Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness
by richard b. hays
baylor, 177 pages, $34.95
I
n the heady days of the early Christian Church, Marcion was considered a very dangerous man. In the second half of the second century, bishops and theologians all over the Christian world, from Gaul in the west to Edessa in the east, worked energetically to expose him as a false teacher and discredit the simple idea now attached to his name. Jesus, taught Marcion, reveals a God of love and so liberates humanity from the horrors of serving and believing in the cruel, irrational, and despotic God of the Jews.
Few Christians today would go as far as Marcion in condemning the Old Testament and its portrayal of God. Thanks in part to the stimulus provided by the Marcionite heresy, Christian tradition affirmed the sacred authority of the Old Testament early on and has held fast to the affirmation ever since. Yet this affirmation has only sharpened specific questions about its status, which have dogged churches from antiquity to the Reformation and beyond. What is the role of the Old Testament in shaping Christian identity, practice, and belief? How necessary is it to understanding the Christian Gospel?
