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www.PresentTruthMag.com Proclaiming the Good News of the forgiveness of sin and eternal life by God’s unmerited grace alone through faith alone in the sinless life and atoning death of Jesus Christ our Lord alone. Sola Gratia…………Only By Grace Sola Fide………...…Only By Faith Solo Christo…….....Only By Christ Sola Scriptura……..Only By Scripture

Volume 41

Preaching Christ – From the Old Testament

Letters – page 2

Editorial Introduction – page 5

Obituary for the Old Testament – page 6

The Church's Need of the Old Testament – page 11

Christ, the Meaning of All Scripture, Life and History (Part 1)

Chapter 1: Christ and the Old Testament – page 20 Chapter 2: The Historical Pattern of the Old Testament – page 24 Chapter 3: Christ, the Meaning of Old Testament History – page 27 Chapter 4: The Legal Pattern of the Old Testament – page 32 Chapter 5: Christ, the Meaning of Old Testament Law – page 33 Chapter 6: Christ, the Meaning of Law and Prophets – page 43

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Breakthrough

To say the least, I am delighted with you issue entitled "This Is Life." I appreciate your effort to be helpful on a congregational level. How to use the great Reformation doctrines in a layman's arena of life, and our own too, is a huge undertaking, but I think you are accomplishing it. You have influenced my thinking, even though I have always been taught historic conservative Lutheranism.

I really feel "This Is Life" is a breakthrough for modern man instead of just an effort to "save his soul."

Sigmund Hillmer, Lutheran Pastor Indiana

Reading Project

I appreciate your issue, "This Is Life," and would like to use it as a reading project for my high-school class. I believe it will help them in facing some of their many questions about life in general.

Although I do not subscribe to your theology completely, I do believe that you take a sincere and honest approach in your material.

Comer D. Hall, Jr., Church of Christ Minister Arkansas

Dumbstruck

With your recent issue entitled "This Is Life," I was dumbstruck to find that your publication appears to have fallen from a journal of theology to that awful level of literature found on our supermarket shelves with such titles as "Dieting with Jesus." Forgive me for being so blunt, but I am truly astonished. I will only make a brief comment on "This Is Life": "It is not what goes into a man but what comes out of him that defiles him," and "the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit; he who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men" (Matt. 15:11; Rom. 14:17-18).

Peter Dunstan Canada

Superb

Your issue, "This Is Life," is absolutely superb for my "Spiritual Life" course when we deal with the Christian's stewardship of the human body.

Loren Fischer, Seminary Professor Oregon

Unique Approach

I'd like to try the "You Too Can Live" program announced in your December issue. I was most impressed by this unique evangelistic approach and couldn't put down the issue until I had read it through. Robbin Tisdale, Lutheran Pastor Iowa

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Fantastic Method

The "You Too Can Live" Life Risk Profile Questionnaire is a fantastic method for reaching others. Health is a subject so many folks are interested in. And it is a fine way to get them interested in spiritual things. The survey is a ''wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove" method for missionary work.

Margaret Kearnes Minnesota

Sound and Refreshing

Having received your journal for several months and scrutinized it for cultic tendencies (since I don't know who "down under" is reliable), I've concluded that it is both sound and refreshing in its rancorless challenge of those errors that have cheapened the gospel by an "evangelical" form of indulgences.

Roger Wm. Bennett Arizona

Accusation

Regarding the letters section in the last issue of Present Truth Magazine, I am amazed at the people who viciously accuse one of their brothers in Christ of being a heretic. Maybe at times the editor is guilty of splitting theological hairs, but that should give no rise to accusations as serious as "heresy." Surely those who write articles are entitled under God to their own responsible interpretation of the Scripture. I wonder if the test of salvation – according to some – is a strict line of doctrine with no deviation from the position they hold. I hope not.

I am thankful for fresh, exciting and challenging interpretations of the Scriptures. I am thankful that we have not arrived at our destination concerning learning. May God always allow us to be meek (teachable).

M. Terry Hall, Baptist Pastor Oklahoma

Ironic

Since receiving your journal, I have truly been blessed by your emphasis on justification by faith.

A college student brought up an interesting point when he said that many of the Protestant churches which for so long have criticized the Catholic Church for adding works to the gospel of Jesus Christ are themselves doing the very thing they have been so quick to attack. They are saying the gospel is Christ plus something else. Catholics still have a long way to go in this area, but many I have talked to are becoming aware of the doctrine of justification by faith. How ironic!

Mark Godshall, Pastor California

Objective Gospel

The great advantage I have gained through reading and studying your journal is to learn the objectivity of the gospel. It would seem to me at the present time that the problems in all our churches, from the Roman Catholic down to the Pentecostal, is that they are following a subjective interpretation instead of realizing that the gospel is an objective fact outside of themselves, already existing no matter what they do.

Clarence B. Foster, M.D. North Carolina

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Church Adrift

I praise God for having stumbled onto your journal. I don't remember how I came to have it, but it has been a blessing. I do remember that at the time I was completely wrapped up in Hal Lindsey and his The Late Great Planet Earth, and your issue on "New Testament Eschatology" straightened me out. I am now looking for Christ in hope, not the antichrist in the form of Kissinger or other such nonsense – as you say, "carnal speculation."I am enjoying your issue on "Theology and Body". Again and again you hit the mark. I am terrified by the condition of the church. It seems we are so far adrift from the truth – so many weeds have cropped up in less than two thousand years – that it sometimes makes me despair. I am certain that Paul would "freak out" if he could see what has happened. It seems that churches are more concerned about just living their lives out day after day rather than reading the Word for themselves and acting accordingly. I became a believer and had myself baptized simply by reading the Word. I also avoided the spiritual hypocrisy of the Pentecostals by simply reading Corinthians. But the doctrine of justification by faith I have had to wrestle with like Jacob with the Angel. You have helped me in this struggle. Thank you, God bless you, and keep writing!

David Pickens North Carolina

One Criticism

Thank you for your publications. Seldom have I seen so clear an analysis of the doctrine of justification by faith as set forth by the Reformers and, in particular, the emphasis of Luther. I liked what I read, and that for one good reason: it is thoroughly scriptural. We need, as you state, a revival and reemphasis of this glorious truth in an age when souls by the multitudes are being submerged in the broad sea of religious subjectivism.

Just one word of constructive criticism. If you wish to gain and retain the confidence of people who adhere to the absolute authority and complete integrity of the Bible as the Word of God, I would strongly advise that you stick to the King James Version (or your own literal rendering) rather than using any of the modern versions so prevalent today. The N.E.B., Phillips, etc., are translations made by thorough-going liberals and are not trustworthy. If I remember rightly, I also saw a reference to Paul Tillich – a religious renegade if ever there was one! The subject matter in your publication is so tremendously vital that it left me somewhat dismayed to find it adorned with references of this nature.

Hayes Minnick, Pastor Florida

Bible-Based

Your journal is appreciated very much. It has a good, clear, Bible-based message, is very encouraging, and has an excellent format. May the Lord continue to bless your work.

John Roodenburg, Minister Australia

Heretics Offended

Many thanks for your journal I have benefited greatly from its teaching. Even the letters' section is educational. Every issue is studied, documented and carefully filed for future reference.

While your publication is obviously directed principally at ministers of religion and students of theology, there is much to commend it to the lay churchman like myself. With little instruction outside of the Scriptures themselves and your journal, I was recently able to preach a sermon on "The Centrality of the Gospel". Not a few people were amazed at where this "rookie" received his teaching, and not a few heretics were offended – thanks be to God and your journal.

D. C. Kidson Rhodesia

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Disturbed I feel you have lost touch with mainstream Christianity. I appreciate very much your justification emphasis, but your lack of practicality disturbs me. You must find ways to return your journal from the intellectual deep to the realm of the everyday believer. Truth is good. But if it is truth, it must be relevant to one's situation! David Musick Tennessee

Understandable Your explanations in theology are nicely compact, and even we simple laymen can understand them with a little effort. Thank you for your explanation of the Reformation gospel, which truly is the rediscovery of God's pure Word. Bob Zinke Michigan

Christian Teacher Thank you for a really professional publication. It is quite enriching to my scholastic needs and responsibilities as a teacher in the Christian education field. The material is challenging and well presented, though I am not always one hundred percent in accord with some of your articles. The "reform" approach assures an openness which is refreshing. Maryanne Robinson, Teacher Pennsylvania

Editorial Introduction

This issue of Present Truth Magazine is devoted to a discussion of the place of the Old Testament in preaching the gospel.

The first article is by our Australian editorial consultant, Graeme Goldsworthy. For those who have not been introduced to Dr. Goldsworthy, he is an Australian Anglican clergyman who did his doctorate in the Old Testament under Dr. John Bright at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia.

The second article is by well-known Presbyterian scholar, G. Ernest Wright. The essay is selected from his path-finding book, God Who Acts. (London: SCM Press, 1952)

These two essays contain enough dynamite to blow a lot of trivial evangelicalism into oblivion. The points made by Goldsworthy and Wright are enough to cause a real shaking in just about every area of Christian theology.

In the third section this editor begins a series entitled "Christ, the Meaning of All Scripture, Life and History."

We appreciate that so many of you have taken the trouble to send us letters. Most of our readers seem to read the letters section before anything else. So here is your chance to "advertise" your point of view in the "hot spot" of our journal.

Come, let us reason together.

R. D. B.

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Obituary for the Old Testament By Graeme Goldsworthy

Graeme Goldsworthy is an Anglican clergyman. He received his doctorate at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, and is presently working for the Theological Education Program of Australia.

The Old Testament is dead – dead at the conspiratorial hands of rationalists, Jews, medieval allegorists, theological liberals, existentialists, evangelicals and others. The Jews denied the Old Testament its appointed goal in the gospel and thus transformed it into a dead legalism. Medieval church scholars followed Origen by capitulating to Gnostics who said the Old Testament was materialistic and unspiritual. Rationalists, liberals and existentialists bowed to the philosophical fads of their day and found the Old Testament incompatible.

But are evangelicals, the "people of the Book," involved in this conspiracy? We evangelicals are more guilty than all. We have prided ourselves on honoring the whole Bible as God's Word and have cast pharisaic stones at the adulterous higher critics and liberals. Yet we have conspired in such a way that our protestations of love for the Bible are either halfhearted or hypocritical. Where are the sound evangelical commentaries that seek to grasp the Christian significance of the Old Testament? Where are the sermons on the Old Testament that preach Christ without bumbling allegorizing or untheological character studies? Where are the evangelical Sunday School courses which teach the Old Testament without legalistic moralizing?

Evangelicalism has reached a terrible impasse. We have come to regard two things as great crimes of evil intent. One is criticism by non-evangelicals. The other is self-criticism. We call this unloving, divisive and intolerable. A terrible insecurity seems to be driving the evangelical world from a willingness to critically test its claims to be biblical and thus from a readiness to reform. Woolly-headed pietism has replaced a clear grasp of the theological issues of the Bible and even the desire to know them.

How was this impasse reached? One thing is clear: The Old Testament was "killed" by the loss of the gospel of the living and dying of Jesus Christ, the God-man, for sinners. Marcion and the Gnostics rejected the Old Testament because of their wrong view of the gospel. Liberal and higher-critical assessments of the Old Testament were the consistent outworking of an erroneous understanding of the gospel. Bultmann's existential gospel led him inevitably to a negative view of the Old Testament. And the new-birth oriented "Jesus-in-my-heart" gospel of evangelicals has destroyed the Old Testament just as effectively as has nineteenth-century liberalism. 1

"You are fools," said the Stranger, "and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have said. Ought not the Messiah to have suffered and to have entered into His glory?" (Luke 24:25). Then from the Old Testament He told the two confused, unhappy men walking to Emmaus all about their Master, Jesus Christ. Later He let them see that He Himself was their Leader, risen from the dead. And He went on to tell a crowd of disciples how all the Old Testament Scriptures spoke about Him (Luke 24:44-47).

Fools indeed, and so are we if we pronounce the Old Testament dead by our neglect. Who was this Christ who rose victorious from the tomb? He was not the Jesus of sentiment and ethical religiosity. He was not the Jesus of inner peace or respectable conformity. Nor was He the vague spiritual presence of "Jesus-in-my-heart" piety.

He was none of these. He was Jehovah's Word. He was, and is, the incarnation and fulfillment of the spoken and written Word of God in the Old Testament. When Jesus Christ rose from the grave, He brought the Old Testament with Him. In proclaiming Himself from the Old Testament, He declared that to bury it was to bury Him. In the apostolic preaching of the gospel the fulfillment of the Old Testament and the resurrection of Christ are the two most frequently mentioned elements. They go hand in hand. To separate them is to remove the Christ event from that which testifies to its meaning.

1 See Geoffrey J. Paxton, "The False Gospel of the New Birth," Present Truth Magazine (volume 37)

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Those who pronounce the Old Testament dead pronounce the Christ of the gospel dead. Such a pronouncement is a man's last defiant gesture of anger toward his self-inflicted rigor mortis. It is a sure sign that his own putrefaction is well advanced.

Some may object to the severity of this rebuke. After all, no one denies some continuity between the Testaments. Let us assume the most positive relationship and say that the Old is the promise and the New the fulfillment, the Old is the shadow and the New the solid reality, the Old is the preparation and the New the realization. Then is not the Old superseded by the New? Should we be concerned with a shadow when the full light of reality is revealed? Many Christians argue this way. They protest that disuse of the Old Testament is not a sign of disrespect but of profound respect for the goal of the Old Testament, which is the gospel.

While this view sounds plausible, we dare not accept it. How, then, does the Old Testament function for Christian faith?

The Old Testament Interprets the Gospel

It is true that the gospel interprets the Old Testament by showing that its final goal and meaning is the saving action of God in Christ. On the other hand, the Old Testament interprets the gospel. It gives the context in which the New Testament vocabulary may be understood. Furthermore, as the foreshadowing of New Testament salvation, the Old Testament uses concrete world-related expressions of this salvation. These expressions guard the meaning of the gospel and prevent it from being abstracted from the real history of man into a world of ideals or mystical inward experience. "Grace," "truth," "life," "peace," "salvation" and "heaven" all have a long history in the Old Testament. The Old Testament shapes the meaning of each term. And the Old Testament meanings of these terms are not abrogated by the New.

Jesus and the apostles were men of the Old Testament. They spoke the Word of God in Old Testament terms. The authors of the New Testament were so close to the Old and to the Israelite background of the gospel that they did not redefine each technical term. If we are to understand their words, we also must try to enter the world of the Old Testament. The New Testament does not completely supersede the Old. In the New Testament the Christ event is consistently defined in relation to the Old. Thus the Old Testament is an essential part of the New Testament's witness to Jesus Christ. The whole Bible is one organic unity which witnesses to Jesus Christ. We dare not dispense with part of that witness.

The Old Testament Universalizes God's Purposes

In view of its concentration on Israel as the chosen people of God, the Old Testament may seem to be quite non-universalistic. But the Old Testament does universalize the purpose of God in two ways:

1. The Old Testament Shows That Salvation Affects the Whole Universe in the Same Way As Creation and the Fall. Pagan Greek ideas such as the immortality of the soul and a bodiless or matterless hereafter would not have entered the church if the Old Testament had been given its rightful place. God created man as a total entity, not as a permanent soul with a disposable body. Moreover, He created man within a material environment suitable to man's psycho-physical being. When Adam sinned and was judged, God in His goodness submitted the entire universe to a similar judgment so that it remained an appropriate environment for fallen man.

Every Old Testament expression of salvation involves the restoration of the saved people of God to a renewed environment appropriate for their fellowship with God. Just as the Bible never conceives of man without a material body, so it never views him without a material environment appropriate to his bodily existence. The Old Testament repeatedly refers to a salvation accompanied by the renewal of the created universe. It underlines the significance of the resurrection body and the everlasting life of the believer in the new earth. 2 The New Testament does not change this. The concept of "going to heaven when you die" – meaning an eternal spirit existence in a spirit sphere – is foreign to the Bible.

2 The Old Testament stresses the earthly nature of the kingdom by its references to universal renewal (e.g., Isa. 11:6-9; 35:1-10; Ps. 98:4-9).

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2. The Old Testament Shows That Salvation Has Its Universal Effect Solely through the Plan Expressed in Promises to Israel and Fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The first twelve chapters of the Bible show that all of Adam's race are included in the plan revealed to Abraham. Some may question the wisdom of God's ways in using so exclusive a plan for so universal a purpose. But the Bible is clear on the matter, and we may summarize it as follows:

a. God is King of creation (Ps. 24:1; 47:2; 93:1; 95:3f.).

b. God is King of the nations (Ps. 47:3; 99:2; Jer. 10:7).

c. God is King of Israel (Isa. 6:5; 41:21; 44:6; 52:7).

d. The nations are the heritage of God's Son (Ps. 2:6-8; 72:1, 8-11, 17-19; Zech. 9:9-10).

e. Israel is a light to the nations (Isa. 42:1, 6; 49:6).

f. The nations reach their destiny through Israel (Gen. 12:3; 1 Kings 8:41-43; Isa. 2:2-4; 60:1-3; Zech. 8:20-23).

Thus, when the New Testament shows that Jesus is this Israel, it assumes the universal scope of salvation given in the Old Testament. 3 And Old Testament salvation exclusively through Israel reinforces the New Testament prohibition against relativizing the gospel and allowing many roads to God.

