Can one exclude the OT and still be Christian?

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Other than refuting those who don’t believe that Christ fulfilled the OT and is the New Covenant, why does anyone place such emphasis on it? Once one believes the Good News (NT) why isn’t the New Testament solely sufficient to be the Christian Testament?

Thanks,
 
I have learned so many valuable life lessons from the Old Testement. The bible, Whole and Entire is the written word of God to me, if God thought it important enough to have put to pen, then I am sure going to read it with prayerful intent.

To me, excluding the Old Testement would be like excluding Sacred Tradition, I would be only getting Half the truth-Half the teachings.
 
Pax_Tibi said:
Other than refuting those who don’t believe that Christ fulfilled the OT and is the New Covenant, why does anyone place such emphasis on it? Once one believes the Good News (NT) why isn’t the New Testament solely sufficient to be the Christian Testament?

Thanks,
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no this was a heresy combatted and refuted in the early Church, I think Marcionism, but someone else may correct me, I don’t have a scorecard on heretics.
 
If you get a university degree and the ability to earn a living from it, are you going to forget all that your family taught you? Throw away your baby pictures? Destroy your past? Forget your grandparents?

You are more than what you know at this moment. You are your history.

When John tells us in his Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, we look back at Genesis, at a God who used a Word to create.

Jesus didn’t just come to any people – Jesus came to God’s chosen people, people who had been prepared for His coming. God created us all and chose a people with whom to build a relationship. Jesus came out of that background. If you don’t know the background, I’m not sure you can know all there is to know about Jesus.

Jesus was a Jew – I want to know what that meant to Him. Who He was talking to when He prayed to His Father – because Jesus wants me to pray to that Father too.

The OT teaches me that.
 
Pax_Tibi said:
Other than refuting those who don’t believe that Christ fulfilled the OT and is the New Covenant, why does anyone place such emphasis on it? Once one believes the Good News (NT) why isn’t the New Testament solely sufficient to be the Christian Testament?
Thanks,
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Since Jesus came to fullfull OTBible and not to cancell it, just to believe in Jesus’ being a true ProphetMessenger of GodAllahYHWH and following OTBible, in my opinion, makes one a better follower of Jesus.
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Davidv: Thanks for sending me to the site.
III.
Christ Jesus—“Mediator and Fullness of All Revelation”
25God has said everything in his Word

65
"In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son."26 Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word than this one. St. John of the Cross, among others, commented strikingly on Hebrews 1:1-2:
In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word – and he has no more to say … because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.27

I’m certainly not saying the OT isn’t valuable in showing God’s dealing with the ancients through the ages and using the OT to prove that God created a New Covenant by sending His own Son to be that Covenant, but now doesn’t His New Covenant close the book on the Old Covenant?

Thanks.
 
Pax_Tibi said:
Other than refuting those who don’t believe that Christ fulfilled the OT and is the New Covenant, why does anyone place such emphasis on it? Once one believes the Good News (NT) why isn’t the New Testament solely sufficient to be the Christian Testament?

Thanks,
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That’s a heresy called Marcionism. It was thoroughly refuted and condemned in the Second Century.
 
Pax_Tibi said:
I’m certainly not saying the OT isn’t valuable in showing God’s dealing with the ancients through the ages and using the OT to prove that God created a New Covenant by sending His own Son to be that Covenant, but now doesn’t His New Covenant close the book on the Old Covenant?

Thanks.
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Neither of the covenants are books, they are agreements between God and man. The Old Covenant has been fulfilled, but the book describing it remains.
 
