John 8:1-11 Is Not Anti-Theonomist

One of the most significant indicators that someone does not understand Christianity is the belief that there is a major disconnect between the moral commands of the Old Testament and those of the New Testament.  This myth has been accepted by a large number of Christians, as well as by many non-Christians who have not read the Bible very thoroughly.  Perhaps the largest manifestation of this falsity is the idea that the Old Testament prescribes unjust capital punishments which the New Testament revokes.  Evangelicals, as well as pseudo-atheists, often misunderstand several passages from the gospels that do not contradict Old Testament legal ethics in any way.

The story of the woman caught in adultery can be found in one such passage: John 8:1-11.  In these verses, a group of Pharisees brings a woman to Jesus, claiming to have found her in the process of committing adultery with an unnamed man.  Jesus, after the Pharisees emphasize that Mosaic Law calls for her death, ultimately tells the group that the one among them who is without sin should hurl the first stone.  Allegedly, the oldest texts of the book of John do not feature this story, but, regardless of its status within the canon, the passage does not in any way contradict theonomy.  The New Testament only affirms the legal penalties demanded by the Old Testament (Matthew 15:3-9).

The fact that Jesus did not stone the woman has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the Romans allowed the Jews to conduct their own executions, as some have so ignorantly suggested; only an inept theologian would regard cruel Roman legal norms, which were often deeply opposed to the ethical commands of Mosaic Law [1], as authoritative and Yahweh's own legal penalties as morally problematic.  Yahweh's commands, not arbitrary societal ideas of justice, dictate the only authoritative legal punishments according to Christianity.  A Christian who regards any cultural norms as authoritative is guilty of a grand heresy, since morality is rooted in God's nature--and his nature does not change (Malachi 3:6).

With this point resolved, it then becomes clear that Jesus did not stone the woman for one of several possible reasons.  Since Jesus did not come to abolish Yahweh's instructions about criminal justice (Matthew 5:17-19), and thus he would not have tried to undermine Mosaic Law's commands regarding legal justice, any opposition to Yahweh's laws on his part would create an internal contradiction within Christianity that is not present in Biblical theology.  Consequently, other explanations must be examined.  One possibility is that the Pharisees truly did discover the woman in the act of adultery, but the man escaped.  Another possibility is that the woman was caught while committing adultery, as the alleged witnesses claimed, but those who found her ignored the man's sin, which deserves death just as much as hers did (Deuteronomy 22:22).

Since John 8:3 says, before it even quotes the Pharisees, that the woman was "caught in adultery," there is nothing that can support the idea that the scenario involved an innocent woman who was being framed.  However, verse 6 does say that the Pharisees brought the woman to Jesus "in order to have a basis for accusing him."  They seem to have had no concern for actual justice, instead hoping to advance their own personal goals.  This was their great error in the story.  If God himself prescribes execution for a particular moral offense, there can be nothing sinful about wanting to enforce the penalty--or going so far as to celebrate its consequences.  The Pharisees were not guilty because they wanted to carry out a prescription in Mosaic Law, but because they trivialized justice for their own gain.

Jesus, had he stoned the woman or approved of her stoning, would have seemingly contradicted Mosaic Law.  There is no evidence that the Pharisees gave the woman a trial, as the Torah mandates, and it is quite possible that they allowed the adulterous man to go unpunished.  Either deviation from Mosaic Law is enough to render their actions unjust.  John 8:1-11 does not convey a story where Jesus models the tolerance that contemporary conservative and liberal Christians alike selectively invoke.  Instead, if anything, the story is about Jesus refusing to participate in an injustice that is defined as such by the Old Testament.  There is nothing in the story that even suggests anti-nomianism or the promotion of tolerance.  Jesus did not challenge, disregard, or overturn the judicial instructions of Yahweh.  Any ideas to the contrary are nothing but myths accepted by gullible people.  At worst, such ideas are examples of a moral relativism that has been internalized by the modern church.


[1].  One obvious example is crucifixion, yet evangelicals are often stupid enough to pretend like the thieves crucified alongside Jesus deserved the unbiblical brutality of Roman law.  I refute this idea in great detail here:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html