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New and Old Testaments Society has always had its theocrat's, but the conflict between the Old and New Testaments has simply rendered the Bible too dim and doubtful to allow them to gain as much traction as their Muslim counterparts have been able to derive from the Quran. American Christians, in other words, are a lot like Arab Muslims, save for the accident of scripture. And until they take the ramifications of that accident fully into account, U. S.
foreign policy will remain unrealistic. Numerous researchers have acknowledged scripture's contribution to the cultural divide but has done so incorrectly, saying that the West's liberalizing tradition of separating church and state stemmed from Jesus' instruction to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. Not so. Despite this verse, the Roman Catholic Church was traditionally tax-supported, as were early Protestant churches (they still are in England and Scandinavia), and the societies in which they flourished were markedly theocratic. The Pilgrims brought the theocratic impulse with them to America and in Massachusetts Bay set up a society in which speech was anything but free and in which the General Court heard heresy cases. Gradually they backed away from the legal enforcement of religious beliefs and rules but not because Jesus called for the separation of church and state.
They backed away because, as Bible printing and reading became more widespread, they learned that Jesus' approach to crime and punishment -- including his rescinding of the writ of "an eye for an eye" -- was impossible to understand. The colonists of Massachusetts Bay wanted to build a society around the laws of the New Testament but ultimately had to acknowledge that it scarcely contains any laws and leaves the issue of the enforcement of the Old Testament's laws in utter confusion. A century and a half later, Thomas Jefferson came to an analogous conclusion. He, like all of the United States' founders, believed in God -- as today's Christian conservatives are wont to remind us -- but he had trouble finding a comprehensible God in the Christian Bible. The Old Testament's morality he found degrading and injurious.
He held a more positive view of the New Testament, saying that the moral system of Jesus (whom Jefferson considered a mere mortal) was sublime. But he also found it impractical and disagreed with Jesus' extreme anti-materialism and de-emphasis of good works, punishment, and restitution in favor of an emphasis on faith and forgiveness. Jefferson was a Unitarian and a scriptural skeptic, and skepticism was widespread among the country's founders. Despite being God-fearing churchgoers, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and others, along with Jefferson, questioned the biblical depiction of God, and it is their skepticism that lies at the heart of the United States' heritage of religious liberty. The Constitution's framers ultimately settled upon a godless constitution -- and fought successfully for it against a public outcry -- because they didn't want to live in a society in which ideologues could stir up Old World-style conflict by coercing professions of faith in a legally and economically unworkable religion, the most basic elements of which (the trinity, the forgiveness of one person's sins for another's suffering) are beyond comprehension. With the advent of Christianity the heritage from the previous two centuries was all but wholly transformed, and the New Testament represents in one of its main aspects the consummation of the spiritual travail of Israel's seers and sages, and especially of those of the last two centuries.
Owing to the transformation of the Old Testament ideas in literature and especially in the New Testament one must expect to find that what was the meaning of a word or phrase in the Old Testament is no longer the same in the New Testament. Let me take as an illustration the phrase "strangers and sojourners. " In the Old Testament we find the saints in Israel spoken of as being "strangers and sojourners with God " (Lev. xxv. 23; Ps. xxxix. 13), that is, God was regarded as their temporary host, with whom they sojourned for a few years and then passed to their eternal home beyond His jurisdiction. When, however, we pass to the New Testament the phrase has assumed a directly opposite significance. There the saints are designated, it is true, as strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Heb.
xi. 13), or as "strangers and sojourners" (Eph. ii. 19), but they are so designated, just because their true citizenship is even now in heaven (Phil. iii. 20), in the city that God has prepared for them (Heb. xi. 16); and so far from being sons of earth they are even now full citizens of the sacred commonwealth, and sons of God's own house (Eph. ii. 19). All the Old Testament and apocalyptic ideals, though realised in one personality, cannot justify the tremendous claims made by the Son of Man in the New.
For whereas the Messianic kingdom in Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic is just as frequently conceived without the Messiah as with Him, in the New Testament the Messiah forms its divine Head and Centre, and membership of the kingdom is constituted first and chiefly by a living relationship to Him. Thus our Lord allows no rival claim, however strong, to interfere between Himself and the soul of His disciple. "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me (Matt. x. 37); "If any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his father and mother and wife and children, he cannot be My disciple" (Luke xiv. 26). Again, this imperious claim to devotion extends to the life of the disciple in its deepest issues: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt.
XI. 28). Only through Him can man have access to the Father: "None knoweth the Father save he to whom the Son wallet to reveal Him" (Matt. xi. 27; Like. 22). Whereas the Old Testament in a few passages denounces the cherishing or manifestation of personal resentment against a fellow countryman, the New Testament requires universally the annihilation of the passion itself as regards fellow countrymen and strangers. Again, while in two or more passages the Old Testament inculcates that a man should do positive kindness to a hostile fellow countryman when in distress, the New Testament everywhere explicitly and implicitly requires him to render such services, whether the wrongdoer be Christian or non Christian, prosperous or the reverse.
In the past some scholars have ignored the question, while others have regarded the New Testament doctrine of forgiveness as a wholly original contribution of Christianity. But such a view is no longer possible, now that recent research has brought to light the evidence of the apocryphal and apocalyptic books on this and other New Testament subjects. A study of the literature that comes between the Old and New Testaments shows that there was a steady development in every department of religious thought in the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. This fact has already been fully recognized in the department of eschatology.
Regardless of those facts, The Bible remains outside of any specifically redemptive covenant (be it cataclysmic or restorative) if only to redeem all of the innumerable covenants with-in its scope. As a model of holiness, scripture is set apart from any single community and yet embraces every community (even that as yet unformed: the community with nothing in common). As with all gifts or signs of divinity, scripture exceeds the giver and compels the receiver to reciprocate. Scripture is a gift bequeathed by the Jews as the possession of the Christians for the sake of the pagans; it departs from Judaism, passes through Christianity, and incorporates paganism.
The Bible is written for the sake of the reader who has been denied it. Despite its perplexities and paradoxes, hermeneutic approach of a dual covenant conjoined with and opposed by an apocalyptic sensibility becomes unavoidable as both Judaism and Christianity encounter the pagan world. Given the renewed challenge which a neo-pagan secularization poses equally to Christianity and Judaism, both new and old testaments not only establish a connection between generations, sustaining church and synagogue -- faith in this-world and hope for the other-world. Even more, scripture must guarantee the connection between the center and periphery, Judaism and paganism, even as it drives a wedge, Christianity, between them.
Scripture holds a community together by putting it into apologetic contact with adversarial communities; like any speaking which takes writing seriously, it thinks through the other. Its empty form (or medium) filled with variable contents (or messages), center and periphery are set in a dynamic relation, contracting and expanding, withdrawing from and engaging with friend and foe alike. Bibliography 1. Bible, NIV.
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