OT + NT = ❤️

In the first centuries after Jesus, Christians were challenged about their relationship to the faith of the Jews, and part of that challenge pertained to the Jews’ Bible. Marcion (ca. 85 - ca. 160) thought that belief in Christ was belief in a different God from the Jews’. He made a Bible of some of the letters of St. Paul and an edited version of St. Luke’s Gospel: no Old Testament for Marcion!

In the early 1800s Thomas Jefferson created (by cutting and gluing passages from the Gospels) a volume that is commonly known as “Jefferson’s Bible.” He excised all miraculous elements, leaving only Jesus’ teaching; one senses here a drive to get to the pure heart of the gospel, to strip away accretions of superstition and supernaturalism. Significantly, the genealogy of Jesus is absent also.

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If Thomas Jefferson had attended an Anglican or Episcopal church in the colonies or the new United States, he would have found (most likely) a service of Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer. In either of these services, he would have heard two scripture readings, first from the Old Testament, then from the New. These readings were often full chapters or significant parts of them. If he attended day after day, he would have heard continuations of the readings previously heard. This pattern of Morning and Evening Prayer, daily throughout the year, was the heart of Anglican worship from the first Book of Common Prayer (1549), carried to this continent, and perpetuated in the Prayer Books of the Episcopal Church to this day. 

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What do Episcopalians/Anglicans believe about the Bible? You can find authoritative statements, at the highest level, that we believe the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God written and that they contain everything necessary to salvation. We also believe that the Bible reveals its deep truths when we take it as a whole; thus, no part is to be interpreted in a way that is repugnant to another part.

These beliefs are built into the manner of worship. We believe that Scripture can be heard and understood when read in a congregation without mediation or interpretation: that is, it can be read in worship without needing a sermon. God truly works through his written Word to speak to those who hear it. Some of us might think it expedient to have a brief comment on the Scriptures that have been read, but that is a judgment to be based on the congregation at hand.

Something else is essential: both Old and New Testaments need to be read, and in the daily worship of the church, they need to be read together in a sort of stereo. The weekly worship of the church is, by contrast, selective and intentional. Often on Sundays there is an Old Testament reading that connects with the Gospel (as, for instance, last Sunday: Jonah’s resentful grumbling over Ninevah’s being spared was like the grumbling of the workers who got the same wage for working all day as those who worked for a single hour). Not so with the Anglican day-to-day: we just go along, day after day, Old and New Testament readings one after the other. Recently, for instance, 2 Kings has been read while we progress through 1 Corinthians. There is no immediately obvious connection of those two books or the particular passages read (in stereo) on a particular day. But there is an implicit conviction that they do not contradict each other.

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This is much more important than many think: if there are two readings at Morning or Evening Prayer, the first is always to be from the Old Testament! Although the 1979 Prayer Book allows there to be just one reading, it is clear (see page 934) that if two are desired, “the first is always from the Old Testament (or the Apocrypha).” That word “always” should settle the matter. 

It seems to me it doesn’t just break a rule to have two New Testament readings (at Morning Prayer, say) and no Old Testament reading. It is to break with a fundamental claim of Anglican tradition. The unity of the Bible is something we need to wrestle with, something one wishes Mr. Jefferson had himself pondered. For you cannot understand Jesus without his geneology. There is no church without Israel. The Old and New Testaments are, as it were, married to each other.

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Out & About. At Holy Trinity Church in Bonham, Texas, on Thursday, October 5, at 5:30 p.m., I will launch a study of my little book, A Post-Covid Catechesis. I will also join them at the end of their study, on November 30. Bonham is a gem, worth a visit—feel free to join us. (They’re on Star Street, so I suppose you just set your driving app to follow the star?)

On Sunday, October 8, I will lead the Good Books & Good Talk seminar in a discussion of Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. Anyone who reads the novel is welcome to the conversation: at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas from 5 to 6:30 p.m. And if you aren’t able to read it, you’re still welcome to come and listen.

And the next Sunday, October 15, also at 5 p.m., I will offer the fall theology lecture, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. My topic is “Divine Distinctions.” You can come for the lecture—or for the Q&A—or for the reception (or any combination of the foregoing)!


Good

When I was a new priest, I was stationed in the Hudson Valley of New York, a couple of thousand miles away from my sponsoring diocese (Rio Grande). So there was a priest back home who was assigned to keep up with me. He phoned one day and asked how I was doing.

As it happens, yours truly had been taught in grade school that it is wrong to say, “I am good,” since “good” is an adjective and what one needs is an adverb, a word that tells how you are doing, not what you are. My teachers had said that the correct answer is, “I’m well, thank you.” In New Mexico, I had noticed people saying, “I’m fine, thanks,” which does the same work, “fine” being an adverb also.

But in those days, New Yorkers talked differently. They said, “I’m good.” In those days this was (it seemed to me) a regional difference, although now it’s everywhere. I was learning how to talk (and live) like a New Yorker. So I told him on the phone, “I’m good.”

Without missing a beat he replied: “No one is good but God alone.” He chuckled over the line—he was that way, sharp and witty but also friendly. I could imagine the smile on his face as he said it. The line, of course, is Jesus’, replying to people who had addressed him as “good teacher.” But this experienced New Mexican priest was (as I like to say) correcting at once both my grammar and my theology. I might be doing well, but only God is truly good.

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 These thoughts recently recurred to me. I was thinking of that lovely, simple hymn, “There is a green hill far away,” which is about Jesus’ death on the cross. One stanza says: “There was no other good enough.” Jesus was good in every respect: he was the only truly good human being. He was truly, fully human—no one else was. “Good” applied to him as an adjective in truth: he was just what a human being should be.

All the rest of humanity falls short. We are not truly or fully human (which is what we mean when we say we are sinners: sin is a subtraction from our humanity). Only Jesus is good enough: only he is fully human, a truly good human being.

The hymn goes on to declare: “He died to make us good.” Jesus died so that sin and its effects might be taken away from us, which is to say, he died so that we ourselves might become fully human. To be fully human is to be a good human being. He died to make us good.

All of which means: if someone asks you how you’re doing, and you think of yourself as living in Christ, if you think of yourself as you will be when salvation is consummated for you and for all who are in Jesus, then it is correct to say, “I’m good.”

Jesus died to make us good.

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Out & About. At the lovely Holy Trinity Church in Bonham, Texas, on Thursday, October 5, at 5:30 p.m., I will launch a study of my little book, A Post-Covid Catechesis. I will also join them at the end of their study, on November 30. Bonham is a gem, worth a visit—feel free to join us.

On Sunday, October 8, I will lead the Good Books & Good Talk seminar in a discussion of Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. Anyone who reads the novel is welcome to the conversation: at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas from 5 to 6:30 p.m. And if you aren’t able to read it, you’re still welcome to come and listen.

 And the next Sunday, October 15, also at 5 p.m., I will offer the fall theology lecture, at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. My topic is “Divine Distinctions.” You can come for the lecture—or for the Q&A—or for the reception (or any combination of the foregoing)!


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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: