Chapter 02, God's Interaction With Israel, Reciprocal/Holistic Relationship of Knowing Between Christ and the Old Testament, Law

Law

            As Christians, we must come to terms with the idea of law within the Christian faith.  Especially since the rise of Protestantism, various Christians have come to different conclusions about the role that the Old Testament law is meant to play in the life of a believer.  Christian faith has always said that followers of Christ are not bound to absolutely every law stated in the Torah.  For example, ever since the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), Christians have not been compelled to be circumcised.  However, when believers come to the conclusion, especially after reading some particularly forceful passages in Galatians, that the law no longer has anything to say to a Christian, problems break out and Christ becomes a minister of sin (Galatians 2:17).

            Martin Luther took a very dismal view of the law.  In fact, for him, the law was only good for two things.  First, it was useful for showing us just how sinful we really are.  Anyone who looks at the laws of God will very quickly see that they are not up to the task of following them (especially after Christ amplifies them in Matthew 5).  The law is meant to drive us to despair of ourselves and cling to Christ for our salvation.  The second function the law can have is to restrain human beings from committing sin.  Often, we will do something immoral, but we will think twice if it is illegal, because the law can punish us.  This study is being written during the severe recession at the end of 2009 and early 2010, which serves as a wonderful object lesson.  The current recession was caused (in large part) by men and women engaging in business practices that were not illegal, but were desperately immoral.  Pure moral obligation does not restrain sin in human beings, but the law does a little better because it comes with punishment.

John Calvin had a much more dynamic view of the law.  While he agreed that these first two uses of the law were legitimate, he also affirmed that the law could serve as a guide for Christian behavior.  That is, the command not to commit adultery not only shows us that we are adulterous by nature and restrains us from acting on our adulterous desires, but it also encourages us that Christians are called to be free from adultery and that our lives will be better if we allow Christ to overcome those sinful, natural desires.

In the end, we have to come to some kind of conclusion about the law.  We cannot affirm New Testament teaching if we insist on rigid adherence to every point of the ancient Jewish law, but we cannot pretend that it has no significance whatsoever.  Somehow, we need to find a way to guide our use of the law that helps us to know which points to affirm, and which may be cast aside.

John Wesley made a distinction between the ceremonial law and the moral law in the Old Testament.  This was helpful and easy to apply to daily life because anyone could easily look at the law in question and see that, if it had a moral application (like the Ten Commandments), it is still in force for Christians while if it does not (like circumcision or table laws), they can go by the wayside.  Wesley may not be far from the truth with this division and we cannot say that it is not an easy to follow distinction, but we must question its authority because we do not find such a distinction in the scriptures.

Some have thrown out all the law.  This often leads to a pseudo-Marcionite view (Marcion was a heretic in the early church who claimed that the God of the Old Testament was not the same as the God of the New Testament, and so eliminated the Old Testament from his Bible) , where the entirety of God’s interaction with Israel is not only reinterpreted in light of Christ but is radically set aside.  Even if it is not taken to the extreme (claiming one God is responsible for the Old Testament and a different one is responsible for the New), any tendency to utterly cut the ancient law of God from Christian faith will tend to not take the Old Testament seriously, which will lead to deficient Christology (understanding of Christ).

On the other hand, some have taken the law so seriously and absolutely that they follow even the dietary laws without question.  One writer/dietitian advocated that Christians not eat pork, not just for dietary reasons but because God said so, “and that should be enough.”  Any move like this is likely to prioritize the activity of God in the Old Testament above what God has done in Christ.  This view, of course, will take the Old Testament writings seriously when looking at Christ, but, if it does not allow the second Person of the Trinity to challenge and reinterpret their reading of those texts, it denies the central and controlling impact of Christ.

