Covenant Theology
Two Testaments - Two Covenants
We have derived the
English word 'testament' from Latin testamentum,
which also
has the sense of a 'last will and testament. In the standard Latin
version of
the Bible, the two parts are called respectively Vetus Testamentum and
Novum
Testamentum. This word testamentum was chosen as a translation of the
Greek
word diatheke; which is similarly used in copies of the Greek Bible,
where Part
I is called he palaia diatheke (the old diadieke) and Part II is called
he
kaine diatheke (the new diatheke). So we have to consider this Greek
word
diatheke; It is, we discover, a word which can bear more meanings than
one. It
may mean 'testament' (in the sense of 'last will and testament'), but
it may
also mean covenant'. It is used frequently in the Greek Bible--both in
the
Greek (Septuagint) translation of the Old Testament and in the original
Greek
of the New Testament--and its regular Biblical meaning is 'covenant'.
There
was, indeed, another Greek word, syntheke; which the Septuagint
translators
might have used to render the Hebrew word for 'covenant' (berith); but
they
avoided it' because it might have suggested that a covenant between God
and men
was concluded as an agreement between equals, whereas diatheke is
better suited
to the Biblical idea of a covenant or 'settlement' which God initiates
by His
saving grace and freely bestows upon His people. In the Authorized
Version,
unfortunately, diatheke is often translated 'testament' in the New
Testament,
but this has the effect of obscuring its real force. For example, in
Heb. 9:20
the Authorized Version says that when Moses had delivered the original
summary
of the law to Israel he sacrificed various animals and sprinkled there
blood
and said: 'this is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined
unto
you'. But of course, Moses said something rather different, as we can
see even
in the Authorized Version by turning up the passage quoted, Exod. 24:8,
where
we are told that Moses said: 'Behold the blood of the covenant, which
the LORD
hath made with you concerning all these words'. The fault does not lie
with the
writer to the Hebrews, who used the Greek word diatheke quite properly
in its
sense of 'covenant' (as he found it used in the Greek Septuagint
version of Exod.
24:8); the mistake lies with the English translation 'testament',
following the
Latin translation testamentum.[1] In the earlier days of
Latin speaking
Christianity, indeed, another word than testamentum was frequently used
to
represent Greek diatheke; This was the Latin word instrumentum, which
in this
connection was much more suitable. If the use of instrumentum had
prevailed,
and its English derivative 'instrument' had been employed in the titles
of the
two parts of the Bible, it would have been more satisfactory, for
'instrument'
can be used in the sense of 'agreement'. So far as English is
concerned,
however, 'covenant' is an even better word than 'instrument', for
'covenant' is
a perfectly well-known word meaning a particularly solemn and binding
form of
agreement. Indeed, the special Bible sense of 'covenant' goes still
farther: it
conveys the idea of mutual 'belonging', of incorporation into the
family, of a
marriage-bond,[2] solemnly ratified by the shedding of blood
(whence the Hebrew
term for making a covenant literally means 'cutting a covenant').
We may, therefore, replace the word 'Testament' by the word
'Covenant' in
the titles of the two parts of the Bible, and call them respectively,
'The
Books of the Old Covenant,' and 'The Books of the New Covenant'. If we
think of
the Bible as comprising these two collections, we shall be well on our
way to
understanding what the Bible is and what it contains**.
To take the second and smaller collection first: in what sense may we
call the
New Testament books 'The Books of the New Covenant'? What is this New
Covenant?
For the answer to that we must remind ourselves of the solemn act
performed by
Jesus in the Upper Room at Jerusalem on the evening before His death.
We
remember how He instituted the Holy Communion, in which, after giving
His
disciples bread as the token of His body, He gave them the cup of wine,
saying:
'This is my blood of the (new) covenant, which is shed for many'.[3]
To one who
remembers the Old Testament background, the significance of these words
is
immediately evident. As we have just mentioned, it was Moses who, when
he gave
the law to the people of Israel, offered sacrificial victims and
sprinkled
their blood, saying: 'This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD
hath
made with you'. By that act and these words Moses, acting as mediator,
solemnized the covenant between Jehovah and Israel, by which He
undertook to be
their God and they promised to be His people. Now Jesus takes upon His
lips
words reminiscent of those used by Moses so long before, and, acting as
Mediator, inaugurates a new covenant between God and men, a covenant to
be
ratified by the blood of no ordinary sacrificial victims, but by His
own:
A
sacrifice of nobler
name
and richer blood than they.
