a tongue and check quote from Jason Stillman http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/#comment-38412 comment 192 excerpt:
"I wrote, “… the promise of the gospel is equivalent with the promise of the New Covenant that God’s law will no longer be external to the believer, but will be written upon his mind and heart, such that its righteous demands are fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. And again unsurprisingly, when I turned to the early Church fathers, and especially Augustine, it was this very understanding of the gospel that I encountered over and over again.” You responded:
These things are true. They are results of the work of the Holy Spirit in concert with or via his gospel, but this doesn’t differ from the Reformers and Protestantism until you confuse our living out (working out) the gospel with the gospel, as your new church does.
What I find confusing is where Paul says we are to work out our own salvation, for it is God who works in us. Shoot, I just can’t figure out where his work ends and mine begins. Or, I find it really confusing when Paul says that God’s grace toward him was not in vain since he worked harder than anyone, though it was not him working but God working through him. Or, when he says he was crucified with Christ but nonetheless lives, yet not him, but Christ within him, that’s pretty confusing, too. If Paul was a monergist he must have stayed up for nights on end worrying that he was constantly stealing God’s credit for everything by ascribing effort to himself! Well, at least it only took a millennium and a half for someone to sort it all out…."
also here
Divine law is any time God breaks into history and gives commands or instructions. He did this with Adam and Eve, Noah, and Abraham. So divine law was around before Moses.
For example, the divine decree to circumcise males on the eighth day was part of divine law (Abrahamic).
St Thomas Aquinas, however, notes that the divine law prior to Christ (Old Law) was more like “heightened natural law” clarified for sinners.
Only the New Law is inward and transformative because the New Law includes the Holy Spirit in our souls.
St Paul also teaches that the Divine Law of the Old Law was shadowy and mediated by angels – thus inferior. In Christ is the fulness.
from comment 31 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/11/why-john-calvin-did-not-recognize-the-distinction-between-mortal-and-venial-sin/
But the law He fulfilled, not in one way only, but in a second and third also. In one way, by transgressing none of the precepts of the law. For that He did fulfill it all, hear what He says to John, “For thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness.” Matthew 3:15 And to the Jews also He said, “Which of you convinces me of sin.” John 8:46 And to His disciples again, “The prince of this world comes, and finds nothing in me.” John 14:30 And the prophet too from the first had said that “He did no sin.” Isaiah 53:9
This then was one sense in which He fulfilled it. Another, that He did the same through us also; for this is the marvel, that He not only Himself fulfilled it, but He granted this to us likewise. Which thing Paul also declaring said, “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes.” Romans 10:4 And he said also, that “He judged sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh.” Romans 8:3-4 And again, “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! Yea, we establish the law.” Romans 3:31 For since the law was laboring at this, to make man righteous, but had not power, He came and brought in the way of righteousness by faith, and so established that which the law desired: and what the law could not by letters, this He accomplished by faith. On this account He says, “I am not come to destroy the law.”
But if any one will inquire accurately, he will find also another, a third sense, in which this has been done. Of what sort is it then? In the sense of that future code of laws, which He was about to deliver to them. For His sayings were no repeal of the former, but a drawing out, and filling up of them. Thus, “not to kill,” is not annulled by the saying, Be not angry, but rather is filled up and put in greater security: and so of all the others. (Homily 16 on Matthew)
Notice especially that second way in which Christ fulfilled the law, namely, by granting us to fulfill it, not by extra nos imputation, but by living faith. And the third way in which Christ fulfills the law is by giving a new law that draws out and entirely encapsulates the old law. This is agape.
Regarding Mt. 5:18 in particular, not the smallest stroke will be removed from the moral law. Christianity is not antinomian; it is the power by which the law is fulfilled in us who believe.
2. Can a Catholic in a state of grace claim that they are currently fulfilling the whole law?
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, as the bishop of Constantinople, in a homily delivered in Constantinople on January 6, 381, on the topic of baptism, said:
But not yet perhaps is there formed upon your soul any writing good or bad; and you want to be written upon today, and formed by us unto perfection. Let us go within the cloud. Give me the tables of your heart; I will be your Moses, though this be a bold thing to say; I will write on them with the finger of God a new Decalogue. Exodus 38:28 I will write on them a shorter method of salvation. (Oration, 40)
By receiving in baptism the agape by which the law is written on our heart, the law is fulfilled in us, unto perfection. Notice that St. Gregory says that, in baptism, in persona Christi, “I will be your Moses.” “I will write on [the tablets of your heart] with the finger of God a new Decalogue.” That’s the heart of the agape paradigm. And with that writing on the heart comes “perfection.”
But perfection has more than one sense. There is perfection with respect to the essence of righteousness, and that is what we receive when we receive agape. But there is also perfection in our members in their participation in this perfect righteousness, that is, in the dispositions of our powers and appetites, and in our thoughts and actions. I have explained this in the comments under the Imputation and Paradigms article. This participation is not perfected during this present life, and so we commit venial sin, and also remain susceptible to committing mortal sin. In that respect we are not perfect in this present life; God has left this imperfection with us for the sake of merit and greater acts of love, as is explained in my analysis and exposition of Session Five of the Council of Trent on original sin.
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