:51). Until then, Jesus had the right to bind every Jew to all the prescriptions in the Mosaic Law, and could also tell them, as Shea reminds us, “the one who accuses you is Moses” (John 5:45). Obviously, Jesus could not have abolished the Old Covenant when he was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, otherwise, he would not have been able to fulfill the prophecies of his death and conclude them with “It is finished” (John 19:30).

  Second, Jesus’ intent was not to abolish the Law to the extent that we could not use its ethical principles in the New Covenant. Legally speaking, the Old Covenant is revoked. Ethically speaking, it remains very much alive. One of the greatest ways the New Covenant could pay compliment to the Old Covenant and thus “fulfill” the Old Covenant’s hoped-for purpose is to incorporate some of its divine principles into the teachings of the New Covenant. But again, whatever is taken from the Old Covenant is under the jurisdiction of the New Covenant, not the Old. The key to deciphering the whole ball of wax is understanding the difference between the legal and the non-legal. Unfortunately, not many Catholics today are knowledgeable about this crucial juridical aspect and thus the confusion regarding the status of the Old Covenant persists.

  In the face of all this information that exposes his heterodoxy, Mr. Shea persists in his recent blog entry with the statements, of which I will make brief comments:

  Shea: “Now he's back in full force, directly ignoring his bishop's order“

  R. Sungenis: No, I haven’t ignored my bishop. My article makes clear that I have been in contact with my bishop and have let him know precisely what I am doing. I have also made it clear to the bishop that, in light of his and the USCCB’s fallacious concepts regarding the Jews, if he wants to make further demands on me, he can do so under the prescriptions of canonical law which will require him to take me to trial. Until then, I’ll continue to preach the Gospel of the Jesus Christ as defined by the Catholic magisterium. Thus, I have done everything required of me.

  Shea: (and lots of rather clear Catholic teaching) in order to push his pet theory that the covenant with Moses was "revoked".

  R. Sungenis: The only one with a “pet theory” here is Mark Shea. One can prove this to himself very easily. Ask Mr. Shea to show you one authoritative reference in Catholic history who taught that Matthew 5:17-18 means the Mosaic covenant is still in force for the Jews today. Just one will do. Mr. Shea won’t be able to find any because none exist. Then I suggest you tell Mr. Shea to drop his erroneous concept of the Old Covenant, since it is heretical. If he doesn’t listen to you, then shake the dust off your feet and leave him. But pray for him that he might see the light of truth.

  Shea: In the course of this, he unveils his brand new Catholic Dispensationalist Theology, in which we discover that when Jesus said, "I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfil them" he actually meant "I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets".

  R. Sungenis: Notice how Mr. Shea, because of his constant penchant for sarcasm, distorts what I taught about Jesus’ statement. I never said Jesus meant: “I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets.” I made it very clear that when Jesus was alive he could not and would not abolish the law and prophets.

  Shea: How does Sungenis do this trick? Easy, just say that Jesus meant that saying for the time between the Incarnation and the Ascension. *Now* however, the law the prophets are abolished, because Robert Sungenis would have it so.

  R. Sungenis: It is obvious from these statements that Mr. Shea didn’t understand a word of what I wrote in my essay, or perhaps he didn’t even read it. After seeing this mental failure of his time and time again, I am forced to conclude that Mr. Shea doesn’t have the theological acumen to grasp these issues. It doesn’t surprise me. Theology was never Mr. Shea’s expertise. He’s good at political commentary and social issues, but he simply finds theological concepts very difficult to comprehend.

  Shea: One does wonder why Matthew would record a saying that no longer has any meaning for the Church and put it smack in the middle of Jesus promulgation of the "new law" in the Sermon on the Mount, but I'm sure he will have an ingenious explanation.

