The OT and NT and Calvin

One issue which I find myself coming back to regularly is the question of the relation of the Old Testament and the New. Over the last few years I have increasingly appreciated the importance of stressing continuity between the two and working from that as a 'bass line'. Last week I preached in chapel on Jesus as priest and that got me thinking about the fact that the we should not see the temple as something we are freed from but something which we have even more fully, since Christians share in Christ's worship and reign in the heavenly temple.

So I was struck by the following  quote in Calvin on the sacraments, "we must utterly reject that Scholastic dogma … which notes such a great difference between the sacraments of the old and new, as if the former only foreshadowed God's grace but the latter give it as a present reality" (Inst VI.xiv.23). (The word translated 'foreshadow' is "adumbrarint" which can mean outline, but can have the connotation of "screen" or even "obscure", and it has that kind of sense here.) Calvin goes on to make his point from the opening verses of 1 Cor 10, arguing that Paul's point there is based on equality of the Jewish and Christian experience of the sacraments.

The quote struck me because what Calvin calls a "Scholastic dogma" is a very common view in evangelical circles. So often the only relationships between the OT and NT are promise-fulfillment and a relationship of contrast. Calvin reminds us that there is another relationship of continuity. The book of Hebrews illustrates each of these relationships (see Heb 4:1; 11:40; 12:18-29). 

John's prologue

I've been looking at John's Prologue (1:1-18) getting ready to preach on it this Sunday. I've had one of those wonderful experiences of finding a whole new perspective on a passage that is so familiar. I'll try to outline it here, though since I am still trying to work it out, I may not be entirely clear.

I skimmed through a few commentaries yesterday evening and as I did I started to notice all the OT references. Of course I knew they were there, but this time they stood out. So many of them are about 'wisdom', for 'wisdom' is with God in the beginning (Prov 8). It is common (and convincing) to see wisdom in Prov 8 behind the "Word" of John 1. Moreover the law is the wisdom of Israel (Deut 4:6 and also the apocryphal Sir. 15:1; 19:20; 21:11; 39:8 ). 

Then I started to see a wider pattern. It is not just that there are many references to the OT. The references develop a theme. The prologue re-reads the history of Israel: the creative wisdom-word of God coming to Israel (who are the children of God). In the exodus God's glory revealed to Moses (that God is 'emet' and 'hesed' - true and gracious) and that glory settles in the tabernacle. Now the prologue announces that the true creative word of life and light has come, and allowed people from all backgrounds to become children of God and grace and truth abound from him as they never did from Moses for the reality of the temple/tabernacle has come in the word incarnate. I think in the past I'd read the prologue against the Greek idea of the logos, but the whole thing starts to have greater coherence when the main background is the story of Israel. So the prologue shows us that what we have in Jesus is the truly divine word who becomes truly human so that we may know God in his faithful and gracious glory. What was prefigured in Israel's story is true in Jesus.

In one sense this is just what John says in the rest of the gospel anyway, but I'd never quite seen it in the prologue.