In his latest rebuttal, Myles has centered his argument on the issue of circumcision. Now, he is quite correct when he points out that under the Torah, the male, physical descendents of Abraham and those who were the slaves of the house of Abraham (which in an Ancient Near East context made them “lesser” members of the household) were required to undergo physical circumcision to seal them to the Abrahamic Covenant. However, he misses two important points:

Salvation was received by Abraham by faith before he was sealed with circumcision (Gen. 15:6, Rom. 4:10ff); therefore, even under the Torah circumcision was never a requirement for salvation.
Circumcision, the seal of Abraham’s Covenant (Promise) from God, predated the Torah and the Mosaic Covenant (Gal. 3:17).

Note that point #1 was the matter that the Apostles struggled with the larger Jewish community over (Acts 15:1). Note that Myles makes the same error as the 1 ^st Century Jewish community by claiming that only those of Abrahamic blood should keep the Torah. To say that circumcision—again, a “buzzword” for being Jewish (Rom. 2:25-3:1, Eph. 2:11)—was required for salvation was a gross misuse of the Torah, and all the more so because God had promised to call Gentiles by His Name as well (Amos 9:12; cf. Isa. 11:10 & 56:6). Therefore, by forbidding Gentile believers from circumcising (with exceptions like Timothy), from ceasing to be “Gentiles who are called by [God’s] name” and becoming instead fully Jewish, they were actually preserving, establishing, and fulfilling the Torah, not exchanging one law for another.

This is why Paul said that if the Galatians accepted circumcision then the Messiah would be of no avail, for they would no longer be trusting Him, but trusting being Jewish as the means of their salvation.

We have firmly established that the Apostles accepted it as a given that Jewish believers would continue to circumcise their sons and to keep that Torah. Myles implicitly accepts this when he writes, “If there is a person who can prove it [that he is a blood-descendant of Abraham) he can be bound by the old covenant,” though he once again makes the mistake of confusing the covenant with the commandments.

However, such a dual-covenantism simply doesn’t hold up to Biblical scrutiny, as Myles well knows. It is to “the house of Israel and with the house of Judah” that ADONAI promises the New Covenant that we of Gentile birth are grafted into—the same Covenant which promises, “I will put My law (Torah) within them and on their heart I will write it” (Jer. 31:31-34, Heb. 8:8-12).

Note that Myles still has not dealt with this passage which proves that the New Covenant and the Torah go hand-in-hand. Until he does, he cannot continue to argue honestly that keeping the Torah means one is under the Old Covenant rather than the New.

Myles asks, “What does it mean by ‘so that you may belong to another?’” So that we may belong to Yeshua, of course. However, is obeying the Torah and belonging to the Messiah really incompatible? Or as Paul says, “Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law” (Rom. 3:31). If the Apostle Paul saw no disconnect between dying to the Law and keeping the Torah, as we indeed see him doing in his life—again, he even took a Nazrite oath and went to the Temple to sacrifice—then on what basis does Myles say that those who keep the Torah are not under the New Covenant?

We once again see Myles returning to his attempted comparison between the Old and New Covenant and Great Britian and the United States. I’m not sure why he keeps returning to it, but it continues to fail for the same reasons as before:

Simply stating that two things are alike do not make them so, and an illustration does not an argument make. Until Myles actually establishes that the Bible teaches two separate laws or provides some sort of deductive reasoning that compares to the two, his illustration is frankly irrelevant.
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We are no longer under the British law or Britain’s monarch. We are under Israel’s monarch, and per Jer. 31 our “government” is based on Torah.

Reasoning from Galatians 3:10, Myles argues,

This passage will be a noose around Michael’s neck for the rest of this debate because after 70 A.D. no one could keep the law perfectly. Michael doesn’t even keep all the Torah for he doesn’t bind circumcision or animal scarifies. Therefore the Torah is a curse to Michael and all who follow him.

Here Myles argues fallaciously again, and actually demonstrates that he does not understand a basic of Biblical hermeneutics: how one goes about prioritizing God’s commands. For example, Yeshua kept the Sabbath, but put actively helping others in legitimate need on a higher priority than resting when the two conflicted (Mat. 12:11f). Though we would all agree that lying is against Scripture, we applaud those Christians who lied to protect Jews from persecution in the Third Reich, for example.

With that in mind, why Myles’ argument falls apart can be easily seen. I have already established why the command for circumcision is not universal: 1) Because it was specifically given to the blood descendants of Abraham, and 2) because it was the object of severe misuse in the 1 ^st Century, and the Apostles had to correct. Likewise, the Torah specifically prohibits me from sacrificing outside of Jerusalem (Deu. 12:5-14)—I am therefore actually keeping the Torah by not sacrificing goats in my backyard.

Do we Messianics often fall short of keeping even those commands of the Torah that we can and should keep? Of course! But that is why we are grateful that we have been redeemed from the curses the Torah pronounces on those who do not keep it by our Lord Messiah (Gal. 3:13) and walk under Grace, not “under the law.” But neither should we intentionally violate the Torah—which again is the very definition of sin (Rom. 7:7, 1 Jn. 3:4)—because of this Grace (Rom. 6).

And finally, as established in my previous rebuttal, Heb. 10:9 speaks of a change in the priesthood and the sacrifice, not of the Torah as a whole. Since Myles has not addressed that point, he cannot continue to rely on this passage for his “Two Laws” theology.

As we move into the latter stages of this debate, let us take a moment to reiterate the major arguments that Myles has not addressed or in which his counter-arguments have been refuted:

Yeshua HaMashiach Himself, the only one with the authority to change or supersede the Torah with a New Law, commanded rather that the least of the Torah’s commandments be kept until Heaven and Earth pass away and all was fulfilled (Mat. 5:17-19). Even if there were some conflict between Yeshua and Paul on this matter—and there isn’t—in any contest of authority, who wins? I know who to place my money on.
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The Apostles kept Torah, and accepted it as a given that Jewish believers would continue to keep Torah and circumcise. Therefore, any reading of their letters which makes them out to be anti-Torah must be rejected, or we make the Apostles into hypocrites.
The original promise of the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34) states that the Torah would be written on our hearts as part of that Covenant. Therefore, Myles cannot legitimately claim that the Torah was only to be kept under the Old Covenant.
Hebrews speaks of a transference of the High Priesthood from Levi to Judah in Yeshua and a corresponding transference in the Torah, but it does not speak of a wholesale overturning of the Torah in favor of a New Law, as even many Christian commentators acknowledge. Therefore Myles’ assumption of even the existence of a “new law” in place of the Torah stands without Biblical support.
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Let me finish this rebuttal by reiterating a final point: Myles’ entire argument relies solely on the writings of Paul and one anonymous letter that Paul may have written. Can we truly afford to rely on a single witness in so grave a matter? Should we not instead look at the witness of all of Scripture?

If Myles’ argument must rely on put a single author in Scripture (and indeed, ignoring half of what he said and how he himself lived his life), ignoring all of the positive things the Scriptures say about the Torah (per my opening argument), one has to wonder if he might be misunderstanding Paul, who told us to look not just to his own letters, but to “all Scripture” (1 Ti. 3:16) and into “all the counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Even Yeshua provided multiple witnesses to His Messiahahip (John 5:31-39)—how much more should we provide multiple witnesses when discussing so important a matter as this one?

Shalom!

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