The Authority of the Old Testament
Nothing less than a fully authoritative Bible will suffice for a fully victorious Christianity.
Dear friends and supporters,
It was Melito, Bishop of Sardis, who some time before A. D. 180 first designated the Hebrew canon the “Old Testament” (OT) just as the quasi-heretical Alexandrian father Origen first labeled the Greek canon the “New Testament” (NT). Each of these designations reflected a particular theological motivation not expressed or even implied in the Scriptures themselves. To mention this is not to suggest the church overturn approximately seventeen centuries of Christian usage by dismissing the time-honored canonical designations and adopting new ones, or to imply that these designations are entirely mistaken. Rather, we may wish to consider how they may lead us to approach and interpret the Holy Scripture incorrectly.
The basic problem is that while “testament” isn’t identical to “covenant,” when most Christian hear “Old Testament” they think of old covenant; and knowing that the old (Mosaic) covenant has been fulfilled in Christ, they can easily dismiss the OT on the grounds that it’s a book about the now-rescinded old covenant.
The error here is that the OT isn’t just about the old covenant. A lot of the OT precedes the old covenant, and Paul makes clear that the old covenant was a vital but temporary inclusion in God’s dealings in the world (Gal. 3:15–25).
This is why it might be preferable to refer to the “Old Testament” as the Hebrew Scriptures, and the “New Testament” as the Greek Scriptures. The traditional nomenclature is so widely used, however, that it’s dubious whether the more accurate designations could be productively employed anytime soon.
In the course of three brief assertions about the relation of the “Old” to the “New” Testament, I’ll mention how this traditional distinction can lead to seriously mistaken thinking — and acting.
The Bible of New Testament Era
The OT is the charter of the NT church. Over the years I’ve occasionally heard Christians say things like, “We need to return to New Testament Christianity,” or, “Let’s plant a New Testament church.” There’s a great irony in these statements, because the Christians actually living during the era recounted by the NT could never have thought this way.
It’s likely that the epistle of James and to the Galatians were the first NT books written, just before A. D. 50. The first churches were started just after our Lord’s resurrection and ascension in the mid-30s, so there were simply no NT books available to guide them. This was the responsibility of the verbal but not yet canonical testimony of the apostles.
If you want to know why the NT writers so frequently cite the OT, it’s not simply because the OT is God’s word, but because it was God’s only written word at the time.
You might notice that the apostle Paul seemed at pains to prove that his new covenant teaching is fully in line with the OT (e.g., Ac. 26:19–23). He began his ministry to apostate Israel and later preached the gospel to the Gentiles. The Jews wouldn’t have given him the time of day if they’d thought his teaching was obviously in conflict with the OT. When they claimed he was violating the OT teaching, his response wasn’t, “Yes, but that’s because it’s no longer authoritative; Jesus alone is our new authority.” A thousand times No. For Paul, Jesus was authoritative precisely because as God’s Messiah he is the fulfillment of the OT promises.
Paul subsequently alerted the Gentiles that they, too, are to be included in God’s covenant promises to the Jews (Gal. 3:26–29; Eph. 2:11–22); and if this is the case, the NT had to be authoritative to them as well as to the Jews since that’s where they found out what God’s promises to the Jews actually are.
Old Testament, New Covenant Doctrine
Moreover, the OT is doctrinally authoritative to the new covenant church. Sometimes we hear preachers and teachers today say that the OT is authoritative only in a derivative or “applicational” way. It’s not our binding authority, but it does show how God worked in the old covenant era and, therefore, is valuable in an illustrative and inferential way.
But recall Paul’s statement to Timothy about the inspiration of the Bible (2 Tim. 3:16-17):
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
The statement wasn’t a part of the NT canon yet when Paul sent his mail to Timothy. The only Scripture to which he could’ve been referring was the Hebrew Scriptures. These Scriptures are profitable for doctrine.
How many preachers today would begin a sermon by saying, “Let’s open up our Bibles to Genesis so that we can understand justification by faith alone?”
