The New Testament

The New Testament, as usually received in the Christian Churches, is made up of twenty-seven different books attributed to eight different authors, six of whom are numbered among the Apostles (Matthew, John, Paul, James, Peter, Jude) and two among their immediate disciples (Mark, Luke). If we consider only the contents and the literary form of these writings they may be divided into historical books (Gospels and Acts), didactic books (Epistles), a prophetical book (Apocalypse). Before the name of New Testament had come into use the writers of the latter half of the second century used to say “Gospel and Apostolic writings” or simply “the Gospel and the Apostle”, meaning the Apostle St. Paul.

The New Testament is the principal and almost the only source of the early history of Christianity in the first century. All the “Lives of Jesus Christ” have been composed from the Gospels. The history of the Apostles, as narrated by Renan, Farrar, Fouard, Weizsacker, and Le Camus, is based on the Acts and the Epistles. The “Theologies of the New Testament”, of which so many have been written during the nineteenth century, are a proof that we can with canonical texts build up a compact and fairly complete doctrinal system.

Christianity being the normal continuation of Judaism, the New Testament must needs inherit from the Old Testament a certain number of religious doctrines concerning God, His worship the original destinies of the world, and especially of men, the moral law, spirits, etc. Although these beliefs are not specifically Christian, the New Testament develops and perfects them.

The attributes of God, particularly His spirituality, His immensity, His goodness, and above all His fatherhood are insisted on more fully. The moral law is restored to its primitive perfection in what regards the unity and perpetuity of marriage, respect for God‘s name, forgiveness of injuries, and in general the duties towards one’s neighbors; the guilt of the simple desire of a thing forbidden by the Law is clearly set forth; external works (prayer, almsgiving, fasting, sacrifice) really derive their worth from the dispositions of the heart that accompany them.

• (a) The Divine life common to the Three Persons (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) in the Unity of one and the same Nature is the mystery of the Trinity, obscurely typified or outlined in the Old Testament.

• (b) The Messias promised by the Prophets has come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who was not only a man powerful in word and work, but the true God Himself, the Word made man, born of a virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate, but risen from the dead and now exalted to the right hand of His Father.

• (c) It was by an ignominious death on the Cross, and not by power and glory, that Jesus Christ redeemed the world from sin, death, and the anger of God; He is the Redeemer of all men (Gentiles as well as Jews) and He unites them to Himself all without distinction.

• (d) The Mosaic Law (rites and political theocracy) having been given only to the Jewish peoples and that for a time, must disappear, as the figure before the reality. To these practices powerless in themselves Christ substitutes rites really sanctifying, especially baptism, eucharist, and penance. However the new economy is to such a degree a religion in spirit and truth, that, absolutely speaking, man can be saved, in the absence of all exterior means, by submitting himself fully to God by the faith and love of the Redeemer.