The Old Testament Historicizes the Gospel

The gospel is no timeless ideal or myth-based ethical principle. The Old Testament unrelentingly binds us to the acts of God in history. Some may think of Jesus Christ as an idealistic figure created by the early church to embody the lofty aspirations of the human spirit. But such a view must confront the challenge of nearly two thousand years of Israelite history moving toward its appointed goal. The Christ of the gospel claims to be this goal. When faced with the Old Testament, self-directed or inner-directed religion, whether mystical, pietistic or existential, is a total enigma. Either the gospel is concerned with the objective historical acts of God which reach their goal in the objective and historical Christ, or the Old Testament must be severed from the New. To neglect the Old Testament exposes us to the danger of turning the objective Christ event into the subjective Christ ideal.

If one is immersed in the Old Testament perspective of the objective acts of God for His people, he is not likely to fall prey to the craze of preoccupation with the subjective experience of the believer. Docetism, with its view that Jesus was truly divine while only appearing to be man, was a great curse to the early church. John referred to it as the spirit of antichrist (1 John 4:1-4). An actual though not confessed Docetism is rife today. Many Christians think of Jesus almost exclusively as the present, indwelling, experience-giving Spirit. The life of Christ within the believer (by the Holy Spirit) is given greater prominence than the life of Jesus of Nazareth for the believer (in the gospel). Serious consideration of the nature of the Old Testament and its relation to the New makes this kind of Docetism impossible.

The Old Testament Eschatologizes the Gospel

The Old Testament not only historicizes the gospel. It establishes the gospel within a particular kind of history. 4 This kind of history can be understood in the contrast between Israel's historical and goal-oriented faith and the cyclic ritual view of reality among the Canaanites. Canaanite religion was an abomination to the Lord not only because of the idolatry and ritual immorality practiced within its fertility cult, but principally because it was a radically different interpretation of reality. Canaan's faith was in the ritual maintenance of the present means of sustenance. Canaanite religion was the forerunner of comfortable middle-class respectability and conformity in religion. It guaranteed the maintenance of the social and material status quo. 5

3 John 14:6; Acts 4:12; 1 Tim. 2:4-5. 4 A. A. van Ruler, The Christian Church and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971). 5 G. E. Wright, God Who Acts (London: SCM Press, 1952), p.24.

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Israel's faith was in a God who was guiding history toward a great and final goal of transformation and renewal. Her faith was in the sovereign Creator-God, whose action in human history upset the status quo and radically reinterpreted existence in light of the great future day of the Lord. No middle-class respectability could withstand the shaking of the foundations of the earth and the complete re-creation – regeneration – of the heavens and the earth. Even the Pharisees, including Nicodemus, fell prey to the paganizing view of self-betterment within a static universe. In contrast, Jesus declared the total renewal which the gospel is bringing not only to the individual, but to the whole world order. "Are you a teacher in Israel and you do not know these things?" (John 3:10). Should not a teacher of the Old Testament have understood that Jesus came not to bring a timeless ideal for moral improvement, but to declare the event of the end of time in Himself. He is the goal, the end, and the shaking has begun (Hag. 2:6-9).

The Old Testament Historicizes the Believer

Jesus Christ is the believer's Substitute both in His living and dying. If the historical life of Jesus was the life lived on our behalf, then the gospel concerns our historical existence. Historical existence is given for historical existence. The gospel is about your history and mine. It touches every moment of our human experience. Some may not become Christians until later life, but the gospel comes to them as God's provision for every moment of their existence. Justification brings acceptance with God of the whole life.

By historicizing Christ, the Old Testament historicizes the believer. The whole life of Israel was under the summons to be perfect and holy. Yet Israel failed. Here we see our own failure to live as we ought before our Maker. Here we see our own condemnation for this failure. Then we see the promise and the grace of God in the plan to make a truly obedient and loving people. The demand to live perfectly will be met by God's own provision. It is in Jesus, the last Adam and the real Israel, that the true life was lived. The believer's identity in the gospel is not the achievement of an ethical ideal or even an inner light. It is the grand declaration that our historical existence is justified in the historical existence of our Substitute, Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament Structures the Gospel

The Old Testament begins with God the Creator, man in the image of God, and the created order under man's dominion (Gen. 1:26f.). Human life is given relational definition. Death results when man seeks to change the relation by trying to be God. Death is the disorder of all the relationships which constitute human life. Salvation is God's activity in restoring the proper relationships among God, man and the created order.

This salvation work of God involves the living and dying of Jesus Christ. The New Testament gives abundant interpretation of what Christ does, but it is in Old Testament terms. Thus the New Testament proclamation of the gospel presupposes the Old.

Many distinct expressions in the Old Testament contribute to the full meaning of the term salvation. Noah's ark, the Exodus from Egypt, the judges' battles of deliverance and the prophetic view of Israel's restoration from captivity are differing models of the reality of salvation. But they all point to the salvation wrought by Christ. Old Testament revelation provides a clear definition of the structure of the gospel. It acts as a safeguard against distortions of the gospel. The most extensive structuring of salvation is seen in the history of Abraham's descendants, which we may summarize as follows:

1. The election and calling of Abraham.

2. The promise of salvation.

3. The captivity of the people.

4. The miracle of God's bringing release from bondage (Exodus).

5. The covenanting at Sinai.

6. The entry into inheritance.

7. The structuring of kingdom rule (Jerusalem, temple, kingship).

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This is a historical demonstration of the process of salvation by grace. But the promises to Abraham, though fulfilled by events in Israel's history, still do not find a perfect consummation. The prophets take them up, renew them, enlarge them and direct the gaze of the faithful to the glorious day of God's kingdom. And all the promises to the fathers of Israel are declared to be fulfilled in the Christ event (e.g., Acts 2:30-32; 13:30-32; 2 Cor. 1:20). This is nothing less than the fulfillment of the whole saving purpose of God in Christ. Jesus Christ is the true seed of Abraham, who is found in perfect covenantal partnership with the living God. He is the miracle which releases from bondage. He fulfills man's obligation to live perfectly before God. He is both the way into the inheritance and, in Himself, is the inheritance. He is all this in His person and work for us. He is the promise and its fulfillment. He is the law and its obedience. He is covenanting Lord and covenanted people. He is king and subjects. He is temple and true worshipers. He is priest and victim. He is city of God and citizen. He is promised land and inheritor. He is the new creation of heavens and earth and the new humanity. He is all this for us in the gospel.

The power of God for salvation is made clear in the gospel. God's way of bringing His people to ultimate perfection is to work His judgment upon their sin and to work out the true and perfect relationship between Himself, man and the world – all within Another. Yet even the gospel dimension of the One for and in the place of the many receives its initial expression in the Old Testament offices of prophet, priest, king-messiah and suffering servant.

The Old Testament Structures the Bible The Old Testament establishes a dynamic progression of revelation.6 This progression highlights the distinctions among the successive biblical expressions of salvation or kingdom. But all revelation expresses the essential relationship of God, man and the world. In the Old Testament we distinguish the epochs of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and the prophet kingdom. This sensitizes us to the distinctions among the gospel event, the inauguration age (Acts) and the apostolic church (Epistles). The Old Testament thus creates the dynamic biblical structure which prevents us from treating all Bible texts on the same level. The theologian attuned to the Old Testament is less likely to engage in the proof-texting often encountered in the arguments of sectarian cults. 7 Proof-texting ignores the contextual relationships of individual texts. It fails to consider the transformation in meaning that occurs when progressive revelation finds its goal in the gospel. It ignores the humanness of the biblical authors as their words reflect the historical, cultural and religious conditioning of their own times.

The Old Testament Strengthens Critical Theology

Theologians are concerned with a crystallization of biblical truth into Christian doctrine. They are also concerned with the critical assessment of false doctrine and how it arises. Critical theology seeks not only to refute error, but to disclose the destructive implications of an apparently inoffensive omission or overemphasis.

It is instructive to observe how certain aberrations of the Christian faith have been accompanied by a false approach to the Old Testament. We suggest that those who accept the Old Testament seriously will be less prone to these errors. Marcion, the second-century Gnostic, completely rejected the Old Testament as un-Christian. Modern existentialists like Bultmann find the Old Testament's principal value in a negative relationship to the New. Liberal idealism agreed with the higher-critical assessment of the Old Testament as a record of the evolution of human religious ideals. In modern evangelicalism we find Dispensationalism with its strange use of literalism applied to Old Testament prophecy but allegory applied to Old Testament history. We also find Keswick holiness theology with its tendency to allegorize

6 This has ben discussed in my article on "The Kingdom of God and the Old Testament," Present Truth Magazine (volume 22). 7 E.g., see the Watchtower handbook of proof texts: Make Sure of All Things (Brooklyn: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1953).

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Old Testament history. 8 And we find a preoccupation with subjective experience which is almost always accompanied by a general neglect of the proper use of the Old Testament.

Conclusion

The Old Testament dead? Let those who think so take heed! Christianity without the Old Testament is like a man without a backbone – flabby, misshapen, grotesque. It is a building without foundations (Eph. 2:20). It is the fulfillment of nothing, the goal of a path from nowhere. Let us learn from our Lord Himself and the men of the New Testament, who quote the Old Testament hundreds of times. Let us make it the warp and woof of the fabric of the gospel.

Dead? Yes indeed if we mean a history fulfilled and a dispensation renewed. But the cloud of witnesses still surrounds us. And what was said of Abel may be said of the whole Old Testament: "He being dead yet speaks" (Heb. 11:4). ——————————————————————————————————————————————

8 E.g., Alan Redpath, The Victorious Christian Life; W. Ian Thomas, If I Perish I Perish and The Saving Life of Christ; Andrew Murray, Absolute Surrender, chap. 1.

The Church's Need of the Old Testament

By G. Ernest Wright From G. Ernest Wright, God Who Acts, pp.15-32. (c) SCM Press Ltd 1952. Reprinted by permission.

I Modern theologians for some time have been writing about the radical transformation in the understanding of the gospel which came into being during the last century and which has had exceedingly serious consequences for the faith and mission of the Church. The one result of this transformation which here concerns us is the evident inability of large sections of the Church to take the Old Testament seriously as a primary revelation of God, of the nature of man and his institutions in human society, and of the Divine purpose in universal history. The scholarly study of the Old Testament has been separated from that of the New and from its mooring in the proclamation of the Church. By the end of the last century Christian scholars of the faith of Israel had become much more acclimated to the fields of general history, Oriental research and comparative religion than they were to the Church and to its traditional presuppositions. Thus while the Church still employed Old Testament scholars as teachers of the clergy, her heart was scarcely warmed by what they taught except in the heat of controversy with Fundamentalism. Consequently, by the time the first world war was over the occasional theological student who majored in the Old Testament was customarily on the defensive and the recipient of considerable derision from his fellow students in the practical departments and especially in the departments of the philosophy and psychology of religion. The serious study of the Old Testament was felt by the more virile minds of the Church to be an exercise of futility, the luxury of antiquarians who took no part in the vital concerns of the present time. Inevitably, therefore, the study of the Hebrew language increasingly came to be frowned upon by the great majority of the clergy as a foolish waste of time and money.

The result has been a rapid decline in both the quality and quantity of significant output on the part of the Church's Old Testament scholars. At the same time, it has meant, not only a rapid decline in the use of the Old Testament for the proclamation of the Gospel, but in many circles at least a radical distortion of that Gospel. Not long ago Godfrey E. Phillips presented the results of an inquiry which he had made regarding the use of the Old Testament in the mission field. Everywhere, especially among the intellectuals, he found uneasiness regarding it. The viewpoint of a pastor in north China is said to be representative of a very considerable section of opinion in that country:

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Intending missionaries or evangelists waste their time if they spend a lot of it studying the Old Testament.... The Old Testament teaching given in theological colleges in China is, in the experience of most students, devoid of interest or value for their after work. Reading the Old Testament is like eating a large crab; it turns out to be mostly shell, with very little meat in it. . . . We don't need to start with Moses and Elijah. It is enough to teach men about God as Jesus taught or revealed him. 1

There is considerable evidence that a similar attitude exists in a large section of the Christian community in the West. Not that the Church would teach officially such a conception of its Scriptural treasury; yet it has been a drift of opinion. An evidence is the widely spread distribution of the New Testament and Psalms as the real Christian canon. Not by overt dogma but by actual practice, the Protestant Church has tended to emend radically the official canon of Scripture.

In other words, there has been a widespread revival of Marcionism in the modern Church, and many of the arguments against it employed by such Church Fathers as Tertullian need to be used again. There is a subtle difference, however, in that while Marcion rejected both paganism and the Old Testament with equal vigor, our modern rejection of paganism, except for the Communist type, is by no means as clear and forthright. To be sure, we inveigh against secularism, but we have not been clear as to where to draw the line between the Gospel and those forms of neo-paganism which are presented in terms of classical idealism. Perhaps, for example, we should not present Jesus Christ as One completely, radically, and revolutionarily new, but as the fulfillment of the best idealism in existence among the heathen. Yet the question arises as to what kind of Christ is presented in such a situation. Surely, if the New Testament is not proclaimed as the fulfillment of the Old, if the Gospel as proclaimed by Jesus and by Paul is not the completion of the faith of Israel, then it must inevitably be a completion and fulfillment of something which we ourselves substitute – and that most certainly means a perversion of the Christian faith.

The new attitude toward the meaning of the Old Testament which came into being during the second half of the nineteenth century has been of tremendous value in the way it has encouraged the enthusiastic assemblage of a vast array of facts by means of which the Biblical literature must be understood. Unlike the liberal movement in New England of a century before, it encouraged Protestant scholarly study of the Bible to such an extent that the era between 1890 and 1910 may perhaps be designated as the greatest age of Biblical scholarship in Christian history, and no section of the World Church has remained untouched by the Protestant work which came to its culmination at that time. Yet because of certain difficulties inherent in its interpretative point of view, the great generation at the turn of the century was unable to reproduce itself. Old Testament scholarship, in England and America especially, has continued by and large along the lines then drawn, but it has done so with steadily diminishing returns.

Most important in the interpretative procedure of the last century was the conception of emergent value. In studying the Biblical materials the perception of the scholar was trained to look almost exclusively for a process of historical growth and development in which certain values emerge at each stage of the process. The earliest datable material was assumed to be the most 'primitive' and the later the more 'advanced'. Basic to one's understanding of the literature, therefore, was a certain scale of values by which the 'primitive' and the 'advanced' are to be so designated. This scale of values was and is usually implicit and unexamined. When forced to defend it, the scholar would attempt to explain it in some vague way as 'the mind of Christ'. Actually, however, it is more commonly seen today as a compound of conceptions derived from secular idealism, and not directly from the Bible. The Old Testament in such a viewpoint is important only in the sense that it provided the developmental background which lies behind the Gospel of Christ. It must be used by scholars for the historical understanding of the New Testament; but when the Gospel is formulated theologically or proclaimed by the Church to the world, one must deal only with the most 'advanced' stage of the revelation in which the values and ideals, so slow in emerging, appear in their purest form. If this be true, then the mission of the Church actually has no need of the Old Testament.

1 The Old Testament in the World Church (London, 1942), p.23.

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Yet today perhaps a majority of the Church's theological scholars have been placing large question marks before the assumptions of the 1900 era. Is the Bible primarily a textbook for values? Can its true significance be portrayed solely in emergent terms? Can the Divine self-disclosure by means of historical acts of grace and judgment be reduced to a philosophy of values? In other words, the proclamation (kerygma) of what God has done, whence it is inferred what he is, is the central concern of the Bible, apart from which a true understanding of the teaching (didache) is impossible. Yet this is precisely the point which the nineteenth century scholarship did not take seriously. When one conceives of the Bible as a textbook solely for didache, and then begins to examine other religions and to see numerous teachings which seem to have the same 'spiritual' and ethical interest, he begins to think of all religions as having a basic common denominator. The uniqueness and radical difference of Biblical faith is no longer comprehended, except as one attempts to argue that the teachings and 'values' of Christ are superior to those of the other religions in the sense that they are seen in him in a clearer and finer distillation. Thus the missionary has been tempted to present the 'superior' Christ and unwittingly to become an agent of the Western feeling of superiority in its patronizing dealing with the 'inferior' peoples. Thus the mission schools have been tempted merely to reproduce the idealism of Western liberal arts schools in the naive assumption that the teaching of values is the same as the proclamation of the Gospel. And thus also it has been difficult for the Christian to draw a clear line of demarcation between the Biblical Gospel and pagan idealism.

II

One of the functions of the Old Testament in the Church has always been its role as a bulwark against paganism. That is to say, the Church has received an enlightenment from the faith of Israel which has enabled it to see that entrance into the Kingdom of Christ cannot be found among the religions of the world, but solely in the faith of Abraham and his seed, of which we are heirs in the Church by Jesus Christ. It is by the spectacles of the Old Testament that our eyes must be focused upon the light in Christ; otherwise that light will be blurred and we shall not see it correctly. In support of these statements only a few observations can be made here.

Of basic importance for the Church is the realization that Israelite faith as represented in the earliest as well as in the latest literature was an utterly unique and radical departure from all contemporary pagan religions. The latter were all natural and cultural religions which had much more in common with one another than any one of them did with the Bible. There would appear to be certain tendencies in all pagan faiths which are normal constituents of the natural man's religion. Israel's breach of this 'normalcy' was something utterly new, phenomenal and radical. Consequently, the faith of Israel as fulfilled in Christ has always and will always bring to the Church such a sharpening of issues that the sword of the Gospel cannot be blunted completely among all Christians by compromise with pagan idealism.

