How New Is the New Testament, by Donald Hagner (Baker Academic, 2018), 224 pp.
Donald Hagner is a revered NT scholar, now retired from Fuller Seminary. He received his doctorate under FF Bruce at the University of Manchester and has contributed weighty commentaries, with a specialty on the Gospel of Matthew. He has a deep grasp of the Jewish background of the NT, which is reflected in this book’s sub-title: “First Century Judaism and the Emergence of Christianity.”
“How New is the New Testament?” is as quite a “thoroughly concise” (oxymoron?) treatment of the relationship between the New and Old Testaments as one can find today. It should be read both by those seeing more Continuity (amillennialists?) and also those seeing more Discontinuity (premillennialists?) between the Testaments.
Hagner carefully and fairly shows how the NT actually stresses both of these themes in very creative ways. He surveys every passage in the NT that touches on his question in the title, showing how both these themes are stressed. He does not claim any specific millennial view, but he does clearly discern in the NT an eschatological future for Israel and firmly rejects any continuity that results in what has been called supercessionism (i.e., the church replaces Israel). He believes that the promised kingdom is both now (continuity) and not yet (discontinuity).
He concludes with the following:
“Continuity, substantial though it is, must finally yield to the discontinuity caused by the dramatic newness of what the NT announces and embodies. … The fulfillment articulated in the NT involves a newness that cannot fairly be represented as simply the convictions of a sect within Judaism. In the last analysis, the word “new” in the title “New Testament” must be given its full weight” (179).
Such a conclusion will probably not satisfy many on either end of this contentious spectrum, but his keen analysis ought not to be rejected without some serious consideration.
Find it here at Amazon.
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