1
To Beast Or Not To Beast: Does the Law of Christ Forbid Zoophilia?
Keith Plummer
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Copyright © 2001, by Keith Plummer
Greg Bahnsen has frequently appealed to the absence of an explicit
prohibition of bestiality in the New Testament as evidence that a discontinuity position on the
Mosaic law is untenable. According to the discontinuity position held by such scholars as
Douglas Moo
1
, John and Paul Feinberg,
2
and Wayne Strickland
3
, the Mosaic law as a
covenantal code has been completely fulfilled and abrogated by Christ. Thus, it is not
binding on the consciences of New Covenant believers. This does not leave the Christian
without law, however. If this were so, the charge of antinomianism would be appropriately
leveled. Instead, the believer is under the law of Christ (1 Cor 9:21; Gal 6:2), consisting of
the teachings of Jesus and his apostles as contained in the New Testament. Bahnsen insists
that such a view reduces to absurdity since allegedly on its premises bestiality cannot be
shown to be immoral.
1
Douglas Moo, "The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses: A
Modified Lutheran View" in The Law, The Gospel, and the Modern Christian, ed. Wayne G.
Strickland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 319-376.
2
John Feinberg and Paul D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World,
(Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), 36-40.
3
Wayne Strickland, "The Inauguration of the Law of Christ with the Gospel of
Christ: A Dispensational View" in The Law, The Gospel, and the Modern Christian, ed.
Wayne G. Strickland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), 229-279.