Replies

I have often heard it said that you MUST interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament.

It's a noble ideal, and done properly, I certainly have no objection to such an approach, for just as the prophets expanded on and explained the Torah, the NT expands on and explains the Torah, Nevi'im (Prophets), and K'tuvim (Writings)--the TaNaKh.

However, here's how not to interpret the Tanakh in the light of thet NT:

1) Become a Greek scholar without spending any time studying the Hebrew language, culture, and way of thinking.
2) Read the NT. Ignore the "Old."
3) Develop all of your theologies from the NT, preferably leaning on the writings of Paul. After all, 90% of all your sermons will be from Paul's letters.
4) Then, after you've come to all your conclusions (with a hefty dose of Protestant tradition to make sure you're acceptable to the mainstream), you can go back and actually study the OT. Not too much, mind--it's old and superceded by the New, after all.
5) When you come to an apparent conflict between the theology you developed reading the NT and something in the OT, don't change your theology--just ignore what you found in the OT and explain it away with the vague statement, "Well, all prophecy is fulfilled in Christ," or "Well, we're not under Law, so that doesn't matter."

There's a very basic problem with trying to develop theology solely or mostly from Sha'ul's letters: All of them, with the exception of Romans, were written in response to some crisis in the Church, a crisis to which we are not privy to all the details. So? you ask. Have you ever heard just one half of a phone conversation and misunderstood what was said as a result? Me too. So if we're only getting one-half of the conversation, Sha'ul's answers without knowing the exact question, might that cause us to misunderstand some of what he writes?

Yep.

Interestingly, when Sha'ul wrote his letters, I don't think he considered them Scripture, but rather simply midrash, commentary on the Scriptures--which he would have considered to be the Tanakh and (insofar as they were written and available) the Gospel accounts. That's not to say that we shouldn't regard them as Scripture today, but Sha'ul never wrote them to stand alone and so they can't be understood properly if you try to read them as stand-alone pieces. Rather, we should treat them as a divinely-inspired and divinely-correct commentary on the Tanakh and the Gospel. But just like we wouldn't encourage someone to read a commentary written today without reading the Scriptures first (or at the least, side-by-side), we shouldn't encourage the practice of reading the Pauline Letters without first reading and getting a grasp of the Tanakh and the Gospel accounts!

Kefa, or Peter if you prefer, was well-aware of this danger, as he wrote that "our beloved brother Paul also has written to you according to the wisdom given to him as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable pervert, as also they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction" (2 Pt. 3:15-16).

Let me give an example. Many read Romans 9 and take it to be a teaching of absolute personal predestination. They read, for example, v. 13, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated," and say, "See, God loves and hates people according to His own will even without them doing anything!" There's just one problem: That's not what the passage Sha'ul is quoting says.

To read Sha'ul's quote in context, Malachi 1:1-5 says,

The burden of the word of ADONAI to Israel by Malachi. "I have loved you," says ADONAI. But you say, "In what have You loved us?"
"Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" says ADONAI; "yet I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau and made his mountains a desolation, and his inheritance to be for the jackals of the wilderness. If Edom says, 'We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places.'"
So says ADONAI-Tzva'ot (the LORD of Hosts), "They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall call them the region of wickedness, and the people with whom ADONAI is indignant forever. And your eyes shall see, and you shall say, ADONAI will be magnified beyond the border of Israel."

It is obvious that Malachi was not speaking of the individual persons of Jacob and Esau, but of the nations that came from them, Israel and Edom. Yet because the Tanakh has been generally treated with contempt--"That's the Old Testament; we follow the New!"--many have failed to go back and actually read Sha'ul's quotation of it here (and elsewhere) in context in order to properly understand the point he was trying to make.

So yes, there is a very real sense in which the NT cannot be understood without reading it in the light of the Tanakh, just as the Tanakh cannot be fully understood without the New Covenant of the Messiah. That will threaten some dearly-held theologies and traditions--most especially in the related areas of ecclesiology, Israelology, and eschatology--but it is the plain truth.

I have often heard it said that you MUST interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament.

If you do not consistently interpret the OT by the NT, you end up with all sort of strange-ologies, e.g., the Judaizers of Galatians, rabbinic Judaism, Messianic Judaism, dispensationalism, Christian Zionism, etc. Even Islam is an attempt to bypass the NT and incorporate selective OT concepts into a new religious system.

"And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." (Luke 24)

"Philip found Nathanael and said to him, 'We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote--Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.'"

This is especially true of all the typology in the OT which ultimately pointed to Jesus Christ. A type is foreshadowing of a greater truth, the antitype. The tabernacle, the sacrifices, the human priesthood, etc all were types of the person and word of Jesus Christ.

As types there were mere shadows of reality, and destined to fade away once the antitype appeared.

"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;" (Heb. 1)

Types were one of the "various ways" that God communicated truth to His people, by Moses and the prophets. Jesus Christ, the very Word of God, has come and spoken finally about God's work in bringing salvation to His people, Israel. The types are no longer required. Those who still live according to the types remain in bondage.

"Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar-- for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children-- but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all." (Gal. 4)

The type could not do what the antitype promises.

"Therefore, if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be called according to the order of Aaron? For the priesthood being changed, of necessity there is also a change of the law." (Heb. 7)

God's true priesthood has changed from being according to the line of Levi to being of the line of Melchizedek.

"But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood." (Heb. 7:24)

The first priesthood according to Levi was malleable, and able to change, indeed, to fade away. But the true priesthood of Melchizedek in unchangeable. It is a perfect priesthood.