But why was a new covenant necessary? Why did not
the Mosaic covenant
remain in
force? Because the Mosaic covenant was defective. It was an undertaking
solemnly entered into by Jehovah and Israel; its continued validity
depended
upon both sides honouring, their agreement. There was no doubt about
this on
Jehovah's part, of course; but what about the people? They intended to
keep the
covenant, it is true. When they listened to Moses reading the divine
law, 'the
book of the covenant', they said: 'All that the LORD hath spoken will
we do,
and be obedient' (Exod. 24:7). But, when they were put to the test,
they found
it difficult, and indeed impossible, to keep their agreement. There lay
the
defect. But although the people of Israel failed to keep their side of
the
covenant, the God of Israel continued to keep His. And the first
covenant,
inadequate though it was, was used by Him to prepare the way for
another
covenant which should replace the first and succeed where it failed. So
we go
on to the time of Jeremiah, roughly midway between Moses and Jesus, and
hear
him announcing the purpose of God:
'Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant
with
the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the
covenant
that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand
to bring
them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I
was an
husband unto them, saith the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will
make
with the house of Israel after those days, saith the LORD; I will put
my law in
their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be
their
God, and they shall be my people; and they shall teach no more every
man his
neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they
shall all
know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the
LORD: for
I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more'
(Jer.
31:31-34).
The significance of our Lord's words, then, is that in Him the new
covenant,
predicted by Jeremiah, became effective. The implications of His
inaugurating
the new covenant to take the place of the old are drawn out in
particular by
the writer to the Hebrews in the eighth and ninth chapters of his
epistle. The
same teaching is emphasized, though in different language, by the
Apostle Paul
when he describes how the purpose of the sacrifice of Christ was 'that
the
ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh,
but after the spirit' (Rom. 8.4). For the superiority of the New
Covenant lies
partly in this, that those who enter into it receive into their own
lives the
life of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, a life which knows and
desires
the will of God and a power which is able to do it.
The Books of the Old Covenant then, tell how God made the necessary
preparation
for the sending of His Son to inaugurate the New Covenant. The books of
the New
Covenant tell how the Son of God came to do this and set forth the
implications
of this New Covenant. Both collections alike speak of Christ; it is He
who
gives unity to each and to both together. The former collection looks
forward
with hope to His appearance and work; the latter tells how that hope
was
fulfilled.
The books of the Old Covenant open with a summary of the early days of
men in
Western Asia which forms an introduction to the story of Israel, the
people
whom God chose for Himself and with whom He entered into
covenant-relationship.
God's choice of Israel was no act of favouritism--He is no respecter of
persons
(or of nations, either)--but He selected this particular nation in
order that
the knowledge of Himself and of His will, revealed to them, might be
communicated by them to other nations; and He chose them most of all in
order
that they might be prepared as the nation in which, when God's time was
ready,
the Saviour of the world might be born.
The history of this preparation is the chief
concern of the books of the Old
Covenant. God prepared this nation to be the vehicle of His purpose by
revealing Himself to them in mighty works and by the words of His
spokesman the
prophets. Through out this period prophets and righteous men in Israel
looked
forward to the accomplishment of God's purpose in the promotion of
which they
played their allotted parts, and they 'died in faith, not having
received the
promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar' (Heb.
11:13). The
promise was carried out and the period of fulfilment dawned when Christ
came.
So He could say to His disciples: 'Blessed are your eyes, for they see;
and
your ears, for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets
and
righteous men desired to see the things which ye see, and saw them not;
and to
hear the things which ye hear, and heard them not (Matt. 13:16,17).[4]
The
books of the New Covenant tell how the divinely--implanted hopes and
aspirations of these ancient men of God were realized in Christ.
A question which naturally arises here is this. Since the New Covenant
fulfilled and, indeed, superseded the Old, and since we now have in our
hands
the books of the New Covenant, why should we trouble any more about the
books
of the Old Covenant? Does not the New Testament render the Old
obsolete? As it
introduces a covenant of grace and not a covenant of works, does it
not, indeed,
contradict the Old Testament? Why, then, does the Christian Church
continue to
include the Old Testament among her sacred books?
