# Does Christianity Accept Everything in the Old Testament as Doctrine?

> There is no doubt that the Church inherited much from the Old Testament, such as the fear of God revealed as Creator and Almighty God, so we came to know God as "Elohim - אֱלֹהִ֑ים", which points to the Trinity since it means gods, and we came to know Him as "Yahweh - יְהֹוָה"…

*2016-12-01T17:55:39Z*

![Quote card, St. John Chrysostom: “But Christ made us alive though we were strangers to the promise under the Law, and wiped out the handwriting the Law laid against us, therefore all the customs and rites of the Old Testament have fallen away from us.” (In Ioan tr 86: 5)](/uploads/sites/1274e232-e31c-46f4-a48b-27b854406479/media/old-testament-as-doctrine.png?w=815&h=815)

### Introduction:

There is no doubt that the Church inherited much from the Old Testament, such as the fear of God who is revealed as Creator and Almighty God, so we came to know God as "**Elohim - אֱלֹהִ֑ים**", which points to the Trinity since it means gods, and we came to know Him as "**Yahweh - יְהֹוָה**", the One who is and who was, and we came to know Him as Lord of all, "**Adonai - אֲדוֹנָ֔י- אֲדֹנָ֤י**". All these names that we inherited as a spiritual inheritance from the Old Testament influenced our worship on a wide scale, and brought the ascetic element into our worship; indeed the Old Testament itself was a shadow of all the rites the Church performs[^1] today, such as the offering of incense, the Divine Liturgy and other well-known liturgies. And there is no doubt that God in the Old Testament did not change from the New Testament in His essence, for God remained a Trinity, and remained the Almighty God, the One who is and who was, Lord over all, but what changed is this God's revelation of Himself.

### 1- God established the Law of old because of the reign of death, so that He might reveal Himself:

**What was revealed in the Old Testament about God was merely husks** "if one may say so", for because of the **reign of death**, a separation occurred between heaven and earth. St. Athanasius says: "For this reason, then, **death reigned all the more** and corruption spread over mankind, and consequently the human race was heading toward destruction, this on the one hand, and on the other hand man, rational and created in the image of God, **was passing into nothingness**, and God's creation was being dissolved. For death also, as I said earlier, **gained a lawful dominion over us (because of the transgression)**, from that time onward, and it was impossible to escape the judgment of the Law, **for it was God who laid it down because of the transgression**, for if this happened the result would be truly frightful and at the same time unseemly."[^2] And what is clear from the words of the great Athanasius is **that the Law was laid down because of the reign of death** which came after Adam's transgression, so all the purifications that the Law laid down, and all the rites that were established and the various acts of worship and arrangements and feasts were set **so that God might reveal Himself through them under the reign of death.**

### 2- The Law failed to make people righteous because it was fleshly:

And so that we may understand the matter, let us focus on this text which St. Paul the Apostle explained: "buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13 And you, being **dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh**, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, 14 having **wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us**, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. 15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. 16 **So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths**, 17 which are a **shadow of things to come**, but the substance is of Christ."[^3]

For the meaning to become clear we must understand what the word **"Law"** means. This word came in the Old Testament in Hebrew as "תּרה תּורה - Torah" and it means "**law**"[^4], as St. Paul the Apostle points out here that we "were" dead in sin and in the foreskin of the flesh "that is, uncircumcised", **but Christ made us alive even though we were strangers to the promise** according to the "Law", and even wiped out the handwriting "that the Law laid against us", **and therefore all the customs and rites of the Old Testament have fallen away from us**, and the Law itself has fallen away from us! St. John Chrysostom says: "The Law was working to make people righteous, **but it was not able**, so He (Christ) came and opened the way of righteousness by faith, **and by this He accomplished what the Law desired**; **what the Law could not accomplish by the letter He accomplished by faith**. For this reason He says: I did not come to destroy the Law"[^5].

### 3- The Lord Jesus fulfilled the Law on the cross in His body and set us free from it:

And we understand from the words of St. John that when the Lord Jesus said: "Do not think that I came to **destroy the Law** or the Prophets. **I did not come to destroy but to fulfill**"[^6] He meant that He had fulfilled the Law which human beings were unable to fulfill! St. John Chrysostom also says "He fulfilled the Prophets insofar as He confirmed by His works everything that was said about Him, for the Evangelist used to say
in every case: **"that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet" (Matt 1:22-23)**, and that was when 
He was born, and when the children sang to Him the wonderful hymn, and when He rode the donkey (Matt 21:5-16), 
and other numerous examples. **He accomplished these things which could not have been accomplished had He not 
come**"[^7], and by fulfilling this Law which no one was able to fulfill, its authority and reign ended, since He fulfilled all the Law on the cross and cried out at last ".. **"It is finished!"** And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit."[^8], and we finally understand that Christ fulfilled the Law in His body, so all the judgment of the Law was fulfilled in Him, and all the laws that the Law prescribed the Lord Jesus carried out, and thus He fulfilled the Law for us, and we became free from the Law as St. Paul says: "But now we have been **delivered from the law**, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the **newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter**."[^9]

**4- The Old Testament must not be a reference for doctrine because it simply reveals God to us under the reign of death and not under the reign of life after the Cross:**

If a leader established a law obliging everyone in the state not to enter a certain place, and ordered that if anyone in the state entered this place he would be killed, and afterwards another came and abolished the first law and this place became open to everyone, could we make use of the abolished law to prove the correctness of something within this state?! Certainly the answer is no!

With the death of Christ on the cross a new covenant began by the blood of Christ, **this covenant out of which the Church came forth,** and in which St. Paul and Peter and John and James and others wrote, conveying what the Holy Spirit Himself placed in their hearts, so the Church became subject to the complete revelation of God of Himself in Christ Jesus, and this is what the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says: "who being the **brightness of His glory** and the express image of His person, and **upholding all things by the word of His power**, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high"[^10], and this complete revelation about the Lord Jesus, which we received through the words of the Gospel in the New Testament, made clear to us the shortcomings of the Law, and what the Law was unable to do, so we find the Lord Jesus teaching the law of freedom, healing on the Sabbath[^11], and speaking with the Samaritan woman[^12], and touching the leper[^13], and many other situations in which He freed us from the law of bondage and the ordinances, and showed us the love of God the Father, so that we may no longer be enslaved to the Law, but live the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

[^1]: See (Hebrews 10:1)
[^2]: On the Incarnation - 6: 1 - 3, translated by Dr. Joseph Moris Faltas
[^3]: See (Colossians 2: 12 - 17)
[^4]: Strong's Dictionary - H8451
[^5]: St. John Chrysostom - In Ioan tr 86: 5; Ser. On N. T. lessons 95: 3.
[^6]: See (Matthew 5: 17)
[^7]: St. John Chrysostom - In Matt. hom 16:3
[^8]: See (John 19: 30)
[^9]: See (Romans 7: 6)
[^10]: See (Hebrews 1: 3)
[^11]: See (John 5: 9)
[^12]: See (John 4)
[^13]: See (Matthew 8: 3)

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Source: https://abba.fadymondy.com/en/blog/old-testament-as-doctrine