Natural religion in Biblical times analyzed the problem of man over against nature. In the struggle for existence the function of religious worship was that of the integration of personal and social life with the natural world. Since man encounters in nature a plurality of uncontrollable powers to which he must adjust himself, he had isolated and identified these powers as the objects of his worship long before 3000 B.C. But in the ancient Near East, at least, polytheism was no primitive religion to be classified as merely one stage removed from animism and poly-demonism, if the latter ever existed in pure textbook form. It was a highly sophisticated, organized and complex affair, in which the greatest intellectual achievement was the reduction of nature's vast plurality into an orderly and comprehensible system. The order of nature was believed to be an achievement in the integration of divine wills, in the pairing of complementary powers by means of the family and household patterns, and in the balancing of opposing forces such as life and death, rain and drought. The life of the individual was embedded in society and society was embedded in the rhythm and balance of nature which was the realm of the gods. The whole aim of existence was thus to fit into the rhythm and integration of the cosmic society of nature. While the law and order of human society was a function of one or more of the gods, sin was not primarily a violation of a gracious and righteous Divine will, a rebellion which destroyed personal communion, as in the Bible. It was rather more of an aberration which destroyed the harmony of affairs in the cosmic state.

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The good life was one which fitted into the established hierarchy of authority, beginning with the elder brother and the father in the family.

Polytheism was thus pre-eminently a religion of the status quo, and it is a significant fact that in no country where such religion has provided the cultural background has it ever been a dynamic force for social change. Allowed to develop long enough, the intellectuals may evolve from it a philosophical idealism, as in Plato, or a mysticism, as in Buddhism. Even here, however, the religion has not been a power for social evolution and social justice because of an inherent pessimism and the separation of the good life from the common life. In any case, the philosophical and mystical ways are for the few, while the common man has been left unredeemed from his superstitions.

In the faith of Israel, even in the earliest preserved literature, there is a radical and complete difference at every significant point. The Israelite did not analyze the problem of life over against nature. The latter plays a subordinate role in the faith, except as it is used by God to further his work in society and history. Instead, the problem of life is understood over against the will and purpose of the God who had chosen one people as the instrument of his universal, redemptive purpose (e.g. Gen. 12.3). This election of a people was not based upon merit, but upon a mysterious grace; and its reality was confirmed by the great saving acts of this God, particularly as expressed in the redemption from Egyptian bondage and in the gift of an inheritance. Here, then, is an utterly different God from the gods of all natural, cultural and philosophic religion. He is no immanent power in nature nor in the natural process of being and becoming. The nature of his being and will is revealed in his historical acts. He thus transcends nature, as he transcends history; and, consequently, he destroys the whole basis of pagan religion. No force or power in the world is more characteristic of him than any other, and it is increasingly understood today that the former identifications in early Israel of a Mountain-God, a Fertility-God and a War-God, from which the 'ethical monotheism' of the prophets gradually evolved, are figments of scholarly presupposition and imagination. It is impossible on any empirical grounds to understand how the God of Israel could have evolved out of polytheism. He is unique, sui generis, utterly different.

One of the important doctrines of early as well as of late Israel, one which we have so zealously sought to set aside because it is so offensive to our good taste and to that of the naturalist and mystic of every age, is the doctrine of God's jealousy. This is an expression of the nature of God as he had revealed himself to Israel. It points directly to the utter difference between him and the gods, and it affirms that he alone is God, that he alone wills to be God, and that he will not put up with man's desire to worship tolerant powers of a lesser order, to whom he can integrate himself by a variety of processes, including magic, which he himself has evolved. The very nature of God's being places a tension at the heart of existence which destroys the natural man's integration of himself and his society in the rhythm of the kingdom of nature. The problem of life is not that of integration in the world. It is much deeper; it is the problem of obedience to the will of the transcendent Lord. He has bound his elect to himself, on the one hand, by great acts of love and grace, and, on the other hand, by a covenant in which his will is expressed. By means of these two elements of Biblical proclamation, the good news of salvation and the requirement of obedience, God wills to bind a people to himself by ties of love, faith and trust. Sin is no longer aberration; it is a violation of communion, a betrayal of Divine love, a revolt against God's Lordship. It can be followed, therefore, only by humble repentance and Divine forgiveness. The pagan, on the contrary, may feel guilt, regret and despair at having fallen short of what was demanded of him, but he knows nothing of the Biblical sense of sin, contrition, repentance and forgiveness, of the joy that comes from doing God's will, or in any way of being undeserving of the Divine blessing heaped upon him. 2

Biblical faith, therefore, could never be a religion of the status quo for its faithful adherents. Dynamic change and revolution are to be expected because God is a dynamic being, external to the processes of life, engaged in the active direction of history to his own goals. The tension which he places at the heart of existence excludes a peace of integration in the rhythmic cycle of nature. Human life must conform to his independent will, and his 'wrath' and 'judgment' are the Biblical means of expressing his active displeasure and his active work against all that flout his will. 2 Cf. Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, 1948), pp. 277 ff; Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York, 1948), pp. 73 ff.

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Man's tendency toward, and desire for, pagan 'normalcy' being what they are, it is scarcely surprising to find that Christians have sought by a variety of means to avoid this conception and to eradicate the tension occasioned by the dynamic and energetic Lord who will even destroy in order to build. Many Israelites tried to avoid it by saying: 'It is not he; neither shall evil come upon us; neither shall we see sword nor famine' (Jer. 5.12). Men have always tried to escape from this God into deistic idolatry of one sort or another by saying that God does not see them and does not act directly in the affairs of earth. Greek philosophy and Eastern mysticism could certainly envisage no such deity, while in the ancient polytheisms the great gods were the aristocrats of the universe who for the most part were inaccessible to the common man and uninterested in him except as aristocrats are interested in the menial slaves who supply their needs.

The Christian idealist of this day has been very subtle in his rejection of this basic Biblical perception of the true nature of God. By setting the Old Testament to one side, he is not confronted so directly with it and he can proceed to interpret the New Testament along more congenial lines. Among other things, he exhibits a distinct tendency to interpret God in 'spiritual' terms, and 'spiritual' entities are 'spiritually' discerned. The term 'spirit', derived from the conception of breath and wind, is of value when applied to God solely to prevent us from assuming that anthropomorphic language can exhaust the mystery and glory of his being.

The difficulty with the term and with its derived adjective, 'spiritual', is that the human perception of God's being immediately becomes diffuse and without objective focus. The knowledge of God is reduced to a feeling, to an 'experience'. In the Protestant churches of our time no two words are in more common use than the terms 'spiritual' and 'experience'. And when the two are coupled together as 'spiritual experience', we have the popular conception of the sum total of religion, especially when the Golden Rule is added to it.

This represents the paganizing of the Gospel in a form that is pleasing to the cultured and sophisticated. It also presents the Gospel in a form that is more acceptable to the pagan idealist and to the Eastern scholar with mystical tendencies. This Gospel is no scandal nor stumbling block. Its tolerant diffuseness does away with the tension occasioned by the self-disclosure of the Biblical God. The reality of God's being becomes an immanent, inner experience which in practice, though not perhaps in theory, sets aside the whole Biblical doctrine of God's jealousy, the Biblical conception of the definite, dynamic, energetic Being whose transcendent holiness and objectivity are too great to be contained in 'experience', and as well the Biblical conception of the external, objective, historical acts of God. Is it not possible to suppose that God may not choose to reveal himself and his true nature primarily, if at all, in 'spiritual experience'? To be sure, there is an immediate awareness of God's presence in worship, in prayer, communion and confession; but the main emphasis of the Bible is certainly on his revelation of himself in historical acts, and in definite 'words', not in diffuse experience. There is an objectivity about Biblical faith which cannot be expressed in the language of inner experience. For this reason Biblical religion cannot be classified among the great mysticisms of the world. It is scarcely an accident, therefore, that the Bible contains no doctrine of God's spirituality. It has a good deal to say about God's Spirit, or the Holy Spirit, but it does not employ metaphors derived from breath or wind as descriptive of his essence or being. 3 From beginning to end it uses the definite and concrete metaphors derived from human society, the most spectacular of all such anthropomorphs being the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

In other words, the Christian disuse of the Old Testament has left the Church an easy prey for the ubiquitous tendencies toward pagan 'normalcy' in which God's being or essence is conceived as in some way immanent in the processes of life, or, as in the more developed intellectual forms of paganism, as an ideal, a principle, a creative event, a vital urge, either within or without the evolving process. In every case, the tension created by God's Lordship, the radically serious conception of sin, and the reality of God's objective, historical acts of salvation are removed as the primary focus of the Christian's attention. In such a situation the distinction between the Church and the world of pagan idealism is difficult to

3 Readers may wish to make an exception of the Johannine literature, basing the conclusion on John 4:24 ('God is spirit'). This statement must be interpreted, however, in the light of the whole Johannine vocabulary and in relation to the other Johannine sentences, 'God is light' and 'God is love'. When this is done, it is doubtful whether it can be used to sustain a doctrine of God's spirituality. These phrases are primarily concerned with the nature of the Divine activity and revelation, rather than with the ontology of God in the Hellenic sense.

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maintain, and the Cross as the central symbol of the Church's faith no longer has the meaning it once had.

III

It has often been pointed out that the pagan religions have no sense of history. Polytheistic man, borne on the rhythmic cycle of nature, has no primary concern with history; instead his focus of attention is upon the yearly cycle in which life is recreated each spring and the blessing of order re-established. He is 'bound in the bundle of life' with nature, which is the kingdom of the gods, and his existence moves with the natural rhythm. Biblical man was 'bound in the bundle of life' with God who was not an immanence in nature but the Creator of nature, and who revealed himself by means of historical acts in which there were also historical promises. The focus of the Biblical man's attention, therefore, was not on the cycle of nature, but on what God had done, was doing and was yet to do according to his declared intention. Promise and fulfillment thus become the central Biblical themes, and the faithful man's attention was focused on the interpretation of his own life and of all history in this light. The chief sources of his light and power came, not from individual or isolated 'spiritual experiences', but from his certainty of the reality of God's working in every event, from his concrete knowledge of God's power to save, to direct and to judge, from his continued attempt to read the signs of the times in the light of God's previous revelation, and from his glad acceptance of his Divine election within the election of his people to do the work God called him to do. His life and his work had meaning and importance, therefore, because God fitted them into an overarching historical plan. God's revealed purpose was that the whole earth shall become his kingdom, and the Israelite was called to play his role in the universal cosmogony of the age yet to be born. The faithful Israelite thus walked in time with a sure and certain hope for the redemption of time. That hope burned the more brilliantly in the desperate crises that meant the destruction of the hopes of paganism, for it was founded on the certainty of God's historical promises; and God does not lie.

It is thus characteristic of Biblical faith that it creates this hope that is based on trust. The pagan, on the other hand, has no such resource. He does not know the God of history. He is unconscious of any significant role he is called to play in history. He knows of no personal election or of the election of his people, except as selfish group desire is projected upon the gods. He is an individualist who uses the elaborate means of worship solely for the purpose of gaining his own security, integration and safety. His vision is not lifted from himself to God's eternity. Consequently, in times of crisis when his security is removed, he is uncertain where to turn. In Egypt he could only hope for a beautiful, abundant hereafter; in Eastern religions for a better reincarnation in which he was elevated above the evil and sorrow of earth; in Canaanite and Mesopotamian religion there was little to sustain him, for, when the individual's hope of earth was removed, there was no hope.

It is scarcely accidental, therefore, that the ancient polytheisms of the Biblical world died with the death of the civilizations of which they were the buttress. They had no means of interpreting history, and, when the gods could not provide order and security, they died. What survived from antiquity were such religions, on the one hand, as had no hope of earth but saw salvation as the individual attempt to climb the ladder of reason or mysticism out of earth's misery, and, on the other hand, Biblical faith with its firm insight in the redemption of God which is known most fully only in the very events which proved the downfall of the gods.

It is Israel which first broke radically with the pagan conceptions of the meaning of life and provided the view of history and the characteristic hope on which the New Testament and the Christian faith so firmly rest. If one leaves the Old Testament aside, he can still find these things present in the New Testament, but they are without historical focus and perspective. God's work in Christ is without meaning when separated from the time which is at hand and the kingdom now fulfilled (Mark 1.15). The Church which lacks the Old Testament again becomes easy prey to paganism and cannot provide the answer or the hope for the present desperate dilemma of man. Thus, on the one hand, the Church today has tended to succumb to man's hope for integration, happiness and security in the world as it is. It has preached the Gospel as a new kind of paganism, the value of which is strictly utilitarian. Religion is good for us; it gives

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us comfort and peace of mind; it is the only hope for democracy; it alone can support the status quo and make us happy within it. Yet Biblical hope and pagan comfort are not the same thing. In the present frustration within and without it is futile to speak glibly of peace when there is no peace. The Biblical hope is based solely upon God, upon his promises, and upon his election. It is known only in the context of judgment and of the Cross, in the acceptance of a severe ethical demand, of cross-bearing and cross-sharing and of a calling which one works out with fear and trembling. On the other hand, the Church has preached a Gospel of individual pietism and 'spiritual experience', separated almost completely from the common life and from the historical program of God as revealed in the Bible, while emphasizing prayer and promising the immortality of the soul. It is not that these things in themselves are totally wrong in their proper setting, but here they are separated from their total Biblical context. As such, they are a reversion to pagan 'normalcy', to an individualistic, self-centered, utilitarian worship which lacks historical grounding in election, promise and fulfillment. The question is critical as to whether such faith can survive any better than did the ancient polytheisms. Is it not a luxury solely of the prosperous? One might ask, furthermore: What safeguards against paganizing tendencies have the Christian doctrines of man, of the incarnation and the atonement, of the meaning and mission of the Church, of the nature of the Kingdom of God, of the responsible or covenant society, if the Old Testament is separated from the New and the latter left without the historical and theological base on which it rests and which it has repaired and strengthened? Certainly the Biblical concern with justice, while present in the New Testament, is nevertheless centered in Israel's struggle for the meaning of her national life in the covenant with God. In the conception of worship it is Israel which first broke the completely new ground on which the Church now stands and from which it receives nourishment. All pagan worship is based essentially on the conception of the efficacy of an individual's works, whether of magic, sacrifice (food for the Deity's need), reason, mystical exercise, or the giving of alms. In Israel, on the other hand, proper worship begins with the proper inner attitude toward God, with fear (holy reverence), faith, trust and love. The sacrificial rites have lost their pagan setting and all thought of God's physical need of food and drink is done away. Sacrifice is instead a means which God provides whereby he may be worshipped, whereby sins may be atoned and communion re-established. It has no efficacy in the hands of the pagan or of the hard-hearted sinner who commits his wickedness with premeditation and a high hand. No atoning sacrifice will avail such a person; he can only humble himself and with repentant heart throw himself directly on the mercy of God. In other words, the means of worship are efficacious only when properly used in sincerity and truth' by faithful members of the covenant community (i.e. the Church), people whose lives exhibit integrity ('wholeness, perfection') in faithful obedience to God's will. The religious cultus which is used in any other way can provide no security in God; it is defiled and will suffer the fire of Divine judgment.

Furthermore, the central religious festivals are not rites of sympathetic magic, as in polytheism. In the latter, man takes on the form and identity of a god and acts out in a drama the role that God has played in the natural cycle. Thus by means of a process of identification man secures for himself the primal blessings and security of nature. But in Israel the major festivals of spring (Passover) and fall (the feast of the Tabernacles) had at their centre historical memory and commemoration in which the saving acts of God were rehearsed. Confessions of faith which were used in worship were nearly all recitals of what God had done. The first six books of the Old Testament have at their base precisely such a kerygmatic theme, one centering in the election of the fathers, the salvation at the Exodus, and the gift of a land in which to dwell. Around that theme the various editors have heaped a variety of material from numerous sources of tradition, but no Israelite was allowed to forget the simple history of God's acts which furnishes the underlying unity (e.g. Deut. 1-4; Josh. 24.1-13; Ps. 105; Acts 13.17-22).

This historical perspective of worship was carried over into the New Testament and into the Church. It is to be distinguished radically from pagan worship, and it cannot be maintained apart from the Old Testament. Biblical theology is first and foremost a theology of recital. The worshipper listens to the recital and by means of historical memory and identification he participates, so to speak, in the original events. Then facing his own situation he confesses his faith and his sin; he seeks God's forgiveness and direction; and he renews the vows of his covenant. In the modern Church, however, one wonders how much of the meaning of this conception of recital and of historical participation in the worship of God is

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actually retained. For what purpose is the Scripture read, Christian truth expounded, and the sacraments administered? There would appear to be a great uncertainty in the churches of our day about this question. The average Christian, however, seems to have little sense of the difference between Biblical and pagan worship, and like the pagan he is inclined to participate in the socially accepted religious cultus in search of security, without vigorous historical memory, without understanding of his sin, without forgiveness, and without renewal in a covenant community which has been founded by the redemptive activity of God.

It is not suggested here that the use of the Old Testament will automatically solve all of the problems facing the Christian Church! Yet it is suggested that the misuse and disuse of the Old Testament have deprived the Church of its Bible. The New Testament is not itself a Bible; it is a small body of literature filled with all sorts of presuppositions which have no meaning to the uninitiated. It is the Old Testament which initially broke radically with pagan religion and which thus forms the basis on which the New rests. Christ came in the fullness of time, not time in general, but God's special time which began with Abraham. To be sure, the Old Testament by itself does not present a faith by which men today can live. Judaism and Christianity are two different religions because in the former the Old Testament is made relevant, is seen fulfilled in the Talmud, while in the latter it is fulfilled in Christ. For the Christian, Christ is the key to the central contents of the Old Testament, but at the same time it is the Old Testament which provides the clue to Christ. It is small wonder, then, that when a Christian seriously seeks to explain and expound his faith over against another religion, his initial and basic arguments are drawn from the Old Testament, for it is the latter which has been a chief bulwark of the Church against paganism.4

IV

If this be true, then one of the most important tasks of the Church today is to lay hold upon a Biblically centered theology. To do so means that we must first take the faith of Israel seriously and by the use of the scholarly tools at our disposal seek to understand the theology of the Old Testament. But, secondly, as Christians we must also press toward a Biblical theology, in which both Testaments are held together in an organic manner. We cannot envisage the task ahead as merely that of studying New Testament theology and Old Testament theology in separate compartments, and then attempting to put them together. It is very doubtful whether one can maintain a New Testament theology as a separate and independent discipline. The New Testament is primarily that fulfillment of the Old Testament which separates the faith from its nationalistic basis and with Christ as the king of the new Israel it unifies that which is not unified in old Israel. It restores the power of the earlier eschatology, and in the cross and resurrection brings together God's justice and love, his wrath and his salvation, his gospel and his law, so that the Church is sent into the world conscious both of the long history of God's activity behind it and of its new creation in Jesus Christ. The New Testament in and by itself alone is an insufficient base on which to stand. The significance of God's work in Jesus Christ can be comprehended only when the Bible is retained as the Bible, not as an abbreviated torso of the Bible.