Few. More often they would immediately appeal to the book of Romans. But interestingly, in Romans 4, Paul anchors his teaching on justification in the OT examples of Abraham and David. We learn about justification first from the OT (See “Why Justification?”). This is equally true of many other doctrines binding in the new covenant era.
In short, the OT is foundational for NT doctrine.
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We sometimes hear the well-meaning exhortation, “Christianity doesn’t start with the Bible, but with Jesus Christ.” This might very well be true, but Christians must embrace biblical truth anterior to Christianity, and that is creation as the Bible describes it. Put another way: the Bible is bigger than Christianity. We will not understand his person and work in their greater depths if we bypass creation. This is a small book about not bypassing creation. It’s a book about thinking in creational categories, and purging contra-creational categories that infect our culture and, in too many cases, our churches.
You can order the e-book or paperback here.
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The Old Testament to Christians
The OT speaks directly, immediately, and authoritatively to new covenant believers.
Paul writes that the OT law is good, if it’s used lawfully (1 Tim. 1:8). He doesn’t say that it’s valuable in that it can illustrate truth to us but, rather, that it’s to be lawfully used in the new covenant era (v. 9). Paul never devalued the revelatory law, that is, the law as such, but only the perversion and misuse of the law.
But not only the law. The writer of Hebrews warns (4:2) His readers in the new covenant era:
For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them [old covenant Israel]; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.
His point was not to make a distinction but, rather, posit a unity between OT and NT gospel preaching.
While the gospel comes to its fulness only after Christ’s death resurrection and ascension, the substance of the gospel is not different in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek Scriptures. In the former, salvation by grace through faith alone on the basis of Christ’s atoning death was in prospect. In the NT, it was a historical truth in retrospect.
But it’s in substance the same gospel. It’s for this reason that new covenant preachers like Philip preached the new covenant gospel from the OT (Ac. 8:26-35).
Old Testament written to Christians
But perhaps the most obvious example of the direct, immediate authority of the OT in the new covenant era is found in what might seem an incidental statement by the apostle Paul concerning financial provision for ministers:
Do I say these things as a mere man? Or does not the law say the same also? For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain” [citing Dyck. 25:4]. Is it oxen God is concerned about? Or does He say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope. If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? If others are partakers of this right over you, are we not even more?
This is a remarkable statement. Paul doesn’t say that the OT law is authoritative merely on the grounds that it provides a principle that could be applied in the new covenant era, though that is often true.
Rather, he asserts that this statement in Deuteronomy was specifically written to new covenant believers with respect to monetary remuneration for ministers.
What makes it all the more significant is that this is an OT case law: not one of the Ten Commandments but, rather, a divinely inspired “good and necessary consequence” (this is the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith) of one of the Commandments.
And if this is true of this text in Deuteronomy, we have every reason to believe it is true of other OT texts also. They speak directly and authoritatively to situations in the new covenant era — and were designed to when they were first written.
The unquestioned authority of the OT is attested by the very manner in which the NT speakers and writers quote the OT. Roger Nicole draws attention to a fact whose significance is not often sufficiently recognized:
In their formulas of quotation the New Testament writers give expression to their conviction as to the eternal contemporaneity of Scripture. This is manifest in particular in the many (41) instances where the introductory verb is in the present: “He says,” and not “He said.” This is reinforced by the use of the pronouns “we,” “you,” in connection with ancient sayings: “That which was spoken unto you by God” (Matt. 22:31); “The Holy Spirit also beareth witness to us” (Heb. 2:5; cf. also Matt. 15:7; Mark 7:6; 12:19; Acts 4:11; 13:47; Heb. 12:5). [“The New Testament Use of the Old Testament,” here]
God wrote the OT not just for us Christians but also to us.
The Old Testament to Everybody
The OT binds all humanity to God’s authority. Paul writes in Rom. 3:19 —
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
He has been making the point that both Jews and Gentiles have violated God’s law and therefore stand under God’s judgment. The only hope for either is justification by faith alone based on our Lord’s atoning death and resurrection.
