The Word of God Is
Living and Active –
Hebrews 4:12.
.The Unity of
the Scriptures
..
edited by Don Schwager
Unity of
the Old and New Testaments
Christians recognize the
Old Testament (Jewish Scriptures) and the New
Testament as one book, commonly called the
Bible or Holy Scriptures. Both the Old and New
Testaments are divinely inspired by one and
the same Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16). Kallistos
Ware, a biblical scholar and Orthodox bishop,
states succinctly,
We believe that
the Scriptures constitute a coherent whole.
They are at once divinely inspired and humanly
expressed. They bear authoritative Witness to
God’s revelation of Himself – in creation, in
the Incarnation of the Word, and the whole
history of salvation. And as such they express
the word of God in human language.While
divinely inspired, the Bible is also humanly
expressed. It is a whole library of different
books written at varying times by distinct
persons. Each book of the Bible reflects the
outlook of the age in which it was written and
the particular viewpoint of the author. For
God does nothing in isolation, divine grace
cooperates with human freedom. God does not
abolish our individuality but enhances it. And
so it is in the writing of inspired Scripture.
Alongside the divine aspect, there is also a
human element in Scripture. We are to value
both.
Alongside this human
element, however, we see always the divine
element. These are not simply books written
by individual human writers. We hear in
Scripture not just human words, marked by a
greater or lesser skill and perceptiveness,
but the eternal, uncreated Word of God
Himself, the divine Word of salvation.
–
from The Orthodox Study Bible, 2008
The New and Old Testaments
are intimately linked together. Over one third
of the New Testament quotes from the Old
Testament. Jesus stated unequivocally, “Do not
think I have come to abolish the law and the
prophets; I have come not to abolish them but
fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). The New Testament
does not replace the Old – rather it unveils and
brings into full light the hidden meaning and
signs which foreshadow and point to God’s plan
of redemption which he would accomplish through
his Son, Jesus Christ.
New hidden
in the Old – Old unveiled in the New
A very common expression,
dating back to the early beginnings of the
Christian church, states that the New
Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old
Testament is unveiled in the New – the two
shed light on each other.The Old Testament
prepared the way for the coming of the
Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ who came not
only to redeem the people of Israel but the
whole world as well.
All Scripture
describes the coming of the Lord. The New
Testament is hidden in the Old; the Old
Testament is brought to light in the New.
Those who are unspiritual have always failed
to see this hidden meaning. Yet even before
Christ those who were spiritual could find the
Words of God hidden in the words of the
prophets, and so through this understanding
could be set free.
–
Augustine, bishop of Hippo (354-430 AD)
There are a number of
symbols and events in the Old Testament that
foreshadow and point to the coming of Christ and
his saving mission. When interpreted correctly
they can also shed light on the significance of
what Christ has done for us. For example, when
the people of Israel were saved from death by
passing through the waters of the parted Red
Sea, the early Christians saw in this Exodus
event a symbol of the “new birth” and
“regeneration” through the waters of baptism
that cleansed us from sin, and delivered us from
death to new life in Christ, thus making us a
new creation in Christ and co-heirs with Christ
in the promises of a restored Paradise and New
Jerusalem – the city of heavenly glory where we
will dwell with God in his everlasting
kingdom of peace and righteousness.
Jesus, in a number of
places recorded in the Gospels, refers to the
Old Testament figures and signs, such as Jonah
(Matthew 12:39), Solomon (Matthew 12:42), the
Temple (John 2:19), the brazen serpent of
Moses in the wilderness (John 3:14) that
pointed to himself and to his work of
redemption.
How to read the Scriptures
From these examples, we
can hopefully see two important truths for how
Christians ought to read the Scriptures. The
New Testament must be read in the light of the
Old Testament, and the Old Testament must be
read in the light of Christ’s saving death and
resurrection.
In the
beginning
Another example of how the
New Testament lies hidden in the Old and how
the Old is unveiled in the New Testament can
be seen by reading both the first chapter of
the Book of Genesis and the first chapter of
the Gospel of John. Genesis 1 describes the
work of creation involving the Spirit ofGod,
the Word of God which was spoken, and the
eternal Father who breathed the “breath of
life” into Adam, making him a “living soul”
and son after God’s likeness and image.
In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth… And the Spirit of God was
hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis
1:1,3).
Then God said [the
word of God], “Let us
make man in our image, after
our likeness (Genesis
1:26)…Then the LORD
God formed the man of dust from the ground,
and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and the man
became a living soul (Genesis 2:7).
Why did God speak in the
plural (let us make man in our image)
when he created humankind in his image? The
Gospels reveal a Trinity of Persons perfectly
united in the one Godhead – the eternal Father,
the only-begotten Son (who is the eternal Word
of God), and the Holy Spirit. John’s Gospel,
chapter one, brings out the hidden meaning in
the Genesis account of creation.
In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God. All things
were made through him, and without him was not
anything made that was made (John
1:1-3).
And the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and
truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of
the only begotten Son from the Father
(John 1:14).
And John bore witness,
“I saw the Spirit descend as
a dove from heaven and remain on him
[Christ]”(John 1:32).
The New Testament revelation
sheds light on God’s work of creation and on how
God determined to restore and fulfil his plan
after Adam’s disobedience and the downfall of
the human race. God sent his only-begotten Son
who takes on human flesh for our salvation. The
Lord Jesus is both fully God – the eternal Word
of God, and fully man – conceived by the power
of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin
Mary who bore him (Luke 1:26-35), and anointed
by the same Holy Spirit (Luke 3:22) to carry out
the eternal Father’s plan of redemption and
restoration through his death and
resurrection.
