Will there ever be another new testament?

[Dan M]

I'm not going to go into the list of things I consider crazy, or morally wrong. I am sure most are familiar with these questions. Topics such as stoning, odd rules to worship, talking snakes, people living to be hundreds of years old, basically certain scriptures if talked about practicing today most would want to put you in jail or in a mental hospital is what I am curious in finding the answers to.

When I ask these questions I always get pointed to other scriptures, why can't the scripture I ask about be talked about alone? Or I get told, at the time of the writing it was normal life, such as stoning women, so it was written that way for the times. When I am told the second answer, I immediately ask, why has Gods position changed on that particular topic?

If it is accepted that the meaning of scriptures change, and should not be taken literally because we evolved, or newer scriptures cancel out the old crazy ones. I ask one final question. Should there be another testament written for modern times?

 

[Hieronymus]

Evolved?

 

[Dan M]

Evolved?

I was making reference to laws of man evolving. Most civilizations do not stone women anymore. Science also makes us evolve. Science has forced people to interpret the bible differently.

 

[All4Christ]

I'm not going to go into the list of things I consider crazy, or morally wrong. I am sure most are familiar with these questions. Topics such as stoning, odd rules to worship, talking snakes, people living to be hundreds of years old, basically certain scriptures if talked about practicing today most would want to put you in jail or in a mental hospital is what I am curious in finding the answers to.

When I ask these questions I always get pointed to other scriptures, why can't the scripture I ask about be talked about alone? Or I get told, at the time of the writing it was normal life, such as stoning women, so it was written that way for the times. When I am told the second answer, I immediately ask, why has Gods position changed on that particular topic?

If it is accepted that the meaning of scriptures change, and should not be taken literally because we evolved, or newer scriptures cancel out the old crazy ones. I ask one final question. Should there be another testament written for modern times?

Welcome to Christian Forums and to Traditional Theology!

To answer your question, no, I do not think there should be another testament written. Why? Because the salvific plan of Jesus Christ has already been given to us.

The Old Testament tells us of the covenant of the Law before the incarnation of Christ. The New Testament is God's revelation of the New Covenant, from the time of Jesus' birth and incarnation, up through the second coming. Through this revelation, salvation is now available to all people. No additional revelation is needed for the purpose of our salvation.

The Old Testament was preparatory; the New Testament is eternal.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Hello Dan, and welcome to CF, and welcome to TT. We are glad that you've joined us.

Two thoughts come to mind.

The first is that you might get better answers if you question specific things that Scripture discusses. It's a little more difficult to address your particular concerns under the umbrella where you place it (except there IS an easy answer, but it won't address your questions. No, there will not be another TRUE testament written, because we don't re-write Scripture to suit our preferences, or should not. This of course doesn't keep some denominations from trying ... but that is not really my concern.).

And you specifically mentioned stoning, for just one example. The reason (in this case) that we refer to other Scriptures is that in the case of the Orthodox Church (and others, but I speak only of my own) we understand that we view all of Scripture through the lens of the Gospel. Christ is God REVEALED directly to us. What did CHRIST do when brought the woman caught in adultery? He did not stone her, or condemn her, but exposed the evil in the hearts of all of those present, and told the woman to "go and sin no more" because God doesn't delight in the death of sinners, but desires they be brought to repentance and healed and reconciled to Him. None of this is easily understood just by reading OT law.

I hope that might help a little.

And again, welcome to CF and to TT! I pray that you are blessed by being here!

 

[Dan M]

Thank you for your reply. I can not get over why was it put in the bible in the first place if God was against it? It seems hypocritical, which is not a virtue I want my kids to put blind faith in.

I appreciate this conversation because my wife wants to raise our kids baptised and Christian; or Jewish because that is the religion I was born into; even though I made it clear that my kids nor I would ever have faith in the bible unless she was able to convince me that the bible was infact words of God and not just made up by man. I told her this the first week we started to date ten years ago. I refuse to push religion on my kids when there are things in the bible I find morally wrong, there are things in the bible that sound like were taken out of fairy tales, and there are things in the bible that are rejected by people who do have faith in it.

I think my wife sometimes regret that she did not marry a man of faith, and this does not sit well with me. I am the type of person that can not believe something just because I was told or it is written. I need to analyze, test and form a conclusion for me to think something is true, and religion does not allow for this. This is why I seek dialogue from people who do have faith and are willing to discuss it with me.

 

[LastSeven]

If it is accepted that the meaning of scriptures change, and should not be taken literally because we evolved, or newer scriptures cancel out the old crazy ones. I ask one final question. Should there be another testament written for modern times?

