Contours of Old Testament Theology

2. The Relative Independence of the Old Testament

2. T H E RELATIVE I N D E P E N D E N C E OF THE O L D TESTAMENT early (christians, we have seen, regarded the scriptures of Israel as their scrip­ tures too, in which they perceived the unfolding purpose of Cod since creation and in which they found clues to the identity ofJesus of Nazareth. But this appro­ priation of the Old Testament proved to be difficult. For the Christian church the Old Testament has a somewhat alien character. This has shown up in various ways down through the centuries, beginning with early attempts to reject these scrip­ tures as non-Christian and coming into the present, when many Christians sense the Old Testament to be a problem. This part of the Bible is sometimes written off as "pre-Christian" literature, because of its ancient views of God or outdated moral injunctions. The truth of the matter is that the Old Testament has a relative independence in the Christian Bible. That is why it is possible for Christians to speak of "Old Testament theology," as something relatively distinct from "New Testament theol­ ogy." A better designation would be "biblical theology of the Old Testament," a formulation that implies the essential relationship between the Old and New Testaments in the Christian Bible.1 Relationship between the Testaments The relationship between the two testaments is one of continuity and discontinu­ ity. In dealing with the Old Testament, the church has often fallen into one of two extremes. The first extreme has been to overemphasize discontinuity. In this view the "new" has superseded the "old"; hence the "old" must be regarded as antithetical, preparatory, provisional, inferior. That was the view of Marcion in the second cen­ tury, who went so far as to say that the Old Testament presents the revelation of "the strange God," different from the God revealed in Jesus Christ. His view, though regarded at the time as a heresy, was echoed by the church historian Adolf Harnack in the twentieth century. In his book Marcion: The Gospel oj a Strange God, Harnack declared that in the second century the church rightly refused to reject the Old Testament, that in the sixteenth century the retention of the Old Testament was a fateful necessity that the Reformation was not yet able to escape, but that in the period since the nineteenth century the inclusion of the Old Testament in the Christian canon is the sign of "a religious and ecclesiastical 1. See the title of Brevard Childs's work, Biblical Theologyof the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). The distinction between Old Testament and New Testament theology in the context of biblical theology goes back to G. L. Bauer in works written at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 9 10 Contours of Old Testament Theology paralysis."2 The New Testament theologian Rudolf Bultmann came very close to this position in his view of the significance of the Old Testament for Christian faith. He maintained that the Old Testament provides only a "preunderstanding" for the Christian gospel, in the sense that it shows human inadequacy and failure that, when taken seriously, prepare one to receive the grace of God in Jesus Christ.3 The other extreme is to minimize the distinction between the testaments and to regard the Old Testament as leading directly to the New. This view is held, for instance, by Hartmut Gese, who regards the New Testament as part of a continu­ ing stream of tradition that flows through the whole Christian Bible.4 This view is espoused in another way by Wilhelm Vischer, who finds Jesus Christ hidden in the Old Testament.5 For instance, Jacob's nocturnal wrestle with a stranger at the ford of the Jabbok River (Gen. 32:22-32) is understood to be an encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ incognito. "These views," as Petr Pokorny observes rightly, "run the risk of defrauding the Old Testament of its relative autonomy, in which it could also remain the Bible of the Jews, and of relativizing the unique features of the Christian message."6 He goes on to say: "the New Testament was canonized neither as a substitute for the Jewish Bible, nor as its continuation, but as its counterpart." In short, it has a rela­ tive independence. Not an absolute independence, please understand, but a rela­ tive one, like that of two partners when joined in matrimony. Or, to shift...