Hi, I'm Dr. Scott Hahn, and I want to welcome you to the Road to Amas, a podcast from the St. Paul Center.

I also want to welcome, my dear friend, Rob Corzine,

our vice president here. Welcome, Rob. It's a delight to be here. So what are we going to discuss

today? What's the question? We're looking at one part of the question of the relationship between

the Old Testament and the New, in particular, this idea of where do Christians

draw the line between Old Testament laws that we do keep that we're obliged to and Old Testament

laws that we don't. It's a really old question. Like Jesus said in the sermon of the Mount,

I've come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

But almost immediately, the early church had to deal with defending both sides of that.

On the one hand, there were Gnostics who said, let's get rid of the old, completely reboot.

You know, the God of the Old Testament seems like angry and smite.

And, you know, let's just have the New Testament God.

At the same time, the Jews would turn to Christians and say, hey, you say you're following

the Messiah, the promised Jewish Messiah, but you don't keep the feasts, you don't keep

the Sabbaths, you don't circumcise, you're all of a sudden, you know, eating foods that are

forbidden.

And this is a live question for us now because atheists turn to us and say the same thing. Oh, you guys say

the Bible, the whole Bible is the word of God. But I notice you're not like stoning your daughters

if they curse their parents. And, you know, there's sausage and lobster on your plate.

And you're not getting together on Saturdays.

You know, so, like, I think it's useful.

And we actually published many years ago an article in letter and spirit on this very question,

...