Someone challenged me the other day on the purpose of the Old Testament. One of the things I had long assumed (in my infinite wisdom!) was that the Old Testament, certainly the laws and practices, were primarily metaphor for Christians, a physical representation of a spiritual reality. This is a problematic theology because it reinforces the idea that the Old Testament and New Testament are fundamentally different, that the OT was for the Israelites and has little direct relevance to us today and that the God of the OT was sort of different from the loving forgiving God of the NT. We try and bridge this difference since we know both parts are related to the same Person but if metaphor is as far as we can go then it isn't a great link.
This guy said that there was no reason to think that some of the OT was metaphor simply because we didn't understand or follow it. For instance, we are told in the OT that if someone touches something unclean, they become unclean. Since we don't avoid touching the same things now, I assumed it was metaphor. What if it isn't metaphor but is actually true? The follow-on question would be, "why don't we still follow the practice then"? The answer would have to be something about Jesus obviously but in what way? This guy taught that although the principle was true that uncleaness is contagious, holiness is more contagious and although Jesus theoretically could have contracted uncleaness from others that he touched, because of His holiness, the flow of power was in the other direction and His holiness infected them!
This felt good as a theology since it made the OT even more real and true, the metaphor argument always felt a little like a cop-out. It also raises a challenge like all good theology that we have a responsibility to be contagiously holy!
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