Episode Details

Christians have inherited a strange habit of treating the Old Testament as optional. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer argues that Jesus and the apostles would not have understood the question. There was a gospel, a Messiah, and a church before there was a New Testament, and none of it was possible without the Scriptures Israel already had. Even the word "gospel" comes to Mark by way of Isaiah.

In this episode, Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Schnittjer about his new book, Connected: How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture. The premise is that the Bible already teaches us how to read it. Story teaches us to read story in Deuteronomy 6. Prophecy teaches us to read prophecy in Zechariah 1. Poetry and wisdom teach us to read poetry and wisdom in Psalm 1. Jesus models the whole thing in the synagogue at Nazareth in Luke 4.

Along the way they work through continuity and discontinuity between the testaments, the burden of holiness carried by the priests and what Hebrews does with it, Daniel's need for help understanding Jeremiah, and the strange counterpoint in Jeremiah 44 where survivors of Jerusalem's fall blame Josiah's reforms for the disaster. They close on Deuteronomy as a book that builds an entire culture of Scripture study, from the king who writes his own copy of the law to the whole covenant community gathered every seven years to hear it read.

Go deeper: Trajectories

Thinking Christian is hosted by Dr. James Spencer, president of the D. L. Moody Center and author of Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Each conversation reads the Bible as the final authority for life and faith, questioning the assumptions of our culture, even our Christian culture, so that we don't settle for a narrower vision than God's word offers.

Unsettling convention. Cultivating conviction.
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Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at Carpenter's Student.

This is part one of a two-part conversation. In the next episode, Dr. Spencer and Dr. Schnittjer turn to Ezra-Nehemiah.

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