***I have noticed that the Reformed (for instance) can retreat from a daylight examination of their misinterpreted Pauline beliefs back into the OT, including Isaiah and Psalms, rendering the Gospels irrelevant for the support of Reformed theology.
Irrelevant? Hardly. We simply don’t have the same issue that you do...the erection of a wall between the Old and New Testaments whereby the two are effectively mutually exclusive of each other and the OT is merely a collection of cautionary tales for present-day Gentile Christians.
The New Covenant is not simply a replacement of the Old Covenant...***
Firstly, let me say that the Gospel proofs of Calvinism are like dogs that speak - very rare. :) I notice that you do not speak of the Gospels; though, you, like many Reformed under examination, speak only of the NT.
Let us examine what Jesus said about the matter.
Luke 22:
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When the hour came, he took his place at table with the apostles.
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He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover 5 with you before I suffer,
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for, I tell you, I shall not eat it (again) until there is fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”
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Then he took a cup, 6 gave thanks, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves;
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for I tell you (that) from this time on I shall not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
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7 Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.”
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And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you.
The new covenant. What is the new covenant? Matt 5:
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25 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’
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But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.
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If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.
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Should anyone press you into service for one mile, 26 go with him for two miles.
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Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
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27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
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But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,
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that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
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For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors 28 do the same?
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And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? 29
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So be perfect, 30 just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
None of this is found in the OT. The OT is more concerned with retribution and less concerned with mercy. Let us see what Paul has to say, since the Reformed are more Paulian than Christian.
Hebrews speaks to this. Heb 7:
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8 If, then, perfection came through the levitical priesthood, on the basis of which the people received the law, what need would there still have been for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not reckoned according to the order of Aaron?
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When there is a change of priesthood, there is necessarily a change of law as well.
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On the one hand, a former commandment is annulled because of its weakness and uselessness,
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for the law brought nothing to perfection; on the other hand, a better hope 13 is introduced, through which we draw near to God.
Heb 8:
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a minister of the sanctuary 2 and of the true tabernacle that the Lord, not man, set up.
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Now every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus the necessity for this one also to have something to offer.
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If then he were on earth, he would not be a priest, since there are those who offer gifts according to the law.
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They worship in a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary, as Moses was warned when he was about to erect the tabernacle. For he says, “See that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.”
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Now he has obtained so much more excellent a ministry as he is mediator of a better covenant, enacted on better promises.
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3 For if that first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second one.
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But he finds fault with them and says: 4 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will conclude a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
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It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they did not stand by my covenant and I ignored them, says the Lord.
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But this is the covenant I will establish with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds and I will write them upon their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
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And they shall not teach, each one his fellow citizen and kinsman, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know me, from least to greatest.
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For I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sins no more.”
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5 When he speaks of a “new” covenant, he declares the first one obsolete. And what has become obsolete and has grown old is close to disappearing.
And so on. The Old Covenant is obsolete and the New has replaced it, according to Saint Paul. How does Reformed theology handle this?
***The Reformed don’t retreat to the Old Testament...we rightly understand the Gospel in light of the entire Word of God.***
And that is exactly how different Reformed theology is from early and traditional Christianity. Christianity from early times has understood that Christ is the Word of God; the Bible is the word - that is, man’s understanding of the Word - selected by the Church in accordance to its adherence to the Creeds. You cannot guarantee an authentic theology by working backwards - as evidenced by the millions of different individual beliefs and theologies and more being developed every year.
Jesus created the Church for men; man created the Bible in order to create a united witness to Jesus. One cannot go backwards as the Protestants attempt to. The children of the Reformation have attempted to create a Jesus out of the Bible; whereas Christianity created the Bible from its witness of Jesus.
For the record, Christianity reads the NT through the prism of the Gospels and the OT through the prism of the New. Not vice versa.
The OT is a collection of tales prefiguring Christ. +Polycarp (70-155 AD), an Aposotlic Father, makes 112 biblical references in his epistles; of those only 12 are Old Testament material! That should show you how much the OT counted in the Church (and Polycarp was challenging Maricon to boot!).
Christianity is a New Covenant Church, established and centered on Christ. We could just as easily postulate that the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament contain all the OT references God wanted us to know and mind.
Under examination? Is the Inquisition ongoing?
I did not set about to present some massive defense...I merely pointed out the error of your flawed claims of Reformed teaching. You're chastising me for failing to do something I never attempted or intended to do in the first place. That's hardly within the realm of intellectual honesty.
None of this is found in the OT. The OT is more concerned with retribution and less concerned with mercy.
Now see...if you had said (and could prove) that the OT was only concerned with retribution and never concerned with mercy, you might have something approaching a point. But you wisely did not say such a thing because it's simply Scripturally untenable. As such, the claim that "none of this is found in the OT" is nothing but an empty claim.
And so on. The Old Covenant is obsolete and the New has replaced it, according to Saint Paul. How does Reformed theology handle this?
Why are you asking me? You've made it abundantly clear that you know everything the Reformed claim, so why bother with the charade of asking me when anything I respond with will be twisted to fit your preconception about what I as a Reformed Christian believe?
The truth is that the New Covenant was built upon the framework of the Old Covenant. The core of the New Covenant is Christ's fulfillment of the terms of the Old Covenant on our behalf. The New Covenant is meaningless outside the context of the Old Covenant.
And that is exactly how different Reformed theology is from early and traditional Christianity. Christianity from early times has understood that Christ is the Word of God; the Bible is the word - that is, man’s understanding of the Word - selected by the Church in accordance to its adherence to the Creeds. You cannot guarantee an authentic theology by working backwards - as evidenced by the millions of different individual beliefs and theologies and more being developed every year.
Yeah...because the theology of the Roman Catholic Church has never changed in the last 2000 years. Keep telling yourself that so you can delude yourself into the false sense of security you've built by putting your faith in an earthly institution. That's precisely where you have put your faith, and allowed yourself to understand the formal canonization of the Scriptures as being the equivalent of conferring upon them authority when in fact they already inherently had such authority as divinely inspired Scripture. The church did not make those works Scripture, they simply recognized the truth about them.
Jesus created the Church for men; man created the Bible in order to create a united witness to Jesus. One cannot go backwards as the Protestants attempt to. The children of the Reformation have attempted to create a Jesus out of the Bible; whereas Christianity created the Bible from its witness of Jesus.
That's wonderful linguistic sophistry, but at the end of the day it's empty and meaningless. Jesus never appealed to the authority or unity of the covenant people of God as the ultimate source of authority establishing the truth of His claims. He appealed to Scripture and to His own works. To claim that the Scriptures themselves are insufficient to give requisite knowledge of everything needed to the salvation of the soul is to be at complete odds with the very witness Jesus Himself established in Scripture. Of course, in placing ones faith in an earthly institution rather than Scripture itself as an authority, it's easy to embrace the circular arguments of that institution as it fashions Scripture into whatever suits its interest.
As for myself, like Luther before me my conscience is held captive by the Word of God. Yours is held captive by an earthly institution based in Europe. Your tagline says it all: "I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)"
For the record, Christianity reads the NT through the prism of the Gospels and the OT through the prism of the New. Not vice versa.
For the record, your claim is at odds with the witness of Christ Himself, as well as the Apostles, who labored extensively to show the inseperable and complementary nature of both the Old and New Testament works.
Revisionist history and projection of doctrine upon history at large is no substitute for coherent and consistent argumentation, nor is it interchangeable with truth.