Shadow & Substance

The relationship between the Old and New Testaments that can often be obscured due to the names historically given them, as relating to the Old Covenant and the New Covenant exclusively. While this relationship is present, it is perhaps helpful to instead use the context given by St Paul when speaking of the Scriptures in the epistle to the Collosians, "These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ." Each shadow is cast by a figure of substance; the Old Testament can be better understood then as a book of shadows, whose figure is Christ.

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Throughout the New Testament , the writers often use similarity of language to indicate that a particular narrative is tied to an Old Testament narrative. For example, when Christ feeds the five thousand, the gospels tell us specifically they are in a "desert place". This should immediately bring to mind the children of Israel in the desert- Christ is the Bread from Heaven, the New Manna, the figure by which the shadow is made.

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Christ fulfills all of the Scriptures in this way, by entering into parallel narratives in order to set right particular wrongs. When Christ is baptized in the Jordan and exits to the wilderness to fast for forty days, we remember the Israelites wandering through the desert. When He is found in the sea sleeping on a ship, we remember the story of Jonah. When He is in the garden of Gethsemane, we remember Eden. By a repetition of movement, location, activity and word, Christ bends each wayward path back toward Himself becoming the thematic resolve of all the stories that came before.

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We see here another chiastic principal emerge in the relationship of shadow and substance between the two Testaments. The many fragmentations caused by the transgressions of man in the Old Testament are one by one gathered together and manifested as a perfect whole a single Person. The One of whom all the prophets foretold would restore not only Israel, but also the whole world as it ought, the Man Christ Jesus.