  R. Sungenis: Unfortunately, Mr. Shea has a bad habit of making sarcastic comments about what his opponent has written without actually reading what his opponent has written. With this type of superficial research, no wonder he gets confused in approaching these subjects. To be sure, I already anticipated Mr. Shea’s query in my essay and answered it, but apparently he missed it. In fact, I spent a greater portion of the essay in explaining it. If you contact Mr. Shea, please direct him to it so that he doesn’t persist in his error. I wrote the following:

  Second, Jesus’ intent was not to abolish the Law to the extent that we could not use its ethical principles in the New Covenant. Legally speaking, the Old Covenant is revoked. Ethically speaking, it remains very much alive. One of the greatest ways the New Covenant could pay compliment to the Old Covenant and thus “fulfill” the Old Covenant’s hoped-for purpose is to incorporate some of its divine principles into the teachings of the New Covenant. But again, whatever is taken from the Old Covenant is under the jurisdiction of the New Covenant, not the Old. The key to deciphering the whole ball of wax is understanding the difference between the legal and the non-legal. Unfortunately, not many Catholics today are knowledgeable about this crucial juridical aspect and thus the confusion regarding the status of the Old Covenant persists.

  Shea: Meanwhile, those of us who don't consider ourselves smarter than the Church on this matter continue to think that it is perfectly admissible for a Catholic to say that the Mosaic Covenant is still in force, but not salvific.

  R. Sungenis: As I said above, if Mr. Shea is so sure of his position, then ask him to provide you with just one authoritative statement from an official teaching of the Catholic Church which says that the Mosaic covenant is still in force, but not salvific. If Mr. Shea cannot produce one, then warn him that his view is heretical. Meanwhile, those of us who don’t consider ourselves smarter than the Church on this matter continue to think that it is perfectly admissible for a Catholic to say that the Mosaic Covenant is no longer in force. Unlike Mr. Shea, in my essay I gave a list of the Catholic authorities who say so. So who is trying pull the wool over your eyes? It is the person who distorts Scripture and fails to back up his view from Tradition and the Magisterium. This has been Mark Shea’s MO for a long time.

  Below are the authoritative sources I listed in my essay which say the Old Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, is revoked. Shea has never addressed these statements:

  ·         Hebrews 7:18: “On the one hand, a former commandment is annulled because of its weakness and uselessness…”;

  ·         Hebrews 10:9: “Then he says, ‘Behold, I come to do your will.’ He takes away the first [covenant] to establish the second [covenant]…”;

  ·         2 Corinthians 3:14: “For to this day when they [the Jews] read the Old Covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away”;

  ·         Hebrews 8:7: “For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another”;

  ·         Colossians 2:14: “Having canceled the written code, with its decrees, that was against us and stood opposed to us; He took it away nailing it to the cross”;

  ·         Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, para. 29: “…the New Testament took the place of the Old Law which had been abolished…but on the gibbet of His death Jesus made void the Law with its decrees fastened the handwriting of the Old Testament to the Cross”;

  ·         The Catechism of the Council of Trent: “…the people, aware of the abrogation of the Mosaic Law…”;

  ·         Council of Florence: “that the matter pertaining to the law of the Old Testament, of the Mosaic law…although they were suited to the divine worship at that time, after our Lord’s coming had been signified by them, ceased, and the sacraments of the New Testament began”;

  ·         Council of Trent: “but not even the Jews by the very letter of the law of Moses were able to be liberated or to rise therefrom”;

  ·         Cardinal Ratzinger: “Thus the Sinai [Mosaic] Covenant is indeed superseded” (Many Religions – One Covenant, p. 70).