The meaning of scripture has never changed. The word of God has never changed, nor has the plan ever changed. However, it can seem that way without proper understanding.

Don't think of the new testament as replacing the old testament, but rather, in the simplest terms possible you can think of the new testament as interpreting the old testament.

Basically everything in the old testament was a type or shadow of something better to come in the new testament. The old covenant written on stone tablets was a shadow of the new covenant written on our hearts. The exodus out of Egypt was a shadow of the salvation of believers out of sin. Adam, the physical man, was a shadow of the new spiritual man to come in the resurrection. The stone temple was a shadow for the temple of our hearts. King David was a shadow for King Jesus. The earthly kingdom of Israel was a shadow for the spiritual kingdom of Israel (Christianity). And so on and so forth.

Now you also mentioned "old crazy scriptures". I understand that some of the old scriptures may sound crazy, like when God commanded the Israelites to kill every single Canaanite when entering the promised land (including women and children), but when you realize that the Canaanites were Nephilim offspring of fallen angels, it makes a lot more sense. God wanted all the Nephilim destroyed, and rightly so. They were an abomination to him because their dna was not pure as God had intended. This is also probably why God destroyed the world in a flood, saving only Noah and his family. The human dna had been contaminated.

You might even think references to unicorns sound crazy, but when you realize that a unicorn is an Indian Rhino (also known as "Rhinoceros Unicornis" because it has a single horn, as opposed to the two horned rhino) it's suddenly not so crazy. You have to understand that the King James Bible was written in the 16th century when the word unicorn had a very different meaning than it does today. The point is, that when you lack understanding, anything can sound crazy. So the next time you read something that you think sounds crazy in the old testament, do some research and keep an open mind. Not everything is as it seems.

 

[Dan M]

Welcome to Christian Forums and to Traditional Theology!

To answer your question, no, I do not think there should be another testament written. Why? Because the salvific plan of Jesus Christ has already been given to us.

The Old Testament tells us of the covenant of the Law before the incarnation of Christ. The New Testament is God's revelation of the New Covenant, from the time of Jesus' birth and incarnation, up through the second coming. Through this revelation, salvation is now available to all people. No additional revelation is needed for the purpose of our salvation.

The Old Testament was preparatory; the New Testament is eternal.

The meaning of scripture has never changed. The word of God has never changed, nor has the plan ever changed. However, it can seem that way without proper understanding.

Don't think of the new testament as replacing the old testament, but rather, in the simplest terms possible you can think of the new testament as interpreting the old testament.

Why not have a new testament that interprets the old new testament to make things more clear? So no interpretation is needed until things become unclear thousands of years from now for the same reasons things are unclear about scripture written thousands of years ago?

 

[LastSeven]

Why not have a new testament that interprets the old new testament to make things more clear? So no interpretation is needed until things become unclear thousands of years from now for the same reasons things are unclear about scripture written thousands of years ago?

Because it's not like interpreting a language. I think you're thinking we need to "modernize" the Bible so that modern people can understand it easier, but that's not the type of interpretation I'm talking about.

The interpretation in the new testament is the next phase of God's plan, which culminates in the end of death. In order to get us to that end goal, God had to give us a path to salvation (new testament). And in order for God to give us a path to salvation he first had to give us a shadow of his plan in a way that we could understand (old testament).

See we're physical beings and can really only relate to the physical world, but God is a spiritual being and His plan is to bring us into His world. So in order for us to understand the spiritual plan laid out in the new testament, we needed to be able to relate that plan to the physical plan laid out in the old testament. In addition, (and perhaps most importantly) the obvious failures of the physical plan served to prove that we need the spiritual plan in order to be saved.

 

[Dan M]

Because it's not like interpreting a language. I think you're thinking we need to "modernize" the Bible so that modern people can understand it easier, but that's not the type of interpretation I'm talking about.

The interpretation in the new testament is the next phase of God's plan, which culminates in the end of death. In order to get us to that end goal, God had to give us a path to salvation (new testament). And in order for God to give us a path to salvation he first had to give us a shadow of his plan in a way that we could understand (old testament).

Does it say this as clearly as you put it, that no interpretation is needed about the text? I thought interpretation means if you take the text literally it does not have the same meaning as it was meant to, so you need to interpret it, is this not the case?

