Meditations in Matthew 5–7: A Syllogism

Please don’t allow a little word to intimidate you. Syllogism may sound scary, but it is our friend. It is “a formal argument consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion.” For example, “every virtue is laudable; kindness is a virtue; therefore kindness is laudable.”¹

This post will use a syllogism to analyze Matt 5:18. So, let’s convince ourselves that syllogisms are useful tools.

George Smeaton says Paul used syllogistic reasoning. The apostle’s opponents claimed the law played a role in our salvation. His response “put in syllogistic form, is as follows: If righteousness come by the law, Christ died without cause. But Christ did not die without cause; therefore righteousness is not by the law.”² This implied syllogism is in Gal 2:11–21.

Good syllogisms lead to truth. Robert Lewis Dabney said, “In a valid syllogism, if the major and minor are known to be true . . . the belief of the conclusion by the hearer is as inevitable, as necessary, as universal as when an axiom is stated.”³ 

Let’s illustrate Dabney’s statement. Suppose I state “God created all men” as my major premise. Then, for my minor premise, I say “Adam was a man.” Since my premises are both true, the conclusion must be that “God created Adam.” This is an unavoidable truth.

So, here is our Matt 5:18 syllogism:

Major premise: “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

Minor premise: Some things have passed from the law. 

Conclusion: Therefore, heaven and earth have passed away; the law has fulfilled its purpose.

If the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. Let’s consider this proposition.

The Major Premise

Major premise: “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt 5:18). 

We know this major premise is true. Our Lord is the “God that cannot lie” (Titus 1:2). But, we are less certain about our understanding of each part of his statement. Let’s work our way through each of them.

“Till heaven and earth pass”

There is a sense in which heaven and earth are permanent. God “laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever” (Psa 104:5; emphasis added). “We have a building . . . eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor 5:1; emphasis added).

Peter says the heavens and earth “perished” in the flood (2 Pet 3:5–7). Yet, the physical heaven and earth did not cease to exist. Richard Chenevix Trench reinforces this sense of permanence. He says there are no passages “which speak of the end of the kosmos.”⁴

Heaven and earth passing has another (prevalent) meaning in Scripture. It is cosmic collapse imagery that shows God’s judgment on a nation. When God pronounced judgment on Babylon, he said: “I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place” (Isa 13:13). Other examples include God’s judgments “of Idumea (Isa 34:1, 2, 4, 8–10); of Egypt (Ezek 32:7, 8); compare also Psa 18:7–15; Isa 24:1, 17–19; Joel 2:10, 11, &c.”⁵

C. Fletcher-Louis says Jesus is using this imagery in Matt 5:18 and Luke 16:17.

By ‘heaven and earth’ is meant the Jerusalem temple and the Torah⁶ constitution at the center of which the former stands. Neither saying envisages the collapse of the space-time universe (as has been understood by modern interpretation). Both refer to the imminent end to the social, religious and economic structure of Israel’s covenant relationship with God with the attendant destruction of the temple.⁷

This meaning fits the context. John was announcing “the wrath about to break at any moment”⁸ on Israel (Matt 3:7). For God to destroy the city, Temple, and nation would be for their “heaven and earth” to pass (cp. Matt 24:29).

D. A. Carson, who is not an inmillennialist, provides another relevant truth. He says, “‘Until heaven and earth disappear’ simply means ‘until the end of the age’: i.e., not quite ‘never,’ but ‘never, as long as the present world order persists.’”⁹ Inmillennialism says these words describe the end of the Mosaic age. During that age, the Mosaic law defined the world order.

So, the Lord is not talking about the end of the physical universe (i.e., the kosmos). He is using traditional prophetic imagery to describe the end of the Mosaic age.

“One jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law”

The identity of these two marks is uncertain. We know Jesus refers to two of the smallest letters or punctuation marks in the Hebrew language. Commentators suggest several possibilities.

We need not pursue this matter. The primary point Jesus is making does not involve physical manuscripts. He is not speaking about letters fading from a particular scroll. Neither is he referring to the canon’s preservation per se.

The Lord is referring to the teachings of the law represented by the letters. None of its precepts would fail—in some sense—no matter how insignificant they might appear.

God established the law to bring Israel to Christ and the messianic age. “The law was our guardian until Christ came” (Gal 3:24, ESV; emphasis added. Cf. Gal 2:19; 4:2–3). Nothing in the law would pass until it fulfilled all things necessary for this purpose. 

Several passages confirm this perspective. “The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached” (Luke 16:16; emphasis added. Cp. Matt 11:12–13). “The law is thus linked with the prophets as looking forward to a time of fulfillment which is now arrived.”¹⁰

Jesus does not mean the law and prophets would cease to exist as parts of the Bible. The jots and tittles of the Old Testament manuscripts would remain. He meant a transition was underway. He and his disciples were preaching the kingdom of heaven. The old order of things was passing (Heb 8:13). 

“The law and prophets” would govern Israel until her “heaven and earth” passed with the Temple’s fall. Until that happened, the law would continue to fulfill its purpose. Nothing in it would pass until it brought God’s people to the kingdom in the messianic age.

Jesus speaks from this perspective in the Olivet Discourse. There he uses the verb “pass away” (Gk. parerchomai) three times. “This generation shall not pass (Gk. parerchomai), till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away (Gk. parerchomai), but my words shall not pass away (Gk. parerchomai)” (Matt 24:34–35; emphasis added). 

Two things would “pass away” at the same time—“this generation” and “heaven and earth.” Jesus’s words—not the law!—would remain.

These events would occur when the law had fulfilled its role.

The Minor Premise

Minor premise: Some things have passed from the law.

The Scriptures mention several things that have passed from the law. The law’s daily sacrifices no longer exist. Daniel referred to “the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up” (Dan 12:11; emphasis added). 

Jesus mentioned this in the Olivet Discourse. “Ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet” (Matt 24:15). This would happen when the Temple fell in his generation (Matt 24:1–3, 34). The daily sacrifices would pass from the law.

The Aaronic priesthood would pass away. “For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. . . . For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness” (Heb 7:18, ESV; emphasis added). 

Paul used the present tense to describe the role of the priests in his day. “There are priests that offer gifts according to the law: Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things” (Heb 8:4–5; emphasis added). Their days were soon to end. Paul said, “Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (Heb 8:13). The priesthood was about to pass from the law. It no longer exists in the messianic age.

The dietary laws and washings of the law would pass. Paul said, “gifts and sacrifices are offered [present tense] that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation” (Heb 9:9–10, ESV; emphasis added). That “time of reformation” came in AD 70 when the Temple fell. Then, these things passed from the law.

Paul makes other statements in Hebrews about these changes. God “taketh away the first, that he may establish the second” (Heb 10:9). “The first” refers to the law’s offerings (Heb 10:8). “The second” means Christ’s “one sacrifice for sins” (Heb 10:12).

Many elements of the law were temporary. God designed them to last only until Christ established his kingdom. Referring to Haggai 2:6–7, Paul says, 

Now this, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. (Heb 12:27–28, NKJV)

The heavens and earth of the Mosaic age were passing away in Paul’s generation.

Some elements of the law passed in Jesus’s generation. They did not pass from the canon of Scripture. They fulfilled their role as pointers to Christ and his kingdom. Then, they ceased to exist for that purpose.

The Conclusion

Conclusion: Therefore, heaven and earth have passed away; the law has fulfilled its purpose. 

If our major and minor premises are true, this conclusion is certain. It does not mean the physical kosmos has ended. It means Israel’s world, as defined by the law during the Mosaic age, has passed. Nothing in the law passed away until Christ came and established the kingdom of heaven.

This conclusion fits well in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7). There Jesus taught his disciples to recognize that the law’s reign was ending. They must now “enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:20). Jesus said, “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matt 6:33). The new heaven and earth of the messianic age would soon arrive.¹¹

Inmillennialism, our proposed prophetic model, conforms to this syllogism.

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1. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1996), s.v. “syllogism”.
2. George Smeaton, The Apostles’ Doctrine of the Atonement (Winona Lake, IN: Alpha Publications, 1979), 241–42.
3. R. L. Dabney, Systematic Theology (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1985), 96.
4. Richard Chenevix Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953), 214.
5. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Matthew–John, vol. 3 of A commentary, critical, experimental and practical on the old and new testaments, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 194.
6. The Torah is the law as revealed in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures.
7. Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis, “The Destruction of the Temple and the Relativization of the Old Covenant: Mark 13:31 and Matthew 5:18,” in “The Reader Must Understand”: Eschatology in Bible and Theology, ed. Kent E. Brower and Mark W. Elliott (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 146.
8. Kenneth S. Wuest, Expanded Translation of the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961), 6.
9. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), 145. Carson applies “the present world order” to the messianic age.
10. R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, New International Commentary on the New Testament eds. Ned B. Stonehouse, F. F. Bruce, and Gordon D. Fee, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), 183.
11. See The Messianic Age as the New Heaven and Earth — Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.