If we allow the reality of the Incarnation to shape the way we understand the law and its function, we quickly begin to see what is important and why.  There were some laws, like circumcision, rigid seventh day Sabbath keeping, and kosher table laws that, in addition to whatever theological purpose they may have served, also had the very real purpose of keeping the Jews separate.  This was very important, as noted above, so that the culture could be adequately formed by God to prepare for Christ without the corrupting influence of the pagan nations.  Once these ideas were taken up by Christ, reinterpreted and set in a new form (such as baptism, a changed date for the Sabbath and the throwing open of the gospel for all people), the specific form could fall away, though their purpose is not any less important.

In practice, the law still serves as a guide for Christian behavior, but we must interpret that, not in terms of the priority of the law, but in terms of the person of Christ.  The laws have no intrinsic value apart from Christ.  The moral laws in particular are authoritative because they accurately point to aspects of Christ and how Christians ought to live as those who follow Christ with all their lives.  The laws can serve a teaching function, but they must never usurp the primacy of Christ.

Chapter 02, God's Interaction With Israel, Reciprocal/Holistic Relationship of Knowing Between Christ and the Old Testament, Sacrifice

Sacrifice

            Christian faith has always explained Christ’s death as a sacrifice.  However, though many cultures have had sacrificial practices, Christ’s death is never portrayed according to a pagan view of sacrifice.  Pagans offered sacrifices of their own design in hopes that the gods would respond with rain, good crops, or other tangible blessings.  On the other hand, the Jews did no such thing.  The sacrificial system was carefully designed by God.  No part of it was the product of human initiative.  Jewish sacrifices were instituted by God, provided for by God, and meant to be part of the fulfillment of a covenant instituted by God.  Additionally, Jewish sacrifices were not meant to curry God’s favor, but to atone for the sins of the people.  Over hundreds of years, the practice of gruesomely killing animals and spreading their blood over their doorposts (as in the Passover story) and over the altar (in the Tabernacle and Temple), taught the Israelites the truth that sins are only forgiven if blood is shed (Hebrews 9:22).

            Though Jesus spent considerable time talking about his death throughout the gospel narratives, he does not spend much time interpreting what his death means (the most significant exception is the institution of the Lord’s Supper, where he explains that his body is being broken for his people).  This was fleshed out in the writings of the apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but we get some clues about we should interpret Christ’s death as sacrifice from the Old Testament context.

            Perhaps the best example from the sacrificial tradition is the liturgy for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16).  Two lambs are involved in this ritual.  One is slaughtered and has its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat.  The other is the scapegoat that has the sins of the people confessed over it and is then driven out into the wilderness.  In this ritual, we begin to see that atonement for sin necessarily involves death, but death on its own is not sufficient; there must be a sin bearer that can take the sin away from the people.  We see that both of these aspects come into play in the New Testament’s understanding of Christ’s death.

            We can even get a glimpse of how we need to interpret Christ’s atoning sacrifice based on geography.  Genesis 22 tells us the story of Abraham being called to sacrifice his only son in the land of Moriah.  We read in 2 Chronicles 3:1 that Solomon built the Temple on Mount Moriah.  This ties the ritual Temple sacrifice with the paradigmatic story of Abraham and Isaac.  Not only is there the theme of sacrifice similar between the two passages, but even the very location.  It is not a coincidence that the Temple was built on the site of the almost sacrifice of Isaac where Abraham called God by the name “The Lord will provide.”

            This geographical significance is strengthened when we consider how the author of 2 Chronicles ties Solomon’s building of the Temple with “where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.”  The Temple and the worship that takes place at the Temple is here bound up with the story in 1 Chronicles 21, where David’s sin results in a plague ravaging Jerusalem.  Here we find wisdom in the saying, “Please let me fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are very great.  But do not let me fall into the hand of man.”  The Lord then commanded David to build an altar on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.  Ornan offered the land to his king for free, but David responded, “No, but I will surely buy it for the full price; for I will not take what is yours for the Lord, or offer a burnt offering which costs me nothing.”  Here, in a fundamental way, the costliness of authentic sacrifice is affirmed, pointing to the terrific cost of redemption.