The general belief of the Christian Church is expressed in the opening
words of
Article VII (in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of
England):
'The Old
Testament is not contrary to
the New; for both in
the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by
Christ, who
is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man.
Wherefore
they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look
only for
transitory promises . . .'
From time to time, however, men have risen in the
Church to argue that
the Old
Testament is so thoroughly superseded by the New that it should no
longer be
ranked among the canonical writings of the Church. One of the earliest
of these
was Marcion, who flourished in the second century A.D. Marcion, a
native of
Sinope in Asia Minor, came to Rome about A.D. 140, and there founded a
sect
which persisted for many years. His distinctive doctrine was that the
Old
Testament was inferior to the New and had been rendered obsolete by
Christ.
Marcion stressed the contrast between the two Testaments so far as to
say that
the God revealed in the one was quite a different being from the God
revealed
in the other. The righteous God, the Creator, Israel's Jehovah,
revealed in the
Old Testament was a different and inferior deity to the good God
revealed by
Jesus under the name 'Father'; This, Marcion thought, was rendered
sufficiently
obvious by the fact that it was the worshippers of the righteous God of
the Old
Testament who sent the Revealer of the good God to His death. Marcion,
therefore, repudiated the authority of the Old Testament, and defined
the
Christian canon as consisting of one Gospel and a collection of ten
Pauline
epistles. (We shall have more to say about Marcion's canon in Chapter
VIII.)
Paul, to Marcion's way of thinking, was the only real apostle of
Christ, who
had remained true to His mind and revelation. The Church, as a whole,
he
maintained, had followed in the error of the Judaizers, among whom the
original
apostles of Christ were to be reckoned-Peter, John and the rest.
Marcion stated
his view of the opposition between the two Testaments in a work called
the
Antitheses, where he collected a number of contrasts between the
revelation of
the Old Testament and that of the New.
Marcion's dualism between the righteous God and the good God has often
been
reproduced, though not usually in such a thorough--going form. We still
find
people drawing a contrast between the God of the Old Testament and the
God of
the New, although they do not, like Marcion, regard the God of the Old
Testament as having an independent existence, but regard Him as a
developing
idea in the minds of His worshippers, which reached full growth when it
attained the measure of the stature of the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus
Christ. Others make the contrast between the attributes of God--His
righteousness and His mercy--as though the former were characteristic
of the
Old Testament revelation and the latter of the New Testament
revelation,
whereas in fact both coexist in harmony throughout the whole Bible.
One illustrious Marcionite of comparatively recent times was the great
German
church historian Adolf von Harnack, who was himself no mean authority
on
Marcion. 'The rejection of the Old Testament in the second century,'
said
Harnack, 'was a mistake which the Great Church rightly refused to make;
the
retention of it in the sixteenth century was a fate which the
Reformation was
not yet able to avoid; but that Protestantism since the nineteenth
century
should continue to treasure it as a canonical document is the result of
a
paralysis which affects both religion and the Church'.[5]
Practical difficulties in the use of the Old Testament arise in various
places
and times, but these difficulties are to be surmounted by further
teaching
about the preparatory character of the Old Testament revelation, not
burked by
throwing the Old Testament overboard. Gibbon[6] reports that
when Ulfilas, the
apostle to the Goths, translated the Bible into the Gothic language
about A.D.
360, 'he prudently suppressed the four books of Kings,[7] as
they might tend to
irritate the fierce and sanguinary spirit of the Barbarians'. Whether
this was
so or not, we are told that similar difficulties arise in Africa, where
converts to Christianity find in the Old Testament too much that
reminds them
of their ancestral practices and beliefs--too much, for example, to
confirm them
in their polygamous customs. How far this representation is exaggerated
can be
ascertained from missionaries.
On the other hand, the contrary difficulty is experienced in India, one
hears,
where the Old Testament is uncongenial to the intellectual heritage of
educated
Hindus. Hindu thought is abstract, impersonal and static, whereas the
Old
Testament outlook is concrete, personal and dynamic. The Indian
sometimes says
that the Old Testament reflects a morality and a conception of God
which is
lower than that of the best Indian religion, and asks why the ancient
literature of his own people should not play for him the role of
Gospel-preparation which the Old Testament plays for others. A cursory
comparison of even the earliest and purest literary monuments of Indian
religion with the Old Testament may well fill one with surprise that
such an
idea could ever be entertained; but it certainly has been and still is
entertained, and not by Indians only. Perhaps it all depends on what
one means
by 'morality' and 'religion'.