 

[LastSeven]

I'm not going to go into the list of things I consider crazy, or morally wrong. I am sure most are familiar with these questions. Topics such as stoning, odd rules to worship, talking snakes, people living to be hundreds of years old, basically certain scriptures if talked about practicing today most would want to put you in jail or in a mental hospital is what I am curious in finding the answers to.

Talking snakes: We don't know if animals could talk back then, but it doesn't really matter. The story of Adam and Eve is very symbolic. That's not saying that there were no Adam and Eve, just saying that the story was simplified and told in such a way as to make the message, not the details, the focal point. And the message is simply that disobedience (sin) created a separation between God and man.

It's even possible that God created many Adams and many Eves all at once. That detail however is not important. The point is, there's symbolism in the story. Personally I don't think there was a talking snake in the garden. I think the talking snake merely symbolizes temptation, which we all still struggle with today. The reason a serpent was used as the symbol for temptation is because temptation is from the devil.

However, it's also possible that Satan literally came into the garden and manifested himself in a physical form. Like I said, such details don't really matter, and whether you believe there was literally a talking snake or if you believe it's merely symbolism for something more believable, also doesn't matter. What matters is that you understand the message.

People living to be hundreds of years old: We don't really know for sure how it is they managed to live so long, but there's a plausible explanation in the water canopy theory. Before Noah's flood, it had never rained before and there was likely a water canopy over the earth which protected people from the sun's harmful rays, allowing people to live much longer. During the flood, this canopy fell down to earth in the form of rain. After the flood life spans started to rapidly decrease. Like I said, it's a theory. The Bible doesn't give us enough information to be sure. What I do know for sure however is that modern science doesn't know much at all about what life was like on earth thousands of years ago.

 

[LastSeven]

Does it say this as clearly as you put it, that no interpretation is needed about the text? I thought interpretation means if you take the text literally it does not have the same meaning as it was meant to, so you need to interpret it, is this not the case?

I was referring to an overall theme of the new testament versus the old. So in a broad sense, the new testament interprets the old testament, though it's not immediately clear to most readers. It's only through a series of epiphanies that one will start to see the mirroring between the two testaments, and a pattern in God's plan. On a micro level however, there's another level of interpretation sometimes required and that's the interpretation of symbolism. Some books of the Bible have a lot of symbolism, others (like the gospels) have very little.

Here's the thing. The Bible is a very complicated book and simply reading it through is not enough. There is a lot of hidden meaning and symbolism that leave room for interpretation, but if you put it all together you start to see a big picture emerge. This is what's so amazing about the Bible, it all fits together perfectly like a puzzle though it was written over a span of hundreds of years by many different people.

Having said that, as I'm sure you know, there's plenty of disagreement on what certain passages of scripture mean or even how the pieces of the puzzle should be put together. This just goes to show that it's no trivial thing. Even people who've studied for years, sometimes still can't see the most basic truths because they've approached things from a certain perspective and insist on applying certain meanings to scriptures in order to try to make them fit.

Some people will read a passage or an entire chapter and see there is clearly a ton of symbolism in there, and others will insist it's all literal. This is where the different interpretations come in. My best advice to anybody reading the Bible is this. The Bible is a puzzle, and that means all the pieces fit together perfectly. If the pieces don't fit properly, or you're trying too hard to make them fit, then you're not understanding it properly and you need to have another look.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Why not have a new testament that interprets the old new testament to make things more clear? So no interpretation is needed until things become unclear thousands of years from now for the same reasons things are unclear about scripture written thousands of years ago?

This is one of the benefits of Tradition .... Holy Tradition includes (along with the Scriptures), those things that were handed down directly to the Apostles and help to interpret the Scriptures, as well as the consensus of the leaders of the Church in the earliest times, such as the disciples of the Apostles and others.

Much of the modern confusion permeating Christianity comes about from everyone picking up their Bible and "interpreting" it for themselves, using whatever bias or input or sometimes very foreign ideas or whatever, and deciding they now have the "truth". It is like giving them pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, but not the entire thing and no picture on the box to use as a guide, and pieces that actually fit together in more than one way .... you get wildly different "interpretations" this way.

 

[Extraneous]

The new Testament is the New testament. There is no stoning in the NT.

 

[~Anastasia~]

The new Testament is the New testament. There is no stoning in the NT.

There is actually ....

Even if you don't count the woman caught in adultery who Jesus did not condone the stoning of, there are the martyrs who were stoned for their faith in Christ. St. Paul was present at the stoning death of St. Stephen the proto-martyr, detailed in Scripture.

Stoning continues until today, and has been prescribed as a punishment in some parts of the world through history.

