CHAPTER ONE
The New Testament as Christian Scripture
What’s in a Title?
Titles matter because the title of a book gives a frame of reference, creates expectations, and sets the tone for readers’ experience. Indeed, many things have already happened in your mind (and body) between when you first started reading the title of this book and the sentence that is ending right now. Our title, Reading the New Testament as Christian Scripture: A Literary, Canonical, and Theological Survey, has already animated various notions and set your expectations in a way that is mostly subconscious.
We hope that these are positive expectations, but we are aware that they may not be! Our chosen title may or may not register much reaction at all and may even cause some confusion. We have carefully chosen this title to stimulate questions and guide your encounter with our book and, more importantly, with the New Testament itself. In this opening chapter we will unpack the title to discuss the frame, goal, and vision for this book.
Why Emphasize Reading Today?
“Nothing easy is worthwhile, and nothing worthwhile is easy.” “You can rake all day long and get only leaves. But if you take the time to dig, you may find gold.” These proverbial statements are pithy and memorable but, more importantly, wise and true. Every generation and culture have obstacles to thoughtful living, but it seems that our culture today has the potential and technology to be more distracted than any other. Screens, notifications, and connection to a global wealth of information in our pockets provide us with dopamine-inspired quick bursts of pleasure that leave us hungering for another fix while dissipating our mental and emotional energy.
This makes reading hard. This makes reading old, foreign, religious documents especially hard. Maybe you don’t want to read this book and are being forced to for a grade. We understand. But we want to invite you into the profound pleasure that comes from learning to be attentive and present to yourself and others through reading. Imagine how wonderful it is when you have the opportunity to sit with an engaging and wise friend at a coffee shop discussing the complexities of life and deep thoughts about the soul and relationships. Remember what it’s like to be so absorbed that you are undistracted, wholly present to the reality and importance of the discussion.
The beauty and power of books is that they enable us to enter into such life-changing conversations with a world of people that we would never have the opportunity to meet in person. This includes the Bible, wherein we can sit with God himself, learning and reflecting. But this does require some work: the commitment to read and to read thoughtfully. This book will guide you through a reading of the New Testament texts. When we begin a new section with a heading like this—READ MARK 1:16–2:12—we are inviting you to pause and devote your energy to listening to these ancient texts. You can browse social media all day and get some leaves, but if you dig into Scripture you will find gold.
Figure 1.1. Saint Francis Reading by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rogers Fund, 1962.]
Why Call This a “Christian” Reading?
What is the significance of adding the descriptor “Christian”? Why are we being invited to read the New Testament as Christian Scripture?
Figure 1.2. The Supper at Emmaus by Velázquez [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913.]
In the first instance, this means that we embrace the biblical canon as twofold, Old and New Testaments together. As we will discuss below, both parts of the Christian canon mutually inform each other. At the same time, the New Testament claims to provide the ultimate revelation of God himself in Christ. This Logos, the Son, who is ever with the Father and has been incarnated at a time in history in Jesus, together with the indwelling Spirit, witnesses to the mystery of the Trinity. This is no small matter. This means that because of the fullness of revelation now given in the new covenant, all of the Bible should be read with the knowledge of the Triune God at hand, even though the Hebrew Scriptures do not explicitly speak in this way. This reading backward of the whole Bible is an important element in what it means to read Christianly. One does not have to read the Bible in this way, but one must do so in order to read it as Christian Scripture.
There is also another vital facet of reading the New Testament as Christian Scripture: reading it as a disciple. To read the New Testament (and the whole Bible) as Christian Scripture is to read it “with the grain,” in line with its clear intention, which is to make disciples of Jesus Christ. The foreignness of the Bible to modern readers inclines us to think that we need to make a pilgrimage into the world of the Bible and then take its meaning back out and transform it into something relatable to us today. Rather, as one biblical scholar observes, “‘Pilgrimage’ is more appropriately a description of the character of our lives in this world, with our status as strangers in the world attributable to our making our home in the world of Scripture. In this hermeneutical scenario, it is not the message of the Bible that requires transformation; it is we who require transformation.”1 That is, we are not taking a pilgrimage into the Bible and back; the Bible is transforming the journey of our lives.
The ideal reader of the New Testament, then, is one who is reading in order to be formed according to God’s vision for humanity. Our goal in reading is not merely to garner information but also to experience transformation: not to be smarter people but to become a different kind of people. The reason for listening to the teaching of Jesus and of the apostles is to come to trust in Jesus as the revelation of God and, from this, to entrust our lives to his ways. The New Testament has a radical and beautiful goal of deconstructing our values and re-forming them in line with God’s nature and coming kingdom. Therefore, to read the New Testament as Christian Scripture is to read it so as to become conformed to the image of Christ himself, imitating the apostles, who themselves were imitating/following Jesus (John 13:12–15; 1 Cor. 11:1; 1 Pet. 2:21). Anything less than this transformative pilgrimage is less than a Christian reading of the New Testament.
The Ideal Disciple Reader
What’s New about the New Testament?
We encounter the word “new” most frequently today through the world of advertising. Whether it is the new iPhone, a new plan from politicians, or a new dishwashing detergent, we are trained to spot and covet the “new and improved.” This is not necessarily bad, of course, as “new” can and does often mean an improvement. Rarely do people want the “old and inferior,” unless it signals some retro technology or sports a throwback look. Even then, the old is desirable because there is some perceived greater value or quality, not simply because it is old.
But what does the “new” in New Testament communicate? Why did early Christians describe the writings of the apostles as a “new testament”? First, we must understand that this word “testament” comes to us through Latin and basically means the same thing as “covenant.” In fact, the title for the New Testament in Greek is Hē Kainē Diathēkē, which translates as “the new covenant,” wording that comes from Jeremiah 31:31; Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25; Hebrews 8:8; and elsewhere. What is a covenant? A covenant is a relationship between two parties (like a marriage or a mortgage) that has spelled-out expectations. So when we call a piece of writing a covenant or testimony, we are referring to the instructions and explanations that relate to a specific relationship. In this case, for both the Old Testament and the New Testament, we are learning about the relationship of God with humanity.
This collection of writings titled “New Covenant/Testament” implies that there was something before, an “Old Covenant/Testament.” The earliest Christians did not use this phrase explicitly, but they understood Jesus as the Promised One, who ushered in the era of a new covenant. By the early third century of the Christian era this “Old/New Testament” description comes into usage, and it continues to this day.
However, this language of “new” does not necessarily mean that the preceding was bad or is now completely irrelevant, as would be the case with a consumer product today (who wants an iPhone 3 anymore?). Rather, “renewed and completed” might be a better sense of how the New Testament is linked to what came before it.
Matthew 5:17–20 is one of the most important biblical passages for understanding the relationship of the two parts of the Christian Bible, even if its exact meaning is still being debated two thousand years later. In his first teaching in the First Gospel Jesus addresses the issue head-on: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17 AT). Jesus is not dismissing or disregarding God’s earlier revelation. He is not deeming the past as irrelevant. The New Testament does not abolish the Old Testament but rather fulfills it. In the Bible “fulfill” primarily focuses not on prediction or replacement but on renewal, consummation, and fullness. This means that when we think about the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament, there is both continuity and discontinuity, a shared foundation with positive change toward its goal.
Thus we can recognize some real sense in which the new (Jesus) covenant is superior to the old (Mosaic) covenant. The apostle Paul and the author of Hebrews particularly make this clear: the old covenant was not able to give life in the same way (Rom. 8:2–4), or provide a perfect, conscience-cleansing sacrifice (Heb. 8:6–13), or be fully internalized and transformative from the inside (Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 36:26; Heb. 10:16). To be a Christian means to believe precisely in this distinction, that Jesus has come and brought a new covenant in his blood (Matt. 26:28; Luke 22:20), bringing us to a mountain greater than Sinai, to Zion (Heb. 12:18–24).
