teachers gathered from
it the revelation of the past, present and future (Barn. 1. 7), and were
therefore able as prophets to edify the Churches; from it was further
drawn the confirmation of the answers to all emergent questions, as one
could always find in the Old Testament what he was in search of. The
different writers laid the holy book under contribution in very much the
same way; for they were all dominated by the presupposition that this
book is a Christian book, and contains the explanations that are
necessary for the occasion. There were several teachers, e.g., Barnabas,
who at a very early period boasted of finding in it ideas of special
profundity and value--these were always an expression of the
difficulties that were being felt. The plain words of the Lord as
generally known, did not seem sufficient to satisfy the craving for
knowledge, or to solve the problems that were emerging;[215] their
origin and form also opposed difficulties at first to the attempt to
obtain from them new disclosures by re-interpretation. But the Old
Testament sayings and histories were in part unintelligible, or in their
literal sense offensive; they were at the same time regarded as
fundamental words of God. This furnished the conditions for turning them
to account in the way we have stated. The following are the most
important points of view under which the Old Testament was used. (1) The
Monotheistic cosmology and view of nature were borrowed from it (see,
for example, 1 Clem.). (2) It was used to prove that the appearance and
entire history of Jesus had been foretold centuries, nay, thousands of
years beforehand, and that the founding of a new people gathered out of
all nations had been predicted and prepared for from the very
beginning.[216] (3) It was used as a means of verifying all principles
and institutions of the Christian Church,--the spiritual worship of God
without images, the abolition of all ceremonial legal precepts, baptism,
etc. (4) The Old Testament was used for purposes of exhortation
according to the formula _a minori ad majus_; if God then punished and
rewarded this or that in such a way, how much more may we expect, who
now stand in the last days, and have received the [Greek: klesis tes
epangelias]. (5) It was proved from the Old Testament that the Jewish
nation is in error, and either never had a covenant with God or has lost
it, that it has a false apprehension of God's revelations, and therefore
has, no