What is the basis for the belief among some Protestants that Christ's teachings do not apply to us today?

Upvote:-1

One biblical basis for the belief that some of Jesus teachings were intended for the audiences of his day but not necessarily our own time are found in some of the stories about Jesus casting out demons. It is not my position that in none of the narratives of Jesus casting out demons did he actually do so, but in a significant number of these stories the symptoms of demon possession sound remarkably like what today are known to be mental illnesses.

For example, the narrative in Luke 9:37-43, and its parallel passages, where a man intercedes with Our Lord to heal his son, who Luke reports has been possessed by a spirit. Now, I am not a physician, and do not play one on Stackexhchange, but people I know who are have told me that the narrative in Luke looks very much like someone with mental illness (the translators who produced the RSV in Matthew describes the boy as an "epileptic"β€”cf. Matt. 17:15 ) rather than demon possession, but the audiences that Jesus was addressing would not known what mental illness was, since the concept of mental illness did not become part of the canon of medicine until at least the eighteenth century.

So I consider that in many of these cases Jesus was not so much casting out demons as he was healing people with mental illness, and that casting out demons was an explanation that would have made much more sense to the people Jesus was talking to in his sermons, than if Jesus had corrected the crowd that said that the man was possessed of a demon by stating that the man was suffering from bipolar disorder.

The fundamental truth here is, in my opinion anyway, that Jesus healed the person, and whether it was from demonic possession or from bipolar disorder, is an inconsequential detail.

Upvote:0

The rationale is that since Jesus preached while the Torah was in effect, His teachings were part of the Torah and were fulfilled by His sacrifice on the cross and are not binding on us.

The motivation is to get around something that is condemned by Jesus in His teachings but which is not condemned anywhere else.

Upvote:2

The category of beliefs you are hearing about fall mainly under the heading of Dispensationalism. I'm not going to give you a detailed description, but now you have the name you can read up in it for yourself.

My experience is that practitioners of this often have very little direct Biblical basis for preaching it (ironically since it is largely preached by conservative evangelicals who claim to teach only what the Bible says) - rather it falls out because preachers decide that some teachings in the New Testament cannot be practiced literally, so decide they must be inapplicable.

I'm aware this is not strictly an answer to the question, but I will leave it unless someone actually comes up with a good Biblical basis for the belief.

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