However, this fulfillment should not be misunderstood as a negating or dismissing of the Hebrew Scriptures. The story of Israel is not old news, or “inferior” like an early, buggy version of hardware or software. The same Paul who speaks boldly about the transforming shift from the Mosaic covenant to the law of Christ (1 Cor. 9:21; Gal. 6:2) also emphasizes that God still cares for the Jewish people, that they have some understanding of God that the world does not naturally have, and that gentiles should not think of themselves as somehow superior (Rom. 3:1–2; 9:1–11:36).
To think about this relationship, we need a metaphor other than that of mere superiority. From a Christian perspective, “fulfillment” is the best way to frame the matter. God’s good plans for humanity come to their completion and consummation in Jesus. This means that going back to the Mosaic covenant would be foolish and even deadly because of what it is unable to do for humanity—provide true and lasting life. However, it does not mean that the Jewish Scriptures themselves are flawed or irrelevant to the Christian life. At the end of Luke’s Gospel, in the story he tells about Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Luke highlights this same fact, that Jesus is understood properly by going back and rereading the whole Old Testament in light of what Jesus has now said and done (Luke 24:13–49).
The Titles of Our Bibles
What Does the New Testament Have to Do with the Old Testament?
Following directly from this idea of the New Testament’s fulfillment of the Old Testament, we then can ask more specifically: What does the New Testament have to do with the Old Testament? We have already noted that we must not think of the Old in a flat-footed way of being replaced with the relevant and instructive New.
Nor should we think of the relationship of the Old Testament and the New Testament as unidirectional only. There is a very old and venerable Christian tradition of reading the Old Testament in light of the New. We might describe this as a front-wheel-drive arrangement. The New Testament drives the whole Bible and pulls the Old Testament along where it is going. Some have suggested instead a rear-wheel-drive understanding, where a plain-sense reading of the Old Testament pushes along and we understand the New Testament in light of what the Old Testament is already doing.3
In contrast to either a front-wheel-drive-only or rear-wheel-drive-only analogy, we propose a four-wheel-drive model where both the Old Testament and the New Testament alternate in taking the lead. We should think of the Testaments as two parts in a two-testament Christian canon. Together the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and the writings of the apostles (New Testament) form something new and authoritative (see below on “canon”). By being read together (and, very early on, being physically bound together), the two parts of the Christian Bible inform each other in a bidirectional way. The Old Testament sets the foundation, reveals God’s character and actions in the world, and points toward the restoration of humanity under his good reign. The New Testament completes this story, enabling a more thorough and particularly trinitarian and Christ-centered rereading of the whole Bible. You can read the Old Testament without the New Testament and understand a lot about God, though to be part of the people of God now requires embracing the Messiah he has finally sent. You can read the New Testament without the Old Testament, but it will be a thin and decontextualized reading of the whole story.
Figure 1.3. Design for a cupola with Old and New Testament figures by Pietro de Angelis [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1960.]
Why Is the New Testament Called “Scripture”?
So far, we have explored the newness of the New Testament and how to think about the relationship of the Old to the New. We may now ask, What is the significance of calling the Old and New Testaments “Scripture”? After all, we are focusing on documents written between two thousand and three thousand years ago by people in cultures very different from our own. Are these documents really relevant today for individuals and for society?
