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January 16, 2021
For the medieval monks, the Old Testament was not merely a prefiguration of salvation in Christ, but the beginning of that salvation, albeit in a veiled form.
the gospel has been contextualized one-sidedly in the realm of the personal and private.12
As noted above, modern theology has treated Christianity as a religion of the inner man rather than an account of God’s works in history.
Jew and Gentile are reconciled in Christ, in Christ’s body, but to suggest that Christians and Jews are reconciled whether or not Jews turn to Christ makes utter nonsense of the New Testament.
The positive lesson is that the Old Testament must be our book if we are to be fully Christian. The modern tendency to demean the Old Testament has wrought untold falsehood, misery, incoherence, and oppression. When the Old Testament is ignored, Christianity is conceived as a private “spiritual” religion with little to say to the world, and the world goes on its merry, bloody way. But Soulen wants us to read the Old Testament as a book having an integrity of its own, without reference to the New Testament, and this we must, with the church in every age, reject utterly. We must recover the
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Looking at the use of a word or image in chapter twenty-five without first tracing how the author has packed meaning into the word in chapters 1–24 is like seeing the end of a movie first. We might get some of it, but mainly we will be left confused.
Systematic theology is the end or summary of the movie. Don't say you've seen the movie if you've just read the summary.
We will grasp this important theme only if we read “with the grain” of the text, paying attention to the accumulating associations of words and phrases as we go. If we read stories in isolation from one another, we will miss this.
Like Noah, he will pass through the waters unharmed, both in infancy and later in adulthood; more importantly, like Noah (whose name means “rest”), Moses will be the one who brings Yahweh’s people from slavery to Sabbath. Like Noah, Moses will be the instrument for destroying the old world of Egypt and bringing Israel into a “new creation.”
It is remarkable, for example, to note the incidence of “death by head wound” in the Old Testament. Sisera, Abimelech, Goliath, Absalom—many of the enemies of God have their heads crushed. When a scene or event is repeated in this way, it is deliberate and theologically grounded. All these are types of the serpent, whose head the Seed of the woman will crush (Gen. 3:15).
The Shape of Biblical Language,
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David fights and then builds a house from the spoils, just as Jesus will later build His church from the spoils of His victory on Golgotha.
In Exodus, for example, the description of the tabernacle is divided into seven speeches, which are marked by the phrase “Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying” (25:1; 30:11; 30:17; 30:22; 30:34; 31:1; 31:12). Some of these sections correspond in striking ways to the creation week, but the mere fact of seven “words” of God suggests that the tabernacle is to be understood as a new creation or as an aspect of a new creation.
Recovering the Old Testament as a text in which Christians live and move and have their being is one of the most urgent tasks before the church. Reading the Reformers is good and right. Christian political activism has its place. Even at their best, however, these can only bruise the heel of a world that has abandoned God. But the Bible—the Bible is a sword to divide joints from marrow, a weapon to crush the head.
The Bible tells one story.
And much later, the Spirit “hovers” in the form of a dove at Jesus’ baptism (Mt. 3:16), because in Jesus, God is again making the world new.
Very often the land pictures Israel and the sea pictures the nations
The waters in Noah as judgment taking dominion over man after he failed to take dominion; the waters of other nations being a threat of dominion over Israel's dominion.
God is turning back creation as He did in Noah’s flood: Instead of separating land and water, the water is now going to overflow the land.
By working hard, Adam is to make creation a “slave.” He is supposed to find new ways to use what God has made, so that the whole creation serves man more and more.
In the New Testament, the wise men come from east to west, seeking the Garden and Jesus, the real Tree of Life (Mt. 2:1).
Thus, Genesis 3–6 record a series of “falls,” moving from the Garden, to the land, to the world.
The Church leads the culture (the world). A "fall" in the Church will flow outward into a "fall" in the culture (the world).
