The OT, fulfillment or abrogation?
In
many respects, asking if the OT has been abrogated or “done away” and
replaced with the NT is like asking if the first half of a Charles
Dickens or John Grisham novel was done away when the books moved toward
the end and finally concluded.
If
we look at the Bible as the record of God’s unfolding drama (as well as
one of the elements used to further the drama) then to speak of Act 1
(let’s say that’s the OT) as being “done away” is the wrong question. It’s not only not done away, without it there is no Act 2 (let’s say that’s the NT) without it and it’s only together that they make a complete drama.
There’s usually an entire network of mistakes and confusion of terms involved when the question is put like that.
When we say the Old Testament (OT) do we mean Genesis—Malachi? Or do we mean just the “Law of Moses”?
When we say “the Law of Moses” do we mean Genesis—Deuteronomy?
Or
when we say “the Law of Moses” do we mean just the rules and
commandments that we find mixed in with the history that’s “attached”?
When
we ask about the “binding” nature of the OT it shows, I think, that
we’re looking at it as nothing more than “a law” or “a body of rules and
commandments”. But this generates difficulties for us when we’re
reading the text of, say, Genesis, where Jacob ends up honeymooning with
the wrong woman or Exodus where Moses rescues the girls from bullies
around a watering hole. We’re able to say things like, “That story has
principles in it that we should pay attention to” but it isn’t easy to
see how a story can be called a “commandment” or “a law” or say
something like, “That story is ‘binding’ on this person or that.”
It’s at that point we usually say we mean the OT in the sense of the Mosaic Law.
That’s a smart move but since the “story” nature of much of the OT
(that is, the Bible) is patently obvious it’s a move perhaps we
shouldn’t have needed to make in the first place. It’s important for us
to be clear what we mean by major terms or we won’t grow as students and
we’ll have a hard time coming to agreement with others who aren’t using
the words in the way we’re using them. [We lose out in other perhaps
more important ways if we’re not careful students and followers.]
In
this case, when we narrow the meaning of “the OT” down to “The Law of
Moses” we end up implying that the “Law of Moses” is nothing but a
collection of commandments. Since we’re fully convinced that “stories”
or “narrative” or “plain history” is not “commandment” or “law” material
we end up combing through the “law sections” of the “Law of Moses” to
find the rules and commands. And if that's our preoccupation then
history and stories and narrative have nothing to say to us. The bulk of
the text is only the basket that holds all the “important” stuff—the
commandments and the rules.
That’s an awful way to treat the OT text!
Now
we’re back to the question about the “OT” being done away. When we ask
the question it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense if we mean, “Has the
history or the stories or the narrative been ‘done away’?” We can’t say
that kind of thing about the biblical narrative material. It’d be like
asking if the cross of Jesus is “done away” or has the history in
Luke/Acts been “done away”?
It
should begin to dawn on us that God doesn’t make his will and purposes
known just by ladling out commands and rules. He reveals his purposes in
his actions and many parts of the OT text interpret those actions for
us and remind us that the events of which God is the author profile the character of God. That being so, these events or acts are never "done away".
While
it’s true that specific acts of God (the call of Noah, Abraham, the
Exodus, the Wilderness wandering and the settlement in the Land as
examples) are especially revealing we’re not to suppose that God was not
moving in the world and among all peoples in what we’d call “everyday
life”. We shouldn’t go hunting through the OT for commands and rules and
dismiss the history but nor should we go hunting through the history
looking only at the outstanding happenings and dismiss the rest as
irrelevant. “Outstanding” events are part of the larger history in which
they occur. The Red Sea crossing was a remarkable event but it was
imbedded in the real world and involved actual people and elemental
forces. If you start pulling the biblical text apart you end up with no
Bible at all; just a collection of abstracted rules, rootless wonders
and the rest as necessary baggage that can be dumped.
God has revealed himself in history (that is, in the lives of actual people) but he has revealed himself by doing historical things. The events themselves are God showing himself and his intentions. [To be continued, God enabling.]
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