Hey guys, I have had this question bothering me for quite a while. My question is regarding Jesus who specifically said "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17). To me this implies, that he wanted to continue the Jewish way of life and its laws and he was living Jewish life.
However, later Paul seem to have twisted, based on a vision that the new Jews are not those in flesh, but those in the spirit and he abolished many of the commandments, such as circumcision which might prevented people to convert to Judaism/ early Christianity (brilliant marketing move though, Paul).
So how do Christians settle this difference? Can we say that (early) Christian is not what Jesus actually meant it to be?
It’s certainly one way that people read the relationship between Jesus and Paul, but it’s not a Christian way. That is, no significant body of people identifying themselves as Christians interprets Paul to be in theological opposition to Jesus. Plenty of scholars in biblical studies do, but since you ask about how Christians reconcile the two, here is my theological overview of the standard type of reconciliation that is more or less consistent historically (at a broad level).
So, that leaves the Christians. How have they attempted to resolve the apparent paradox that you present? Historically, in a number of ways, but the features are relatively common.
Firstly, historical Christian interpretation generally proceeds from/on the basis of a number of presuppositions, such as the Scriptures are authoritative, and that the New Testament canon functions as a whole, without internal theological contradiction. That means there’s a conceptual drive to find a resolution between these issues.
Secondly, Paul’s view on the Law is itself complicated. In my view, one of the best explorations of this remains Brian Rosner’s Paul and the Law, which sets out a nuanced case that Paul understands Jesus’ fulfilment of the Law of to effectively set aside the Law as a covenant. The Law still operates for Paul, but not as ‘law’, rather in categories of prophecy and wisdom (this is Rosner’s argument). Of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Law + Paul is a huge topic, and this position is certainly not uncontested in contemporary biblical scholarship.
Why then didn’t Jesus abandon the Law the way Paul does? Because Jesus was a Jew living under that Law in order to fulfil it. Paul sees that Law fulfilled in Jesus, and argues that it no longer applies in the same way. I wouldn’t argue that Paul abolishes individual commandments, so much as no longer sees the Law as constitutive or a legal body of strictures that God’s people, Jews and Gentiles united in Christ, are to follow.
I want to finish this brief theological overview by turning to the specifics of Matthew 5:17 in early Christian interpretation. Among those we have (Chromatius, Hilary, Origen), comments on this verse focus heavily on the idea of Jesus’ fulfilment of the Law, the law fulfilled in grace, and a comparison of the old law with the new (Chrysostom). Early Christian interpreters interpreted Matthew 5:17 with a fairly consistent hermeneutic that still saw ‘high moral standards’ in play, but reinterpreted the Law to be not the Torah per se, but the Law as taught by Christ and brought by the Gospel.