            What is particularly significant about these geographical observations is that these events are not only bound up with each other, tying them together within the Jewish mind, but they are also geographically connected with the crucifixion.  Jesus was crucified only a short distance away from the Temple mount.  It is certainly interesting that Christ would die on more or less the same spot that Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, where David made his famous offering to God, where Solomon built the Temple and where hundreds of years of Israelite worship, centered on atonement.

            Though we cannot take these Old Testament images and simply add them together and come up with the Christian doctrine of atonement, they must be taken seriously.  If we attempt to understand the sacrifice of Christ without rooting it in the sacrificial tradition of ancient Israel, we will, in practice, be rooting it in some other framework.  Again, if we do this, we will find that we are thinking about God, not according to how God has actually made himself known, but according to how we want to think of him, which is nothing less than making God in our own image.

Chapter 02, God's Interaction With Israel, Reciprocal/Holistic Relationship of Knowing Between Christ and the Old Testament

Reciprocal/Holistic Relationship of Knowing Between Christ and the Old Testament

            One might wonder why it is necessary to take so much time to emphasize that Christ is unintelligible apart from the Old Testament witness.  The reason for this is because Christians have often tried to understand the Old Testament on its own and understand the New Testament on its own.  This is reinforced by the modern practice of referring to the Old Testament as the “Hebrew Bible.”  Using this term presupposes that the two Testaments are not intimately and essentially related and that they have nothing to say about how we interpret the other.  However, seeing that Jesus and the apostles consistently interpret Christ in light of the Old Testament and Christ himself insists that the Old Testament bears witness to him (even though the people at the time did not think so), if we allow the Scriptures to guide our interpretation, we must take this inter-Testamental influence seriously.

            What this means is that we cannot truly understand Christ unless we understand the Old Testament and we cannot truly understand the Old Testament unless we understand Christ.  This is not meant to be circular but rather reciprocal and holistic.  Our ability to probe into the truth of both the Incarnation and the Old Testament arise together.  As we gain an insight into one, it shapes the way we understand the other.  Grasping major themes in the Old Testament teaches us to look for them in the New.  As has been said above, our concepts and controlling ideas need to take their definitions and interpretations from the Old Testament narrative.  And yet, at the same time, we can only know what is of enduring importance and what is only of passing significance if we read the Old Testament in light of Christ.  Now, we will shift our attention to two examples of major themes in the Old Testament and how they interact with Christian faith.  The first of these will primarily show how the Old Testament needs to shape our Christian concepts and the second one will illustrate how the revelation of Christ can help us wade through Old Testament material and appropriate it in responsible ways.

Chapter 02, God's Interaction With Israel, The Shaping of the Israelite Culture

The Shaping of the Israelite Culture

            One of the difficulties that permeates the modern church (though it might also be said for the church throughout the ages) is a tendency to neglect the Old Testament.  This is somewhat understandable as Jesus is only explicitly found in the New Testament, the Gospels are entirely narratives which are easier to read than some passages in the Old Testament texts, and the Epistles are full of explicit statements about God’s love and the grace that we are given through Christ and in the Holy Spirit.  And yet, to lose the Old Testament is disastrous.  Too many people treat Christ as if the historical and cultural context of the Incarnation are unimportant.  To separate who Jesus is and what he has done from where and when he did it is to lose the interpretive framework that we need to make sense of it.

            The fact of the matter is that if God were to become a human being without a nation of Israel in preparation, he would have been completely incomprehensible.  For example, the title of Christ, “The Lamb of God,” does not make sense unless it is interpreted within the Israelite context of sacrifice.  In fact, none of the images used in the New Testament receive their meaning from general human experience or an arbitrary interpretation, but are grounded in the Old Testament.  Since Jesus is consistently interpreted throughout the New Testament in terms of images and prophecies from the Old Testament, any examination of Christ must take seriously the painful shaping of the Israelite culture over hundreds of years that paved the way for such an interpretation.