Even if understood as a collection of merely human documents, the Bible still has abiding antiquarian and historical interest. But the perspective operative in this book, in line with the ancient Jewish and Christian conviction, is that the Bible is not only a record of religious understanding but is also more: it is Holy Scripture. This means that in addition to providing human wisdom and lessons from human history, the Old Testament and the New Testament are witnesses to God’s self-disclosure, a revelation of who God is—his character, his name, his identity, his actions, his ways. To understand the Bible as Scripture, then, is to approach it with a posture of humility, teachability, and submission, not because the Bible itself is magical or glows in the dark, but because it faithfully does what no other speech or writing in the world does fully: it reveals the Triune God of the universe. It is the revelation of God himself in verbal form. And this calls for a response. Erich Auerbach writes, “The world of the Scripture stories is not satisfied with claiming to be a historically true reality—it insists that it is the only real world, is destined for autocracy. . . . The Scripture stories . . . seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”4
This is why we refer to the Bible as a “canon,” meaning that the books that make up the Bible together are separate and distinct and worthy of heeding closely. The books of the Bible have a unique authority because they are part of the canon, or rule. There is plenty of wisdom and truth all throughout the world, but to identify some writings as canonical is to set them apart, to recognize and honor their authoritative contribution. So to read the New Testament as Scripture is to recognize its revelatory nature.
We may also think of the Bible as “Scripture” in another way, as providing the “script” for our lives. Not only does Scripture show us truth and falsehood, but also it guides how we are to live in the world. This sense of “script(ure)” is analogous to that of a play. The script guides the direction of the story, but a good actor will always make the performance his or her own. Performing is more than reading lines on a script with monotone obedience; it is understanding and being present to the voice and power of the script, interpreting and emphasizing with wholehearted presence, and even ad-libbing and expanding as the need arises. Of course, this analogy breaks down eventually, but the point is that to read the New Testament as Scripture is to be in a lively and humble dialogue with the voice of the text, seeking to understand and live according to its direction as we encounter obstacles, tensions, and other people.
What Can You Expect from This Book?
This leads us to the final question for this opening chapter: What can you expect from this book? This is a textbook, and, more specifically, it can be classified in the genre of a New Testament survey or introduction. This kind of book developed relatively late in the reading of the Bible, only a couple of hundred years ago, as a product of modern scholarship. Various New Testament surveys or introductions emphasize different aspects, depending on the interests and perspectives of various writers. Our introduction to the New Testament is no exception, reflecting a particular vision. We hope that our readers will discover some modes and means of reading the New Testament that have largely been lost in the modern era and therefore are not found in other New Testament surveys. These include reading the New Testament texts in dialogue with each other, with the Old Testament, with other interpreters throughout history, and with Christian creeds and theological statements.
Figure 1.4. Reading the Scriptures by Thomas Waterman Wood [The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rogers Fund, 1966.]
Our conviction is that direct engagement with the biblical texts themselves is more important than anything we can say about them. As a result, the major goal of this New Testament survey is to offer a guide for students to thoughtfully read the texts of Scripture themselves, with helps supplied by those who are a bit further along on the journey. These helps include the use of bold type to indicate that a term appears in the glossary at the end of the book. Don’t forget to look there when you have a question! Each chapter also ends with some study questions to help you reflect and deepen your understanding. As we trek through each book, we encourage you to read the biblical texts before you read our interpretive guide.
In addition to this main interpretive guide, each chapter contains a series of sidebars organized into five different categories: Historical Matters, Literary Notes, Theological Issues, Canonical Connections, and Reception History. This unique approach comes from the conviction that the kinds of questions we ask of texts determine the kinds of answers we get from them. If we ask historical questions, we get historical answers; theological questions yield theological answers; moral and practical questions produce moral and practical answers; and so on. (The introductory chapters also include some general sidebars that contain information that helps prepare us to read the text well.) Icons corresponding to the various types of sidebars are placed within the main text to prompt readers to pause and read the relevant sidebar(s).
Scripture is not afraid of questions; we believe that these five query categories are valuable for a truly Christian reading of the whole Bible.
- What makes a Christian reading of Scripture different from another way of reading the Bible?
- What traits mark the life of the ideal disciple reader?
- How does the New Testament relate to the Old Testament? How is this understanding different from or similar to the way you thought about the two Testaments before reading this chapter?
- Why is it important that we call the Old Testament and the New Testament “Scripture”? How does this influence the way we read them?