St Irenaeus

"God cannot be seen or described in his own nature and in all his greatness by any of his creatures....Through his word the whole creation learns that there is one God the Father, who holds all things together and gives them their being." St Ireneaus, Against Heresies

One of the most vexing problems for the early church was how to fold the Hebrew scriptures into the teaching of Jesus, especially as Christianity began to reach into the gentile world, since it would make little sense to non Jews to accept the Hebrew bible as their own.

Despite these difficulties, early Christians did not put aside the Hebrew bible, but embraced it in its entirety, and St Irenaeus was the most important champion of integrating what we call the Old Testament into our understanding of Christianity. His reasoning was clear. If Jesus was an observant Jew and claimed that not a "letter of of the law" (Mt 5:18) would be done away with, then we must find a way to celebrate and pray the truth of the Hebrew bible.

Reading Irenaeus helps us understand how this early Christian martyr, whose name means peace, did this. When we admit with Irenaeus that, "God cannot be seen or described in his own nature and in all his greatness by any of his creatures," we begin thinking and praying in the right place. While every story of God in the Bible offers us a glimmer of insight, none of them allows us to understand God completely. Only God's graciousness allows us to know God in Jesus who is the fullness of the Father.

In other words, while the scriptures are a marvelous help in knowing who God is, they can never, in themselves, reveal the fullness of God. Only God can do that. If, then, we enter into Jesus as the head of the body of Christ, the entire bible will be our most important took in knowing God and God's love for us.

Today, open yourself to the transforming power of the Bible.

Do you struggle with the tone or images in the Old Testament? How do you resolve these conflicts?