¶109 The Scriptures-Authority of the Old Testament
The Old Testament is not contrary to the New. Both Testaments bear witness to God’s salvation in Christ; both speak of God’s will for His people. The ancient laws for ceremonies and rites, and the civil precepts for the nation of Israel are not necessarily binding on Christians today. But, on the example of Jesus we are obligated to obey the moral commandments of the Old Testament.
The books of the Old Testament are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi.
¶131 Scriptural References
The doctrines of the Free Methodist Church are based upon the Holy Scriptures and are derived from their total biblical context. The references below are appropriate passages related to the given articles. They are listed in their biblical sequence and are not intended to be exhaustive. Matthew 5:17-18; Luke 10:25-28; John 5:39, 46-47; Acts 10:43; Galatians 5:3-4; 1 Peter 1:10-12.
This Article continues from the first one referencing the authority of Scripture. Here, specifically, we speak about the Old Testament and affirm that it is just as much divinely inspired as the New Testament and just as much a testimony of who Jesus is as the New. This combats an ancient heresy propagated by a man named Marcion who taught that the god of the Old Testament must necessarily be a different god than the Father of Jesus. He saw nothing but wrath and anger in the Old Testament god and could not reconcile that with the image of a loving Father Jesus proclaimed.
This view is sometimes subtly still taught in churches today. “The Old Testament is about law; the New Testament is about grace.” This is a soft version of Marcion’s heresy. It is also not true. God chose Abraham without giving him a law to follow. God delivered the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt before he gave them the Law. God offered to heal and restore the Israelite nation repeatedly if they would only repent and return to him. There is grace all over the Old Testament.
Two other points to notice in this Article. One is that we make a distinction between the ceremonial and civil laws for the Jewish nation and Jewish worship and the moral laws that apply to interpersonal relationships and actions. This is a classic distinction of what parts of the Old Testament are applicable to the Church today. There is a long history of applying the Old Testament in this way. This is why Christians have no problem affirming (in some of the most adamant ways sometimes!) the Ten Commandments, and yet also not following the laws concerning the kosher diet or wearing clothing of mixed types of fabric.
The other point to notice is that the list of Old Testament books is the Protestant list of them. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox list of books in the Old Testament is longer. Protestant Bibles will print these books sometimes, and include them in a different section called Apocrypha or Deutrocanonical Books. These books were a part of the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, that was used by the early Church. As such, they were always a part of Christian Scripture. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he decided to use the Hebrew list of books, which did not contain those extra books (or portions of books, as Esther and Daniel are longer in the Greek). There are many reasons why this decision was made, and there are many reasons why the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox retain those books to this day.
John Wesley included one reading from Tobit in his readings for the Lord’s Supper when he first composed a service book for the Methodists in America in 1784. This shows some of the Church’s conflicted opinions about these books. Essentially, they are seen as good for teaching many things about a Christian life. On one level, they can be considered “inspired” in that sense, just as many people have considered What’s So Amazing about Grace? by Philip Yancey or Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright as inspirational. But at the end of the day, we trust that the books listed above are the ones out of which we draw our understanding of who God is based upon our reading of His self-revelation within them.