The Whole Thing

Total Truth

I am grateful for the insights into the unity of the Bible given by Douglas Wilson. I first heard a CD from him maybe 3 years ago, where he began citing the English Bible where there’s a quote or citation of the Old Testament referenced in the New. He went one by one, and then turning to examine the New’s citation and use.

The New Testament is full of themes and direct quotations from the Old Testament. It contains a range of uses of the Old—from faint allusions to specific, definite quotations. Some 224 direct citations of the Old that are introduced by a formula, “it is written” or something like “where it says.” Beyond the 224 another 71 references cite Old Testament verses without the formula. That means one verse in every 22 ½ verses of the New mentions the Old. Some teachers have sought to make a case that there are over 4,100 passages “reminiscent of the Old Testament.” In a striking manner there’s a broad sweep about this—consider the spread of the Hebrew Bible quoted in the New: 94 times the Pentateuch is directly quoted or has direct allusion, 99 from the Prophets, and 85 from the Writings (Psalms, Job, etc.). Out of the 39 Books of the Hebrew Scriptures only 6 fail to get an explicit quotation or direct allusion (Judges-Ruth literature, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah literature, and Chronicles literature). But no doubt all the Books of the Old Testament are faintly alluded to in the New.

There are volumes and volumes published that provide Insight Mountain about this: 1) The integrity of the Bible’s inspiration, inerrancy and infallibility; 2) The case for the closed canon of God’s revelation; 3) The centrality of the message of Jesus Christ on the page or in the scene of every OT story, and much, much more. Only one matter that I have time for—have you considered that one reason we fail to prize and act on the integrated whole and unity of God’s world in education is because we fail to prize and act on the unity—the integrated whole and unity—of God’s Word? We divide Chemistry from Literature; we separate English Grammar from Geography; we isolate Political Science from Cinema Studies. We fragment. We set disciplines off from one another turning them into self-contained, self-regulating, self-governing entities. Idolatry abounds. The One—anyone one of the subjects of life—becomes an overachiever; and it swallows up the Many. When the church fails to prize the unity of the Bible and act on it, she loses ground in her responsibility to sit under God as Lord working to bring every discipline of learning under Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). We fragment and break apart the Bible; and we fragment and break apart God’s world.

G. Mark Sumpter