  ·         St. John Chrysostom: “Yet surely Paul’s object everywhere is to annul this Law….And with much reason; for it was through a fear and a horror of this that the Jews obstinately opposed grace” (Homily on Romans, 6:12); “And so while no one annuls a man's covenant, the covenant of God after four hundred and thirty years is annulled; for if not that covenant but another instead of it bestows what is promised, then is it set aside, which is most unreasonable” (Homily on Galatians, Ch 3);

  ·         St. Augustine: “Instead of the grace of the law which has passed away, we have received the grace of the gospel which is abiding; and instead of the shadows and types of the old dispensation, the truth has come by Jesus Christ. Jeremiah also prophesied thus in God’s name: ‘Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah...’ Observe what the prophet says, not to Gentiles, who had not been partakers in any former covenant, but to the Jewish nation. He who has given them the law by Moses, promises in place of it the New Covenant of the gospel, that they might no longer live in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit” (Letters, 74, 4);

  ^·          Justin Martyr: Now, law placed against law has abrogated that which is before it, and a covenant which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous one; and an eternal and final law – namely, Christ – has been given to us, and the covenant is trustworthy…Have you not read…by Jeremiah, concerning this same new covenant, He thus speaks: ‘Behold, the days come,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah…’” (Dialogue with Trypho, Ch 11). [xiv][xiv][xiv]

   

  I rest my case, Nicholas. Let me close with a warning. As I said in my essay, the idea that the Old Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, is not revoked, will be one of the most serious and persistent heresies of the modern age. And when this error is pointed out to its purveyors, they will balk and slander their opponents, just as Mr. Shea is doing now. But you will know them by their exegetical fruits. All of them have failed to understand Scripture in context; they have failed to honor the tradition of the Church which has never taught that the Old Covenant is not revoked; and they have failed to accept the authoritative statements from the Magisterium which says that the Old Covenant has been revoked. When you see them persist in their errors, run, don’t walk, away from them, and shake the dust off your feet.

  Robert Sungenis

   

   

  
  

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  [i][i][i] Greek: ajqevthsiV (athetesis), “to annul, to set aside, to abolish, to make of no effect, declare invalid, remove” (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker, Greek lexicon, p. 21)

   

  [ii][ii][ii] Greek: ajnairei: (anairei), “to take away, to destroy, to do away with, to eliminate” (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker, Greek lexicon, p. 54)

   

  [iii][iii][iii] “The Law and the Covenant,” National Catholic Register, Part 2, November 4-10, 2007.

   

  [iv][iv][iv] “You may remember the Reformation,” InsideCatholic.com, Sept. 28, 2007.

   

  [v][v][v] “The Law and the Covenant,” National Catholic Register, Part 2, November 4-10, 2007.

   

  [vi][vi][vi] “The Law and the Covenant,” National Catholic Register, Part 3, November 11-17, 2007.

   

  [vii][vii][vii] Shea states: “Some Reactionary Dissenters simply reject all this outright, saying, ‘To say that the Mosaic Covenant has not been revoked in the normal manner of speech is contrary to the faith…’” In one paragraph, Shea, again using the term “Reactionary Dissenter,” quotes my words but without revealing my name: “Unfortunately, today there is a lot of confusion occurring because of the vague and ambiguous use of the phrase ‘Old Covenant’ by prelates and theologians. They purposely don’t tell you which definition of ‘Old Covenant’ they are using, and thus a lot of people think when they see ‘Old Covenant has never been revoked’ it means that the Jews still have a covenant with God. They don’t. The only covenant in force today is the New Covenant…” (ibid). 

   

  [viii][viii][viii] Ibid.

   

  [ix][ix][ix] Ibid.

   

  [x][x][x] “Magna Carta was the most significant early influence on the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law today. Magna Carta influenced many common law and other documents, such as the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, and is considered one of the most important legal documents in the history of democracy” (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta).

   

  [xi][xi][xi] Ibid.

   

  [xii][xii][xii] Greek: ajqevthsiV (athetesis), “to annul, to set aside, to abolish, to make of no effect, declare invalid, remove” (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker, Greek lexicon, p. 21)

   

  [xiii][xiii][xiii] Greek: ajnairei: (anairei), “to take away, to destroy, to do away with, to eliminate” (Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich and Danker, Greek lexicon, p. 54)

   

  [xiv][xiv][xiv] The Fathers are in absolute consensus that the Old Covenant had been revoked and replaced by the New Covenant. The above is just a small sampling of their agreement.

   

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