The sect of 'German Christians' 'which flourished in Germany under the
Hitler
regime urged a similar argument. Why should Nordic Christians cherish a
volume
of Jewish religion and history when they had the sagas and beliefs of
their own
pre-Christian ancestors? These latter should serve as the proper
introduction
to 'German Christianity' as they understood it, instead of the Hebrew
Scriptures. An adapted edition of the book of Psalms appeared in these
circles
during the thirties of the present century, entitled Divine Songs for
Germans,
where the historical and personal references in the Psalms were
replaced by
others drawn from Germanic and Indo-European history and mythology: for
example
the place names of Psa. 87 were replaced by the geographical landmarks
of
Indo-European migrations from the Ganges to Scandinavia.
In the early days of the Church difficulties were felt in connection
with the
Old Testament even among those who repudiated Marcionism and maintained
the
apostolic faith. The Greek Fathers, especially those of Alexandria,
found the
concrete realism of the Old Testament uncongenial to their heritage of
Greek
philosophic thought, and they had large recourse to the method of
allegorization. In this they had a predecessor in the Jewish scholar,
Philo of
Alexandria (c. 20 B.C.-A.D. so), who himself followed the pagan
scholars who
applied similar methods to the poems of Homer and Greek mythology in
general.
The allegorical treatment was carried to absurd lengths but the
Alexandrian
Fathers held, as some Christians do even to-day, that where the literal
sense
is plainly impossible (that is to say, impossible in their eyes), the
text must
be interpreted allegorically. The fact of the matter is that very
little indeed
of the Old Testament was originally intended to be understood
allegorically.
The fact that books are still published professing to deal with Moral
Difficulties of the Old Testament suggests that some readers even
to-day find
difficulties in the acceptance of the Old Testament as part of the
Church's
canon.
Yet we must ever bear in mind that the Old
Testament was the Bible of
our Lord
and His apostles, and its authority was fully acknowledged by them.
That some
of its provisions were of the nature of a temporary accommodation was
recognized;
Jesus, for example, said that the provision which the Mosaic law made
for
divorce and remarriage was introduced because of the men s 'hardness of
heart';
but it was from the Old Testament that he took the fundamental and
abiding
principle in the light of which the Mosaic provision was seen in its
true
character. 'Have ye not read, that He which made them from the
beginning made
them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his
father and
mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one
flesh? So
that they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath
joined
together, let not man put asunder Moses for your hardness of heart
suffered you
to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so'
(Matt.
19.4-8).
The Old and New Testaments, in fact, cannot be dissociated; while on
the one
hand we cannot understand the preparatory revelation of the Old apart
from its
fulfillment in the New, it is also true, on the other hand, that we
cannot understand
the New apart from the Old. The Old Testament is to the New as the root
is to
the fruit. It is a grave mistake to think that the fruit of the Spirit
in
Christianity will grow and ripen better if the plant is severed from
its roots
in the Old Covenant.
A few years ago Professor A. M. Hunter wrote an excellent little book
called
The Unity of the New Testament. He found the unity of the New Testament
to lie
in its presentation of the history of salvation, a history which is
like a cord
made up of three strands-the Bringer of salvation; the way of
salvation; the
saved people. We might say very much the same thing in terms of the
covenant
idea if we speak of the three strands as being: the Mediator of the
covenant;
the basis of the covenant; the covenant-people. In the New Testament,
of
course, the Bringer of salvation or the Mediator of the Covenant is our
Lord
Jesus Christ; the way of salvation or the basis of the covenant is 'by
grace
alone through faith alone'; the heirs of salvation or the
covenant-people are
the Church. But what Professor Hunter says of the New Testament is
equally true
of the Bible (as he would be the first to agree). The Bible - Old Testament and
New Testament together - has a unity of its own; and that unity is to
be
found in
the fact that the Bible tells the story of salvation-the story of God's
covenant-mercy. This explains what the Bible is. It is the record of
God's
revelation of Himself as a righteous God and a Saviour.
This record has a threefold theme. As for the first strand, it is God
Himself
who is the Saviour of His people; it is He who keeps covenant and mercy
forever. All through the Old Testament He points His people forward to
a day
when He will vindicate His character, establish His covenant, set up
His
kingdom, and bring near His salvation. We turn the page into the New
Testament,
and find Him doing just this, in the person of Jesus Christ His Son.
