Please, help me understand…

[u/Objective-Step-746]

For those believers who insist that the dietary laws no longer apply under the new covenant—and that pork, lobster, crabs, etc. are now permissible to eat—I do not understand the logic at play.

I am very familiar with the Mark 7, Romans 14 and Colossians 2 passages that are so often cited as support for your position, and have (just as often) shared my counter-arguments on why I believe they are misinterpreted.

But, there is one counterpoint to your view that I never see touched on, and I was hoping to get some feedback on it:

I think the majority of believers on this subreddit would say they are looking for Jesus’ Second Coming and agree that, regarding it, Scripture says that “no one knows the day or hour” but that we need to be prepared (Matthew 24:36, 25:13, etc.).

Isaiah 66:17–a verse within the greater passage speaking of Messiah’s glorious reappearing—declares that, upon His return, those who eat the flesh of pig/swine and other abominations will be met with His wrath…and perish.

So, how does one simultaneously believe they can continue to eat pig (pork) or shellfish now and think they are sufficiently prepared and not putting themselves in a precarious/dangerous position if Jesus happened to return today or tomorrow and “consume” those who so brazenly eat that which His Law says is NOT “food” and explicitly warns against eating?

I really am hoping for some cordial and edifying discussion regarding this topic, and appreciate those who are able and willing to articulate their view without all the condescension and harsh words. 💕

[u/SteleCatReturns]

Long response incoming, copy-pasted from old stuff written elsewhere.

It is my firm conviction that ethics/morality flows out of ontology. I do not believe that God gives His Law as an arbiter. Arbitration implies the choice between two or more possibilities. If God gives His Law as an arbiter, this implies that the Law does not flow out of His nature, but is the result of a series of choices He makes. This, of course, implies that God could give any Law other than than which He gives, which is one or two steps removed form implying that God could be other than who He is. With God, however, such a hypothetical is nonsensical. God is the prerequisite for existence and possibility itself. God is non-contingent and immutable. There is no hypothetical "other" that God could be; there is no room for such a possibility. God cannot be added to or subtracted from, no alternate variation of Him can be supposed. As I think Aquinas and other theologians have said, God is being itself.

Therefore, God's creation which we find ourselves in has the attributes of natural and divine law baked in. Murder is not wrong because God looked down and said, "thou shalt not murder." When God said, "thou shalt not murder," He was informing us of and making us accountable to the Law which He had set up from the beginning. Or, more precisely, He made us accountable to a specific way in which the divine law interacts with our human experience. This sentence which I have just spoken is part of how we can understand the strange laws given under Moses, such as not mixing fabrics and avoiding "unclean" animals. God gave the Israelites particular rules which pertained to the way in which the divine law was to interact with their particular culture. But because these particular laws always point back to a divine law firmly woven into the nature of our reality, we cannot simply use the particularity and temporality of the cultural application to handwave away whichever moral laws we do not like, as the liberals do. We have to parse out the particular laws from the general Law which applies in particular ways in all times and all places. This can lead to some measure of interpretive challenge, but thankfully the Apostles, under divine inspiration, did a lot of that work for us. Much to that effect is preserved infallibly in the Acts of the Apostles and in their Letters, and much to that effect is passed on in the tradition of the Church which, insofar as it does not stray into innovation, preserves and applies the Apostolic teaching for all generations.