But we can see God's heart expressed in Christ's reaction to the woman.

Not everything that is mentioned in Scripture is something that God approves of. Many things are just there, for us to learn from the mistakes of others, and so on.

 

[Hieronymus]

I was making reference to laws of man evolving.

Which laws would that be?

Most civilizations do not stone women anymore.

Ah,so you mean development in society.

Science also makes us evolve. Science has forced people to interpret the bible differently.

Both science and popular pseudo-rationalistic naturalistic science have done that, yes.

 

[Armoured]

I'm not going to go into the list of things I consider crazy, or morally wrong. I am sure most are familiar with these questions. Topics such as stoning, odd rules to worship, talking snakes, people living to be hundreds of years old, basically certain scriptures if talked about practicing today most would want to put you in jail or in a mental hospital is what I am curious in finding the answers to.

When I ask these questions I always get pointed to other scriptures, why can't the scripture I ask about be talked about alone? Or I get told, at the time of the writing it was normal life, such as stoning women, so it was written that way for the times. When I am told the second answer, I immediately ask, why has Gods position changed on that particular topic?

If it is accepted that the meaning of scriptures change, and should not be taken literally because we evolved, or newer scriptures cancel out the old crazy ones. I ask one final question. Should there be another testament written for modern times?

I once encountered a guy who, in all seriousness, thought the US Bill of Rights, Constitution, and Declaration of Independence should be added to the Bible. I've also seen people suggest Dante's Divine Comedy warrants inclusion.

 

[JCFantasy23]

MOD HAT ON

This thread has been moved from Theology to Exploring Christianity

Please continue the discussion here.


MOD HAT OFF​

 

[All4Christ]

Why not have a new testament that interprets the old new testament to make things more clear? So no interpretation is needed until things become unclear thousands of years from now for the same reasons things are unclear about scripture written thousands of years ago?

Dan, I will be unavailable for awhile today due to work and some planned events tonight, but I will be happy to discuss this with you soon. I've experienced some of the same questions in the past, and I understand that they are not always simply answered. Exploring the topic is beneficial for everyone.

Blessings to you and I will respond as soon as I can.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I'm not going to go into the list of things I consider crazy, or morally wrong. I am sure most are familiar with these questions. Topics such as stoning, odd rules to worship, talking snakes, people living to be hundreds of years old, basically certain scriptures if talked about practicing today most would want to put you in jail or in a mental hospital is what I am curious in finding the answers to.

When I ask these questions I always get pointed to other scriptures, why can't the scripture I ask about be talked about alone? Or I get told, at the time of the writing it was normal life, such as stoning women, so it was written that way for the times. When I am told the second answer, I immediately ask, why has Gods position changed on that particular topic?

If it is accepted that the meaning of scriptures change, and should not be taken literally because we evolved, or newer scriptures cancel out the old crazy ones. I ask one final question. Should there be another testament written for modern times?

I think you have a misunderstanding of the relationship of the New Testament with the Old, as well as a general confusion of what the meaning and purpose of the Biblical Canon is in Christianity.

The New Testament is not a set of Scriptures delivered to supplant, replace, or abrogate the "Old" Scriptures.

Your talking about stoning, etc is a reference to commands given in the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). The Torah, as a body of instruction, was given to a particular people, a specific nation, namely the Israelites, the Jews. God made with the Jewish people a specific covenant, that they would be His covenant nation and He would be their God, etc.

Christians don't observe those commandments, not because the New Testament abrogates or supplants the Old Testament, but because Christians aren't Jews, our religion is Christianity, not Judaism. In Christianity it is our belief that the promises and covenants which God made in the past have their fulfillment, their ultimate "yes" in the person of Jesus. And this is crucial, the role of the Bible in Christianity is Christocentric, the historic Christian understanding of Scripture is that it's all about Jesus. Jesus, in fact, is God's Word, God's Revelation; not a book or a collection of books.

Further, the role of Scripture in Christianity is not that these are "revelations" handed down from on high; these are texts which have been used in the Christian Church as essential parts of our organized worship--our liturgy. The Christian Canon of Scripture developed out a broad and ancient consensus of what was to be read within the context of the liturgy. Because these are the texts we have received, which were handed down from those who came before us, read as part of Christian worship--that through their reading we hear the faith of our forebearers, we hear the word of Christ proclaimed (the Gospel) and coming together we offer our consent and confession; through this the Church together confesses Christ and trusts upon Christ.

There's no "newer testament" to be had. That's not how it works.

-CryptoLutheran