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“Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament” by Christopher Wright: A Guest Post by Leslie Keeney

By Anita Mathias

Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament

Why does a particular book “speak” to one person and not another? I suspect that it is often just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Or rather reading the right book during the right stage of one’s life. 


Christopher Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament is not particularly well-known, nor was it ever the “must-read” book of the season, but it spoke to me at a time when I desperately needed—in a “dark night of the soul” kind of way—a new way of understanding the Bible.

You see, I was “saved” in a traditional evangelical church in the early 1980s. Essentially what this meant was that I had walked the “aisle” during an alter call and promised to give up drinking. Although the Christians there were faithful, loving, and filled with good intentions, they viewed the Bible very much as an “instruction manual”—a kind of flattened-out guidebook for getting to heaven. The Old Testament, especially, was a foreign land into which few ever ventured. We were, after all, already saved. What was the point?
Many years later, God decided that it would be a good idea to drag me kicking and screaming into Seminary. Oddly, what terrified me most was not being a woman in a sea of complementarian men, but that after all those years of loving and following Jesus, I might discover that the Bible was what I had always secretly suspected it was—a confusing collection of stories that meant whatever the pastor said it meant.
It was with much fear and trepidation that I started my first class. One of the course requirements was a “scholarly” review of Christopher Wright’s Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. While I did get an “A” on the paper, I also walked away with a lot more. In just 250 pages, Wright managed to undo all those years of bad exegesis and blow the locks off the doors of the Old Testament. Not bad for an unimpressive little paperback.
Wright’s thesis, while profound, is also fairly straightforward:
“The Old Testament tells the story which Jesus completed. It declares the promise which he fulfilled. It provides the pictures and models which shaped His identity. It programmes a mission which he accepted and passed on. It teaches a moral orientation to God and the world which He endorsed, sharpened, and laid as the foundation for obedient discipleship.”
Each of these five themes–“story,” “promise,” identity,” “mission,” and “values”–are explored in a separate chapter of the book.  And although there is something valuable in each and every chapter, it is the first, seemingly most arcane section about Jesus and the Old Testament Story, that drastically impacted how I read the Bible. It is this chapter that I think should be copied and handed out to every Bible Study in North America (I assume that I could say the same about the UK, but I don’t want to generalize).
Here in 2012, the idea that “the Old Testament tells the story that Jesus completes” is finally beginning to gain some ground among traditional evangelical churches, but when I first read this 10 years ago, it was explosive stuff. What Wright manages to explain in his uncomplicated, winsome prose is that the Old Testament matters, not just as a kind of “foreshadowing” of Christ, but as the story that Jesus resolves. He succeeds in shattering the “instruction manual” metaphor without ever mentioning it by reframing the Old Testament as the rising action of God’s story of redemption. In doing this, Wright also convinces us that the plot of the Old Testament—its action, conflicts, and themes—matter. The Old Testament matters in the same way the first six books of Harry Potter matter—because without them the end doesn’t make sense.
Reading the Old Testament this way, says Wright, has several effects. First, it means that “whatever significance a particular event had in terms of Israel’s own experience of God…is affirmed and validated. ‘What it meant for Israel’ does not just evaporate in a haze of spiritualization when we reach the New Testament.” Another advantage of this paradigm is that it helps us understand the full significance and brilliant complexity of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. No longer can the reader assume that “taking away my sins” was the only thing Jesus had on his mind.
Finally, says Wright, understanding how Jesus completes the Old Testament can deepen our understanding of the original events, providing “additional levels of significance in the light of the end of the story.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but what Wright does here is provide the foundation for a Christocentric hermeneutic that both values the Old Testament as the historic record of God’s interaction with Israel and interprets that story through the lens of the gospel.
It is this hermeneutic that has transformed not only how I read the Bible, but how I view the world. It is the realization that knowing the end of the story changes how we understand the beginning that started me on the path toward narrative theology. It is this insight that drastically changed how I teach the Bible, read novels—even how I watch TV. (To see a perfect example of this, click here) 
I recommend this book to anyone who loves Jesus, but is afraid to look too closely at the Bible. I recommend it to anyone who “gets” the New Testament but just can’t figure out what to do with the Old. I recommend it to anyone who is so content with the idea that Jesus’ primary purpose in dying was to save them from their sins that they never venture any further inside the heart of God.

*******
Leslie Keeney
Leslie Keeney is getting her Masters of Philosophical Studies at Liberty University. She is interested in moral & imaginative apologetics, and how myth, narrative, and pop culture can reveal the best of man’s universal moral intuition. (Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means. Sometime she doesn’t either!) Her current project involves trying to figure out how narrative theology and a Christocentric hermeneutic might fit together to provide way of reading the Bible that’s both faithful to its purpose and helpful for the church.


She blogs at www.theruthlessmonk.com. Follow her on Twitter @lckeeneyMonk

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Comments

  1. Leslie says

    March 16, 2012 at 8:09 pm

    Claudia,

    I found two isbn numbers on amazon:

    ISBN-10: 0830816933
    ISBN-13: 978-0830816934

    I hope one of these works for you.

