Archetypal Moses
A Bedouin from Sinai, ca. 1930 – a Hebrew descended from Joktan the son of Eber,
the progenitor of the Hebews
Moses looked much more like this than Charlton Heston
The Theoretical Cancellation of Salvation
in the Classical Armstrongist Model of the Law
By NeoDromos
The reason why people turn to Jesus is because through him they are offered salvation. If that offer is not present or is impaired, then there is no reason to turn to Jesus. If a belief system inadvertently nullifies the offer of salvation, there is a need to revisit the theology that underlies that belief system. Because Jesus did, in fact, bring to us the Gospel of salvation so something is awry. In this writing, I present the case that classical Armstrongism denies salvation to all comers in the way that it models the Law of Moses. I do not believe that this was intentional. I believe it is the inadvertent product of an incomplete soteriology. Therefore, I have classed the denial as “theoretical” only. I will refer to classical Armstrongism – the Armstrongism of documents written in the middle of the last century. I do not know what modern denominations derived from the pre-1995 Worldwide Church of God believe on this topic. I would hope that their soteriology is now much more mature.
Acne and the Armstrongist Legal Model
“What are these statutes and laws? The Ten Commandments formed the basis of God’s Law given to his people.” – Herman L. Hoeh, from his article titled “Which Old Testament LAWS Should We Keep Today?,” 1971.
The classical Armstrongist view is that the statutes and judgments of the OT are based on the Ten Commandments, that they existed before the Old Covenant so that the change from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant would not affect them. They are still in force today and they magnify the Ten Commandments. This means that if you transgress the statutes or judgments, you transgress the superordinate Ten Commandments from which they are derived. Read carefully his section in the article cited above titled “Other Laws Based on the Ten Commandments.”
Let us consider the following case from Leviticus 13:45,
“And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.”
This law is contained in the same section of Leviticus that states the dietary laws. Hoeh refers to these as binding “statutes and laws.” So, for people who follow Hoeh’s reasoning, it is critically important to salvation to understand precisely, if possible, what this law means. In the interpretation of this law, the preponderant point of obscurity is the term “leper.” Leper is a translation of the Hebrew word tzara’at which does not refer to Hansen’s disease. This is what the Jewish Study Bible (2nd Ed., Oxford University Press, p. 222, Notes) says about this term:
“This has sometimes been translated as “leprosy” (or “leprous affection”), but the disease today called leprosy (Hansen’s disease) was not known in biblical times and the description given in the Bible is not consistent with it.”
If anything this term was broad scope. It seemed to include natural and supernatural effects. It had to do with a pathology that blemishes the surface of things and, principally, the human skin. In modern times a broad class of common and uncommon skin eruptions has been identified with tzara’at. But nobody knows, and certainly not the King James translators, what this pathology is. So much for Biblical literalism. So, it is likely that in an abundance of caution that this broad definition would arise:
“The Talmud maintains that Leviticus 13:1 et seq. refers generally to any disease that produces sores and eruptions on the skin (Sifra 60a).” (Jewish Encyclopedia, Funk and Wagnalls, Volume 8, Page 10, 1904.)
This means that Leviticus 13 encompasses common acne as well as many other skin afflictions.
A Hypothetical Case in Point
Assume an Armstrongist minister, who is exemplary in following classical Armstrongist theology, has a teen-aged daughter with a little acne. The Jewish Study Bible interprets the prescription in Leviticus 13:45-46 to mean that the teen should keep her hair in a disheveled state, clothes in disarray and should warn others by shouting “Unclean.” Recall that Hoeh asserted that such laws were a part of God’s eternal moral law that pre-existed the Old Covenant. Hoeh wrote in the section of his article titled “Other Laws Based on Ten Commandments”:
“Notice! Here again are the statues and laws of God existing before the old covenant. As they existed before the old covenant, they could not be abolished when it ceased to exist. The old covenant could not destroy what it did not bring into force. The old covenant was merely an AGREEMENT to keep laws that were already in force.”
This statement by Hoeh assigns a striking gravitas to Leviticus 13:45-46 within Armstrongist theology although I doubt that Hoeh was thinking about tzara’at. And although I have seen many people with skin afflictions in Armstrongist congregations, I have never known this law to be kept.
The Pro Forma Cancellation of Salvation
This model unavoidably results in the cancellation of salvation. I think that this was probably inadvertent. Hoeh was avidly pursuing the hermeneutical integrity of the Sabbath, the holy days, dietary laws and tithing and shot salvation dead as an innocent bystander. There are many laws in the Old Testament that are classed by Hoeh as God’s pre-existing, eternal, moral law that are disregarded or gratuitously modified by modern Armstrongism. These laws are as much on the critical path to salvation as Sabbath observance is in the Armstrongist legal model. This means that under Armstrongist theology, there is a soteriological formula, it is just that nobody observes it and it is not taught as being a requirement and, hence, it does not result in salvation for anyone.
What is lacking to make the Armstrongist view defensible is a Doctrine of Selectivity. Why is the law concerning the Sabbath important to salvation but not the law concerning tzara’at? There must be a reason and it is certainly not found in the writing of Herman Hoeh. Armstrongists argue themselves into the loss of salvation. Armstrongists make the keeping of the Law a requirement for salvation yet they do not keep it in its entirety. They observe it selectively and in a modern implementation (staying in a hotel rather than a brush arbor for the FoT, for example). And they have not asserted a well-exegeted Doctrine of Selectivity to underpin this viewpoint. Essentially, what they have done is issue a new rendition of the Law of Moses through the WCG Church Administration Department (CAD). So when you spar logically with them you must recognize that they are not talking about the Law of Moses, they are really talking about the Law of the CAD. And the CAD, further, is based on post-70 AD Rabbinic Judaism (sans Temple) and not the Law as observed in Second Temple Judaism which was based on the OT.
Summary Argument
Paul, in contention with the Circumcision Party, stated, “For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.” If you are going to make keeping the Law of Moses an adjunct condition to the salvific work of Christ, you must keep all of the Law. It is a unified body of legislation. I would assert that classical Armstrongism and likely modern renditions of that theology do not provide a clear path to salvation. And this is lost in the clamor of trying to prove that the Old Testament laws are still in force. I would strongly advocate that, instead of a pre-occupation with predictive prophecy, Armstrongists should revisit the concept of salvation that is fundamental to any rendition of the Gospel and define a Biblically based soteriology that makes the good news, good news.
