But those rituals were written in the Torah and spoken by G-d's Own Mouth. If they are abolished (chas vechalilah!), why should there by any rituals or dietary restrictions (such as lenten fasts, eg)? What kind of messiah abolishes Torah laws but not post-Torah laws?
If human activity is of any meaning, then the chr*stian interpretation of the messiah is deeply flawed. And if it is not, logic would seem to dictate that rituals and ritual commandments, not just those of the Torah, would have been done away with.
One who, as God, introduces a New Covenant.
>> But those rituals were written in the Torah and spoken by G-d’s Own Mouth. <<
Jewish rituals weren’t the original plan for Moses’ people. They were introduced to the Jews when the Jews sinned in the Sinai wilderness. Catholic ritual is not the obliteration of Jewish ritual, but it restores the role of it serves to daily life, not just annual holy days. (for instance, the purpose of Passover, Pentecost, Yom Kippur are served by Eucharist, Conversion, and Contrition.)
>> If they are abolished (chas vechalilah!), why should there by any rituals or dietary restrictions (such as lenten fasts, eg)? What kind of messiah abolishes Torah laws but not post-Torah laws? <<
I think you’re still clinging to a basic misunderstanding of the Christian position as to Talmudic law. Paul is responding to people who murdered the Messiah because the Messiah healed people on the Sabbath. Jesus healed people because he was moved with love for them. The Sanhedrin had him murdered (and Paul had condoned the murder of Stephen) because they were clinging to such a loveless adherence to the law that they would do an act of unspeakable hatred in the name of the law. They used the letter of the law to the direct opposite purpose of what the law was supposed to accomplish.
So Paul is instructing people that it’s not (the letter of) the law which is important: Blind adherence to the law as merely law leads to death, as he has witnessed in the killing of the Stephen, and as his audience has witnessed in the killing of the Messiah. What Paul is calling for is that people act out of love, and use the scripture — including the Talmud — to learn what love looks like.
So, Paul teaches that faith (not adherence of the law) permits what God desires, which is love. The Sanhedrin permitted the murder Jesus because they feared Rome, not God. That was a lack of faith in God; they had the Messiah killed to appease Rome; but they justified their faithlessness by citing the law against the Messiah.
With faith that God can make all things right, even something as inconceivable as saving the world through his own death, the “contradictory sign” of the triumph of the cross should have put an end to worldly fear of the sort that inspired the murder of the Messiah. With faith, there’s no reason to act out of fear of God’s punishments, as the Jews had, for we know the intent of God. Thus the purpose of the law can be fulfilled: that we may love God with our entire hearts, our entire souls, our entire minds, and that we can love our neighbor as ourselves.
So the intent of “abolishing the law” is not so that the works of the law go undone, as you seem to think, but to ensure that they are done out of love for God.
One of the most beautiful things about the minority of Jews who still live the Jewish faith is that, in a way, in the face of the holocaust and so many centuries of suffering, that they continue in their practices is that their persistence is a great sign of love. The 21st century practicing Jew may cling to certain doctrines of the Sanhedrin Jew, but seeing themselves as a fulfillment of the suffering servant of Isaiah, they have allowed their suffering to purify their love of any selfish purpose.
There is a persistent tendency to do works or to avoid sin out of fear of punishment. When this tendency persists within Protestants with a rigidly dogmatic belief in sola fides, the reaction is a temptation to either antinomianism (see the ELCA, the PCUSA, TEC, the UCC, etc.), redirection, or puritanicalism (by which I meant the tendency to obliterate sources of temptation).
Catholicism calls this lawfulness due to the fear of punishment, “imperfect contrition”. Contrary to the presumptions of Protestants who condemn Catholicism for not adhering to sola fides, The spiritual practices of Catholicism are strongly oriented to perfecting contrition, because Catholics DO believe that legalism isn’t true faith, and that a perfected faith with bring forth righteousness borne out of love, not fear.
But where Catholics reject sola fides is that Catholics believe that acting lovingly helps us learn how to love better. One way this expressed is to receive the sacraments. (I’m not getting into the full depth of this; I don’t mean to imply minimalistically that the full effect of the sacraments is merely an act of contrition.) The Catholic belief is that if our faith is imperfect, than it can be improved through actions intended to strengthen it: Prayer, studying the bible, sincerely receiving the sacraments, etc.