The second post relates Minear’s thought in understanding the particular imagery associating the church with the People of God (Israel) to the universal imagery of the New Creation, describing a relation of unity-in-distinction that you’re both trying to talk out here.

The difference is, as I think we’d both agree, that in the New Covenant, Jesus definitively fulfills the divine mandate. By grace, then, Israel, and then the Gentiles, are allowed to partake of his righteousness. Thanks be to God.

The first thing I see then is that the New Covenant is superior, founded on promises that transcend the Old. Clearly, Jesus goes beyond the old in a number of ways. However, this does not necessarily make the old “imperfect,” which would seem to me to require at least one of three things to be true: (1) God was in error in the old; (2) God deliberately set up Israel to fail; or (3) the Old Testament is simply wrong about God. None of those is acceptable to me, which is why I’m such a stickler on this point.

Torah is not the whole substance of the Sinaitic Covenant (though it is the core); covenant also includes the people’s ratification, their commitment to follow. Therefore, the old covenant is flawed if and when the people don’t follow it. That’s why much attention is spent in the rest of Hebrews 8 saying how the new covenant will be bound in such a way that the people will follow it.

I, too, have appreciated and benefited from our discussion. Thanks.

If we are talking about the same God operating in the OT as the NT – and this is my assumption, though I’m not sure all of us agree on that point, or what it means (“bugger Marcionism” comes to mind) – then we can’t say that this God did something imperfect in the OT that only gets perfected in the NT. There has to be some other dimension involved.

And yes, the book of Hebrews should be included in the discussion, despite its rather strident supersessionist tendencies (which you say you want to avoid, and I concur with you). But we should be clear what Hebrews is saying. Hebrews 8 does not say the old covenant was inferior wrt its author or its content, but merely because it was not followed. Covenant consists not only of Torah, but of the agreement of the people to follow it. In that sense (Heb. 8:9), and that sense only, did it pass away. Yet even there, we cannot safely say “pass away” given that Jesus himself said it wouldn’t except in his own fulfillment of it, which means it rather mattered for him. Also, Hebrews 8-9 is talking about covenant with…wait for it…Israel, which according to the NT is only subsequently opened to the rest of humanity (though that was, of course, always the intent). If so, then how does that context not matter, or how would we not see continuity between the OT and NT in this regard?

I hadn’t cited passages pointing to the continuity, because the entire context of the gospel and several epistles is saturated with it. Also, I thought you had read Lohfink, which would highlight many of them, as does Bader-Saye. But we could consider things like the Magnificat or other pre-birth/birth narratives, or we could point to the fact that while Jesus is certainly as definitive as you say, he wasn’t crucified only as the singularly unique irruption of God into the world, but also as “King of the Jews.” Or we could point to the incredibly important 1 Pet 2:8-9, which as you know appropriates for the church Israel’s own calling in Exod 19. Of course, I can also provide some standalone verses, though inevitably they would be perceived as prooftexting: John 4:22 – “Salvation is from the Jews”; or Romans 9, and especially 9:6 – “It is not as though God’s word had failed.” The church is grafted onto Israel, and there would be no logic to that whatsoever if there were no continuity, or if such continuity didn’t matter for understanding Jesus. Certainly, the Old Testament must be read in light of the new, but the New is unintelligible without the Old.

These are hints at a much broader thrust of continuity between the testaments. This means there’s a context involved, a context which defines the Son-as-incarnated. But it is a context which God initiated out of free, loving choice, and entered into from the same. Dismissing that is, in my mind, an injustice to God’s own initiative.

Again, forgive me if I seemed to have caused all this trouble over nothing, and I do really agree with the larger point of this post. I’m sure we generally agree for the most part. But it reminded me of things I find problematic here from time to time, so I thought I’d mention them. We need not belabor the point any longer. A blessed Advent to you, Halden.

