The problem of the theological center cannot therefore be translated from the New to the Old Testament.' The broad contexts of the Old Testament must be understood by starting from these verb structures.
The Experience of Being Saved
All parts of the Old Testament (with the exception of the Wisdom literature) contain evidence of the lasting memory of the meeting with the savior God at the beginning. But this experience of the saving God in the life of the individual is not related to the saving actions of God in the history of Israel (almost the only exception is Ps. 22).
The Act of Saving and History 1. The Elements of the Saving Act
But some parts of the Old Testament have no direct relation to the events of salvation. For the Old Testament the mediator of the word is much more important than the mediator of action.
The Creator and the Creation
The creation narrative at the beginning of the Bible points to the horizon in which it plays out what it wants to say about God. It is the whole world (Gen. 1) and all mankind (Gen. 2), with which the God of the Bible is dealing. The creation of the world implies its possible destruction (Gen. 6-9); the creation of life involves its preservation through the power of reproduction and growth; the creator blesses his creatures.
This point is taken up again at the beginning of the fifth chapter, in the transition to the series of generations. The creator's blessing, in which he remains the creator for all generations, even includes death in the rhythm of his work. The same is true of the creation of the world in a different way.6 In the Old Testament, the whole of the universe is primarily something that happens and only in a secondary sense something that exists.
As a result, if God is the creator of the world, everything that happens in the world from the beginning to the end of time is in his hands. Therefore, speaking in the Old Testament about the creator and creation necessarily implies a universalism that attributes everything that happens from the beginning to the end of time to the God who meets Israel as her savior.
The Blessing
In the second transition, the transition to kingship, a change in the role of mediator is manifested. God's work of blessing his people continues even after the collapse of the state and monarchy. This corresponds in the personal sphere of life to the servant of the Lord in the history of the people.
It is God the Creator who in the worldwide institution of the independent court opposes the transgressor and restrains the evil. This has two sides: one of them is evident in the language of the prophets. How the suffering of the mediator is part of the new context of God's mercy beyond judgment, we will discuss next.
The way of promise through the Old Testament is the strongest expression of continuity in the history of the people of God. It is intimately connected with the history of the people of God and can only be understood in this context. First, it is reported that the Server's suffering does not end in the abyss of death.
He is a Servant in the order of the servants of God, his suffering is the suffering and death of the mediator.
The Response in Words I. The Praise of God
It is a reaction to experiences gained outside the church service in the daily life of the individual and society. 5. The simplest form of praise to God that speaks of an act of God is that of the exclamations we meet in the historical books. The same structure is somewhat expanded in the people's hymns of praise (Ps. 124; 129).
It is one of the most fixed forms of speech in the Old Testament.?t. This is the reason why a theology of the Old Testament must be characterized by verbs. Here reference must be made to the relationship of the praise of God in the Old Testament to faith in the New.
Understood in this way, the structure of the Sorrowful Psalm is one of the strongest witnesses of the experience of God's action in the Old Testament. The history of Lamentations and the history of God's messengers meet in Jeremiah's Lamentations.
The Response in Action
However, all this simply corresponds to the situation in the Old Testament itself: only in the Sinai account of the Decalogue does the word of God come directly from the mountain of God to Israel; and the decalogue in Deuteronomy 5 is definitively placed before the laws that follow in chapters 12-26. It was not until the late post-exilic period that a comprehensive concept of law emerged that subordinated the commandment to the law. It is on the basis of the instructions and commandments of God that one can act.
The readiness of the congregation gathered at the service to listen to the word of God is related to this silence. The importance of worship in Israel lies in its function as the focal point of people's lives. The blessing is essential for the daily life of the community gathered for worship.
Only in this way can worship be the center of the whole life of the people. Since we are concerned with the relationship of the entire Old Testament to Christ, we must start from the context of the Old Testament as a whole, i.e.
The Historical Books and Christ 1. The Saving God and the History of the Saved People
Therefore, God himself in the New Testament remains the savior from the physical threat of death, as the Gospel accounts show. In the Old Testament, God's act of salvation inaugurates the history of a nation that, from the possession of the land to its collapse, is based on political-military power, as one nation among others. But the historical books of the Old Testament do not limit the history of God's people to the period of their existence as a state.
The history of God's people is rooted in the history of mankind and in the history of the world (Gen. l-l l), from creation to the end of the world. The history of God's people in both the Old and the New Testament is related to the history of the world and of humanity. God's message of salvation at the beginning of the Old as well as of the New Covenant sets his people in motion as the "wandering.
In the Old Testament, the transmission of the tradition of wandering in the wilderness was intended to leave open the possibility of a new vocation outside the settled life. A conscious association of events with constants is revealed in the message of Jesus.
The Prophetic Message and Christ
The birth of the child is a sign that is supposed to prove the Completion of this notification. A distant hint of Christ can be found in those oracles of salvation that announce something new that extends beyond the history of God's people in the Old Testament. In another way, Jeremiah 3 1:3 l-34 tells beyond the history of the people of the Old Covenant: God declares that he.
Nevertheless, neither of these two passages acts as a direct announcement of the coming of Christ. The Songs of the Suffering Servant in Deutero-Isaiah refer more directly to Jesus of Nazareth than the Messianic prophecies. Christ and the History of the Promise in the Old Testament The main focus of the relationship between the prophecy of redemption and Jesus Christ lies in the history of the promise as a whole, not in individual statements that refer or do not refer to Christ.
The path of promise through the Old Testament begins with the promises to the patriarchs16 and continues with the oracles of salvation spoken by the prophets, known and unknown, during the exile and later (see Chapter IV). The junction between the Old Testament prophecy of promise and the prophecy of judgment is the prophecy of Deutero-Isaiah, who is himself a prophet of salvation, but can only be understood in the line of judgment prophecy before him.
Christ and the Response of God’s People
- What Does the Old Testament Say About God?
- The Blessing God aud Creation
- God’s Judgment and God’s Mercy
- The Response
- The Old Testament and Jesus Christ
This equivalence confirms that in the Old Testament as in the New God's redemptive action receives the same response. There is not a single context in the Old Testament in which the law is shown as a means of salvation. 23 The existence of God's people rests both in the Old and in the New on God's redemptive act; and likewise in both cases I command obedience.
In the story told by the Old Testament can be seen a direction towards a goal that shows what the New Testament says about Christ. In the light of Christ a Yes and Amen is said to the Old Testament as the way that leads to this goal. English translation: “The Kerygma of the Deuteronomic History Work” in The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions, ed.
The oneness of God is not an eternal doctrine in the Old Testament; the general concept of monotheism is not sufficient to explain it. The fact that God is one is expressed in the Old Testament in different ways at different times.
CLAUS WESTERMANN
WHAT DOES THE OLD TESTAMENT
SAY ABOUT GOD ?
