The Hope of the Old Testament

The Bible is the most printed and read book ever written. It is also the most complex and significant book of all time. To act as a witness to the Tradition of the Church which preceded the Bible, it required infallible, inspired hands to write it with the depth and perfection required for the Holy Word. The Old Testament, often called the Law or simply the Scriptures by Jews, was once the only Bible. It is at least three thousand years old, with the events it details stretching back to the beginning of the universe and humanity.

There are many "senses" to Scripture - three, in fact. While it is not the intention of this article to delve into that specific topic, it should be noted that the Bible is too complex and intricate to be read only at face value, as some suggest. To do so is to overestimate oneself and underestimate the spiritual depth of the Bible and God Himself. The Bible of course is a recording of events and truth which preceded it, but in order to record and elucidate on them it must employ the widest possible range of literary senses and techniques. Furthermore, things such as historical context, religious usage and reference to other Biblical passages must be taken into account as well in the interpretation of Scripture.

Jews did not simply write the Old Testament to record history. They believed the events, and their own thoughts and experiences, to have spiritual importance and so were inspired by God to write them down. Each book of the Old Testament had a different author and/or style - genealogical, historical, prophetic, proverbial, poetic, etc. Each of these styles had a specific religious aim in mind, to describe a different aspect of Truth and God's revelation. The New Testament shows us an even greater depth to the Old Testament and an underlying thread which ties all of it together - Christ.

Christians often say this: Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. But what does this mean? To answer this, we must understand that Jews in the Old Testament were unified by a common belief: hope for the coming of the Messiah, of God's salvation of the world by replacing sin with redeemed perfection. Obviously, they did not know the specific plan God had in mind, even His prophets. But God revealed things to the Old Testament saints which prefigured Christ and the entire Gospel, as is St. Paul's use of the term (Romans 5:14, 10:4). This hope for the Messiah's redemption and fulfillment, for Him to make their pious desires and pursuits whole and purified, underlies every aspect of the Old Testament, even that which was not intended to be prophetic. Often, even negative and incomplete images of Christ in the Old Testament still prefigure Him, as Christ simply redeemed them into fullness.

From the beginning of the Bible this is the case. God made man in the image of Himself - this is a prefiguring of Christ who is the full image of man and God at once and thus lends spiritual dignity to humanity. He then created Adam who was the first man, leading to the life of all others, prefigures both Christ's salvation unto eternal life of all humanity and, by Adam's original sin, Jesus' sacrifice which revoked this penalty and promised a cleansing of its effects. The flood of Noah prefigures baptism, while his ark represents both Mother Mary as the ark of the Word and the Church as the house of refuge for all. As St. Paul explains, the blood of the Passover of Moses prefigured the Eucharist, where those who have received the "mark" of Christ's blood will be passed over on Judgment Day (1 Corinthians 5:6-5:8).

The Promised Land, while also physical real estate, prefigured the universality of Heaven, as well as the Universal Church. Originally in the Promised Land, Jews had no king - they simply lived according to the Law of Moses directly, another image of Heaven. But eventually they requested a king. The song of the coronation of a king, as recorded in Isaiah (9:1-6), while talking about a very real and ultimately sinful human king, prefigures Christ the King in its hope for a true King who would rule the universe with perfect judgment.

In Old Testament Judaism, the Jewish congregation is called the Church, from which the Catholic Church proceeded. This Jewish Church possessed very similar rituals, procedures, readings, venerations and overall liturgy to the Catholic Mass, especially Jewish services at the Jerusalem Temple. The Bread of the Presence was kept in the Tabernacle, where it was believed God's real presence resided continually. Candles, incense and holy water were used for effect and symbolism. An altar was used for sacrifices, where it was believed the pouring of the blood and consumption of the body of a living thing would forgive sins by taking one's judgment onto itself - obviously prefiguring Christ's Crucifixion and the Eucharist. The Scriptures were given special reverence, read at every Temple service. These and many other features explicitly prefigure Christ and His Church. The Church, being universal and redeemed, simply takes the Jewish format and illuminates it with Roman and Christian traditions which do not truly violate the fundamental Jewish fabric.

Many would consider the use of this "typology", as the study of prefiguring is called, as "cheap", simply reading into it what we desire as Christians to validate our beliefs. While this goes against Christ's lordship of the entire Bible and insults our integrity, it also evidences an ignorance of the centrality of Messianic hope in Old Testament Judaism I described above, from which all their beliefs and practices derive whether consciously or not. Further, this is not simply a Jewish phenomenon. Fulfillment of prefiguring was used evangelically by the Church as she encountered new cultures and religions, seeing figments of the truth in them and illustrating Christ's fulfillment of them. For example, by studying the mythology of the Viking Norse culture, the Church saw a lack of hope, as the Norse believed the world would eventually end in a war that would destroy humanity and the gods forever. The Church answered this with Christ's triumph, and without coercion or intimidation, the Norse acknowledged this and began seeing Christ as the heroic All-Father deity who defeated evil and saved the world, just as He truly did.

Christ commanded us to "search the Scriptures" for Him - to discern the prefigured images of Him and His Gospel in the Old Testament. Many Christian congregations since the Protestant Reformation have abandoned their Jewish liturgical heritage, as well as an openness to deeper senses of Scripture. I believe this not only contradicts Christ's intentions for His Church, but also cuts them off from the fullness of liturgical life as God desires it. The Catholic Church is that fullness, and even "the gates of Hell" (Matthew 16:18) will not overcome it. As Catholics, we can share in the Messianic hope of the Jews - both in the fulfillment during Christ's life, and the certain hope of His apocalyptic Second Coming. Living in humble faith by this hope, enacted with contrite love, we can become the holy saints Christ desires.