Paul writes in Romans 2:14–15 that even though the Gentiles did not possess God’s written law, that same law was written on their hearts, and they instinctively know that it’s true, and yet they sin against it. God’s moral law inscribed in the OT binds both Jew and Gentile.
Temporary and permanent
Not every aspect of the law, of course, is permanent. The law designed to separate Jews from Gentiles has been abolished. The OT sacrificial system has been perfectly fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The law specifically designed for the Jews‘ settlement in Canaan (the laws of extermination, for example) applied only to that specific situation.
But this certainly isn’t true of the moral of God, of the Ten Commandments, of the written law of God obviously setting forth universal standards of right and wrong.
Learning from Isaiah
Christians who argue the Mosaic law was designed only for Jews and not Gentiles should note the argumentative flow of the book of Isaiah. In chapters 1–13 Jehovah warns the Jews of his impending judgment for their idolatry and apostasy just as he warns them in almost all of the other OT prophets.
Yet when we come to chapter 14, we find him turning to address Babylon, Syria, Philistia, Moab, Ethiopia and other Gentile nations surrounding Israel, and he indicts them with the same language and for the same sins for which he reprimanded the Jews.
This is quite in line with what Paul was later to say in Romans 3: both Jews and Gentiles stand under the authority of God’s law and, therefore, it binds all humanity.
It is for this reason (among others) that the moral law of God constitutes the foundation even for civil law among Gentle nations in the modern world. God’s moral law is just as eternal as his character, it binds Gentiles just as much as it does Jews, and it binds them in the civil and political realm no less than in the individual and familial and other realms.
Conclusion
The Greek and Hebrew Scriptures unite to comprise a single, authoritative Bible.
We’ve sometimes driven several times by a house being erected and noticed an unfinished foundation. After a while we ask ourselves, “I wonder when they’ll get to the rest of it.” This is a metaphor for the OT without the NT, a misguided theological architecture with which orthodox ( = heterodox) Judaism is afflicted. The OT pervasively points to Jesus Christ, the Messiah and world’s Redeemer and King. In fact, laying the foundation for our Lord is the prime role of the OT. The apostate Jews reside in a half-finished, Christ-excluded structure.
Many modern Protestants, however, have the problem from the opposite angle. On their theological lot sit four walls and a roof and porch perched precariously on bare ground. The first howling windstorm or California earthquake will demolish the foundationless edifice. The present collapse of conservative Protestantism is due partly to its void of an OT foundation.
The sturdy house of the biblical canon consists of the rock-solid foundation of an authoritative OT buttressing the robust, Christ-exalting, authoritative NT.
Nothing less than a fully authoritative Bible will suffice for a fully victorious Christianity.
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Personal
As I mentioned last week, Sharon and I are driving to western Pennsylvania for her 40th high school reunion. We’ll be driving home after July 4, spending a week there, and then driving to Alabama, where I’ll be addressing the For God and Truth Conference (Pastor Ernie Yarbrough) in Decatur, August 4–7.
You might be interested in knowing why we’re driving rather than flying. There are several reasons, but two of the main ones are the persistent draconian COVID regulations on commercial aircraft and in airports, and the radical homosexualization at California airports.
We flew a number of times in 2020 the apex of the drama, and the Covid-regulation suffocation on our flights two weeks ago was more intense than it was in 2020. As the Covid threat dissipates, the federal government’s regulations intensify — at least at the airports and on the aircraft we frequent.
Moreover, San Francisco airport is increasingly drenched in homosexuality. We flew out of Harvey Milk terminal, commemorating the first openly gay political officeholder in the country. Gays were conspicuous (more than usual) both in the terminal and on the flight. To ice the proverbial gay cake, when we sat in our seats, we were greeted by the cover story of American Airlines’ in-flight magazine — right there in the magazine holder in the seat-back in front of us:
We said, “Enough is enough.” In our own rental car, we’re not forced to wear masks for 9 hours, listen to intercom loop recordings warning of fines and jail time for mask removal, or to suffer immersion in gay culture.
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Thank you for any help you can offer.
Yours for comprehensive biblical authority,
Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership
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