Who's Afraid of the Old Testament God?. Alden L Thompson
Sinai, then the God of Sinai is indeed in trouble—as well as anyone who attempts to proclaim that both revelations are part of the Christian faith.
The second way of looking at “better” is to see it simply as the comparative of “good”; the revelation at Mount Sinai was good, and the revelation in Jesus Christ was “better.” Maybe we could even add the superlative: personal reunion with God in his kingdom will be “best.” If we can take such an approach to the two historical revelations of God, then there is no need to reject the first revelation; rather we may see it as a major step in God’s plan of restoring humanity, and it is a good step at that. In fact, the Sinai revelation was precisely what God’s people needed at that time.
One illustration that has helped me to visualize the relationship between “better” and “good” has to do with my boyhood experience with the family cars. It fell to my lot to keep the “buggy,” as we affectionately dubbed it, clean and polished. Over the weeks and months I became quite good friends with the car. I knew each scratch and chip and did my best to touch them up or to polish them out. This personal friendship with the car became a problem only when it finally became evident that a new and better car was needed. I well remember when we sold our beloved little 1950 Chevrolet. It had been a good car, even though we had moved on to something better—a 1956 Ford. Thereafter I would occasionally catch a glimpse of the Chevy, now under the care of its new owners. A peculiar sensation of excitement and disappointment would strike me: “There’s our old car! Oh, but it’s not ours any more!” Perhaps those feelings explain why that next car, the '56 Ford, is still in the family. Its finely polished, deep metallic green is still a sight to warm the heart. Newer and better cars have come and gone, but that old one is still “good.” It doesn’t have air conditioning, something very helpful in the desert regions of the West, and we probably wouldn’t take it on a long trip, but it was and is a good car. When we first bought it, it was just what the family needed and even now is a source of warm memories—as well as quite an adequate vehicle for short journeys.
I look on the relationship between Mount Sinai and Jesus Christ in a very similar way. I find the revelation of God in Christ a clearer and better revelation, but I certainly need not deny the marvelous experience that God gave to his people at Mount Sinai. It was just what they needed and it was good. Even today I can relive that experience and be blessed. The fullness of the revelation in Jesus can be joyfully received as Part Two of God’s great drama without detracting in the slightest from the marvels of Part One as described in the Old Testament. With any good book it is possible to hasten ahead and read the conclusion without ever bothering with what precedes. If we do that with our Bibles, however, we are missing a real treat and we are letting the New Testament get in the way of the Old. Yes, the New Testament revelation of God is clearer and therefore in some ways better. But if we neglect the Old in favor of the New, we shall never really experience that peculiar kind of joy that comes from experiencing the movement of God’s great plan from “good” to “better”—and to “best.”
TWO APPROACHES TO THE OLD TESTAMENT: THE HIGH ROAD AND THE LOW ROAD
Another way in which the New Testament often gets in the way of the Old is also illustrated by the book of Hebrews. In particular, I am thinking of the famous “faith” chapter, Hebrews 11. If you read that chapter carefully and compare the stories there with the first accounts told in the Old Testament, you will notice a fascinating tendency in Hebrews to tell the stories in such a way that God’s men of ages past are all seen to be great men of faith. Perhaps it would not be too far amiss to compare what is happening in that list of stories to what often takes place at a funeral. Regardless of what kind of life a person has lived, the official memorial service remembers only the good. The deceased may have been a real villain, but you couldn’t guess that from what is said in public! Hebrews 11 doesn’t contain anything quite that extreme, but certainly the highlights of faith tend to exclude those less than complimentary features of the original Old Testament stories. Let’s note just a few examples.
The Genesis picture of Abraham is a man of faith—but one whose convictions often wavered when put to the test. His halftruths to Pharaoh about Sarah showed not only his lack of faith in God, but also his selfishness and lack of genuine respect for his wife (Gen. 12:1-20). Likewise, when he decided that Hagar could bear the child of promise (Gen. 16), he betrayed an uncertain faith. To be sure, these lapses of faith can actually be encouraging to us, for here is a man with serious difficulties yet who was adjudged to be faithful (Heb. 11:8-19). The point that I want to make, however, is that the original Old Testament story is essential if one is to reap maximum benefit from the story in Hebrews. Hebrews 11 taken by itself is a fine story, but taken alongside the Old Testament story it becomes superb.
The mention of Sarah and of Moses in Hebrews 11 provides further examples of a partial telling of the Old Testament story. Hebrews 11:11 says that “by faith” Sarah conceived. Would you have guessed that she actually laughed when God first made the promise to her—unless of course you had read the Old Testament story (Gen. 18:9-15)? And the contrast in Moses’ case is even sharper, for the Exodus story of the killing of the Egyptian and Moses’ flight from Pharaoh makes it quite clear that Moses fled because he was afraid (Ex. 2:14). But Hebrews 11:27 says that “by faith” he left Egypt, “not (!) being afraid” of the anger of the king. The apparent contradiction between the two stories is resolved by a clearer understanding of what “by faith” means in Hebrews 11, namely, that faith can work wonders even when the human agent does not really appear to be faithful. Yet that particular understanding of faith is possible only when one carefully compares the original Old Testament story with the interpretation of that story in Hebrews 11. Now I happen to believe that both the Old Testament and the New Testament stories have an independent value of their own and should be appreciated for their own sake, but linking the two together enhances our ability to understand God’s activities. I shall return to this point later, but now I want to note what has happened to the general interpretation of the Old Testament in view of the treatment that it receives in Hebrews 11.
Just as Hebrews 11 tends to focus on the highlights of Old Testament godliness, interpretation has tended to glorify this “royal line” of God-fearing people. Such an emphasis is valuable; in an age when heroes are characters, emphasizing their commitment, so their faithfulness, their subsequent Christian hard to come by, it is important to understand what a real hero is. Nevertheless, I remember my surprise when I actually got around to reading the Old Testament stories themselves after having heard only Christian interpretations of these stories. Some of the realistic and seamier aspects of the biblical characters came as real surprises. The horrors of polygamy didn’t really snap clear until I read the biblical edition of the story of Jacob’s family. The book of Esther is even more surprising. I had pictured her as a virtuous young lady without any taint—the feminine counterpart of Daniel. But when I actually read the biblical account, I began to realize that her standards of morality were quite different from mine. Not only was she willing to keep quiet about her convictions (Esther 2:10), but she was willing simply to be one of the girls, a part of the Persian king’s harem (Esther 2:12-18)! Daniel stood firmly for his convictions and his standards of morality line up rather well with what a modern Christian would consider appropriate. But then there is Esther …!
I began to realize that Christians have often taken a “high road” approach to the Old Testament, which, in my case at least, had left me quite unprepared for the reading of the Bible itself. Subconsciously I had formed an image of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as classic saints who could quite easily slip into twentieth century dress and, if called upon, could easily assume positions of leadership in the Christian community. I suspect that this glorified conception of Old Testament saints is at least part of the reason why many Christians tend to read interpretations and adaptations of the Old Testament instead of actually reading the Old Testament itself. The emphasis on the good qualities of biblical characters is very necessary, especially in the training of younger children, but I feel keenly about the need to prepare Christians for the actual reading of the Old Testament, and to prepare them for coming to grips with the real Old Testament stories, even though many of them are not pretty when viewed strictly from an aesthetic point of view.
I sometimes use the term “low road” to describe