Yet how are we to proceed in such a task? Biblical scholars divide themselves into Old Testament specialists and New Testament specialists, and our theological seminaries have Old Testament and New Testament departments. An occasional seminary in America still attempts to bridge the gap by something called the Department of English Bible, as though the only prerequisite for Biblical understanding were a knowledge of the English language, while those who are able to teach the Biblical languages are by their knowledge incapacitated for the communication of Biblical truth in the language of their nativity.

Even more important is the fact that Biblical scholars today are very uncertain as to how to move in the direction of Biblical theology. The point of view of the last century resulted in numerous histories of Israelite religion, but in very little theology. We now see the inadequacy of the former approach, but how are we to proceed in our attempt to do something different? The focus of attention formerly was

4 For fuller discussion, with supporting detail and references, of the arguments here presented for the distinction between Israelite faith and that of polytheism, see the writer's monograph, The Old Testament Against Its Environment (London and Chicago, 1950).

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concentrated on the analysis of history and literary forms, with the result that the Bible was split into its many component parts with little to hold them together except the conception of an evolving historical process. An extreme example of this type of work was published recently, as though born long after its time: I. G. Matthews, The Religious Pilgrimage of Israel (New York and London, 1947). This author presents Israel's history as evolving through some fourteen different religions or distinct religious formulations. The final chapter on the religion of Judaism (400 B.C.-A.D. 135) scarcely mentions the early Christian movement, except for one brief paragraph on the Nazarenes, thus emphasizing the complete separation of the Old and New Testaments. In such a viewpoint a Biblical theology is completely impossible because the Bible has no unity; it speaks by means of many human voices which present more dissonance than they do harmonious concord of sound.5

Fortunately, most Biblical scholars today are unwilling to surrender to such a view. After all, the Bible does testify to a certain religious faith which, like other faiths, is a distinct entity of which its adherents were very self-conscious. The process of history brought changes and developments within the faith, but not of such a nature as to shift it completely to a different religion. To deny this seems a violation of the whole procedure of scholarly research and an exhibition of a serious myopia which renders one incapable of seeing the forest for the trees. Thus most scholars today who are seriously interested in Biblical theology believe that it is possible and necessary to deal with Biblical religion as an historical reality in its structural unity, and not alone in its chronological development.

Yet the problem is still acute as to how the historical and the systematic approaches are to be combined. Indeed, there is a real question as to whether Biblical faith can be compressed into a 'system' at all. On the one hand, it is filled with paradox so that one no sooner makes one type of statement on the basis of one selection of verses than he may be confronted with other passages which seem to say the opposite. The world is good; but it is also evil. Man is a free lord of this world; yet he is not free because God is Lord. God loves man above all creatures, but turns on him with a terrible wrath. God chooses Israel and sets his love on her; yet his election brings with it a continuous suffering. Many of the Biblical paradoxes can be resolved by rational statement to be sure, but, taken as a whole, Biblical faith can no more be confined to a rigorous system than can life itself.

On the other hand, the Biblical language is concrete, poetical, metaphorical, picturesque. Nearly all of its religious vocabulary is derived from sources in human life which immediately bring pictures or images to the mind and which are filled with colour, contrast and movement. Consequently, the Biblical language will always be the despair of the precise and exact theologian who above all desires a simple, coherent system. When one tries to translate this language out of the paradoxical colour and movement of life into abstract, universal concepts and propositions, he immediately finds that the vitality of the faith has eluded him. Must we assume, therefore, that to theologize from the Biblical language means that we are immediately separating ourselves from the faith? The answer is certainly in the affirmative, if to theologize means first and foremost the reduction of the colorful image into a dreary black and white so that a consistent system may be erected with a minimum of paradox. Yet man cannot live by consistency or by the abstract, colorless, universal truth. One must ask, therefore, whether our concern with the abstract and with the systematic should occupy the centre of our attention as we approach the subject matter of Biblical theology. Is it possible that there may be another kind of theology than the abstract, the coherent and the propositional? I believe that there is, and that Biblical theology is more to be characterized by the words 'confessional recital' than it is by 'a system of ideas'. It is a reflection on the meaning of God's acts more than it is 'a study of the religious ideas of the Bible in their historic context'.6 If this is the case, then perhaps a number of our initial difficulties with the subject may be removed.

5 See further in more detail Robert C. Dentan, Preface to Old Testament Theology (New Haven, 1950), Chaps. V-VII; and James D. Smart, "The Death and Rebirth of Old Testament Theology", Journal of Religion, Vol. XXIII (1943), pp. 125-136. 6 Contrast Dentan, op. cit., p.45.

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Jesus Christ — the Meaning of

All Scripture, Life and History

Robert Brinsmead

Chapter 1

Christ and the Old Testament The apostles preached Christ from the Old Testament and out of the Old Testament background. The Old Testament was the Bible for Jesus and the apostles. They knew no Scripture except the Old Testament, and no God except the God of the Old Testament.

For centuries the law and the prophets had nurtured a hope in Israel. The apostles proclaimed Christ as the fulfillment of that hope. It was as if a veil had been removed from the Old Testament. Now their eyes were opened to see that the entire Scripture existed for the sake of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:16). They could now see that Moses wrote about Him (John 5:46). "All the prophets testify about Him" (Acts 10:43). The law and the prophets had pointed to the gospel of God's righteousness (Rom. 1:2; 3:21). Christ died and rose again according to the Scriptures (1 Cor.15:3-4).

If the New Testament gives a picture of God in the face of Jesus Christ, then we must not forget that the Old Testament provides the framework or setting for that picture. This framework is tremendously important. The gospel cannot be understood without a framework. A person with slides of his latest trip to Africa cannot show an intelligible picture by projecting it in midair. He must have a backdrop, a screen. The screen will either enhance or distort the picture. Likewise, spirit always needs form. The soul needs the body. And faith needs to be expressed in good works. The gospel is spiritual, but it must be expressed in visible form. Just as God designed the human body as the form for expression of the human soul, so He designed the form through which He would express the gospel of His grace. That form was the Old Testament background.

Let us consider the long centuries of careful preparation for the staging of the "divine passion play." The staging was the Old Testament. The New Testament does not discard this staging, this background. In their preaching of Christ the apostles knew how to use this framework in presenting the divine splendor of the One by whom and for whom all things consist (Col. 1:16).

For various reasons we Christians have neglected or discarded the art of preaching Christ out of the Old Testament as the apostles did. Marcion, the great heretic of the second century, wanted to discard the Old Testament entirely. Although the church rejected Marcion, a Marcionist tendency has persisted. The church has not always been comfortable with the Old Testament. Christians often have not known what to do with it. And to the extent that we have neglected the God-given framework of the gospel, we have had to invent frameworks of our own.

Although we might not be consciously aware of it, we need a framework for our theology. Our thinking about God and man must move within the framework of some system of thought. We need a theological structure.

The history of theology shows how different epochs and different sections of the church have developed different theological systems. We are all familiar with such terms as Romanism, Calvinism and dispensationalism. They represent systems of theological thought – frameworks in which God's method of saving men is explained. To these we could add other "isms" such as mysticism, pietism, enthusiasm, rationalism and the twentieth-century phenomenon of existentialism.

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These systems of thought have developed because the human mind cannot hold spiritual truth apart from form. We all sense the need of a framework. God not only gave the church His gospel. He gave that gospel in His framework. Too often His framework has appeared like "a root out of dry ground." It was unappealing to the rationalistic Greek mind. Western Christian civilization has been permeated by this Greek mind set. To the extent the church has lost the original gospel framework, she has devised one of her own. Some of these theological frameworks have had tremendous hold on the minds of Christians. But these frameworks have often distorted the original purity of the gospel. The Christian message has often been pressed into supporting exaggerated individualism or triumphalistic hierarchy, external ritualism or internal pietism. One of the most encouraging developments in Christian scholarship today is a renewed interest in the Old Testament and its place in the proclamation of the gospel. This development is crossing all classical boundary lines. There is a new openness for the apostolic presentation of the gospel in the thought forms of the Old Testament. There is a new willingness to allow these biblical thought forms to call our traditional thought forms into question. The proper place and use of the Old Testament in preaching the gospel is where the action is in Christian scholarship today. Men who have done their work in the Old Testament now find new acceptance in departments of theology in the best Christian schools. This is an exciting and challenging moment in the history of the church.

Two Outstanding Features of the Old Testament Background

The Old Testament background has two outstanding features. It is historical, and it is legal. Historical. Anyone who reads the Old Testament books without presuppositions must be impressed with their historical nature. They begin with an account of God making the world and of man defecting from God's authority. Then they trace the subsequent history of God's dealings with the human race, highlighting such events as the Flood, the creation of the Hebrew nation and its history for over a thousand years. Old Testament theology is a theology of history. This is the unique feature of biblical religion. It is the only truly historical religion. It is not a mystical religion. The God of the Old Testament does not reveal Himself in diffuse mystical experience nor in abstract propositions, but in concrete historical acts. As far as the Old Testament is concerned, history is the stuff of revelation. God is revealed by His mighty acts – both in the event itself and in the interpretation given that event. For example, in the Old Testament, righteousness is the fundamental attribute of God. But when the Old Testament sets forth the righteousness of God, it does not do so with abstract propositions about God's righteousness in Himself. Hebrew literature is dynamic, concrete, and moves on a relational plane. God is righteous by what He does. The emphasis of Scripture is that God is righteous in all His ways and acts (Judges 5:11; Ps. 145:17). We have ignored this "theology of history" far too often. We have tried to theologize in an abstract, rationalistic, metaphysical and speculative framework. But this moves outside the framework of biblical theology. That is why most systematic theologies do not sound like the Bible. They contain good and helpful biblical data. But the thought framework is more Grecian than biblical. The first and foremost biblical truth is the doctrine of God Himself. But classical systematic theologies present this doctrine in a rationalistic, speculative and non-historical framework. We must refuse to know any God but the revealed God. That revelation is found in the historical acts recorded in the Bible. The Word of God is more the acts of God than the oracles of God.

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Since God is known by His acts in history, the true worship of God – giving God His worth – consists in joyously recounting the acts of God. G. Ernest Wright calls the Old Testament "a theology of recital." In his path finding essay, God Who Acts, he points out that Israel's earliest confessions of faith were simple recitals of how God had acted for her deliverance in the Exodus (Deut. 6:20-24; 26:5-9). An examination of Israel's worship shows that her Sabbaths, ceremonies, harvest festivals and institutions were all directed to commemorating and proclaiming the redemption of the nation in the Exodus. Many of the psalms worship God by declaring the acts of God in Israel's formative history. Bible writers never tire of recounting what God did at the Exodus. Psalm 66 is typical:

Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of His name; give to Him glorious praise! Say to God, "How terrible are Thy deeds! So great is Thy power that Thy enemies cringe before Thee. All the earth worships Thee; they sing praises to Thee, sing praises to Thy name. Come and see what God has done: He is terrible in His deeds among men. He turned the sea into dry land; men passed through the river on foot. There did we rejoice in Him. —Ps. 66:1-6 (cf. Ps. 78, 105-106).

Legal. Biblical history is special history because it is preoccupied with the salvation of God's people. In theological circles this is called heilsgeschichte. 7 We could propose another name – covenant history. In many respects this would be a better designation for the history we find in the Bible.

The covenant is the treaty or arrangement which binds God and man together in fellowship. It is the basis for the God-man relationship. It is so basic we could even say that God has no dealings with man outside the covenant.

The covenant is a legal conception. It has stipulations which are legally binding on both parties. It decrees blessings and cursings to follow the performance or nonperformance of its stipulations. The thirty-nine Old Testament books take their name – Old Testament or Covenant – from the covenant God made with the Hebrew nation at Mount Sinai. The words of the covenant are the Ten Commandments (Ex. 34:27-29; Deut. 4:13). The commandments are prefaced by a statement of God's

7 From the combination of two German words that, taken together, mean "salvation history."

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redemptive act. Then follow the stipulations, which define the response divine love calls for from the redeemed community.

Israel was a covenant people. God was their King. He ruled them by His law. Fidelity to the covenant meant fidelity to the law. Leon Morris rightly says that the God of the Old Testament is the God of law. He can be relied upon to uphold the law and to act according to its terms with undeviating fidelity. Morris points out that the men of the Old Testament never tire of depicting the relation between God and His people in legal imagery. 8 When Old Testament saints appeal to God, they appeal to His covenant and for a hearing before the divine court. When God has a complaint against His people, He too appeals to His covenant and sues His people at the court of law. 9

The early Hebrew law court was basic to Hebrew life. Disputes were arbitrated in an open-air law court at the city gate. Here the judges, and later the kings, sat to uphold justice and judgment. God is depicted as the great King. His chief office is Judge. As Judge He acts to cut off evildoers and to uphold justice (Ps. 72, 101). Especially does He deliver those whose cause is righteous. He is a God of judgment (Mal. 2:17). "Justice and judgment are the habitation of Thy throne" (Ps. 89:14).

When God acts to save His people, it is always a just salvation – a salvation according to His covenant and true to the just requirements of His law. As supreme King and Judge He always acts in a way which upholds the constitution. He will never depart from the rule of His law nor alter the thing which has gone out of His lips. Only in this light can we understand what the Bible means when it exalts the power of God to defeat the enemy of His people. If the power of God simply meant the might of God, there would be no contest with Satan, Pharaoh or anybody else. God could overcome them as easily as one casts a pebble to the earth. Their destruction would not constitute a great expenditure of divine energy. But whatever God does He must do lawfully, justly and in harmony with His holy self-consistency. The Bible everywhere teaches that man's salvation is no easy matter for God. It is a costly affair. God's power, therefore, is legal or lawful power.

We think of Darius, the king of Medo-Persia, laboring all night to deliver Daniel from the lions' den (Dan. 5). He could not save Daniel because, as king, he had to execute the law. It was not a question of having military might to execute his wish. He could deliver Daniel or he could uphold the law. He could not do both. But God does what neither Darius nor anyone else could do. He both saves and carries out His law.

This marvelous union of salvation and justice was taught in the ancient sanctuary ritual. The covenantal law was deposited in the ark and enshrined in the holy of holies. The broken stipulations demanded the death of the transgressor. The blood of the sin offering was therefore brought into the holy of holies and sprinkled upon the lid of the ark. Justice and mercy blended. The repentant sinner was saved – and saved justly.

Thus the Old Testament is often and rightly called "the legal economy."

Conclusion

The apostles preached Jesus Christ from the Old Testament. They took the historical and legal features of the Old Testament and used them as the framework for the portrait of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

8 Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, pp.256-57. 9 Scholars have identified these legal contests as ribh controversies, from the Hebrew word meaning judge, decide (Isa. 41:1, 21; 50:8; Jer. 25:31; Micah 6:1).

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Chapter 2

The Historical Pattern of the Old Testament

The great acts of God in Old Testament history are stamped with characteristics which show they are the work of one Author. There is a recurring pattern of divine activity, a recapitulating history of events.

We will briefly survey this recurring historical pattern in the main events of the Old Testament – the Creation, the Flood, the Exodus and the post-Exilic deliverance.

Features of the Creation Event

1. There is a Creation chaos (Gen. 1:2; cf. Jer. 4:23).

2. The waters cover the earth (Gen. 1:2).

3. The Spirit overshadows the earth (Gen. 1:2).

4. The waters are divided (Gen. 1:6).

5. The dry land appears (Gen. 1:10).

6. The animals appear (Gen. 1:24).

7. Man is made in God's image (Gen. 1:27).

8. Man is given dominion over the creatures and the earth (Gen. 1:28-29).

9. Adam is put to sleep, and Eve is formed from a rib taken from his side (Gen. 2:21-24).

10. The pattern of the covenantal kingdom appears in this record. Here are the people of God in God's place and under God's rule.

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The intent of the Genesis record is not just to give biological or geological information. It is to also give theological information. This pattern was not only established by Jesus Christ. As we will see, it exists for the sake of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:16).

Features of the Flood Event

1. There is a world chaos (Gen. 7:11).

2. The waters cover the earth (Gen. 7:19, 20).

3. The wind blows on the waters (Gen. 8:1).

4. The dry land appears (Gen. 8:13, 14).

5. Noah is given dominion over the creatures, and the mandate – first given to Adam – to subdue and populate the earth is repeated (Gen. 9:1-2).

6. The covenant is renewed (Gen. 8:20-22).

Essential features of the Creation act are repeated in the destruction of the old world and the emergence of the new at the time of the Flood. Not all features are represented in the recurring pattern of divine activity. But there is sufficient recurrence to establish a clear pattern.

