Last month, I noted that for many years I have been an active participant in the continuing seminar on biblical issues associated with Jewish/Christian relations. This year our entire group decided to join the seminar on "typology," namely the patterns of salvation which Christians find in the books and stories of the First (Old) Testament.
As guests overhearing someone else’s discussion, we found ourselves listening carefully to the presentation of papers which celebrated the great themes of our Christian faith as found in the stories of that First Covenant.
This is the way that our early Christian writers (we call them the "Fathers" of the Church) tested and studied the sacred writings of Israel.
Certainly it is true that the New Testament is hidden in the Old (Shared), and the Old prefigured in the New!
There is an energetic movement these days to return to the writings of the Fathers.
Those great figures often gave us superb theology and were classical models of the engagement of faith with the greater culture of their age, but they didn't always provide solid examples for the study of Scripture!
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