This Bringer of salvation, the Son of God, does not appear suddenly in
the New
Testament as a visitant on earth from another realm, having no
connection with
the course of prior events down here. As touching His eternal
relationship with
the Father, He is 'without genealogy, having neither beginning of days
nor end
of life'; but as touching His Manhood, He is indissolubly bound up with
all
previous history. Marcion, in editing Luke's Gospel to make it a
suitable
Gospel for his Canon, cut out the genealogy of Christ which we find in
Luke
3.23-38; but the genealogy is there of right, as is also the companion
genealogy in the first chapter of Matthew's Gospel. In Matthew, Christ
is
introduced as a true son of Abraham and heir to the throne of David; in
Luke,
He appears as a true son of man, the Saviour of mankind. But both
genealogies
emphasize the link binding Christ and the New Covenant to the age of
the Old
Covenant. The genealogy of Christ is the culmination and explanation of
the
many genealogies which almost seem to form the skeleton round which Old
Testament history is built up. The words of Mr. Robert Rendall express
this truth
illuminatingly : 'It is in
retrospect from Christ that the common genealogies reveal their primary
spiritual value. When being written, the exact course and issue of the
divine
purpose could not have been foreseen. True, here and there, a
particular branch
was singled out for special notice, and, as time passed, a main
interest
developed, but in general no one could say certainly from which line
the
Messiah would come. The documents were a plain straightforward
transcription of
genealogical data: it was only afterwards that God's action therein
began to be
seen. Thus the genealogy of Christ was not isolated as such from the
common
genealogical tables, but was embedded in the general register of names.
This
accounts for the seeming irrelevance of a large mass of names in these
genealogies, and proves beyond question that the Messianic element is
there,
not through human foresight, but through a dispensation of divine
providence.
This hidden development in the long succession of Hebrew generations is
that from
which old Testament history derives its substance and completeness'.[8]
This means that the Saviour is bound up with His people--bone of their
bone and
flesh of their flesh. So we may take this strand next in the history of
salvation--the people of God, the elect community--as one which runs
through
the whole Bible. This continuity is obscured for us in the English
Bible
because it uses for this community in the New Testament a word which it
does
not use in the Old Testament-the word 'church'. But in the Bible of the
early
Christians--the Greek Bible--the continuity was plain, for the Greek
New
Testament word ekklesia, which is translated 'church' in the English
Bible, is
also used in the Greek (Septuagint) translation of the Old Testament to
denote
Israel as the community ('assembly' or 'congregation') of Jehovah.
Indeed, we
find it used twice in this sense in the New Testament: in Stephen's
speech in
Acts 7:38, where he says that Moses 'was with the church in the
wilderness'
(where the whole people of Israel is meant), and in a quotation from
Psa. 22:22
in Heb. 2:12: 'in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto Thee'
(where
a particular local community of Israelites appears to be meant).[9]
The Christian Church was, of course, a new beginning: Christ used the
future
tense when He said: 'upon this rock I will build My church' (Matt.
16.18). But
the very word that He used for His new community (ekklesia) pointed to
its
connection with the ekklesia of Old Testament times.[10] For
He Himself forms the
organic link between the two and embodies the continuity of both. He is
the
Messiah-Saviour to whom the old community--the ancient
covenant-people--looked
forward; He is Saviour and head over all things to His Church--the new
covenant--people. He belongs to both and both belong to Him, and in Him
they
are not two but one. Abraham had the Gospel proclaimed to him[11]
and is the
spiritual father of all believers;[12] Moses esteemed the
reproach of Christ
greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.[13] Of these and
all other
believers under the Old Covenant it is written that 'these all, having
had
witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise,
God having
provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they
should not be
made perfect'.[14] The first followers of Christ were at one
and the same time
the last believing remnant of the old community and the first believing
nucleus
of the new. The New Jerusalem has the names of the twelve tribes of the
children of Israel written on its gates and the names of 'the twelve
apostles
of the Lamb' inscribed on the foundation-stones of its wall.[15]
Neither in the
old Testament nor in the New is solitary salvation envisaged : the
salvation of
God is enjoyed in the membership of the saved community. When we
consider the
third strand, the way of salvation, too, is a theme common to both
Testaments.
