John Walton's Lost World of Ethics

A Response to the Lost World of the Torah

Background

The following analysis of The Lost World of the Torah (written by John Walton and his son J. Harvey Walton) began as a short presentation at the 71st National ETS in San Diego, CA on Nov. 20, 2019. The presentation was standing room only and overall the paper was well received. John Walton himself showed up to hear my talk. At the end, Walton responded to my paper during the Q&A. He was very gracious.

Walton commented that my presentation of his argument was “better than most” of the people he has heard or read.

Certainly I have some outstanding disagreements with Walton’s hermeneutical approach and its implications for ethics, but I was glad he acknowledged that I fairly presented his argument.

Journal Article

Eventually, my presentation was peer reviewed and published in The Global Journal by John Warwick Montgomery.

Miller, J.R. “Jesus in the Torah: A Response to John Walton’s Lost World Ethics.” Global Journal of Classical Theology 17, no. 3 (March 1, 2021).

I was also encouraged by Dr. Montgomery’s comments about my article.

The Global Journal has been much concerned with the hermeneutics of a number of liberal and quasi-evangelical biblical scholars who avoid the factuality and propositional truth of Holy Scripture by arguing that biblical writers were in fact employing allegedly common “literary” styles of their time that did not mandate historical or factual accuracy (see, e.g., Vol. 15, No. 3). It should therefore not be surprising that the present issue of the Journal features a detailed analysis and critique of one such attempt, that of John Walton.  Readers of Dr. Joseph Miller’s devastating study will certainly be able to generalize to similar efforts by other biblical de-historicizers.

What that background in mind, enjoy the article and subscribers are welcome to engage with me in the comments section.

Introduction

Jesus’ testimony in Matthew 5:17–20 that He came to fulfill and not abolish the Torah is foundational for understanding the Mosaic Law and its relevance for Christian ethics. However, recent scholarship has challenged this premise. One prominent example is John Walton’s “Lost

World” hermeneutic which interprets the Old Testament (OT) text through the lens of Ancient Near East (ANE) patterns of thinking reconstructed from his analysis of ancient sourcedocuments. This paper evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Walton’s hermeneutic in his book The Lost World of the Torah and examines the specific consequences for Christology and normative ethics. 

Jesus’ declaration in Matthew 5:17–20, if taken as the hermeneutical beginning point, shows that Law was fulfilled, not by universalizing the particulars of Torah code which were limited to Israel’s relational-covenant with God, but—contra Walton and Walton—by grounding the Torah in the universal nature of YHWH which was manifest through the incarnate person of Jesus Christ. This Christocentric hermeneutic allows for application of the Torah in modern cultures—not as an impersonal system of moral principles—but as a new covenant; given freely by God’s grace, received through faith, and sealed by the Holy Spirit who indwells each believer. The Waltons’ conclusion does, however, rely on at least four distinct premises repeated throughout the book which serves as an outline for my response.

P1: The Torah must be accepted or rejected as a complete ethical system.
P2: The Torah makes no universal moral claims binding on anyone outside the ANE.
P3: The Torah can only mean what a human reader of the ANE would understand it to mean.
P4: Virtually no Christian theologian has accepted the entire Torah as a universal system of ethics.
C: Christians today cannot use any passage in the Torah for moral guidance.

Summary of Walton’s Argument

In their book, The Lost World of the Torah, John H. Walton and his son J. Harvey Walton argue that God communicated the Torah to Israel within the “cultural river” of the Ancient Near East (ANE). The Torah must therefore be read, argue the Waltons, by skilled interpreters as a wholistic set of wisdom sayings pertinent to the values of the ANE. The Torah is not a revelation from God giving prescriptive legislation meant to guide obedience, but a collection of flexible wisdom sayings regulated by the customs and norms of the ancient world which were meant to bring civil order and justice.^[1] These sayings were given to God’s covenant people Israel in order to fulfill their twofold purpose of self-identification with YHWH and to protect God’s reputation among the nations. To these ends, conclude the Waltons, the Torah neither reflected the character of God nor did it function as a prescriptive guide o Israel’s moral decision-making.

In the ANE, write the Waltons, human beings were never to be like the gods in moral character: the gods were gods and humans were humans. Rather, Israel’s covenant relationship allowed them to co-identify with YHWH by imitating the temporal values of social order, wisdom, and justice. These moral ideals were highly prized in the ANE but said nothing about the eternal character or holiness of God.^[2] The Waltons argue: “Instead, we should understand

Yahweh’s self-revelation not in terms of absolutes or universals but rather in terms of contrast.”^[3] Christians today must recognize that “the purpose of the Torah (including the rituals) is not legislation, not moral instruction, not to form an ideal society,… not universally applicable, not incumbent on those outside the covenant, and not connected to salvation.”^[4] Therefore, the Waltons conclude, readers today should not imitate the values of the Torah because these are merely reflections of the values of the ANE.

The Waltons’ hermeneutical approach to the Torah is equally applied to the New Testament (NT). The NT writers produced works, write the Waltons, which interpreted the Torah from within their own Second-Temple worldview and whose moral sayings had limited application within the Greco-Roman culture. Therefore, both the Old and New Testaments operate from within their own unique cultural river and modern readers should not impose the artifice of continuity.^[5] The NT, argue the Waltons, is not a source of information for understanding the Old, but for understanding how the first century Christians applied the Torah to create social order within their own communities. 

The wider effect of the Waltons’ book is to release present-day readers from the difficulty of trying to establish any ethical norms from the Scripture. On a corporate level, the universal nature of Divine justice is replaced by the ideal of social justice (a term not fully defined by the Waltons). On an individual level, the call to be a holy people must remain distinct from the call to be a moral people. God’s people are declared to be holy within the divine covenant; but the Waltons argue that this status does not require the individual believer to follow any universal moral system. Instead, it requires only that each person demonstrate respect for the social order particular to his or her own cultural river. The Christian understanding of moral order, therefore, does not come then from God’s character, laws of nature, social convention, the Torah, or even the NT. Morality, conclude the Waltons, is a set of behaviors, customs, taboos, and traditions set by each community within each culture that establish and preserve social order.^[6] Consequently, moral purpose for the individual believer is found in following after God’s plan for their life. This plan may entail some particular moral choices, but these individual choices should never be understood as universal norms.

Critical Analysis