            If we are to understand the Israelite history, we need to begin with Abraham.  God chose Abraham to leave his family, his place of residence, and everything he knew and go out into the wilderness, trusting in nothing but God to take care of him.  It must be noted that God chose Abraham and not the other way around.  Further, this choice had nothing to do with how good or bad Abraham had been.  In one sense, it is an arbitrary choice.  God chose Abraham and not someone else, but that does not mean that God could not have chosen anyone else, but simply that God, if he was going to shape a culture to prepare for his entering into the created world, had to start somewhere.

            However, though God could have started with someone else, he didn’t.  Again, this does not make Abraham any more intrinsically worthy of being chosen by God (in fact, the New Testament hints that, had God chosen someone else, their descendents might not have been so stubborn.  Matthew 11:20-24), but we must make sure that we always remember that though God could have chosen anyone, he actually did choose Abraham.  This means that we are not free to take an independent way to understanding the Incarnation that sets aside what God has actually done in Israel.  We cannot take, for example, the ancient Greek way of thinking or the modern American way of thinking and create the same interpretive framework.  There is no way to bypass the hundreds of years of interaction with Israel.  If we project a Gentile way of thinking onto Jesus, we will miss key insights for interpreting God’s full self-revelation.

            In his interaction with Abraham, God began to move in decisive ways that, as they were assimilated into the collective unconscious of the Israelites, prepared the way for the Incarnation.  By accepting him before commanding circumcision, God prioritized faith above the law (Gen 15; Rom 4). With the birth of Isaac, God began to associate the establishment of God’s people with the miracle birth of a promised child.  Through the story of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac, God set the precedent for understanding sacrifice as a substitute where God provides the lamb where even the best we can offer is replaced by a sacrifice chosen by God (Genesis 22).  Throughout his life, Abraham was promised that, because he had been singled out by God, all the world would be blessed.  Even in the act of God choosing a particular person and his descendents, God was emphasizing that his intentions were fully universal and this separation of the Israelites from their pagan neighbors should not be construed as God’s rejection of the Gentiles.

            If we skip ahead in Israel’s history a few hundreds years, we come to Moses, through whom God established some of the most important images for the understanding of the Messiah.  Most significantly for the formation of the Israelite culture and pointing forward to what Jesus would eventually do is the Passover (Exodus 12).  Many aspects of this event help us to understand the work of Christ.  After Israel was delivered from slavery, they received the law, some of which seems clearly applicable to modern Christians, some of which does not.  We will examine the nature of the law below, but for now suffice it to say that, by establishing laws that were considerably unlike those of their neighbors, the Israelites were effectively set apart.

            Indeed, this separation is extremely important.  It is not important in the sense that it was intended to endure forever or because it gives us particular insights into the person and work of Christ.  However, it is important for a very different reason.  If the Israelites were not kept very distinct from their pagan neighbors, they would quickly assimilate themselves into their ways of worship.  Indeed, the history of Israel is riddled with examples that this would be exactly what happened if God did not send prophet after prophet to set them straight.  The continual faithfulness of God in the face of the continual rejection of God by Israel reinforced the fact that the status of Israel as the chosen people of God is not based on works, but on grace.  The love of God is shown to be a love that will not let the people go, even when they want it to.

            Over the centuries, God worked out key concepts like atonement, sacrifice, substitution, obedience, prophet, priest, and covenant throughout the life of Israel.  If we were to attempt to bypass this history, we would inevitably have to interpret the life of Christ in terms of other frameworks; frameworks not shaped by the continuous explicit interaction of God with the people.  If we do not allow the Old Testament to shape our concepts at any particular point, we will misunderstand and misinterpret Christ at precisely that point.

Chapter 02, God's Interaction With Israel, Time and Space

Time and Space

            What is particularly significant about looking to God’s interaction with Israel is that it roots God’s revelation to humanity within the world of time and space.  The gospel is not a collection of timeless and spaceless truths as if these two considerations did not enter into its content.  It is important to understand that God does not just move, God moves in particular times and in particular places.  There is a sense that the truths of Christianity are independent of time and space because they are rooted in the very being of God, but this must not be turned into an attempt to bypass God’s actual interaction with Israel in favor of reading preconceived notions inherited from various philosophical traditions back into God.