Features of the Exodus Event

1. The Hebrew nation is created.

2. The waters of the Red Sea are divided (Ex. 14:21-22; cf. Isa. 51:9-11).

3. Israel is told to possess the promised land of Canaan, to subdue it and to exercise dominion under the rule of God.

4. God enters into covenant with Israel. This exhibits the pattern of the covenantal kingdom – the people of God in God's place (the promised land) and under God's rule.

The Exodus has other features which give this event special significance. Some are reminiscent of Eden. The manna in the desert reminds us of the tree of life. The serpents which bit the people remind us of the serpent which deceived Eve. Israel's testing in the wilderness reminds us of Adam's testing in Eden. There is not an exact correspondence between the two events, but the recurring pattern is evident. New features in the Exodus show us that covenantal history is not merely cyclical. Each new event not only recapitulates the past. It transcends it. So covenantal history moves forward. 10

Other features of the Exodus have an important place in the recurring pattern of events:

1. Israel is called God's firstborn son (Ex. 4:22-23).

2. Moses, the deliverer, is hid from the wrath of the king and escapes the slaughter of the baby boys (Ex. 1:22-2:6).

3. Israel is saved by the Passover blood (Ex. 12).

4. Israel passes through the sea (Isa. 63:11-14).

5. Israel is brought into the wilderness and is tested for forty years (Deut. 8:2-3).

6. The people murmur against God and break the covenant, yet God gives them manna from heaven, water from the rock, a pillar of fire to lead them, a symbol of his presence in the tabernacle, and healing by the brazen serpent.

7. Israel crosses the Jordan and enters the promised land.

10 The non-Hebrews of the ancient world thought of times as a circle going nowhere. The recapitulating history of events in the Old Testament should not lead us to think that the Hebrews thought of time as a circle. There is a recurring pattern. But in each recurring event the former event is not only gathered up, but transcended. History is a straight line moving inexorably forward to God's eschatological event. This was the Hebraic (Old Testament) concept of time. Time was a straight line moving somewhere.

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The Exodus event dominates the skyline of Old Testament history. It towers over the consciousness of Israel for all time to come. All future history is understood in the light of that event. This deliverance becomes the pattern for all future deliverances.

Features of the Post-Exilic Deliverance

The Old Testament presents a recurring pattern of captivity and restoration. This is a witness to the infidelity of man and to the faithfulness of God. His undeserving people have sold themselves into captivity. But God delivers them because He is the covenant-keeping God. The books of Judges and Kings record many deliverances. Each is a mini-Exodus. And a thousand years after the Exodus from Egypt there is another great Exodus from Babylon.

Israel's captivity and bondage to Pharaoh recapitulate Adam's captivity in Eden. Israel's rescue through the Red Sea recapitulates Noah's rescue from the waters of the Flood. Likewise, the captivity of the Jews in Babylon for seventy years recapitulates the Egyptian bondage. God's act in delivering His people from Babylon recapitulates the Exodus. The prophets depict this coming deliverance from Babylon (and sometimes from Assyria) as the Exodus redivivus [metaphorically repeated / revived] (Ezek. 20:33-37; Hosea 2:14-15; cf. Isa. 4:5; 10:24-27; 11:11-12, 16; 40:3-5; 41:17-18; 42:16; 43:16-19; 44:27; 48:20-21; 51:9-11; Jer. 51:36; Ezek. 16; Micah 7:15-17). In Isaiah 40-66 the prophet uses Mosaic imagery to describe the liberation from Babylon. The Lord will again dry up the waters, this time the river Euphrates.11

He will redeem His people and lead them through the desert, providing them with food, water, light and shelter. He will renew the courtship, restore the covenant (Jer. 31; Ezek. 16; 20:33-37; Hosea 2:14, 15) and return His people to their own land.

The prophets, especially Isaiah, show that the deliverance from Babylon will not only be the Exodus redivivus. It will be Creation redivivus. The glory of the coming deliverance is too great to describe in terms of the Exodus. It demands the language of Eden. Dangerous and vicious beasts will become docile. The desert will blossom as the rose. And the wilderness will become like Eden (Isa. 11:6-9; 35:1, 10; 55:12-13; 65:17-19).

When the decree of Cyrus released the Jews, only a feeble company returned to Palestine. In the face of great adversity they restored the sanctuary desolated by the Babylonians. But the prophets had more in mind than this event when they spoke of the glory which should attend the Exodus redivivus. As Israel remembered and celebrated the first Exodus, they began to realize that the real Exodus promised by the prophets was still to come. The past therefore became the pattern for the future. Even more, it was the symbol and pledge of the expected future deliverance. This is the significance of the recurring divine activity, this recapitulating history of events. The prophets inspired Israel with the hope that history was moving to a destined goal, a telos point, a day when God would recapitulate His saving act for His people in one final drama of redemption.

11 The sea and water are often used to represent trouble, persecution and oppression by Satan through ungodly powers (Isa. 8; 17:12, 13). The unruly, turbulent waters of pre-Creation represent the place of the dragon, sometimes called leviathan or Rahab. At the Exodus the dragons is left defeated at the bottom of the sea (Job 26; 12-13; Ps. 68:22; 74: 12-17; 89:10-11; Isa. 27:1; 44:27 ; 51:9-11; 60:5; Dan 7:1, 2; Rev. 12:6-16; 17:1, 3, 15).

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This is why the Old Testament is an unfinished book. The post-Exilic deliverance was not the final drama of redemption. The marvelous resurrection of Israel (Ezek. 37) pointed forward to another "coming up out of the sea," another restoration of the sanctuary and another resurrection that would exceed all others and bring history to its appointed end.

Chapter 3

Christ, the Meaning of Old Testament History

The recurring rhythm of Old Testament history is perfected in the Christ event. Jesus sums up and completes that history. In the light of His death and resurrection the Old Testament becomes clear. The great acts in Old Testament history are seen as a typology of Jesus Christ.

Typology is not allegory. The Old Testament events were real events. They had historical significance for their time. What is said about them may be understood by grammatical-historical investigation. But a divine hand had arranged the pattern in the events for the sake of Jesus Christ.

We should be careful not to push typology to fanciful extremes. But we are on solid ground when we follow where the New Testament leads us. In their witness to Jesus as the promised Messiah, the apostles generally do not follow a proof-text method. They present the account of Jesus' life, death and resurrection so that its correspondence with Old Testament history becomes apparent to anyone acquainted with that history. We must immerse ourselves in the Old Testament if we are to grasp the force of what the apostles say about Christ.

Since Creation and the Exodus are the two great events of the Old Testament, we will see how they are recapitulated (def: retold, re-enacted) in the Christ event.

Christ, the Recapitulation of Creation

The idea that God would recapitulate Creation is not novel to the New Testament writers. This was the hope expressed by Old Testament prophets. Isaiah declared that God would act to create a new heaven and a new earth (Isa. 65:17). Daniel 7 recapitulates Genesis 1:

1. The four winds blow upon the sea (Dan. 7:2).

2. Four beasts come up out of the sea (Dan. 7:3).

3. The Son of Man stands before God (Dan. 7:13).

4. This Man is given dominion over the beasts and over the whole created order (Dan. 7:14, 27).

The rabbis believed that the "Son of Man" in Daniel's vision represented the coming Messiah or Deliverer. The apostles show that this expectation is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The New Testament recalls the Creation in a number of remarkable ways. With words clearly reminiscent of Genesis 1:1, John begins his Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1). The same Word which spoke the world into existence became incarnate in Jesus Christ (John 1:1-14).

The angel announced to Mary, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God" (Luke 1:35). This corresponds with Genesis 1:2: "The Spirit of God was moving [hovering protectively] over the face of the waters." Jesus is God's new creation (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10). The humanity of Christ is the new creation of the Holy Spirit. This Man is also the new Adam of God's new creation (Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:45). Paul says that the first Adam was a figure (Greek, tupos) of Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:14). Commenting on this, Irenaeus, the early church father, said:

Therefore Adam was said by Paul to be tupos tou mellontos [the type of Him to come], because the Word, who made all things, had formed beforehand for himself the Economy of mankind which would centre in the Son of God; God predestinating the natural man to be saved by the spiritual man. 12

12 Cited in G. W. H. Lampe and K. J. Woollcombe, Essays on Typology, p.49.

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As the new Adam, Christ is the image of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3; cf. Gen. 1:27). He is the ideal man, the one true specimen of humanity who is all God designed man to be. He is the man in whom God is well pleased (Matt. 3:17). Man is only man in relationship to God, to others and to the world. Jesus is presented in the New Testament as the ideal man because He is in ideal relationship to God (in perfect subjection), to others (in loving service – Mark 10:45; Acts 10:38; Phil. 2:5-7) and to the world (in exercising dominion – Heb. 2:6-9).

We see the dominion Adam had "over the fish of the sea . . . and over every living thing" (Gen. 1:28) being exercised by the new Adam. The fishermen who became His disciples recognized that Jesus had authority over the fish of the sea. At His command they caught so many fish that neither their nets nor their boats could hold them – and this after the time for successful fishing had vanished with the night. In obedience to the word of Jesus, Peter took up the coin from the fish's mouth. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an unbroken colt, yet it was perfectly submissive to Him. The angry waters were subject to Him. (In the light of the Old Testament waters, how full of Messianic

significance is Christ's act of rebuking the sea!) As the true Adam, Christ is Lord – Lord over all creation, disease, demons and even death itself. He is the Danielic Son of Man, who receives all authority and dominion from the Father (Dan. 7:13-14; Matt.

28:18). Christ is also the new Adam, put to death so that from His pierced side the church is brought into existence. Thus Paul likens the church to Eve (2 Cor. 11:2-3), who was taken from Adam's side.

In summary, we may say Jesus Christ recapitulates Creation and Adam. He becomes all Adam was meant to be.

As the antitypical Adam, He transcends Adam the first. He passes over the ground of Adam. He not only does what

Adam should have done as the covenantal partner. He undoes the results of Adam's breaking the covenant. Because of Adam's sin the earth was cursed to bring forth thorns, and mankind was cursed to death (Gen. 3:18, 19). But the new Head of the race bears the crown of thorns and tastes death for every man. Adam the first left us a legacy of condemnation and death. Adam the second leaves us a legacy of justification and life eternal (Rom.

5:17-19).

Christ, the Recapitulation of the Exodus

Israel not only commemorated the Exodus. They looked forward to its recapitulation at the end of the age. The Old Testament is an

unfinished book because the real exodus was still to come. The Old Testament is a promise. It awaits fulfillment.

Moses had said that God would raise up a prophet like himself (Deut. 18:15). Glasson shows that the rabbis of the first century expected a new Moses,

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another deliverer who would recapitulate the Exodus. 13 They wondered how this new Moses would feed the people with manna and do what was done under the administration of the first Moses. The New Testament tells us that when John the Baptist and Jesus appeared, all men were in expectation (Luke 3:15).

In presenting Jesus as the Messiah, the apostles show us that Exodus typology is gathered up in His life, death and resurrection. More is said of the Christ event as the new exodus than as the new creation. The Exodus imagery is so widely used in the New Testament that it merits a separate book. 14 We will merely trace some highlights here.

Jesus Is the New Israel. The apostles show the remarkable correspondence between Christ and Israel, not by a series of proof texts, but by weaving together a pattern of the Christ event. The book of Matthew is an example. Matthew presents a replay of Israel's Exodus from Egypt.

1. Jesus is Mary's firstborn – and God's (Matt. 1:25; cf. Col. 1:15).

2. Jesus is brought up out of Egypt (Matt. 2:15).

3. He passes through the waters – His baptism (Matt. 3:14-15). 4. He is led into the wilderness and tested forty days and nights. In resisting Satan's three temptations, Jesus actually quotes the three scriptures found in the setting of Israel's testing in the wilderness (Matt. 4:4; Deut. 8:3).

5. The final chapters of Matthew describe Jesus' second baptism of suffering and blood and His entrance into the glory of the heavenly Canaan.

Jesus is therefore the new Israel of new-covenant history. As the new Israel, He passes over the same ground as old Israel. Whereas they murmured against God, broke the covenant and failed miserably, He trusted God, kept the covenant and triumphed gloriously. He did what Israel should have done. And He undid the results of their failure.

When Israel broke the covenantal stipulations, she stood exposed to the covenantal curses. In Leviticus and Deuteronomy 28-30 the curses come in handfuls. These awful threats may first appear out of all proportion to the sins committed. But sin, as a breach of the covenant, is an affront to the covenant God. It is an insult to His infinite majesty. The prophets invoked the covenantal curses against disobedient Israel. The curses included hunger and thirst (Deut. 28:48; Isa. 65:13), desolation (Isa. 5:6; Zeph. 1:15), poverty (Deut. 28:31), the scorn of passers-by (Jer. 19:8), darkness (Isa. 13:10; Amos 5:18-20), earthquake (Isa. 13:13; Amos 1:1), being "cut off" from among the people (Ex. 12:15, 19; 31:14; Lev. 7:25; Jer. 44:7-11), death by hanging on a tree (Deut. 21:23), a brass heaven (Deut. 28:23) and no help when one cries for help (Deut. 28:31; Isa. 10:3).

Christ must fulfill the stipulations of the Sinaitic covenant. He must also carry away the terrible curses pronounced in the covenantal documents. For this reason He was hungry (Matt. 4:2; 21:18). He was so poor He had nowhere to lay His head (Matt. 8:20). On the cross He cried, "I thirst!" (John 19:28). He was mocked and derided (Mark 15:19, 31) and deserted by His friends (Matt. 26:69-75). He was hanged on a tree as a cursed man (Gal. 3:13) and "cut off" from His people (Isa. 53:8). As He hung on the cross, the heavens were as brass. He was as one who cries for help and receives none (Mark 15:34). He died as the great covenant breaker and endured the unabated fury of all the covenantal curses. The cosmic scope of these curses is portrayed in Matthew. As Christ bore the sins of the broken covenant, darkness descended over the earth (Matt. 27:45), the ground quaked, and the rocks were rent (Matt. 27:51). But by dying Jesus carried away the curses of the covenant.

13 T. Francis Giasson, Moses in the Fourth Gospel. 14 See D. Daube, The Exodus Pattern in the Bible, for an excellent treatment of the Exodus pattern.

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Jesus Is the New Moses. Jesus is not only the new Israel of the new Exodus. He is also the new Moses.15

1. The prophecy of Deuteronomy 18:15 – “a prophet like me" – is often used in the New Testament to apply to Jesus (Acts 3:22-23; 7:37).

2. Jesus too is hid from the wrath of the king who kills all the male children. Jesus also returns to the homeland after the one who sought His life is dead (Ex. 4:19; Matt. 2:20, 21).

3. Both Moses and Jesus are unrecognized by their own people as God's elect (Acts 7:27). On occasion the people try to stone them both (Ex. 17:4; Num. 14:10; John 10:31-33; 11:8).

4. The close communion Moses enjoyed with God is surpassed by Christ (Ex. 33:20; John 1:17, 18).

5. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount reminds us of another lawgiver on another mountain (Ex. 19; Matt. 5).

6. Jesus appoints seventy elders just as Moses did (Num. 11:16; Luke 10:1).

7. Both Jesus and Moses fasted forty days before giving the law to the people.

8. Both were glorified on a mountain.

9. Jesus fed the multitude in a desert place. This reminded the people of Moses and the bread from heaven (John 6).

10. Jesus said He was the water of life. This declaration was made at the Feast of Tabernacles when the people were celebrating the water from the smitten rock (John 7:37-39).

11. Jesus declared He was the light of the world while the people were celebrating the pillar of fire which led Israel through the wilderness (John 8:12).

12. Our Lord said to Nicodemus, "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14).

13. Jesus' final discourse to His disciples presents a remarkable parallel to Moses' farewell speech recorded in Deuteronomy. Some of Jesus' parting words are quoted directly from Deuteronomy.

Jesus, of course, not only recapitulates Moses. He supersedes Moses. This is a truth taught in biblical types and antitypes. Thus John the evangelist not only makes parallels between Christ and Moses. He contrasts them and shows the superiority of Jesus (John 1:17). This reveals an important argument presented by John. The Jews had absolutized Moses as he was represented in the law – the Torah. The rabbis taught that the Torah was the Logos – the divine wisdom or word (cf. Prov. 8). They also said the Torah was the bread, water and light which lead to the life of the age to come. John denies these popular assumptions. He declares that this Logos, this bread and water and light of eternal life, are embodied in the second person of the Godhead, incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. We too must remember that the Scriptures are only a witness to Jesus Christ. A high view of scriptural inspiration is no guarantee of life (John 5:39). Faith in an inerrant Bible is not the prima facie test of evangelical faith.

15 See Glasson, Moses in the Fourth Gospel, for an excellent, detailed treatment of Moses and Jesus.

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Jesus Is the New Temple. The entire Levitical priesthood and temple ritual are summed up in Jesus. He is the new Aaron. And just as He supersedes Moses, He supersedes Aaron. He is a priest after the better order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7). He is also the new temple whose glory exceeds the former (Hag. 2:9; John 1:14). He is the restored temple, the temple rebuilt after being destroyed by the king of Babylon (Dan. 8:14; Zech. 6:13; John 2:19-21).

In short, Jesus Christ is the new exodus event. On the mount of Transfiguration Moses and Elijah "appeared in glory and spoke of His departure, which He was to accomplish at Jerusalem" (Luke 9:31, RSV). The Greek word for "departure" is exodos. How fitting that the Moses of the first Exodus should be found communing with Christ just before the great exodus of the ages took place in His death and resurrection! The writer to the Hebrews understands Jesus' resurrection as the replay of Moses' coming up out of the Red Sea. This is clear from a comparison of Isaiah 63:11 with Hebrews 13:20:

Then He remembered the days of old, Moses, and His people, saying, Where is He that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of His flock?—Isa. 63:11, KJV.

