Authority of the Old Testament\"

¶ … Authority of the Old Testament" by John Bright, Bright tried to answer some very important questions about the role of the Church that they should give to the Old Testament. If the reader is very in tuned with Bright's attempts to be straight forward with the difficulties in holding to a literal image of Old Testament authority, they will be very informed even though his thesis is extremely unclear. Unfortunately, unlike most writers did not make his readers fulfilled with his ideas so that they can see his point-of-view about the authority of the Old Testament. One reason for this is due to the fact that he asked the really hard questions without following through with clear answers. In order to be a good writer, the reader must be convinced of the ideas, which is something that Bright did not accomplished (the authority of the old testament).

This book is not the kind of book that the readers can skip chapters and still be able to understand it due to author style of writing and ideas. When Bright compares the two testaments, it is obvious that the thesis is clearly difficult to comprehend, which makes the reader uninterested in his theories and that causes his ideas not to be valid. Unfortunately, most people do not agree with Bright on this theory where he suggests that the Old Testament had no bearing on Christianity because his theories are unclear and confusing to the reader.

John Bright's comparison of the two testaments to the acts of a play: An audience cannot expect to show up during the interval and understand Act II, or to leave at the interval with an understanding of the play based on seeing Act I." [3] Neither can be understood without the other, yet the task of Old Testament Theology need not make reference to the New Testament because it is seeking to understand what is communicated in the writings of the Old Testament as a whole" (Is 'New Testament Theology' ill-conceived?).

With that knowledge, it can be interpreted that Bright believed or tried to prove that authority of the Christian canon is a theological knowledge while the Old Testament has authority in good quality of its place in the canon. Unfortunately, due to the fact that it is created by the diversity within the canon, it is considered to be an issue. There are a lot of differences between the Testaments because each is the expression of a "different religion" (Bright and Kelsey 1967), however through Bright's writing, it is hard for the reader to distinguish between them.

However, according to Bright, there are some very important parts within the Old Testament that serve a greater purpose than other do. From there, he also attempts to establish everything in the Old Testament and New Testament is equally binding. Furthermore, he believed any attempt to level out these differences are authoritative for Christian thought (Bright and Kelsey 1967). Along with that, it is clear that he believed that the differences are very difficult to figure out, which may explain why his thesis was unclear.

We shall never hear the Old Testament's word rightly unless we are willing to hear it all. That is to say, we must hear it in its full humanity. There is a drive toward incarnation in the biblical revelation... It pleased God to reveal himself not through timeless teachings, or some heavenly gnosis, but through the events of a particular history, and to and through men who were caught up in history, and who were in every case men of like passions with ourselves and subject to all the limitations of our flesh. And God's final revelation of himself was given-so the New Testament declares-when "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," in the form of a man who had a body like our own and feelings like our own, and whose mortal life, like ours, ended in death. It is incumbent upon us to take this aspect of the Biblical revelation seriously" (Bright and Kelsey 1967).