How to read the Old Testament as a Christian
Here’s the key — the first line of the Nicene Creed. “We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.”¹
Early Christianity was diverse, especially by the second century. Larry Hurtado writes,
In the earliest period, long before imperial coercion could be brought to bear in favor of this or that doctrinal position, there was a ‘free-market’ religious economy in the Christian movement!”²
Ideas attracted followings, and what became orthodox Christianity once competed with several alternatives. According to one competing view, we should distinguish the God and Father of Jesus Christ from a lesser God who created the world. Irenaeus argues against this view in his second century book, Against Heresies.³ He writes,
Their object in this is to show that our Lord announced another Father than the Maker of this universe, whom, as we said before, they impiously declare to have been the fruit of a defect (1.19.1).
Irenaeus wants to prove the opposite — that the Father of Jesus is the Maker of the world, the one attested to in the Old Testament.
He who, by His Word and Spirit, makes, and disposes, and governs all things, and commands all things into existence, — He who formed the world (for the world is of all), — He who fashioned man, — He [who] is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, above whom there is no other God, nor initial principle, nor power, nor pleroma, — He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we shall prove (1.22.1).
I get this same vibe from the first line of the Nicene Creed. The point is not that there is one God but that the one God is the self-same God who created the world. This Nicene tradition is that God created the world — rather than someone else.
Irenaeus points out that “almost all the different sects of heretics admit that there is one God,” yet they prove “themselves ungrateful to Him that created them” (1.22.1). So monotheism per se is not the main issue here. Rather, the question is whether the supreme power is also the creator. Is it beneath the one God to have created the world?
Many attribute this competing view (that a lesser god created the world) to Marcion. But Irenaeus blames someone called Cerdo. Irenaeus summarizes Cerdo as teaching,
the God proclaimed by the law and the prophets was not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the former was known, but the latter unknown; while the one also was righteous, but the other benevolent (1.27.1).
By comparison, Marcion
is the only one who has dared openly to mutilate the Scriptures, and unblushingly above all others to inveigh against God (1.27.2).
This means the debate involves parties who used the same scripture. They both read the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible if you prefer. Yes, Marcion cut out large portions of scripture. But others such as Cerdo distinguish the one God from the Creator with their Old Testament in hand. How is this possible? Irenaeus explains with an illustration.
Scripture passages are like precious jewels or gems. Their proper interpretation is like “a beautiful image of a king . . . constructed by some skilful artist out of precious jewels” (1.8.1). His opponents “rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed” (1.8.1). (Marcion stands out from the crowd in that he actually discards many of the jewels of scripture.) Irenaeus’s task: restore “every one of the expressions quoted to its proper position” (1.9.4).
Gnostic Christianity divided from proto-orthodoxy over how to read the Old Testament. Rejecting Marcion’s rejection of scripture is not enough to steer clear of Gnosticism. One must read the Old Testament looking for the one to whom it testifies. The Nicene Creed asserts that the Creator in the Old Testament is the Father of Jesus. A Christian reading of the Old Testament today begins there.
What about the New Testament? Emil Brunner argues that “our understanding of the Old Testament is . . . decisive for our understanding of the New Testament.”⁴ The New Testament alone allows perspectives that the Old Testament rejects. A New-Testament-only Christian has little protection from Gnostic Christianity.
For example, Brunner warns that our constant temptation is to Hellenize the New Testament. After all, the New Testament is a collection of Greek documents. Apart from the Old Testament’s influence, we might worship the God of the philosophers. If we attend to it, however, we learn that “God can be known as the personal God . . . the living God of the Old Testament.”⁵ We encounter this living God in moral experience rather than in mere contemplation. We worship in community rather than isolation. The Old Testament makes a tremendous difference here.
Recall that Irenaeus charged Cerdo with setting God’s righteousness against God’s benevolence. Brunner claims, however, that “only in the Old Testament are the holiness and the love of God conceived as one, without either weakening the other.”⁶ Indeed, those who neglect the Old Testament could miss this point. They might fail to grasp that God’s love is a holy love, a fire that consumes.
I could say much more, but I hope my point is clear. New Testament Christianity as such is under-determined. The Old Testament is the key to interpret the New. But one need not become a Marcionite to become a Gnostic. The Old Testament is still vulnerable to abuse if we neglect our main lesson. We Christians need to look for the Father of Jesus as the Creator in the Old Testament, and escape the ancient Gnostic trap.
[1] Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787): Their History and Theology, Theology and Life Series, v. 21 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 60.
[2] Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 520.
[3] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in The Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Collection, ed. Philip Schaff, Catholic Edition (Catholic Way Publishing, 2014), Kindle edition.
[4] Emil Brunner, “The Significance of the Old Testament for Our Faith,” in The Old Testament and Christian Faith: A Theological Discussion, ed. Bernhard W. Anderson (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1963), 246.
[5] Ibid., 254.
[6] Ibid., 256.