In both salvation results from the exercise of God's free electing
love. God
chose Abraham that he might be the father of many nations, that through
his
seed blessing might be brought to all the families of the earth. He set
His
love on Abraham's descendants when they were slaves in the land of
Egypt and
wrought their deliverance that they might come to know Him as their God
and
spread that knowledge to others. And the New Testament believers are
taught to
regard themselves as having been chosen in Christ before the world's
foundation
that they should be holy and blameless before Him, It is of grace
alone, that
it might be of faith alone. Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned
to him
for righteousness, and thus he became the father of all who by similar
faith
receive God's righteousness. The covenant at Sinai might be a covenant
of works
so far as Israel's undertaking was concerned; but it was a covenant of
grace so
far as God's fulfilling it was concerned, for He continued to treat
Israel as
His people even when Israel forgot that He was their God. Paul's
insistence on
justification by faith is no innovation in Biblical doctrine; he turns
to the Old
Testament to confirm and illustrate it. In the New Testament the focus
of our
faith and the declaration of God's grace is the self-offering of Christ
upon
the cross; but when Christ Himself wished to make plain the
significance of His
death He did so in language drawn from the Old Testament-in particular
from the
picture of the obedient Servant of Jehovah in Isa. 53, whose suffering
is
endured for the sake of others, whose sin He bears Himself. 'The Son of
man
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a
ransom
for many' (Mark 10:45).
Apart from the organic unity of the Old Testament with the New, which
makes it
an indispensable part of the Christian canon, the Old Testament makes
in
various ways its own distinctive contribution to the volume of
revelation.
The supreme religious value of the Old Testament is the way in which it
presents God as the Living God, One who is dynamically alive and active
in
self-revelation, not simply the Prime Mover or Pure Actuality of
certain schools
of philosophy, nor yet merely the Self-Existent Being. He is that, of
course,
but He is much more. He is the God of creation, providence, and
redemption; He
is the God who makes Himself known in the mighty acts with which He
breaks into
the course of history. And this picture of God in the Old Testament
prepares us
for the supremely redemptive mighty act which He wrought in sending His
Son
into the world for our deliverance and in raising Him from the dead.
The God of
the Old Testament is not aloof from the world, which He created and
maintains;
He is not disinterested in His creatures, but satisfies their need. Nor
is He
partial; He has no 'respect of persons'. The nation to which He reveals
Himself
and with which He enters into covenant-relationship cannot presume on
that
privilege; if it abuses His goodness, His judgment is all the more
severe on it
just because it is peculiarly His nation. 'You only have I known of all
the
families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your
iniquities' (Amos
3:2). True, His providence is not restricted to Israel: He brought up
the
Syrians from Kir in the desert and the Philistines from Crete just as
He had
brought up the Israelites from Egypt, but He had not revealed Himself
to those
others as He had to Israel, and therefore Israelis more responsible
than the
Syrians and Philistines. How different this God is from such a
nature-deity as
Chemosh, the god of the Moabites! Chemosh had no independent existence;
his
fortunes rose and fell with the fortunes of Moab, and when Moab
disappeared, so
did Chemosh. Unlike Chemosh and all gods of that order, Jehovah is the
living
God, who freely chooses His people and makes ethical demands on them;
He is 'a
God with a character', and that character of holiness and truth,
righteousness
and mercy, He desires to see reproduced in His people.
This brings us to the ethical value of the Old Testament. The Old
Testament is
introduced by the Books of the Law, in which the holy requirements of
God's
will are made known. 'The law', says Paul, 'was our custodian until
Christ
came' (Gal. 3:24, RSV). The law is the preparation for the Gospel; the
Gospel
offers forgiveness of sins, but the law makes us conscious of our
sinfulness
and of our need for forgiveness. Above the religions of the nations
which
surrounded Israel the Old Testament revelation towers high in its
insistence
that God, who is Himself holy, requires holiness in His people. 'Ye
shall be
holy: for I, Jehovah your God, am holy' (Lev. 19:2; cf. I Peter 1:16).