    Leslie

  2. Claudia says

    March 16, 2012 at 6:04 am

    This sounds like a book I'd like to read, but my local library doesn't appear to have a copy. Do you have an ISBN number or similar that I can try to order it with?

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anita.mathias

Writer, Blogger, Reader, Mum. Christian. Instaing Oxford, travel, gardens and healthy meals. Oxford English alum. Writing memoir. Lives in Oxford, UK

Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford # Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford #walking #tranquility #naturephotography #nature
So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And h So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And here we are at one of the world’s most famous and easily recognisable sites.
#stonehenge #travel #england #prehistoric England #family #druids
And I’ve blogged https://anitamathias.com/2020/09/13/on-not-wasting-a-desert-experience/
So, after Paul the Apostle's lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us...
And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart.  Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper. 
England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.
A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years... John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them. 
Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection
Let's use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray. 
And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty or vocation
So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I have totally sunk into the rhythm of it, and have got quiet, very quiet, the quietest spell of time I have had as an adult.
I like it. I will find going back to the sometimes frenetic merry-go-round of my old life rather hard. Well, I doubt I will go back to it. I will prune some activities, and generally live more intentionally and mindfully.
I have started blocking internet of my phone and laptop for longer periods of time, and that has brought a lot of internal quiet and peace.
Some of the things I have enjoyed during lockdown have been my daily long walks, and gardening. Well, and reading and working on a longer piece of work.
Here are some images from my walks.
And if you missed it, a blog about maintaining peace in the middle of the storm of a global pandemic
https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/  #walking #contemplating #beauty #oxford #pandemic
A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine. A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine.  We can maintain a mind of life and peace during this period of lockdown by being mindful of our minds, and regulating them through meditation; being mindful of our bodies and keeping them happy by exercise and yoga; and being mindful of our emotions in this uncertain time, and trusting God who remains in charge. A new blog on maintaining a mind of life and peace during lockdown https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/
In the days when one could still travel, i.e. Janu In the days when one could still travel, i.e. January 2020, which seems like another life, all four of us spent 10 days in Malta. I unplugged, and logged off social media, so here are some belated iphone photos of a day in Valetta.
Today, of course, there’s a lockdown, and the country’s leader is in intensive care.
When the world is too much with us, and the news stresses us, moving one’s body, as in yoga or walking, calms the mind. I am doing some Yoga with Adriene, and again seeing the similarities between the practice of Yoga and the practice of following Christ.
https://anitamathias.com/2020/04/06/on-yoga-and-following-jesus/
#valleta #valletamalta #travel #travelgram #uncagedbird
Images from some recent walks in Oxford. I am copi Images from some recent walks in Oxford.
I am coping with lockdown by really, really enjoying my daily 4 mile walk. By savouring the peace of wild things. By trusting that God will bring good out of this. With a bit of yoga, and weights. And by working a fair amount in my garden. And reading.
How are you doing?
#oxford #oxfordinlockdown #lockdown #walk #lockdownwalks #peace #beauty #happiness #joy #thepeaceofwildthings
Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social d Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social distancing. The first two are my own garden.  And I’ve https://anitamathias.com/2020/03/28/silver-and-gold-linings-in-the-storm-clouds-of-coronavirus/ #corona #socialdistancing #silverlinings #silence #solitude #peace
Trust: A Message of Christmas He came to earth in Trust: A Message of Christmas  He came to earth in a  splash of energy
And gentleness and humility.
That homeless baby in the barn
Would be the lynchpin on which history would ever after turn
Who would have thought it?
But perhaps those attuned to God’s way of surprises would not be surprised.
He was already at the centre of all things, connecting all things. * * *
Augustus Caesar issued a decree which brought him to Bethlehem,
The oppressions of colonialism and conquest brought the Messiah exactly where he was meant to be, the place prophesied eight hundred years before his birth by the Prophet Micah.
And he was already redeeming all things. The shame of unwed motherhood; the powerlessness of poverty.
He was born among animals in a barn, animals enjoying the sweetness of life, animals he created, animals precious to him.
For he created all things, and in him all things hold together
Including stars in the sky, of which a new one heralded his birth
Drawing astronomers to him.
And drawing him to the attention of an angry King
As angelic song drew shepherds to him.
An Emperor, a King, scholars, shepherds, angels, animals, stars, an unwed mother
All things in heaven and earth connected
By a homeless baby
The still point on which the world still turns. The powerful centre. The only true power.
The One who makes connections. * * *
And there is no end to the wisdom, the crystal glints of the Message that birth brings.
To me, today, it says, “Fear not, trust me, I will make a way.” The baby lay gentle in the barn
And God arranges for new stars, angelic song, wise visitors with needed finances for his sustenance in the swiftly-coming exile, shepherds to underline the anointing and reassure his parents. “Trust me in your dilemmas,” the baby still says, “I will make a way. I will show it to you.” Happy Christmas everyone.  https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/24/trust-a-message-of-christmas/ #christmas #gemalderieberlin #trust #godwillmakeaway
Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Gratitude journal, habit tracker, food and exercise journal, bullet journal, with time sheets, goal sheets and a Planner. Everything you’d like to track.  Here’s a post about it with ISBNs https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/23/life-changing-journalling/. Check it out. I hope you and your kids like it!
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