MetaCatholic

John Hobbins has encouraged me to comment on his responses to a Bible meme he really doesn’t like. His three responses are here, here and here, getting progressively more focussed onto the relationship between the covenants and their respective scriptural testimonies. He blames Peter Kirk for what he calls an “appallingly superficial” meme. If he read here more assiduously, he would have seen that I’d tagged him more than a week earlier with the same meme, and the prophetic comment “I tag John Hobbins (who will probably dislike some of these questions even more than I do)” Anyway, enough with the introductory waffle and down to the meat.

John’s starting place is not, I think, quite the same as mine. His favoured Bible translation (at least for the purposes of this meme) is, he claims (with reading age qualifications), the NJPSV. But this – quite reasonable and unexceptionally for a Jewish translation – is not a Bible in Christian terms, rather it is a part Bible. This is related to why questions two and eight are so annoying:

2. [Do you prefer the] Old or New Testament?

8. [Do you prefer] Moses or Paul?

John rephrases the questions as follows:

2. In what sense is the Old Testament abrogated by the New, and in what sense is it not? (The main subject of his second post)

8. In what sense does Paul set the law of Moses aside, and in what sense does he retain it? (The subject of his third post)

This is in line, I think, with the way John selects his favoured translation as one which contains the Hebrew Scriptures only, but it is also in line with the phrasing of the question. The discussion continues from the starting point of two separate things, Old and New, Moses and Paul — the latter contrast surely driven by a Lutheran (and somewhat mistaken in its reading of Paul) contrast between Law and Gospel. This is, I think, misleading. The Old and New Testaments are not opposed in this way; neither are Moses and Paul. In a sense (although this is not exact) the New Testament is opposed to Mishnah and Talmud as a commentary on the Scriptures and a guide to reading them rightly. It is in a unity with the Old Testament, not a disjunction. Paul is, even when he disputed the role and place of Torah, an interpreter of Moses, not an opponent. I start my thinking from the base in this historical perspective, that the New Testament begins life as the interpretation of the Scriptures. Formally and liturgically there are significant differences in the status of New Testament and Talmud. Practically the differences are far fewer.

In this context it is not only that word “or” that points to a false antithesis, but also words from the Christian tradition like “abrogate” and “set aside”. A promise that has been kept is not set aside, but after it has been kept it functions differently. A signpost that leads you to a destination is not abrogated when you get there, but you no longer look for it in the same way.

In some ways I can find myself agreeing with both Michael Bird’s as well as John’s rewritten summary of Paul. It is a question of perspective. When Paul is faced with those who oppose Torah to Messiah, he is derogatory indeed, because Torah taken like this is dragged away from the service of God and ultimately an idol — one that carries its own curse against the idolaters and those who disobey God. When, however, he is talking to his converts, or thinking out loud to himself, or praising God, Torah is refracted through Christ in whose shape it is formed and truly represents the wisdom of God.

(Oh yes, and I’ve oversimplified as well.)