Thus we
are prepared for the supreme demand made by Christ in the Sermon on the
Mount:
And the Old Testament is distinctive in its presentation of the
historical
process. This process is not illusion, as it is to certain phases of
Indian
thought; it is not an indefinite series of cycles, as some Greek
schools held;
it is the steady unfolding of God's one increasing purpose. We have to
await
the New Testament record of the coming of Christ to see the
consummation of
that purpose in Him, but the broad view of its outworking is found in
the Old
Testament. The Old Testament writers had a philosophy of history long
before
Herodotus, who among secular historians is rightly hailed as the father
of
history. They were not mere annalists, as their contemporaries in Egypt
and
Assyria were for the most part: they selected and presented the facts
which
they recorded in accordance with a guiding principle which we find
fully
embodied in Christ. The Old Testament has been compared by Dr. Emril
Brunner to
the first part of a sentence and the New Testament to its second and
concluding
part. This comparison is all the more forceful if we think of a complex
sentence in Dr. Brunner's native German tongue, where the sense of the
whole
cannot be comprehended until the last word is spoken. So God, to the
fathers
through the prophets, spoke the first part of His salvation-bringing
sentence;
but the last word, completely revealing and redeeming, was spoken in
His Son.
That is why the old Testament prophets did not know clearly the full
import of
their words: they 'searched and inquired about this salvation; they
inquired
what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them
when
predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory' (1 Peter
1:10,11,
RSV). But the apostles, in whose days Christ Himself came, had no such
questionings: taught by their Master, they knew that He was the One of
whom
Moses and the prophets had spoken, and that it was to their own days
that those
men of old had looked forward. 'This is that which was spoken by the
prophet',
Peter claimed when interpreting the strange events of the first
Christian
Pentecost. For Christ was the key to the problem and the answer to the
questionings of the prophets. The New Testament, as Augustine
declared, lies
hidden in the Old; the Old Testament is revealed in the New.
Footnotes
[1] The Revised
Version
regularly gives 'covenant' for diatheke in the New Testament. But in
Heb.
9:16,17, in spite of using 'covenant' elsewhere in the same passage.
both
before and after, the Revisers felt themselves compelled to use
'testament':
'For where a testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him
that
made it. For a testament is of force where there hath been death: for
doth it
ever avail while he that made it liveth?" Similarly the R.S.V., which
elsewhere translates diatheke by 'covenant', translates it by 'will' in
these
two verses. The reason is that diatheke which has the wider sense of
'settlement', can include the idea of 'bequest' or 'testament', and
this is the
particular kind of diatheke meant in these two verses, because this is
the only
kind of settlement whose validity depends on the death of the person
who makes
it. The New English Bible marks the transition from the general sense
of 'covenant'
to the special sense of 'testament' by beginning verse 15 : 'And
therefore he
is the mediator of a new covenant, or testament.
[2] The idea of the covenant as a marriage-union between God and His
people is
specially emphasized in the Book of Hosea; cf. Jer. 2:2; Ezek. 16:8.
[3] Mark 14:24. Here, as in Matt. 2.:28, R.V. and R.S.V. Omit 'new' in
the text
but supply it in the margin. In any case, it is implied if not
expressed. Matt.
26:28 adds 'unto remission of sins' after 'many'. Luke 22:20 reads:
'This cup
is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for
you.' But
some early authorities omit Luke 22:19 after 'This is my body' and the
whole of
verse 20. The earliest written account of the Institution is in I Cor.
11:2325;
here the words spoken over the cup (verse 25) are: 'This cup is the new
covenant in my blood: this do, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of
Me.'
[4] The parallel passage in Luke (10. 23, 24) has 'prophets and kings'
instead
of 'prophets and righteous men'.
[5] Marcion (1921), p.217.
[6] Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 37 (Chandos Classics
edition.
Vol. II. p.516).
[7] The 'four books of Kings' are those which we know as I and 2 Samuel
and 1
and 2 Kings. Gibbon's information came from the Arian historian
Philostorgius.
Probably Ulfilas did not live to complete his translation. See p.216.
[8]History, Prophecy and God (London. 1954), p.61.
[9] In these two New Testament passages A.V has 'church'; R.V. has
'church' In
Acts 7:38 ('congregation' in margin), and 'congregation' in Heb. 2:12
('church'
in margin); R.S.V. has 'congregation' : the word in both cases is Greek
ekklesia. See p.244.
[10] This is true no matter what language our Lord was speaking on the
occasion.
Probably He used the Aramaic term kenishta.
[11] Gal. 3L8.
[12] Rom. 4:16 ff.
[13] Heb. 11:26.
[14] Heb. 11L39,40.
[15] Rev. 21:13,14.
** Note: Emphasis added, bold text not in original book