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In Christianity † IN CHRISTIANITY † Christianity began as a conventicle in Judaism, with a complete and unquestioned acceptance of what had come to bePage 664 | Top of Articlethe foundation stone of Judaism's serious view of itself as the one true revealed religion, destined to be the religion of all mankind. Through the years the confidence had matured that in the Bible was the complete and all-embracing record of all that men would ever need to know. Here stood revealed the full and complete will of God: all that men were to do and to be had been revealed to them. Their conduct toward one another and toward Him, the way they were to worship Him and regard Him, even their attitudes of mind and will, all had been revealed and was man's for the knowing. No circumstance could ever arise that had not been anticipated, no question for which the certain answer had not been given. Even before the moment of creation it had stood in the mind of God. Subsequently the blueprint for all time had been revealed by God to men through the agency of Moses and the other specially designated and inspired agents. The Bible was not 24 books, as it might superficially seem to be to Jewish eyes, or 29, to those of the Christians. It was fundamentally one book, with God its one author. As the movement eventually to be styled Christianity became separate from the parent, it never lost this confidence in the nature of its inherited Scriptures, which, as the true Israel it regularly conceived itself to be, it easily came to believe were actually primarily its own, not the parent's, "for," as Justin *Martyr phrased it in his Dialogue with Trypho (ch. 29): "we believe them, but you, though you read them, do not catch the spirit that is in them." Gradually, in the course of almost exactly 100 years, a large number of additional chapters, so to speak, were produced. As the years passed, many of these later writings became dear to an ever-increasing body of believers, with the result that by the middle of the fourth century 27 more writings had come to be widely regarded and formally accepted as a part of God's Revelation, of which He was the actual author, having seen fit to reveal His mind through the records which evangelists and apostles had written at His dictation. Through the centuries this view was maintained. It is this which is meant by the statement in the twentieth of the still-authoritative Thirty-Nine Articles that the Bible is "God's word written." In the 18th century Locke was asserting nothing new when he insisted: "It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter." A century later, an Oxford theologian, Dean Burgon, spelled it out: "The Bible is none other than the voice of Him that sitteth upon the throne. Every book of it, every chapter of it, every word of it, every syllable of it (where are we to stop?), every letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High. The Bible is none other than the Word of God, not some part of itmore, some part of it less, but all alike the utterance of Him who sitteth upon the throne, faultless, unerring, supreme" (Inspiration and Interpretation(1861), 89). This view of Scripture, despite two centuries of inquiry during which in the eyes of an increasingly large group it has been discredited or drastically qualified, is still with nuances the verdict of Christianity, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant alike. The Protestant Reformation did not affectthe matter in the slightest. There was and is no real difference between Catholics and Protestants as to the proper attitude toward the Bible or the basis on which they rest their creeds. The sole difference lay – and still lies – in the fact that to the Catholic (and Orthodox) Scripture is not the sole authoritative and infallible source of belief. Scripture (i.e., Old and New Testament including the deuterocanonical books) and tradition are the source of God's revelation. For the Protestants the Scriptures alone can have such a claim. Both, however, accept the Bible as the authoritative and infallible statement of revealed truth. Actually, Protestant scholars at times wentto greater extremes in their stress upon biblical interpretation than did Catholics. During the years, ecclesiastical infallibility and scriptural infallibility had grown up together. As a result of the Reformation, ecclesiastical infallibility was thrown overboard by Protestants. The infallibility of the Bible was set up as a bulwark against the rejected infallibility of the Church. It is accordingly not surprising that in consequence a literal view of inspiration, like that enunciated by Dean Burgon, resulted. Thus the real and distinctive note in the Christian attitude toward the Old Testament has never been whether the Old Testament is or is not Scripture, to be accepted and prized, for this acceptance has been universal. Rather, the problem has always been how the Old Testament is to be interpreted and used. Beginning, and continuing for many years, as a part of Judaism, sounding the proclamation of Jesus, whom they believed to have been raised from the dead by God and to be with him in heaven soon to return to establish the speedily expected new age, which, like him, they styled the kingdom of God, the Christians' main differences from the rest of orthodox Jewry were their developing views of Jesus himself. Sofar as fundamentals were concerned, they remained orthodox Jews, in their views of the unity of God, of His relation to Israel, of His complete revelation in Scripture. With their basic view of the all-inclusive content of the Divine Revelation in Scripture it was not unnatural that Christians saw prophesied therein their movement and their Christ. As the movement came more and more to be separate from Judaism, the conviction deepened that Judaism, which failed to see in the predictions in the Old Testament the Christian Jesus and the success of the movement resulting from his preaching, was blind to the real content of the Scriptures, which Scriptures they were confident were theirs. The Old Testament, according, for example, to the Epistle of Barnabas, has meaning only when it is understood in terms of the gospel. It was held that God's covenant has always been made with Christians, and the Old Testament has always been misunderstood by the Jews. This in no wise minimized the Old Testament. "All scripture is inspired by God and helpful for teaching," as the author of II Timothy 3:16 was to insist; but it must be rightly understood. Page 665 | Top of Article Much has been written about Paul's rejection of the Mosaic law, but although this is true, it is far from meaning that herejected the Old Testament. It remains Scripture for Paul and of the profoundest value, as his constant citation to establish or buttress this contention or that indicates, but it is no longer letter but spirit, no longer law but a ministry of grace. By the aid of the Spirit he holds, the Old Testament can be interpreted as a spiritual book – the reason others cannot do so is because they have not received the gift of the spirit. They have been blinded by Satan; true understanding of the Old Testament comes only from God. Paul is adept in finding "spiritualmeaning" in the most unlikely texts. He does not view the Old Testament as the Christian's moral guide, for his break with the law, ceremonial and moral alike, was complete. Rather this standard or guide is to be found based on what he calls Jesus'law of love, more exactly, what is worthy of one in Christ. The point often overlooked is that the kind of life which Paul felt worthy of in Christ is precisely the type of life which as a Jew he had been from birth trained to revere, as he had found it revealed in Scripture. The whole insistence in the Epistle of Barnabas is that Christians must avoid a Judaistic conception of the Old Testament. Despite Barnabas' blistering criticism of the literal understanding of passages regarding sacrifices and the food laws, he never thinks of giving up the Old Testament or its divine Creator, as Marcion and most of the Gnostics were subsequently to do. Instead his pages are filled with such words as "Moses received these doctrines concerning food and thus spoke of them in the Spirit; but they [the Jews] received them as merely referring to food, owing to the lust of their flesh" (Epistle of Barnabas 10). His reference to gnosis and his anti-Judaism do not mean that he was either a Gnostic or that he rejected the Old Testament. Gnosis, as he uses the term, is simply deeper insight into the truths of Christianity with the aid of allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament which allowed him to find what he sought to discover. His allegorization constantly does violence to the meaning of the text and resolves historical events into exaggerated fantasy. Nor is Barnabas alone. Justin Martyr indicates the same naive and uncritical attitude toward the Old Testament. That he revered it as inspired Scripture is evident in every page; his devotion to allegorical interpretation, which can find Jesus clearly predicted in the most impossible passages and the cross prefigured not alone throughout the Scriptures – the paschal lamb roasted on a spit (Dialogue with Trypho 40), the extended hands of Moses (ibid.
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