            For example, as will be discussed in later chapters, it is problematic to develop a doctrine of the one God based purely on ideas and independently generated reason rather than on God’s concrete activity.  The question of how we come to know God can only be addressed after it is concluded that we have come to know God.  To begin with questions of possibility or to try and determine our ability to know God independently of our actual knowledge and interaction with God will tend to lead us into arrogance or skepticism.

            Since the history of God interacting with Israel, culminating in God’s final self-revelation in Jesus Christ takes place in the world of space and time, the world that we can see, touch and experience, it overthrows any cosmological dualism, which believes that the visible world and the invisible world are utterly distinct and cannot ever have any real interaction.  Such views were common in Greco-Roman thought and have continually tried to separate God from God’s revelation.

            The main point in this is to realize that, since God has actually communicated God’s self to humanity, ultimately becoming incarnate in our midst, the gospel and all the preparations for it, are intrinsically relevant to humanity.  Revelation is not something “out there” that is utterly mystical and beyond all human comprehension, but is something where God has come to us and condescended to communicate God’s self to us in a real way that impacts the way we live.

Chapter 02, God's Interaction With Israel, The Scandal of Particularity

The Scandal of Particularity

            In the modern era (post-enlightenment timeframe, approximately from the mid 1700’s to the early 1900’s, as exemplified by people like Renee Descartes and Isaac Newton), emphasis was placed on universal truths, the goal being that nobody could deny the foundations of human knowledge and all would agree on every point of dispute.  Since the collapse of that ideology, the emphasis has been placed on the various communities in which knowledge arises, where the community that produces the knowledge is inseparable from the knowledge it produces.  For example, certain tribes of Eskimos have over forty distinct words for snow.  However, those who do not live in a community that shares in this intense experience of snow for long periods of time are not able to distinguish between more than a few different kinds of snow.  This work of theology prioritizes the revelation God has made of God’s self within the context of Israel over all other alleged revelation.  This prioritization of the Old Testament, the acknowledgement that the incarnation of God occurred in the nation of Israel, that when God became a man, he became a Jewish man, and the message taken from that revelation of God to the rest of the world is an offensive thing, often called the scandal of particularity.

            In the modern era, this was offensive because it was perceived to give the Judeo-Christian tradition a privileged status for knowing and understanding the being and work of God.  Within a context that emphasized universal truths and the universal appropriation of those truths through the use of reason alone, this is offensive because it asserts that we can only understand God’s revelation from the Jewish point of view.  It claims that reason alone is not sufficient if it is developed within a foreign framework that is not commensurate with God’s interaction with Israel.  It dares to proclaim that human ways of thinking cannot be put to the service of the gospel until they have been utterly transformed by God’s revelation.

            Now that our culture is moving to a post-modern context, the claim that absolute truth can only be found within the Judeo-Christian tradition has lost none of its offensiveness.  With the turn to localized truth, the belief has arisen that there is either no such thing as universal truths (Truth with a capital “T”) or that, if there is such a universal truth, we have no access to it because all the truth humans can know is of a local character and influenced by the community of the knower in a profound way.  Though post-modernity affirms the value of a particular community as essential to obtaining certain kinds of knowledge, it refuses to believe the Judeo-Christian claim that a particular community (the Jews) might have privileged access to absolute truth so that everyone must participate in that community, in one way or another, to join in that access.

            As a side note, the fact that the community in which individuals find themselves plays a major role in what those individuals can know is support for the need of the one seeking to know God to be participating within a community of faithful people.  One can only understand God and speak about God if they are participating in the worshipping life of the church.  This is why, as Karl Barth has pointed out, any authentic Christian Dogmatics (theology) must be a Church Dogmatics.