Billings: “The Word of God for the People of God” - Pt 1
I ran across this guy while playing online chess. He identified himself as an Orthodox Jew in Canada and asked me a question, “I see you’re a Christian minister. How do you Christians interpret Scripture?” It was an excellent question I thought. We had a nice, short discussion. The major answer I gave him came as a direct quotation from J. Todd Billings’ recent book “The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture”, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010. Billings writes, “”Jesus was not just a great teacher, nor was he just God with limbs and a mouth. In Jesus, the whole history of Israel--and through Israel, humanity--was recapitulated, or lived again. But this time the one who was true Israel and true human being did not take the path of the first Adam. As the second Adam, Christ was the righteous one, the perfect human covenant partner. But this perfect covenant partner was also the Word incarnate, the one in whom the fullness of d...