(1) What is purity / impurity? (2) Why does God require the maintenance of purity? (3) What is the logic of the laws we encounter related to purity, specifically the food laws?
- Purity/impurity is a concept that tries to quantify material “closeness” to God. When faith can’t be measured by simply looking at someone (faith is in concept something that it is not “quantifiable” and only exist within someone’s own heart), others are able to witness ritual obedience and ritual towards God. The acts that purity laws and rituals forbid are often things connected to humanities previous mistakes (sex and death being references to the curse of Eden as talked about in Purity and Danger, death being the curse laid upon mankind and sexual promiscuity being an act that God seems to look down upon in the Old Testament). Therefore the concept of purity is one that is connected to bringing the favor of God upon oneself, while impurity is falling further away from God.
- Like we spoke of how God directs the Israelites towards worship not for his own benefit, but rather for the benefit of the Israelites so that they may be closer to God and gain benefit from his gifts and benevolence. The same reasoning I’m guessing is behind the purity laws and why God requires the maintenance of them. When humanity was at its “worst”, when God was ashamed of his creation and moved to just start anew(with the flood), it was because of humanity slowly slipping into depravity. The purity laws act as protections against this happening again and additionally being beneficial to the followers to maintain a positive spirituality.
- The logic between the food purity laws is pretty simply. In the ancient world, the danger of uncooked food, or even food coming from specific sources, was real. While the main concern of these laws were the spiritual purity, they served a second purpose of physically protecting those who follow them to prevent them from food related illnesses and such.
Patrick Hines's Foundations of Theology Blog 