May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep. —Heb. 13:20.

Conclusion

In the great acts of God in the Old Testament, there is a recurring pattern of events. This recapitulating history moves forward and reaches its summary and perfection in Jesus Christ. The events of the Old Testament exist for the sake of Jesus Christ. They mirror Him and therefore find their true meaning in Him. Christ is the meaning of Old Testament history. He is God's great act of creation and redemption.

We have seen that the Old Testament is a history of captivity and restoration. Man sins and is cast away into captivity by the God of the covenant. But man is rescued again by the God of the covenant. In the Babylonian Exile God cast His people out of His sight. But then in mercy He gathered them again. This was like a judgment of death and resurrection. Hosea could write:

"Come, let us return to the Lord; for He has torn, that He may heal us; He has stricken, and He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, that we may live before Him."

—Hosea 6:1-2.

This and other Old Testament scriptures mirror the death and resurrection of Christ. In His death He was Adam and Israel, cast out of God's sight as the great covenant breaker. In His resurrection He was Adam (mankind) and Israel, restored to God's favor as the great covenant keeper. God spared Adam (mankind) and Israel from the full penalty of sin because behind all this covenantal history stood the Surety and Mediator of the covenant. The judgments which fell on Adam and Israel were tempered with mercy because the account was to be paid in full by Jesus Christ in the fullness of time.

As Old Testament history recapitulated, Jesus Christ is Old Testament history rewritten. There are two histories of man: the history of the old covenant and the history of the new. The old is a history of continual failure on the part of Adam and Israel. This history stands under the judgment of God. But God has rewritten this history of failure in Jesus Christ. It is now a glorious, triumphant and holy history. By His death God buries the old history – our old history. And by His resurrection He brings forth for us a new holy history. This is the gift of His righteousness to be accepted by faith alone. Here is a history – a righteousness – with which God is well pleased. When the church is satisfied with this holy history and rests on it as her only righteousness before God, when she stops imagining that she must write a new holy history for her justification, then this song will be sung:

"Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory! . . . His bride has made herself ready." —Rev. 19:7.

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Chapter 4

The Legal Pattern of the Old Testament

It is often said that the four Gospels and the book of Acts major on history while the New Testament Epistles major on doctrine. It is true the Gospels show that the history of Jesus recapitulates Old Testament history. The book of Acts also records how the early Christians traced the events of Old Testament history and told how they reached their end in the death and resurrection of Christ (Acts 2-3, 7, 13). The Epistles of Romans, Galatians and Hebrews, on the other hand, show that Christ is the end or goal of Old Testament law (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:24; Heb. 10:1). Of course, there is history in the Epistles and law in the Gospels and Acts. But the Epistles major on Christ's relation to the law.

The historical and legal aspects of the Bible cannot be separated because its history is covenantal history. The acts of God are juridical acts. God presides over history as King and Judge, carrying out the covenant and upholding His law.

There are three ways we could describe the juridical nature of the great acts of God recorded in the Old Testament: acts of the covenant, acts of righteousness and acts of judgment.

Acts of the Covenant

In each act of history God carries out His covenantal purposes. He is the covenant-keeping God (Dan. 9:4). This covenant is a union or partnership based on a legally defined arrangement or treaty. The terms or stipulations of the covenant are the Ten Commandments (Ex. 34:27-29; Deut. 4:13). Whether God punishes or saves – and in most of His acts He does both – He carries out the terms of the covenant with undeviating fidelity. God acts according to law. He is lawful and just when He punishes. He is lawful and just when He saves. This is what the covenantal character of His acts means.

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Acts of Righteousness

God reveals His righteousness by what He does (Judges 5:11; 1 Sam. 12:7; Ps. 48:10; 71:16, 19, 24; Isa. 51:5-12; 56:1; Micah 6:4-5). Scholars generally agree that the word righteousness is a strongly forensic or legal word. It is also a covenantal word. It means fidelity to the terms of the covenant. We could even say that righteousness means covenantal justice. Whatever God does, He upholds the law and sees that justice prevails. The righteousness of God is displayed both in His punishing acts and in His saving acts. When God's righteousness is revealed, it is both a time to tremble and a time to rejoice. It is a time of great wrath and a time of great mercy. We should especially notice the prominent juridical element in God's righteousness.

Acts of Judgment

The Lord is "the God of judgment" (Isa. 30:18, KJV; Mal. 2:17). To judge and to execute justice are the chief functions of the King (Ps. 72, 101). The Old Testament never tires of legal or juridical imagery in depicting the relation between God and His people. When God has a complaint or controversy with His people or the nations, He is represented as calling them before the court of law (Isa. 41-45; Jer. 2:9, 29; 12:1; Micah 6:1-2). When God acts, it is an act of judgment – whether He punishes the enemy or delivers His people from oppression. The great acts of God generally display the two aspects of God's judgment – wrath and saving mercy – as in the Flood, the Exodus and the termination of the Exile.

Even God's acts in dealing with sinful Israel are acts of judgment. He sends them into captivity so that He might judge and sift out a faithful remnant. Says Leon Morris:

Yahweh's judgment is a process which sifts men. It separates the righteous from the wicked and thus makes the 'remnant' to appear. . . . 16 'To some extent ... the remnant is created by the judgment, for it is in the hour of crisis or judgment that men truly know and make manifest where they ultimately stand. Judgment is creative as well as revelatory. 17

Chapter 5

Christ, the Meaning of Old Testament Law The acts of covenant, righteousness and judgment in the Old Testament mirror or picture the death and resurrection of Christ. The Christ event is an act of covenant (Matt. 26:28; Luke 1:72), righteousness (Rom. 1:17; 3:21-26) and judgment (John 12:31; Heb. 9:27, 28).

Each of these three aspects of God's act in Christ merits a full presentation. But we can only briefly show how this great act of God, like the typical acts of the Old Testament, is both punitive and salvific. It is a manifestation of both wrath and mercy. Some recognize the legal and juridical metaphors in the New Testament but think they are only one element among many. Such scholars emphasize that the New Testament also uses pastoral, domestic, medical, horticultural and other metaphors. They say, "The legal metaphors may appeal to some people – those unfortunate enough to have a legal mind set – but we prefer the more winsome metaphors." Of course, the New Testament does use imagery other than the legal in preaching Christ. But the legal motif is overwhelmingly central. Along with the historical element, it is the framework of New Testament theology.

16 Leon Morris, The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment, p.23. 17 J. V. Langmead Casserley, Christian Community (London: 1960), p.12. Cited in ibid.

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Those who wish to grapple with the New Testament message must accept the juridical element of biblical theology. It is irrelevant whether or not they think it is appealing. They must heed the God-given framework of the gospel if they are to avoid misunderstanding and distorting it.

Some have said the presentation of the gospel in its historical and legal framework is too cold and impersonal, that it leaves the heart unwarmed and untouched. But we must be careful lest we accuse God of choosing a poor framework for the gospel as though we knew how to reach the heart better than He does. While the New Testament appeal may not be directly to the emotions, it may be more effective than more sentimental approaches in reaching man at the center of his existence. God's "root out of dry ground" may meet man's need more than do our own inventions. Some say, "We must make the gospel relevant today." But they often mean, "We must mold and fashion the gospel to our own taste."

There has been a stampede by theologians, pastors and people away from the legal or juridical elements of the gospel. The effect on the church has been devastating. Preoccupation with internal trivia has displaced justification by an imputed righteousness. The message of the New Testament has been so privatized, internalized and individualized that it has become something it was never meant to be. We must return and listen to what the Bible says and how it says it whether we like it or not. God's Word is our medicine. And that medicine may not at first seem palatable to our perverted taste.

The Legal Framework of Pauline Theology

Paul's theology of the cross abounds with legal metaphor. His training as a lawyer and judge doubtless qualified him in the familiar use of juridical concepts. But there is a more important reason for Paul's forensic language. As a Jew, Paul was immersed in the Old Testament. He preached Christ from the Old Testament background. And that background is both historical and legal. Says Derrett:

Paul is very direct. He preaches Christ crucified and glories in the cross. ... Paul blandly works out the meaning of that event in a strictly legal framework. His use of legal metaphors is not surprising since he was in any case brought up as a jurist, and legal metaphor was good style in an age when law was the prestige-bearing discipline. . . . The appeal is not directly to the emotions, but to existing belief in relationships known indeed to the law. . . . Christ died, he seems to say, in order to achieve realities which can only be expressed in terms of law, and which are fully and adequately so expressed. We, with our lack of interest in law and a long-inherited dislike of lawyers, find it hard not to regret this choice of language. 18

18 J. Duncan M. Derrett, Law in the New Testament, p.397.

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It is not necessary to be a lawyer to appreciate Paul's thought forms. But it is necessary to see the cross against the same background as Paul saw it – that is, the Old Testament legal framework. Let us consider some of the Pauline expressions used to explain the meaning of the atonement.

Redemption and Ransom (Rom. 3:24; Mark 10:45; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6). This Old Testament idea relates to release from debt by payment of a price. While it often means deliverance, it is always deliverance at a cost. If a man fell into debt, his inheritance could be taken and he himself sold into servitude. He could be redeemed, however, by his next of kin.

The breach of the covenant has put man into debt to the law of God. Sin is a debt (Matt. 6:12). Man has therefore lost his inheritance and is sold to hostile powers. Christ took human nature and became our next of kin. By His death on the cross He redeemed us from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13) by blotting out our bill of indebtedness (Col. 2:14). By this means He also delivered us from the control of hostile powers (Col. 2:15). 19 Redemption, therefore, is a legal conception.

Reconciliation (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18-19; Col. 1:20-22). The reconciliation Paul speaks about is not something done in man. The word here does not mean a change of attitude in man which enables him to see God in a friendly light. Rather, it is something entirely objective. Reconciliation was done and finished while we were still God's enemies. It was a covenantal transaction between God and Christ. But it was a transaction on our behalf and in our interest. By dying Christ removed the barriers which prevented a just God from coming to fellowship with poor, lost sinners. The barrier of sin gives man a standing of guilt before the holy law. Guilt is a legal conception. It must be removed by a legal transaction.

Propitiation (Rom. 3:25). This word probably comes closest to the Hebrew concept of atonement. The word propitiation (hilasterion) comes from the word used for the mercy seat or lid of the ark in the holy of holies (Heb. 9:5). The Hebrew word for this covering of the ark is kapporeth. It can be translated "place of atonement" because the high priest sprinkled the blood of the sin offering upon it seven times and thereby made the atonement for the sins of Israel (Lev. 16). All this, of course, relates to the law of God because the law was deposited in the ark beneath the kapporeth. By its very nature law is penal. It demands satisfaction for its violation. Without the shedding of blood

there could be no pardon for sin (Heb. 9:22). Luther translated kapporeth with a German word which means mercy seat. But it would be just as correct to call it justice seat. Mercy is extended to the sinner only because justice has been done in the death of a substitutionary Victim. The Greek word hilasterion also contains the idea of placating an offended person or mollifying wrath. C. H. Dodd tried to soften the biblical concept of God's wrath and to prove that propitiation means expiation. It became fashionable to do away with the concept of God's wrath altogether.

Leon Morris, however, has proved that it is not possible to do away with either the plain sense of propitiation or the wrath of God. 20 The holy character of God demands that He take action against sin. The law of God is an expression of His holy self-consistency. We dare not lose the impression of God's horror and detestation against evil and evildoers. One who has no passion against the bad has no passion for the good. God is no Grecian stoic. Since He is a God of law, we may know that His wrath is neither unpredictable nor vindictive. His actions are always in harmony with His law. We can depend on Him to carry out His covenant with undeviating fidelity.

19 See Gustaf Aulen, The Faith of the Christian Church, chap. 26. Aulen emphasizes that the atonement means deliverance from hostile powers and contends this was Luther's interpretation of the meaning of the atonement. Aulen is right in what he affirms but is wrong in what he denies. Neither Aulen nor anyone else can get rid of the plain legal sense of the Calvary transaction as presented by Paul and Luther. The truth is not found in playing the deliverance-from-hostile-powers element against the legal element. They belong together. Man's legal debt meant that he was sold to hostile powers. In fact, the law of God binds the sinner to the control of sin (Rom. 7:1-8; 1 Cor. 15:56). Freedom from legal debt leads to freedom from enslavement to hostile powers (Col 2:14-15). The two elements are inseparable. 20 Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, pp.144-213.

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We must also remember that in the work of propitiating wrath God did not punish an innocent third party. The Lawgiver Himself bore the penalty of sin and exhausted His wrath. He provided the atonement (Lev. 17:11). "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself" (2 Cor. 5:19, KJV). The atonement does not cause God to love those whom He hated. He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins because He loved us (1 John 4:10).

Most problems with propitiation stem from trying to understand the atonement apart from its juridical relationships. If we start with the Old Testament premise that God is a God of law and that law by its very nature is inexorable and penal, then the death of Christ must be seen as a juridical penalty for sin.

Representation and Substitution. The principle of representation is taught in those passages where Christ is presented as the new Adam (Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:22). It is also implied in most of the Pauline "in Christ" passages (e.g., Eph. 1:1-10). Representation means that Christ acts in our name and on our behalf. It is a legal concept. That is not all there is to it. But the legal character cannot be removed without emptying representation of its essential biblical meaning.

Substitution means that what Christ did, especially on the cross, was done for us. It was for us in the sense that it was done in our stead. Christ gave "His life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). The word "for" in this text is anti, meaning "in the place of." Paul also says Christ gave Himself "a ransom [antilutron – literally, a ransom in the place of, or substitutionary ransom] for all men" (1 Tim. 2:5). In many other places Paul declares that Christ died for us, was made a curse for us, etc. (1 Cor. 15:3; Gal. 3:13). The word "for" in these places is from the Greek huper. Although huper does not literally mean "in the place of," it is nevertheless impossible to remove that sense from many of the passages. The idea that one's suffering and death could be accepted in the place of others is thoroughly juridical. This is the very element that many have been feverishly working to abolish. It would be better if the opponents of juridical salvation were to admit what Marcion admitted when he wanted to get rid of the book of Revelation. He simply said, "Too Jewish." An atonement conceived along juridical lines cannot be expunged from Paul or from anywhere else in the New Testament.

Imputation. The words impute, reckon, accounted all come from the Greek word logizomai, which is used eleven times in Romans 4. The believer has righteousness imputed to him (Rom. 4:6). This is "the righteousness of One," even Christ (Rom. 5:18, KJV). Paul is not talking about the believer's experience but about his status in the judgment of God. Imputation of our sins to Christ (Rom. 5:19-21) and of His righteousness to us deals with legal realities. Neither the imputation of sin nor of righteousness means a change of character. It means a change of legal standing. Imputation in itself does not change the moral character of the object. But it does change the way the object is regarded. Surely Calvary is the proof of this!

This Pauline message of "imputed righteousness" has been derided as "imputed nonsense" and "legal fiction" by those who reject the juridical framework of biblical thought. To those who dispense with legal categories and say moral transformation is all that matters, we answer with Luther that Christ must surely have labored in vain and suffered foolishly on the cross. For why did He not stay in heaven and save men by imparting to them a moral transformation? But the atonement was a juridical transaction entirely outside the realm of our moral transformation. The Righteousness of Christ (Rom. 5:18-19). The righteousness which God imputes to faith is the righteousness of Christ (Rom. 4:3-6; 5:18-19). This righteousness consists in His covenantal faithfulness. He perfectly obeyed the divine law on our behalf (cf. Rom. 2:6-16; 5:18). John Calvin is scriptural when he says: "Righteousness consists in the observance of the law." 21 "For if righteousness consists in the observance of the law, who will deny that Christ merited favor for us when, by taking that burden upon himself, he reconciled us to God as if we had kept the law?" 22 The righteousness of Christ, therefore, being related to law, is a legal conception.

21 John Calvin, Institutes, bk. 2, chap. 7, sec. 5. 22 Ibid., bk. 2, chap. 17, sec. 5.

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Justification. The central theme of Romans and Galatians is justification by faith. Justification is law-court terminology. It is a word which relates to the day of judgment (Rom. 2:13-16). It means being "pronounced righteous by divine sentence" (Shrenk) or being "set right before the law" (A. H. Strong). To be justified does not in itself mean to be changed in character. 23 It means that one's legal status is changed. Justification by faith is inseparable from Christ's work on the cross because it is the saving application of it to the believer. At Calvary Jesus was "numbered with the transgressors." This did not make Him a sinner in character. It made Him a sinner in His legal standing. Those who deride the purely forensic nature of justification by imputed righteousness are attacking the purely forensic nature of Christ's condemnation because of imputed sin. Justification by faith is out of date and makes no sense in much of the contemporary religious scene because the legal framework of biblical thought has been abandoned. The gospel has not been allowed to lead people to love and reverence the law of God like the man of Psalm 119 ". . . because the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so" (Rom. 8:7).