Ignorance
of
the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ
From the beginning of the
early church to the present, Christians have
understood the importance of personally
encountering the Risen Lord Jesus in and
through the living and active Word of God in
the Scriptures.
Jerome (347-420 AD), an
early church Bible scholar who translated the
entire Bible from the original Hebrew and
Greek texts into the common language of his
day (Latin), said that “Ignorance of the
Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”
You are reading
[the Scriptures]? No.Your betrothed is talking
to you. It is your betrothed, that is, Christ,
who is united with you. He tears you away from
the solitude of the desert and brings you into
his home, saying to you, “Enter into the joy
of your Master.”
In the
Bible it is God who speaks to us
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(1906-1945), a German Lutheran pastor and
theologian, who wrote extensively and preached
widely from the Scriptures on the centrality of
the cross of Christ and on ethical demands of
the Gospel message, paid the ultimate price with
his life when he was imprisoned and executed by
the Nazi regime in 1945. His writings and the
witness of his life and martyrdom continue to
have significant influence on generations of
Christians – Protestants, Catholics, and
Orthodox – throughout the Christian world. In a
letter he wrote in 1936 to Dr. Rudiger
Schleicher, his brother-in-law and close friend,
he explains his approach to the reading of the
Bible:
One cannot
simply read the Bible the way one reads other
books… That is because in the Bible it is God
who speaks to us…If it is I who say where God
will be, I will always find there a God who in
some way corresponds to me, is agreeable to
me, fits in with my nature. But if it is God
who says where he will be, then that will
truly be a place that at first is not
agreeable to me at all, that does not fit so
well with me. That place is the cross of
Christ. And whoever will find God there must
draw near to the cross in the manner that the
Sermon on the Mount requires. That does not
correspond to our nature at all; it is, in
fact, completely contrary to it. But this is
the message of the Bible, not only the New
Testament but also the Old (Isaiah 53!). In
any case, Jesus and Paul understand it in this
way – that the cross of Jesus fulfils the
Scriptures of the Old Testament. The entire
Bible, then, is the Word in which God allows
himself to be found by us. Not a place that is
agreeable to us or makes sense to us a priori,
but instead a place that is strange to us and
contrary to our nature. Yet, the very place in
which God has decided to meet us.
(translation
from the German by David McI. Gracie, Meditating
On the Word)
Encountering
the
face of Christ
In our own present day many
Christians are witnessing a renewed interest and
rediscovery of the great treasure and power of
God’s Word in the Scriptures. Benedict XVI
[Joseph Ratzinger], who has devoted his life to
the study of the Scriptures and to the biblical
teaching of the early church fathers, has
written extensively on the importance of
encountering the 'face of Christ' in the
profound and intimate unity of the
Scriptures:
Christian
tradition has often placed the Divine Word
made flesh on a parallel with the same word
made book. This is what emerges already in the
creed when one professes that the Son of God
"was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the
Virgin Mary, and was made man", but also a
profession of faith in the same "Holy Spirit,
who spoke through the Prophets".... as Saint
Ambrose affirms (In Lucam VI, 33) – and
clearly declares: "For the words of God,
expressed in human language, have been made
like human discourse, just as the Word of the
eternal Father, when he took to himself the
flesh of human weakness, was in every way made
like men" (Dei Verbum 13)…
In this rediscovered
harmony, the face of Christ will shine in
its fullness and will help us to discover
another unity, that profound and intimate
unity of Sacred Scriptures… "At many moments
in the past and by many means, God spoke to
our ancestors through the prophets; but in
our time, the final days, he has spoken to
us in the person of his Son" (Hebrews
1:1-2). Christ thus retrospectively sheds
his light on the entire development of
salvation history and reveals its coherence,
meaning, and direction.
-
Benedict XVI, Address on “The Word of God in
the Life
and
Mission of the Church,” October 2008
Reading the
Scriptures spiritually
In conclusion, it is
important that when we read and study the Old
and New Testament passages of the Bible, we must
be very attentive to the unity and the content
of the whole Scripture. It is also important
that we learn to discern the full sense of
Scripture both in its literal and spiritual
senses together. Hence, the importance of
learning how to both read Scripture prayerfully
and interpret it spiritually –
through the help and guidance of the Holy
Spirit.
[Don
Schwager is a member of The
Servants of the Word and author of the
Daily
Scripture Reading and Meditation
website.]
See related articles:
- The
Unity
of the Scriptures, An introduction by
Don Schwager
- Christ
In
All the Scriptures, by Dr. John Yocum
- How
to
Read the Bible, by Metropolitan
Kallistos Ware
- The
Authority
of Scripture, by Steve Clark
- The
Scriptures
Are One Book in Christ, quotes from
early church fathers
- Approaching
Scripture
As God's Word, by J.I. Packer
- In
the
Bible It Is God Who Is Speaking to Us,
by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- You
Can
Understand the Bible, by Peter Kreeft
- Formational
Versus
Informational Reading of the Scriptures,
by M. Robert Mulholland Jr.
- How
to
Silence the Scriptures, by Soren
Kierkegaard
- Reading
the
Scriptures with the Early Church Fathers,
by Don Schwager
- Scripture
Study
Course, by Don Schwager
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