However, I must say that I don’t believe I’ve said anything about the church being “incidental” or inconsequential. My point only has been that we must understand the church biblically and christologically — that is, in light of God’s prior action before which we were “no people” (1 Pet 2:10) and on which everything depends.

Again, you seem to read too much into my comments. I didn’t say Israel and the church were necessary to God’s work of redemption, though I think in the very qualified way Lohfink presents it (where they are necessary as a function of God’s free, uninhibited choosing and initiation), they are. I said they’re a “necessary part of the picture,” meaning they can’t be made incidental, nor can the fact that God has chosen to use them as integral to his redemptive plan be dismissed.

But it is absolutely essential to recognize that neither Israel or the church can ever, biblically, be construed as “necessary” to God’s work of redemption. Otherwise grace is not grace. If the church or Israel is in any way necessary, their life is not longer gift.

This is not to “sever” anything. It is only to understand the church rightly in light of the biblical story. It is to understand the church as the community of those who have been saved completely from beyond themselves, by God’s own radical action to which we contribute nothing.

This does not render church, community, or common life unimportant unless we only understand importance to mean nothing less than “that upon which God depends.” Nothing is severed here it is merely placed in proper biblical and Christological context which does not demand that the church take on an importance that only Christ can have if we are to be true to the faith we confess.

I’d also say that the book of Hebrews needs to be part of this discussion. No amount of hermeneutical gymnastics can make that book be read as “suggesting that that which Yahweh did in Israel passed away, i.e., was imperfect and lacking” — that’s the exact argument of the entire book, that the old covenant was inferior and, in Christ has passed away (see Heb 8-9; esp 8:7;13).

Also, you’ve — again — simply re-asserted that I “dissociate” Jesus from Israel, but you haven’t shown me how I have supposedly done so, nor have you engaged in any of the Scriptural discussion I as I have tried to do for you. You simply continue to assert “continuity” as if it were a self-positing, self-evident criterion to which we must all, prima facie adhere. However, I’m more interested in what the NT itself has to say before positing “continuity” as a hermeneutical determinate to be imposed on the text. On that point, the point of actual discussion of the NT, you haven’t been willing to enter into the discussion.

But to be clear, I’m not saying that God’s action in Israel is somehow at odds with God’s action in Jesus, only that God’s action in Jesus has an utterly singular quality that determines all that came before and comes after in an utterly irreducible way.

I don’t think I’ve elided divine and human action in the least (as you say, “I’d have to be convinced”), and as I’ve said, if one properly acknowledges the radical nature of Yahweh’s activity in and through Israel in the OT, one cannot help but see the continuity of God’s initiation and expectations for human response.

All I can say to the last part of your post here is that I see you going too far in the other direction, seeming sometimes to make Christ so singular that a people is not even a necessary part of the picture. Not necessary because God inherently needs it, but because God has chosen to work that way, in continuity with God’s character. God’s people, in Israel and the Church (and yes, there are obvious ways in which they belong together, in addition to the ways they substantively differ), have always been part and parcel of God’s work of redemption. To sever them from that is to extract Christ from his proper context, i.e., a context of his own making.

But that’s really beside the point. The fact that “anyone” is a new creation in Christ does not suggest that Jesus is in discontinuity with Israel. You’re conflating contexts here. Moreover, you run the danger of suggesting that that which Yahweh did in Israel passed away, i.e., was imperfect and lacking. Yet, the imperfection of the old covenant was on Israel’s part, not Yahweh’s, as I’m sure you’d agree. If what Yahweh did was perfect, then it stands to reason that it would continue in some form.

I think you have indeed disassociated Jesus from Israel to a greater degree than appropriate (“greater,” since certain discontinuity, as I’ve said, is both necessary and important). Your commitment to the radical nature of what God does in Christ is commendable, and I’ve appreciated it, to be sure. But here and elsewhere, it tends to be rather dismissive of the radical nature of what God did with Israel in the OT, a radicality that is actually in considerable continuity with Jesus. That’s my main problem.