The Righteousness of God (Rom. 1:16, 17). Paul says he is not ashamed of the gospel because in it God's righteousness or justice is revealed. The surprising thing about Paul's gospel is that it declares that God's justice means salvation for all who believe. There is a virile strength in the gospel when set in its biblical framework. It shows us that God is not only in the business of saving people. He is in the business of saving them justly. The divine law is maintained and honored in the whole process by which the believing sinner is justified and given eternal life. God is seen to be just when He justifies the believer (Rom. 3:26). The law is not annulled but established (Rom. 3:31). 24

This reminds us again of what the Bible means by the power of God. It does not mean raw might. In the divine administration, power is first the power of right. There are some things God cannot do. He cannot lie. He cannot be unjust. If man is to be saved, he must be saved in a way which satisfies the highest demands of divine justice. It must also satisfy man's sense of justice, for man is made in God's image. An unjust, unlawful and cheap forgiveness will satisfy neither heaven's court nor the court of human conscience. God must therefore establish His right to save the sinner who believes. This is what cost the Godhead infinite self-giving. 23 Although a change of character will always accompany God's verdict of justification. 24 The comment by James Orr on this point is very apt: "It was before remarked that the Reformers were far from regarding justification as a simple amnesty, or passing by, or forgiveness of sin, without regard to what is due to the condemnatory testimony of His law against sin. Justification was not in their view, any more than in the Apostle's, the simple setting aside of the claim of the law upon the sinner, but was the declaration that that claim had been satisfied, and that the law had no more any charge to bring against him. It is justification on an immutably righteous basis; only that the righteousness which grounds this new relation is not in the sinner himself, but in the Saviour with whom faith unites him."-James Orr, The Progress of Dogma, p.260.

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We see an illustration of this in the affairs of any human society with a semblance of justice. Let us take the case of Patty Hearst. Her incarceration or freedom did not depend on who could muster enough police or military might. The real battle over this woman's fate was legal. This is where the Hearst family spent its great wealth and effort. This is where the prosecution also spent its great effort. Once the right of a certain course of action was legally established in court, confinement or freedom was a foregone conclusion. In an organized society right does not stem from might. Might stems from right. So also, in matters of big business and government the power to act is derived from legal procedures. When this ceases, all decent society is at an end and the "law of the jungle" – raw might – prevails.

Our eternal fate rests neither on vindictive wrath nor on impulsive love. The peace established by the blood of the cross is a just and lasting peace. We cannot dispense with the legal categories of biblical salvation without compromising God's righteousness and the believer's security.

Thus, a survey of Paul's major words and concepts proves that the apostle works out the meaning of the Christ event in the framework of Old Testament jurisprudence.

The Legal Framework of Johannine Theology

We now turn to the theology of a Bible writer often thought to emphasize the mystical rather than the juridical aspects of the Christian religion. We speak, of course, of John, the apostle of love.

Some scholars have recently awakened to a new appreciation of the pronounced Jewishness of John's Gospel. Of course, the Jewishness of John's Revelation has long been recognized. That entire book is a mosaic of Old Testament texts or allusions to Old Testament places, persons and institutions. The Gospel of John also reflects his Jewish, Old Testament background. We must not be surprised, therefore, to find he presents his Gospel in a legal framework.

In his brilliant essay on justification, Preiss has incisively shown that the juridical element is just as prominent in John as in Paul.

This aspect has been strangely neglected by exegetes and still more so, if that is possible, by those who have tried to give a bird's eye view of Johannine thought: I mean the juridical aspect. It is an elementary, evident fact and so simple that I feel inclined to apologize for making of it the object of a study, that juridical terms and arguments are notably frequent in the Gospels and Epistles – the Christ who is sent, witness, judge, judgment, accuse, convince, Paraclete. Even terms of a rather mystical character, like light and truth, reveal if considered from this standpoint a very marked juridical emphasis: truth is contrasted less with error than with falsehood, and less with falsehood in general than with false witness: and Jesus is the light which judges, and sheds light, as we say, in this dark and sinister world. . . .

The only texts in which the verb 'witness' has the merely vague sense of 'solemnly declaring' are 4.44 and 13.21. Everywhere else both verb and noun connote an act that is at one and the same time religious and juridical, conceived in the framework of a contest in law.

In 8.17 allusion is made to the juridical principle of Deut. 17.6, 19.15, which requires two or three witnesses: 'Thou bearest witness of thyself; thy witness is not true. Jesus answered and said unto them, Even if I bear witness of myself, my witness is true: for I know whence I came and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. Yea, and if I judge, my judgment is true; for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. Yea, and in your law it is written, that the witness of two men is true. I am he that beareth witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me . . . ' (8.13-18). Here it might be supposed that Jesus uses the juridical categories of witness, witnessing and judgment merely to answer the accusation of false witnessing leveled by the Pharisees. But in other connexions the Johannine Christ has resort spontaneously to these themes. In the solemn monologue which crowns the interview with Nicodemus he declares that inasmuch as he is the Son of Man he is the sole eyewitness of the heavenly world (3.11-13) and explains later that he does not wish to be the judge which condemns, only the Son who saves, but that being the light he provokes judgment: those who believe come to the light which reveals that their works are good, those who do not believe evade it lest their works should be revealed. A little further (3.32-33) we read that he who comes from above 'what he hath seen and heard, of that he beareth witness; and no man receiveth his witness. He that hath received his witness hath set his seal to this (another juridical expression) that God is true. For whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God. . . .' The close connexion between witnessing and

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the One who is sent can be clearly perceived. The Son of Man is sent from above to be the ambassador as rabbinical law understands the term: the ambassador is to be identified with the one who sends him; he is the witness who, because he has seen and heard the Father, has all the authority of a plenipotentiary. After having announced the judgment and the resurrection which he will accomplish inasmuch as he is the Son of Man, Jesus declares (5.30): 'I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous because I seek not mine own will but the will of him that hath sent me. If I bear witness of myself my witness is not true. It is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. Ye have sent unto John and he hath borne witness unto the truth. But the witness which I receive is not from man. . . But the witness which I have is greater than that of John: for the works . . . bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me. . . .' Then Jesus affirms that he is the sole witness who has seen and heard the Father, that the Scriptures bear witness of him (v.39), that he does not receive glory from men, that the Jews have not the Word and the love of God in them (vv. 38, 42), that Jesus will not accuse them before the Father: that it is Moses who will accuse them, he in whom they have set their hope (vv. 45, 46).

Thus here we have a whole series of interconnected themes: Jesus is the witness of the heavenly world; as such he is Judge of the end. But he does not intend to be the accuser of the Jews. Their kategor – it is well known that the Greek juridical term passed into the juridical and religious language of the Jews at the same time as its opposite sunegoros or parakletos – will be Moses, he whom they believe to be their defending counsel, who will intercede at the judgment day. Jesus returns to these themes in his last words addressed to the Jews (12.35-36, 44-50): 'I judge him not. . . For I come not to judge the world but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I spake not from myself; but the Father which sent me, he hath given me a commandment what I should say. . . .'

Is it a mere coincidence that these four groups of texts or chapters 3, 5, 8, 12, gravitate around the title of Son of Man? It is consistent with classic Jewish eschatology and with that of Jesus according to the Synoptics that the Son of Man should be the central personage of the last judgment. He will be the Judge at the end. But he will also be the Paraclete before the Father, because he is the righteous One who died for the sins of the world (I John 2.1). And at this very moment witnessing to the Father he exercises judgment by his Word. Like the prow of a boat cleaving the waters to right and to left, he constrains men to declare themselves for or against him. Hence his judgment is both future and present. The process of judgment unfolds itself both on earth and in heaven: the witness who has come from heaven, to whom God himself, his works, the Scriptures, and John the Baptist, bear witness – he who will become the object of the world's attack (first concealed then open), is the One who is about to be condemned by men. But he does not cease to bear witness to the world that its works are evil (7.7); he does not need that anyone should tell him what is in man: he knows himself what is in man (2.25), because he is the Judge who is light and who sheds light (3.21). Before the court of Annas Jesus behaves as a witness (18.23) and before that of Pilate (18.37) he affirms that he has come into the world to bear witness to the truth. The truth is that the world is condemned and that he whom it is engaged in condemning is the sole righteous and true man. In the course of this gigantic juridical contest, of which the earthly career of Jesus consists, other figures emerge, notably John the Baptist, the eyewitness, those who have heard him (3.28) and the crowd which bears witness to the raising of Lazarus (12.17).

After the resurrection the contest continues – in face of the hostile world, the witness par excellence will be the Spirit. He bears witness with the water of Baptism and the blood of the crucified; and these three are one; the Spirit is, like the Son and the Father, truth itself (I John 5.6). The witnessing Spirit makes the disciples witnesses before the world (15.26-27).

And thereupon John unfolds a whole theology of the interior and exterior witness of the Spirit which can only have meaning when it is seen against the background of the quarrel between the world and believers which is developed both before the inner tribunal of the believer and the outer tribunal of the world (I John 5.4-11).

But to appreciate properly this new phase of the earthly conflict and its connexion with the conflict of Jesus, we must view the drama from the celestial and cosmic plane. The Johannine kerygma is rather reserved at this point. But what it does disclose is quite clear. At the moment when the Son of Man accepts his glorification, that is, is willing to be buried in the darkness of condemnation and death, and when the heavenly voice says in confirmation 'I have both glorified it and will glorify it again' (12.23, 28), Jesus declares: 'Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me' (12.31-32).

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This text alone would be sufficient to explode the current prejudice which supposes that judgment for John is something purely interior and immanent and spiritual, that he has interiorized the primitive eschatology of Jesus and expects of the future only the continued presence of the Spirit. In point of fact the quarrel includes a transcendent aspect and a last judgment. But the fact is that John is very reserved about the transcendent world as about the future. He has quite simply taken very seriously the truth that only the Son of Man knows the life of the world to come and that he forbids apocalyptic speculation about this world of the beyond. Yet the few glimpses of the beyond which he permits suffice to show us that eschatology like everything else is severely concentrated on Christology. In the Son of Man, the future Judge, judgment is already mysteriously present. At the very moment when the Son of Man accepts death, there takes place in the presence of God the decisive event: Satan is cast out. He whose name means 'accuser' is banished from the divine presence. That is the judgment of this world. The dominion of Satan is shattered. This text could have no better commentary than that of the apocalyptic hymn (Rev. 12.10-12): 'Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the Kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accuseth them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony. . . .' Can it be maintained that because this event is considered as past the Apocalypse has spiritualized and interiorized eschatology? The hymn goes on to warn men that the devil has descended to the earth to vex it in anger knowing that his time is short. Similarly the Gospel of John knows that Satan will continue to work on earth. There will be a tragic but provisional disjunction between the heavenly and the earthly series of events. But the quarrel which is to issue in the condemnation of Jesus is accompanied by that which ends in the condemnation of Satan the Accuser. And with his prophetic vision the Johannine Christ – and John too – sees transcendent and future events already contained in earthly and actual events. The Son of Man exalted on the Cross and at the same time paradoxically raised to the glory of the Father will take the place of the Accuser to reign as Intercessor, as Paraclete. Paraclete before God, he the Just, is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (I John 2.1). Hence he will be able to draw all men unto him (12.32).

How will he do so? By the Spirit, until the day of final advent for the general resurrection and the last judgment. Is it not significant that the function of the Spirit is regularly described in John more than in the rest of the New Testament in juridical terms? He is the Paraclete, he bears witness; he convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He is the witness par excellence: he is the truth as opposed to false witness. If exegetes have not quite known what to make of the Spirit-Paraclete it is because it has not been realized that he has meaning only within the framework of the cosmic conflict. Even in Jewish thought a precise juridical role is assigned to the Spirit. 25

Preiss also points out the way John's Gospel complements Paul's.

If he is less full than Paul on the subjective aspect of justification, on the other hand he is more precise than Paul with regard to the cosmic conflict . . . Not all the personages of this drama of justification were still known: the accuser Satan had been forgotten. In particular the drama had become a non-temporal and personal interior affair, detached and isolated from the great cosmic drama of the coming of the Kingdom and its righteousness, and of the victory over Satan. Is it not significant that exegesis still fails to recognize that the parable of the Wicked Judge (Luke 18.1-8), just as much as its twin sister concerning the Pharisee and the tax-gatherer, treats of justification, but of its objective aspect, of the great clash between God and his elect on the one hand and Satan and his partisans on the other? . . .

Is not eschatology as a whole centered around God's judgment on the world? And will it not always include as a consequence an absolutely essential juridical aspect? And will not the central personage of this conflict between God and the prince of this world be the Judge, the Son of Man? All that Paul says about justification is but an integral part of what one might call, for want of a better term, the cosmic conflict. In this connexion I can only mention apart from Luke 18.1-8 the grandiose vision of the celestial court of justice which forms a climax to the process of justification (Rom. 8). If we wish to overcome our difficulty in appreciating the true dimensions of this doctrine we must break this age-long habit which goes back perhaps beyond the Reformation to the second century and which one-sidedly emphasizes the purely individual and subjective aspect of this important doctrine. But we are not here concerned to show how this distortion has impoverished the biblical kerygma and obscured its splendid unity. Let us simply point out that it has unduly exaggerated the difference between Paul and John. For Johannine thought puts before us precisely this cosmic and objective aspect of the great conflict. 26

25 Theo Preiss, Life in Christ, pp. 11, 15-20. 26 Ibid. pp. 27, 13-14.

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Now we turn to the work of Allison Trites. A large portion of his book, The New Testament Concept of Witness, deals with the Johannine literary corpus since John uses the word witness (testimony) about seventy times – more than any other New Testament writer. Says Trites:

The Fourth Gospel, like Isaiah 40-55, is of particular importance for it presents a sustained use of juridical metaphor. . . .

To begin with, the sayings of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are often described as 'discourse', but are rather more commonly juridical debate. The discussions of Jesus with 'the Jews' sound like a lawsuit: indeed, the first twelve chapters have as their main theme the conflict of Jesus with the Ioudaioi, who represent the unbelieving world in its hostility to God. 'This whole section', Professor Johnston has pointed out, 'has the form of a great contest or assize.' The 'argumentativeness' which Burkitt found 'so positively repellent' is an integral element in the Fourth Gospel, and provides just the context of contention and debate in which one would expect to see witnesses called and evidence presented to substantiate the claims of Christ. . . .

The idea of witness in John's Gospel is both very prominent and thoroughly juridical, and is to be understood in terms of Old Testament legal language.

Other juridical words are notably frequent in the Fourth Gospel in the context of hostility and debate; e.g., judge, cause, judgment, accuse, convince. The use of such Greek words as krisis (eleven times), krinein (nineteen times), krima (9: 39), kategoria (18: 29), kategorein (5: 45, twice), apokrinesthai (5: 17, 19), apokrisis (1: 22; 19: 9), bema (19: 13), zetesis (3: 25), elegchein (3: 20; 8: 46; 16: 8), homologein (1: 20, twice; 9: 22; 12: 42), arneisthai (1: 20; 13: 38; 18: 25, 27), aitia (18: 38; 19: 4, 6), heuriskein (18: 38; 19: 4, 6) and schisma (7: 43; 9: 16; 10: 19) suggests the idea that the work of Christ is set against a background of opposition in which it would be natural to try to prove Christ's case when it was being questioned and challenged.

The work of the Holy Spirit appears to be interpreted in a juridical way in the Fourth Gospel. Not only is the Spirit described by the juridical word Parakletos (14: 16, 26; 15: 26; 16: 7; cf. I Jn 2: 1), but his activity is thoroughly in keeping with such a designation.

The respect paid to the Old Testament law of evidence indicates that John has a case he is anxious to prove. Thus even Jesus' own declaration is not accepted as valid without confirmation (5: 31). Similarly, Jesus is presented as quoting the rule from the Old Testament that 'the witness of two men is true' (8: 17). This rule comes from Deut. 19: 15, and can be discovered in several places in John's Gospel – chapter 1 has the double witness of the Baptist and the disciples; chapter 2 establishes the reality of the miracle by two independent witnesses; chapter 5 records the witness of the Baptist, the works of Christ and the scriptures; chapter 20 has two angels at the empty tomb where Mark has only one. John is definitely concerned to present legally admissible evidence.

Belief is a central concept in the Fourth Gospel; indeed, 'no other evangelist speaks so often of belief and unbelief.' Thus the verb pisteuein appears some ninety-eight times in the Gospel, usually with reference to Christ as the object of faith (e.g., 3: 16; 4: 39; 6: 29; 12: 44; 17: 20). This is not surprising in view of the testimonial and evidential character of this Gospel (20: 31), and supports the notion that the Evangelist is trying to convince people that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. He writes, to borrow a phrase from 19: 35, 'that you also may believe'. . . .

In chapters one to twelve John uses forensic language to describe a cosmic lawsuit between God and the world, and in this respect he resembles Isaiah 40-55. In this lawsuit Christ is the representative of God and the Jews are the representatives of the world. In their pleading the Jews base their arguments on the law, while Jesus appeals to the witness borne to him by John the Baptist, his own works and the scriptures, and refers also to precedents in Old Testament history and fulfilled predictions. The lawsuit reaches its climax in the proceedings before Pontius Pilate in which Christ is sentenced to death. Paradoxically, however, Christ's death is the means whereby he is glorified and draws all men to himself (12: 28, 32). By his apparent defeat on Calvary Christ wins his case and 'overcomes the world' (cf. 16: 33, where the perfect tense of nikan is used). Instead of the cross being his judgment, it is really the judgment of the world; by it every mouth is stopped and the whole world is found guilty before God (12: 31; cf. Rom. 3: 19). The diabolos is active in opposing Christ (8: 44; 13: 2); as ho Satanas he makes use of Judas, ho hujos tes apoleias, in engineering the betrayal and arrest (13: 27; 17: 11; cf. 18: 2-12 and 6: 70, where Judas himself is termed a diabolos). However, the cross entails the legal defeat of Satan. The archon tou kosmou, mentioned in 12:31, 14: 30 and 16:11, is 'cast out' of the heavenly law court, so that he can no longer accuse those who follow Christ; he has been vanquished by the uplifting of the Son of Man (12: 31f., where note the double meaning of hupsoun; cf. Job 1: 6-12; 2: 1-6; Zech. 3: if.; Rev. 12: 9-12).

