Revolutionary Threads : According to the Scriptures

1 Corinthians 15:1-11, Luke 24:19-27, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 17:1-3

‘What Does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?’

The above quote is found in the works of Tertullian, an early Church Father from Carthage in Africa.¹ He had seen a trend in Christian theology to try and marry together the ideas of Greek philosophy with those contained in scripture and he wasn’t a fan. Looking through the centuries that have passed since Tertulllian asked the above question we can see that Greek philosophy and theology have become intertwined and that this has indeed caused problems.

Plato was probably the greatest Greek philosopher and lived around 2400 years ago and about 400 years before Jesus was born. He is called the father of philosophy and much of western tradition stems from his work. His writings have also survived the test of time and have allowed many traditions to read his work and understand his ideas right through to the modern day.²

To condense some of Plato’s key teaching into an extremely short and simplistic form would give us the following:

He believed that there were two worlds that of Matter and Form or Physical and Spiritual. The physical world is changeable and corruptible and the spiritual world is perfect. This is the same for human beings. We are corrupted flesh with a soul desperate to escape and be made free and perfect in the spiritual world.

You may already catch a glimpse of a common Christian theme within the above. In a Christian context it is often told like this; our aim is to leave this world and get to heaven. The physical or flesh is bad so we need to concentrate on spiritual things. Jesus died to ‘saves our souls’ so we could go to heaven when we die. Christian mission then is about telling people how to ‘save their souls’, escape this evil world and get to heaven.

Now there is truth within this explanation, but there is also Platonic influences caught up with in it. It is important that we recognise this so we can separate the wheat from the chaff and find the truth amongst that which has been distorted and second so we can try and work out a less Plato inspired understanding of the world God created, of where we are heading in God’s plan and how Jesus’ death on the cross achieved this.

What does the Bible say?

In Paul’s first letter to Corinth we again see him spelling out how we should understand the death of Jesus. In v3 he tells us that Christ died for our sins ‘according to the scriptures’. In Luke, as Jesus walks the road to Emmaus with the two downhearted disciples we are told that he explains why the Messiah had to die ‘staring with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.’

Again Acts gives us accounts of Philip and later Paul using the scriptures to explain the good news of Jesus of Nazareth. This is also echoed in the speeches given by Peter and Stephen as they use the stories of God’s rescuing acts to frame the death and resurrection of Jesus.

What then does Christ dying according to the scriptures mean?

Scripture Now and Then?

When we read the word ‘scripture’ in the Bible it can lead to a little confusion about what is being referred to. We speak of scripture as the whole Bible in our modern world but for the New Testament writers the scriptures only referred to the books we know as the Old Testament. The stories, poems, laws and histories we often shy away from in the books of the Old Testament are the very foundation of Peter, Paul and others’ understanding of what Jesus came to do.

According to the Scriptures

So how did the New Testament authors understand the Old Testament stories? How did they influence their understanding of what happened upon the cross and what does that tell us about the events of that first Good Friday? There is no way we can cover all of the threads that lead to the answers to these questions here but we can maybe begin to scratch the surface.

Exile

Adam and Eve are exiled from the Garden of Eden. Joseph moves his family to Egypt which soon sees the family enslaved by Pharaoh. God rescues the people from slavery but they spend another 40 years wandering the desert. Even after entering the promised land the Israelites turn to infighting and idol worship. First the north is exiled by Assyria and then the south by Babylon. Exile from God’s manifest presence in the garden, land, tabernacle and temple is an ongoing thread in the Old Testament.

Liberation

In each of the cases in which exile occurs we see linked to this the rescuing action of God. The story where this is most profoundly told is in the Exodus as God brings his people out from slavery. Liberation is a common theme weaved through the words of the prophets as they remind the people of God’s rescuing acts and assure them he will rescue them again – from Assyria, Babylon, sin and death.

Covenant

When Jesus breaks bread with his disciples before his death he invokes the language of covenant. Many have taken this new covenant as a rejection of everything that went before it instead of a fulfilling of it. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are a fulfilling of God’s covenant for not only those chosen (the Jews) but for all nations (the gentiles).

As well as these we have the themes of the suffering servant, future messiah, divine vocation, idolatry, sin, God’s presence and the passover all weaving together to bring meaning to Jesus’ death.

Questions

• Have you ever thought about what may have influenced Christianity through the ages? What influences Christianity today?
• Do you like the Old Testament or is it a group of books you avoid?
• Are there any other threads you see in the Old Testament that might help us understand why Jesus died for us?

Credits – ‘This legitimatley took…’ by Natalie Brenner under CC BY 2.0