Following is the beginning of a terrific article by friend and fellow blogger, Peter Vest, about Wheaton College Professor of Old Testament, Daniel I. Block’s essay entitled “Preaching Old Testament Law to New Testament Christians.”

“I am keenly aware that in proposing [that the Torah of Moses is valid for Christians] I have guaranteed for myself a limited hearing,” Daniel I. Block, opening line from his essay entitled “Preaching Old Testament Law to New Testament Christians” found in the book “The Gospel According to Moses: Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Book of Deuteronomy”
What follows are my notes on Daniel I. Block’s essay entitled “Preaching Old Testament Law to New Testament Christians.” I just read this today and was astounded that a Christian would be promoting the Torah of Moses to fellow Christians. And not just any Christian but he happens to be a professor of the Old Testament at Wheaton College. Friends, this is G-d at work in Christendom, changing it into something new. Enjoy:
Block claims to have figured out why Christians believe the Torah is not relevant. They think it’s a bunch of boring rituals made obsolete by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, laws that are hopelessly out of date and inapplicable to modern times, unduly harsh laws that are grossly inferior to the “law of love” announced by Jesus, encrypted in an antiquated literary form that would be impossible to understand in our modern age, and representing a view of G-d that is objectionable to modern sensitivities.
But, he says, these misconceptions about the law arise from fundamental ideological and theological prejudices against Old Testament law. He first traces these prejudices to the 2nd century heretic Marcion proclaimed a radical discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, Israel and the Church, the G-d of the Old Testament and the G-d of the New. Then he identifies three current streams of prejudice: the antipathy resulting from the Lutherian law-gospel contrast, the dispensational idea that the church age with its dispensation of grace is fundamentally different from the Israel age with its dispensation of law, and, finally, the New Covenant Theology rooted in Reformed Theolgoy which says that Mosaic Covenant ended when Christ instituted the New Covenant.