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The charges of the world and of the Jews against Jesus have been proven untrue – a point suggested apocalyptically by the ejection of the heavenly prosecutor (ekblethesetai, 12: 31). 'The ruler of this world is judged not to have any just title or claim upon God's people.' Conversely, by winning the lawsuit, Jesus acquires a legal claim upon all men – an idea which becomes clear when the juridical background of helkein is understood. The first phase of the lawsuit is completed when the first Advocate 'ascends' to the Father (20: 17), to plead, according to I John, the cause of sinful believers in the heavenly law court (I Jn 2:1; cf. Jn 17: 9ff.). The second phase begins when the Holy Spirit comes to function as the Paraclete on earth (14: 16, 25; 16: 8-11). 27

With regard to the book of Revelation, Trites cites the words of Caird:

The repeated use of the words 'witness' and 'testimony' is one of the many points of resemblance between the Revelation and the Fourth Gospel. In Greek as in English these words could be treated as dead metaphors, without any conscious reference to the law court, which was their primary setting. But both these books use the words in their primary, forensic sense. The author of the Fourth Gospel, perhaps inspired by the example of Second Isaiah, presents his argument in the form of a law court debate, in which one witness after another is summoned, until God's advocate, the Paraclete, has all the evidence he needs to convince the world that Jesus is the Son of God, and so win his case. In the Revelation the courtroom setting is even more realistic; for Jesus had borne his testimony before Pilate's tribunal, and the martyrs must face a Roman judge. What they have to remember as they give their evidence is that the evidence is being heard in a court of more ultimate authority, where judgments which are just and true issue from the great white throne. 28

Says Trites:

Under these conditions one would expect that words with forensic overtones would be given their full weight in any message of encouragement. The use of nouns such as martus (1: 5; 2: 13; 3: 14; 11: 3; 17: 6), martuija (1: 2, 9; 6: 9; 11: 7; 12: 11, 17; 19: 10; 20: 4), satanas (2: 9; 3: 9; 12: 9), diabolos (2: 10; 12: 9, 12), kategor (12:10), krisis (14: 7; 16: 7; 18: 10; 19: 2), krima (17: 1; 18: 20; 20: 4), thronos (2: 13; 20: 4, 11f.), hujos (tou) anthropou (1:13; 14: 14; cf. Jn 5: 27), nephele (1: 7; 11: 12; 14: 14-16; cf. Mk 14: 62 par.), biblia (used twice in 20: 12 to refer to the 'record books'; cf. Dan. 7: 10); of verbs such as 'bear witness' (marturein, 1: 2; 22: 16, 18, 20), 'confess' (homologein, 3: 5), 'deny' (arneisthai, 2:13; 3: 8), 'accuse' (kategorein, 12:10), 'judge' (krinein, 6:10; 11: 18; 16: 5; 18: 18, 20; 19: 2, 11; 20: 12f.), 'avenge' or 'vindicate' (ekdikein, 6: 10; 19: 2; cf. Lk. 18: 3, 5), 'have against' (echein with kata in 2: 4, 14, 20), 'find' (heuriskein, 3: 2); and of adjectives such aspistos (1: 5; 2:10, 13; 3:14; 17:14; 19:11; 21: 5; 22: 6) and alethinos (3: 7, 14; 6: 10; 15: 3; 16: 7; 19: 2, 9, 11; 21: 5; 22: 6) show that this is in fact the case. Metaphors drawn from the law court are never far from the author's mind. 29

Revelation 12 "presents one of his [John's] great legal scenes." 30 Satan is the accuser or prosecutor, while Michael stands as the counsel for the defense. By the blood of the cross Satan's case against God's people is quashed, and they emerge victorious in the court of law.

Summary

The gospel of the New Testament is not only set in the framework of Old Testament history. It is also set in the framework of Old Testament law. God's salvation act in Christ was both a historical event and a legal transaction. God acted in such a way that the redemption of the human race was legally accomplished, the sin problem was solved, the devil was defeated, death was abolished,

27 Allison A. Trites, The New Testament Concept of Witness, pp. 78-81, 112-13. 28 Ibid., p. 154. 29 Ibid., pp. 161-62. 30 Ibid., p. 170.

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and everlasting righteousness was brought in. The future is a foregone conclusion because the decisive victory has already taken place. Salvation is founded on the just and lawful proceedings of the court of the universe.

The objection that the juridical element of theology is cold and impersonal stems from a twofold misunderstanding. On one hand, it stems from misunderstanding the character of God. He is a God of law who has created a structured universe governed by inexorable law. The Bible everywhere declares that man is confronted with a final judgment which will judge him by law (Rom. 2:6-16). On the other hand, man, made in God's image, is a creature of law. His own conscience testifies to the human heart's insatiable demand for justice. Man cannot be truly human unless he knows he is in the right – justified. All human behavior is related to justification. Man's behavior either springs from the effort to be justified or from the consolation of being justified. Only a salvation historically and legally established can give man peace of conscience and a secure basis on which to build for time and eternity. Although biblical truth may not appeal directly to the emotions, it strikes a man in the center of his existence. It alone can profoundly affect his deepest feelings because it alone can reach his deepest needs.

Chapter 6

Christ, the Meaning of Law and Prophets Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.—Matt. 5:17-18.

There are two main elements in Old Testament Scripture: law and prophets. Both elements are gathered up and reach their goal and perfection in the death and resurrection of Christ.

Prophets

God's first promise of redemption was given to Adam in Eden (Gen. 3:15). It was repeated to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David. This promise was the message of the prophets. Out of days of darkness and human tragedy, the prophets spoke of a new age. They depicted God's final act of redemption in the light of past history and contemporary events. They promised that in the fullness of time God would recapitulate Old Testament history in one glorious drama of liberation. All history is shown to be moving toward that goal. The Old Testament points forward, crying, "Behold, the days come!" The New Testament brings a dramatic change of tense. The promises of the Old Testament are no longer future but present. They are said to be fulfilled in Christ. The New Testament proclaims: "The time is fulfilled." "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your ears. Paul proclaimed this message in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia. He preached Christ out of the background of Old Testament history. First he recounted and recited the election of Israel, the Exodus and the promises the prophets had kept alive for centuries. Coming to the death and resurrection of Christ, he declared, "We tell you the good news: What God promised our fathers He has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus from the dead" (Acts 13:32-33). In another place Paul wrote, "For all the promises of God find their Yes in Him" (2 Cor. 1:20, RSV). All the hopes and promises of the Old Testament find their fulfillment in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The hermeneutical question is not whether we are going to interpret the prophetic promises of the Old Testament literally or spiritually. It is whether we are going to follow the lead of the gospel and interpret them christologically. It is not a matter of acknowledging that some prophetic promises to Israel were fulfilled in Christ and the rest are left to be fulfilled in another time or place. Either Jesus' death and resurrection fulfilled every jot and tittle of God's purpose for Israel, or He fulfilled none of it and is not God's Messiah.

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Jesus is God's new Israel. He is the real Israel God always had in mind. When He raised Jesus from the dead and glorified Him at His own right hand, what more could He do for Israel? Here He fulfilled His promises to Israel far beyond what any Old Testament saint could hope or think. By His death ("It is finished") Christ had fulfilled all Israel's obligations to God. By His resurrection God had carried out all His promises to Israel. The covenantal transaction was fulfilled. Christ's glorification is of deepest interest to those who believe on Him. By the Spirit they are incorporated into Him and become part of the Israel of God (Gal. 3:27-29; 6:16). All that Christ has been given is for them (Dan. 7:13-14, 27) and is theirs in Him. With Him they have been given all things (Rom. 8:32; Eph. 1:3). And by the Spirit, through faith, they wait for the visible realization of these things when Christ shall appear (Gal. 5:5; Col. 3:4).

What then can we say about the "evangelical" fashion of taking the Old Testament prophecies and jumping over the New Testament to postulate a carnal fulfillment in a nation now called Israel – which is not biblical Israel? Surely this is one of the most extraordinary heresies ever to roost in the evangelical nest! It is contrary to the whole spirit of the New Testament, which proclaims that all that the Old Testament promised Adam (mankind) and Israel has been fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Law

The New Testament is just as emphatic that the entire law – both moral and ceremonial – has met its fulfillment and reached its appointed goal in the death and resurrection of Christ (Matt. 5:17-18; Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:19-24).

Moral Law. 31 The Ten Commandments were a reflection of the righteousness of Christ. They pointed to Him because His perfect life was exactly what their rigorous moral demands required (Rom. 10:4). The law was the gospel of His righteousness enfolded, and the gospel was the law unfolded. Under the Mosaic

administration the Ten Words of the covenant (Deut. 4:13) were amplified by additional statutes and judgments and were applied to suit the historical situation of the religious cult. They served to keep alive a sense of sin in the age of Israel's minority. By causing the community to look for a righteousness outside and above themselves, the elaborate legal code kept the community from reverting to a pagan insensibility.

With the coming of the gospel, however, the covenantal community came of age (Gal. 4:1-6). They no longer needed that

multitude of cultic laws imposed on them in their minority. The gospel broke through the bounds of sectarian Judaism to become

trans-cultural and a universal world religion.

This does not mean that New Testament ethics are less rigorous and demanding than Old Testament ethics. In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus radicalized the demands of the law. Now it is clearly seen that the law has always demanded nothing less than the perfect righteousness found in Him. But in the New Testament we do have a new administration of the law. In the Old Testament the words of the covenant were administered by the Torah, which literally means the instruction or teaching. In the New Testament they are administered by the Spirit, who comes to us clothed in the gospel of Christ (2 Cor. 3). If we look carefully at the ethics of the Pauline Epistles, we will see that Paul always shows that the gospel demands a certain type of behavior. He, of course, is still moving within the framework of Old Testament ethics. (And all the great historic churches have followed the biblical tradition by including the Ten Commandments in their catechisms or articles of faith.) But

31 Although the New Testament generally makes no precise distinction between the moral and ceremonial aspects of the law, the Christian church has always been able to assume a distinction between the two. Texts like 1 Corinthians 7:19 imply a distinction. And no one could successfully argue that Romans 7:7, 12, 22, Romans 8:7 and 1 John 3:4 are talking about Jewish ceremonies.

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instead of having the words of the covenant hedged about and expanded by a multitude of cultic laws designed for "children," the New Testament believer lives as a grown son who can see these moral principles refracted by the gospel of Christ. When Paul uses the expression "under the law" in a pejorative sense, he means at least three things: under condemnation of the law, under a law-keeping method of salvation, or under the elaborate rules and regulations of the religious cult (Rom. 6:14; Gal. 3:24-25; 4:1-6, 21). While the consciences of Christians today are not bound by the Old Jewish national taboos, they are often bound by peculiar denominational taboos or special evangelical taboos. We are too prone to measure piety by adherence or non-adherence to things which have assumed a cultic religious significance. The breaking of one of these taboos is often regarded as more serious than breaking one of the Ten Commandments. Paul would identify this as being "under the law.

Ceremonial Law. Like the historical acts of God in the Old Testament, the ritual law was a typology of Jesus Christ. It prefigured how Christ would become Israel's righteousness and take away her sin. The tabernacle ceremonial was a typology of the gospel.

No part of the law – whether circumcision or feast days – could pass away until all of it had met its fulfillment in Jesus Christ (Matt. 5:17-18). Since the law of the priesthood has been changed (Heb. 7:12) and circumcision and Jewish feasts are no longer binding on Christians, we know that every jot and tittle of the law have met their fulfillment in Christ – whether Passover, Tabernacles, Jubilee, the offering of the red heifer, peace offerings, sin offerings, Day of Atonement sacrifices, or the service of priests and the high priest.

The main emphasis in the Gospels is that the Exodus Passover was fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ (Luke 9:31). But allusions to the climactic feasts of the seventh month are also present. Derrett says:

They [the synoptics] linked Jesus’ sufferings with the usual dramatic preparation of the High Priest, on the Eve of the Day of Atonement. The latter was taken to an upper chamber, where he communed with the 'elders of the priesthood', having left the custody of the 'elders of the Court'. He was adjured, and was kept awake all night . . . During the ceremonies the High Priest was robed and disrobed several times and his final vestments were glorious. The gospel texts have retained the coincidences, some of them trifling in themselves, because the role of the High Priest and the outlines of his ritual were perfectly well known, and because a succession of mere hints was enough to make the point that Jesus was the real High Priest and was just about to effect the real (and everlasting) Atonement. . . . That the Day of Atonement and Passover have little in common seemed irrelevant, on the theory that Jesus' life summed up and gave meaning to all the Torah. 32

On the Day of Atonement Aaron laid aside his pontifical vestments and donned the plain white robes of the common priest. In these garments he offered the Day of Atonement sacrifice and entered the holy of holies to make the atonement by sprinkling the blood upon the mercy seat. Having made full satisfaction to the claims of the law of God beneath the mercy seat, he came out of the holy of holies and laid aside his plain linen garments. Then, re-clothing himself in his glorious vestments, he came forth and blessed the waiting people (Lev. 16). 32 J. Duncan M. Derrett, Law in the New Testament; pp 410-11.

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In His incarnation Jesus laid aside His royal robes and took the garment of frail human nature. At Calvary He was the sacrifice, the High Priest, and the mercy seat all in one. Veiled in the awful and impenetrable darkness which enveloped the cross during His dying agonies, He was like Aaron making atonement beyond the sight of any human eye. As deep silence fell over the congregation of Israel when Aaron stood before the mercy seat, so every voice was hushed when Jesus was enveloped by the thick darkness of Calvary. The darkness and earthquake (and probably thunder and flashes of lightning) were a recapitulation of the theophany at Mount Sinai, which was a type of the day of judgment. According to Jewish tradition the Day of Atonement was celebrated on the anniversary of the day their mediator Moses entered the thick cloud and ascended the mountain into the presence of God.

On the resurrection morning John and Peter ran to the tomb and found only Christ's linen garments, which He had laid aside (John 20:5-8). In choosing to record this incident, John was probably thinking of Leviticus 16. Our High Priest had made the atonement and had laid aside His common linen garments. On His resurrection day He came forth and blessed His waiting disciples (John 20:22).

The fascinating allusions in the Gospels become emphatic dogma in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Passover imagery is present in the mind of its author (Heb. 13:20; cf. Isa. 63:11). But his main theme is to show that the high-priestly ministration on the Day of Atonement had met its fulfillment in the Christ event.

An important feature of biblical typology in the book of Hebrews must not escape our notice. Although features of the type are always gathered up and recapitulated in the antitype, the antitype always supersedes the type. There is correspondence between type and antitype, but there is also contrast. For instance, the high priest of the old Aaronic order went into the sanctuary to make the atonement before the mercy seat. But according to Hebrews the High Priest of the Melchizedek order made the atonement and then went into the heavenly sanctuary.

After He had provided purification for sins [an expression corresponding to the Old Testament word atonement], He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.—Heb. 1:3.

He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.—Heb. 9:12.

But now He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of Himself.—Heb. 9:26. (This act on Calvary is contrasted with Aaron's entrance into the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement.)

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Again using the Day of Atonement imagery, the writer to the Hebrews says:

He had to be made like His brothers in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people.—Heb. 2:17, NIV.

The word the New International Version translates as "atonement" is hilasterion, the same word used to designate the mercy seat in Hebrews 9:5 (KJV). What the King James Version translates as "mercy seat," the New International Version more accurately translates as "place of atonement." (The same word is used in Romans 3:25, 1 John 2:2 and 1 John 4:20.) From the total New Testament witness, we can say the New Testament teaches that the cross of Calvary fulfilled the type of the high priest sprinkling the blood on the mercy seat on the Day of Atonement. On the cross Jesus Himself became our mercy seat or place of atonement. Daniel's prophecy of the Messiah also takes several key expressions from Leviticus 16 and applies their fulfillment to the Christ event (Dan. 9:24).

Summary

All Old Testament Scripture – law and prophets – is fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ. All the promises of the prophets, all the demands of the moral law and all the types of the ceremonial law find their end in Christ crucified and risen. Calvary gives meaning to the entire Old Testament.

Consider how great was this act of God in Jesus Christ. It was all that God had ever promised the human race. It was our Passover, Day of Atonement, mercy seat, Jubilee. In fact, it was the reality of all offerings and feasts in one. It was the new creation, the ark which saves from the flood of wrath, the exodus from sin and death, and the restoration of the desolate sanctuary (Dan. 8:14). All that came before Calvary was a picture of Calvary. It all existed for the sake of Jesus Christ (Col. 1:16).

We must not conclude that God often acted to deal with sin in Old Testament times but was unsuccessful until He acted in Christ. God planned one great saving act from eternity (Rom. 16:25). As far as God is concerned, Calvary does not come after Creation or the Flood or the Exodus or the giving of the law. It comes first. Before God did anything, there was Christ, the eternal Mediator, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (John 1:1-4; Rev. 13:8). "He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17). Calvary was God's predestined act (Acts 2:23; Eph. 3:11). So surely as there was never a time when God was not, so surely there was never a time when it was not the delight of the eternal Mind to manifest His grace toward us in the gift of Christ.

All the power, love and wisdom of the Godhead were manifested in the death and resurrection of Christ. It was an act so great that the universe is small in comparison to it. God planned this one act to deal with sin. And when He did it, it was done forever (Eccl. 3:14). It was a thorough work. God gave everything with Christ (Rom. 8:32). There was nothing more He could do. Calvary has become the watershed of history. It is the event of all events. All events before it point forward to it. All events after it point back to it. The death and resurrection of Christ give meaning to everything else. Nothing in itself has any meaning unless related to the death and resurrection of Christ. "All things were created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together" (Col. 1:16-17). (To be continued in the next issue of Present Truth Magazine)