The Old Testament is not untrue but it is incomplete – and an incomplete truth, when taken without understanding of the way in which it is incomplete, can more powerfully mislead than an outright lie. God has a problem, in that there is no way for him to reveal himself completely to us without the risk of that incomplete revelation leading us into the dead end of religious abstractions. There is no way – until the Incarnation, when God finally discloses himself completely to us by becoming ‘us’ in his humanity. For Christians, the face of Christ is the face of God, as John’s gospel says ‘if you have seen me you have seen the Father’.
How is this worked out in practice for those who want to honour the integrity of holy scripture? Let’s take Moses as an example. He gives the law, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. Does this law represent something ‘untrue’? No – it is true and reasonable to suggest that if I destroy your car then you are within your rights to smash up my car in retribution. This serves as both a deterrent and a remedial measure. But when Christ comes, he tells you to love your neighbour as yourself, and to love your enemy, who also turns out to be your neighbour, and so to love your enemy as yourself.
How can you love your enemy as yourself? When we see that Christ is ‘all in all’, we discover that our true selves are all hidden to be found in Christ, and Christ in the Father. You see your enemy beyond superficial differences as the same as you, subject to the same trials, temptations, and troubles as you, and guilty of the identical transgressions to a greater or lesser degree. This creates empathy that opens the way to love. From the completeness of this truth we discover that instead of me smashing up your car and you smashing up mine, we have in fact together smashed up two of our cars. Moses’ law breaks down because it cannot be applied to human beings once we have seen what human beings truly are. That’s when we realise that to love your enemy as yourself, you must first recognise that your enemy is, after all, YourSelf. To forgive and be reconciled to yourself is a matter of knowing Divine Love, and thus sits right at the beginning of mystical encounter.
It also saves us from being misled by our incomplete reading of an incomplete scripture into the belief that Christ comes to save us from the retribution of God. He comes to us one with God and as God to save us from the retribution of ourselves.
