Church History in Plain Language

by Bruce L. Shelley

Does the New Covenant make sense without the Old? By retaining the Old Testament the church scored two important points. First, it insisted that faith for the Christian would identify the idea of the creating God with the idea of the redeeming God. Marcion’s message was too easy. Marcion had not only misread the Old Testament; he also broke the unity seen in the entire Christian Scriptures: the same God who made the world also chose Israel; that God sought to reclaim his creation by Jesus, who fulfills Israel’s destiny. Second, by retaining the Old Testament the church underscored the importance of history for the Christian faith. Christianity is a historical religion, not just in the sense that it comes from the past or that it is associated with a historical character named Jesus. It is historical because it stems from the belief that within history itself, in a particular place, at a particular time, God himself took a hand in human affairs. And that means that living by faith for the Christian includes facing the puzzles of human existence—all of the “why, Lord?”s of life—and still believing that God has some good in mind. If Marcion, a heretic, nudged the churches into thinking about forming a New Testament, another troublemaker, Montanus, forced the churches into thinking about closing it.