Mark 2:22 "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the win and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins." --in response to the Pharisee's question why the disciples don't fast like John's disciples and the Pharisees
Mark 3:5 "He looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts."
Switching back and forth between the Old and the New Testament has highlighted things I might have missed otherwise. I've been spending the last week or so immersed in the rules and laws of Leviticus. It's exhausting (not to mention nauseating) reading all the laws regarding sin and sacrifice. The law was incredibly rigid. So when we jump forward 8,000 (or so?) years to the time that Jesus walked and taught, how surprising is it that the teachers of the law have hardened hearts, they've been teaching and following these rigid laws for thousands of generations.
I wrote a couple posts ago about the God of the Old Testament not being the God I thought I knew. The Jesus we see here in Mark, though, comes closed to who I thought God was. (I'd like to say, of course, that I don't claim to know exactly who God is, but what I've come to believe about God is what I am referring to.) He's taken the old law and thrown it out? He's come to replace it, right? He's the new wine. And though the hardened hearts of the Pharisees make him angry, it also saddens him. There's compassion in the sadness. This is the God I believe in.
Could they possibly be the same? How can there be such a rigid dichotomy between the two if they are one and the same?
The New Testament made them one in the same. The trinity. Once the benevolent Jesus become equated with God (Homoousious) then it isn't terribly hard to imagine people focusing on the better part of their new deity. No one likes to dwell on the unfavorable aspects of the ones they love.
ReplyDeleteSo you say the New Testament made them the same... I don' know, I think it was the church coming up with its doctrine that made them one and the same. I don't think the word "trinity" is found at all in the Bible. There are certainly hints at the notion of there being a trinity but only if you're reading it with that filter. Maybe they are different entities...
DeleteWell, yes, the church made it that way with the New Testament. They wrote it. They edited it. They chose the words of God to use. So yes, I think we are in agreement here.
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