New Testament

There is a question, of course, whether or not the New Testament contains a theology - that question is dealt with in one of the early chapters of this book. Many scholars deny that there is a New Testament theology; others take it for granted. The term "New Testament thought" does not settle the controversy but only draws a larger circle to embrace the whole disputed area. Even if there is no New Testament theology, the thought of the New Testament is certainly moving in the direction of theology, and its first efforts in that direction are profoundly interesting as well as of profound importance for the whole later development. Much of the thought of the New Testament is concerned with the interpretation of the Old. Much of it is, we might say, artistic rather than speculative - as the New Testament writers search through the Old Testament for answers to their questions, and come upon "Christ in the Old Testament" in most unexpected places.

The thought of the New Testament is religious, from beginning to end. There are no "secular" books in the New Testament canon, as there are in the Old Testament ( Ruth, Song of Solomon, Esther, for example - though these books have a religious-nationalistic relevance), nor are there any secular passages in the New Testament books. A high seriousness pervades the whole volume, a solemnity of tone, an austere beauty of religious devotion, which, by a purely literary test, is rarely reached elsewhere in the world's religious literature.

Christianity came into the world with a sacred book already provided; all it needed to do was interpret it - and supplement it with its own writings, the books of the New Testament.The pattern of religious thought taken for granted in the New Testament is still that of the Old - with modifications. Quite distinctly from the patterns of other religions (Hinduism, for example, or Greek religion, or ancient Babylonian or Egyptian), the Old Testament pattern may be summed up briefly under a very few headings.

Just as in the Old Testament the bare facts or events of history were more or less the same as those found elsewhere in the world's life - for example, God had called other nations from afar and settled them in their homelands, even as he had called the Israelites out of Egypt and located them in Palestine - so in the New Testament it is not some startling difference between the gospel story and all others that gives it uniqueness, but its divine significance. God was using this method for purposes which men could at first sense only dimly, but its significance grew upon them as they contemplated the fact and began to see its relation to other facts, and found that somehow it was related to human sin and divine forgiveness, to the further realization of God's purposes for the world and the final coming of his kingdom.

From this point of view, then, the thought of the New Testament is essentially a continuation and further development of the thought of the Old Testament, with a new orientation and emphasis which were completely to distinguish it from the contemporary but divergent development of rabbinic Judaism. For a rounded view it is necessary to take into account the Old Testament thought on every point. The Old Testament is even more important than the apocalyptic literature, important as that is, though some scholars at the present time incline to rate the book of Enoch, for example, as more significant for the New Testament than anything in the old canonical scriptures.

In brief, what we call New Testament theology is chiefly derived from the Old Testament as read and interpreted by the early Christians. The other factors, drawn from their own religious experience and their reflections upon it, affected the interpretation, not the data.