Iulian Utupanu - us106214 1
Iulian Utupanu- us106214 9
M2 Continuity and Integration
10/14/18
“What evidence do you find that the New Testament possesses a sense of continuity and integration?”
Continuity
New Testament’s continuity in relation to the Old Testament
It is not hard to figure out which one of the two testaments is more acceptable by many of the today’s Christians. Without any reluctance the majority would say that they feel more attracted to read the New Testament rather than the Old Testament. For any open-minded reader, there may be two possibilities, as the leading reasons, for the above-mentioned dilemma.
a. The immediate punishment for sin as it may appear in God’s dealings with the Israelites.
b. The apparent disconnect between the Old and the New Covenants.
One should not get lost in all our human misunderstandings, regarding God’s character, but he should focus on taking a closer look at the New Covenant as a continuity of the Old Covenant.
When we address the Old Covenant, we may need to either be specific or mention that it contained other several ‘covenants’ that seemed to have taken place in the Old Testament. For instance, we may need to mention the Adamic covenant, and this is divided into two parts. The first part is the Edenic covenant or the covenant that God made with the human race in its
prelapsarian condition, when He warned them that ‘in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die’. [footnoteRef:1] [1: Genesis 2:17 KJV.]
This suggestion is very well endorsed by Paul Enns when he says that, “The Edenic Covenant or Covenant of Works can be found in the opening chapters of Genesis where God makes some conditional promises to Adam. The Edenic Covenant is not explicitly called a covenant in Genesis; however, it is later referred to as a covenant in Hosea 6:7, ‘But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with Me’ (ESV).”[footnoteRef:2] [2: The Moody Handbook of Theology by Paul Enns. ]
The second part has taken place after Adam and Eve have broken ‘the Edenic covenant’. This second part happened in their postlapsarian condition and it included the promise of the Messiah the One who will destroy the head of the serpent.
The Adamic covenant, either before the fall or after the fall, finds its fulfilment in the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve did not immediately perish, after they broke the ‘Edenic Covenant’, due to the implementation of the plan of salvation that God had put together before ‘the world was’[footnoteRef:3]. [3: John 17:5 KJV. ]
Scotfield outlines the postlapsarian Adamic covenant as follows: “The serpent, Satan's tool, is cursed, and becomes God's illustration in nature of the effects of sin from the most beautiful and subtle of creatures to a loathsome reptile! The deepest mystery of the atonement is intimated here.”[footnoteRef:4] [4: C. I. Scofield, The Holy Bible: The Scofield Study Bible.]
The implementation of the plan...