From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
newadvent.org/cathen/09645c.htm
Marcionites
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Heretical sect founded in A.D. 144 at Rome by Marcion and continuing in the West for 300 years, but in the East some centuries longer, especially outside the Byzantine Empire. They rejected the writings of the Old Testament and taught that Christ was not the Son of the God of the Jews, but the Son of the good God, who was different from the God of the Ancient Covenant. They anticipated the more consistent dualism of Manichaeism and were finally absorbed by it. As they arose in the very infancy of Christianity and adopted from the beginning a strong ecclesiastical organization, parallel to that of the Catholic Church, they were perhaps the most dangerous foe Christianity has ever known.
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verne humphery:

Heretical sect founded in A.D. 144 at Rome by Marcion and continuing in the West for 300 years, but in the East some centuries longer, especially outside the Byzantine Empire. They rejected the writings of the Old Testament and taught that Christ was not the Son of the God of the Jews, but the Son of the good God, who was different from the God of the Ancient Covenant.

I certainly made no assertion that Christ was not " the Son of the God of the Jews". I don’t reject any of the OT. I just think the NT is all that is necessary.

Thanks,
 
But by rejecting the OT, or ignoring it, you are rejecting the NT. What did Jesus say, “Look to the Scriptures”. What did Paul say, “All Scripture is profitable…”

Both of these were references to the OT, for the NT wasn’t even written in any form with Jesus, and only partially with Paul’s letter.
 
Pax_Tibi said:
verne humphery:

Heretical sect founded in A.D. 144 at Rome by Marcion and continuing in the West for 300 years, but in the East some centuries longer, especially outside the Byzantine Empire. They rejected the writings of the Old Testament and taught that Christ was not the Son of the God of the Jews, but the Son of the good God, who was different from the God of the Ancient Covenant.

I certainly made no assertion that Christ was not " the Son of the God of the Jews". I don’t reject any of the OT. I just think the NT is all that is necessary.

Thanks,
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I merely point out that rejecting or neglecting the Old Testament is venturing onto dangerous ground.

Let us remember that Christ had no New Testament – He preached from the Old Testament. Interestingly enough, the Saducees rejected all of the Old Testament but the first five books (the Torah or Pentateuch) and when speaking tp Saducees, Jesus confines His quotes to those five books – and finds them perfectly adequate!
 
So what do we learn from the OT. We learn that God is a forgiving God and will accept us everytime we reject him and then repent.

Look at Judges - how many times did Israel reject and then turn back to the Lord, and yet the Lord honored the Covenant every time.

2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles does the same thing. God rewards us when we repent and return to Him. Everytime we repent.
 
No we can’t exclude the OT - Jesus said ‘think not that I am come to do away with the law, but to fulfil it’. So the essentials of the Old Testament law and covenant remain - except the portions that are explicitly done away with or replaced by the commands of the NT which ‘fulfil’ the OT and are prefigured in it.

Circumcision, for example, is explicitly replaced by baptism. The old laws about diet and ritual impurity are explicitly done away with, but the requirement to fast for our purification remains. Animal sacrifice is done away with firstly by the eternally sufficient self-sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and secondly by our bloodless re-presentation of it in the Mass. The laws on marriage and sexuality, on the other hand, do not just remain but are made more stringent than they were in OT times (in regard to divorce and adultery for example).
 
LilyM said:
N The laws on marriage and sexuality, on the other hand, do not just remain but are made more stringent than they were in OT times (in regard to divorce and adultery for example).
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You mean Christians caught in adultery our getting something worse than being stoned??? :eek:
 
NotWorthy said:
You mean Christians caught in adultery our getting something worse than being stoned??? :eek:
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Yup – we can go to you-know-where.😃

And notice the penalty is the same for men and women – not just for women as in the Old Testament.
 
NotWorthy said:
You mean Christians caught in adultery our getting something worse than being stoned??? :eek:
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I’d call being eternally damned worse than being stoned 😃

Besides which, I was thinking of the whole ‘whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her …’ thing (redefining adultery to include thoughts of it)
 
LilyM said:
I’d call being eternally damned worse than being stoned 😃

Besides which, I was thinking of the whole ‘whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her …’ thing (redefining adultery to include thoughts of it)
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Ooops! I was thinking in this world instead of the next. My bad.
 
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