Legalism By Any Other Name: A Review of the Book Holy Cow

There are essentially two goals of Hope Egan’s book: The first is to prove that an Old Testament kosher diet—that is, abstaining from meats such as pork and shellfish—generally leads to better personal fitness and health. For instance, she states (p. 32) that plant-eating animals (herbivores) absorb fewer toxins or poisons than meat-eating animals (carnivores) and that people will be healthier if they eat herbivorous animals allowed under the OT food laws. Although the validity of this and other health claims in the book are difficult to evaluate because Egan does not appear to cite any original research, my concern in this review is for the second, and really the main, emphasis of the book: to build the case that Christians today can be more pleasing to God if they keep the OT dietary laws. This is not stated as such, but seems implied throughout. For instance, after noting the importance of holiness in the life of believer and quoting Leviticus 11:45 (“…you shall be holy, for I am holy”), the author concludes (p. 25) that holiness is the “only reason” mentioned as to why God gave dietary laws to the Israelites in Leviticus 11.

Let’s begin with the positive. Egan’s book does contain biblically accurate statements about the relationship between the OT Law and getting yourself right with God (p. 19): “But Scripture itself—both the New Testament and the Old—tells us that following the Torah never led to salvation. Right standing with God has always come solely through faith in God’s promises.” While Egan (and the secondary author, Thomas Lancaster) clearly understand that no one can be made acceptable to God by following the Law, they err in their understanding of several key passages that discuss the nature of the OT law and how it relates to the Christian, and fail to mention central biblical texts that plainly acknowledge that the OT is no longer binding on the believer.

Although the finer points of how the New and Old Testaments relate together can sometimes appear puzzling, it is clear that the OT law is temporary, a fact that the OT itself announces: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:31-32, ESV). Like the prophet Jeremiah, the author of Hebrews recognizes that the laws and regulations of the old covenant (“covenant” is a more modern word for “testament”) have expired, and therefore no longer have validity. After quoting the Jeremiah passage above (Hebrews 8:8-12), and discussing the superiority of the new covenant, the author of Hebrews concludes that “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (verse 13).

Theologians have often divided the Law into its moral, civil (pertaining to governmental and civil administration), and ceremonial (e.g., sacrifices, offerings, feasts) aspects. The moral law, according to this view, is retained in the new covenant, while the civil and ceremonial laws are discarded. This appears logical, since many of the moral commands of the OT are repeated in the NT, but doesn’t seem to square exactly with the statement of the author of Hebrews that the old covenant itself (not just the civil and ceremonial laws) are as a whole now obsolete.

Perhaps a better model is to conceive of the old covenant as a passport that has expired and needs to be reissued (at least in the United States, passports cannot be renewed). Like an old passport, the old covenant also has expired and God’s covenant with mankind has been “reissued” in Christ. As the old passport served its purpose for travel while it was valid, the old covenant served its purpose in God’s plan for the Israelite nation. Now that God has issued a new and better passport—one that anyone in the world can have, and without an expiration date!—the old passport is no longer needed. True, the new covenant and the old both hold a certain moral outlook in common, just like the old passport and the new passport both allow you to travel. We would expect this since the same God issued both covenants.

Space will not permit a full discussion of other relevant texts, some of which are used as proof texts in the book, but I will briefly address the authors’ core misunderstanding of Jesus’ statement in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:17 that He has come not “to abolish the Law and the Prophets . . . but to fulfill them.” In the context, Jesus goes on to say that whoever breaks the “least” of the OT laws, and so teaches others, will be called “least” in the kingdom of heaven, whereas those who keep and teach them will be called great. For Egan, this means Christians are to keep the OT law dietary laws and perhaps the OT law in general (this point is not made totally clear), although she is willing to make exceptions for certain commandments, such as stoning adulterers, because this would conflict with civil laws today.

But what does it really mean for Jesus when he urges us to “keep” the commandments, and what does it mean to “fulfill” them? Reading on in Matthew 5, Jesus presents a number of vivid, clarifying examples. In verse 21, for instance, Jesus notes (“You have heard…”) that that the OT law does indeed forbid murder (Exodus 20:13), but condemning murder is not the point of the Law. Hatred is. No murder has ever take place without someone first hating someone else. Jesus penetrates to and condemns the motivation behind the action, an attitude of hatred toward others. God’s real concern is for a heart attitude of love and worship toward Him and others. “Keeping” the commandment not to “murder” as God truly intended it (“But I say to you…”, verse 22) requires a pure and righteous motivation for our actions. It requires us to love God and our neighbor, which is simpler to express than the OT law code but infinitely more difficult for fallen sinners to do without God’s grace!

In his dramatic conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus summarizes the requirements of the OT law: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12; ESV) The New Testament believer is “fulfilling” the Law—just as Jesus came to “fulfill” the Law—by loving his neighbor, because that is the true end and purpose of the Law. Jesus was announcing a new era in which the moral kernel of the Law is not only restated, but its demands are actually amplified forcefully.

So what was the primary purpose of the Law? The multiplied commandments of the OT law are necessary for God to demonstrate the utter futility of attempting to curry favor with Him on the basis of our works. The Law was the “tutor” or “guardian” that taught us about our own sinfulness and desperate need for a Savior (Galatians 3:232-26). Just like the child coming of age is no longer under a guardian, the NT believer who has received grace is no longer under the OT law.

In sum, Egan’s book tends to blur the line between law and grace, old covenant and new covenant. Its practical dietary recommendations may or may not be helpful, but its theological reasoning lays the dangerous groundwork of legalistic thinking.