Originally published at The Catholic Thing
Martin Luther speaks imaginatively of the Old Testament as “the manger in which Christ lies.” Richard Hays begins his splendid book, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness, citing Luther’s insight. Then, he expands the image: “[Jesus Christ] is the treasure who lies figurally wrapped in the folds of the Old Testament.” “Figurally” because Jesus Christ, “prefigured” by God-inspired personages and events of Israel’s history, recapitulates them, bringing them to historical and spiritual fulfillment. Like swaddling clothes, Israel’s Scriptures both reveal and conceal the promised Messiah.
The first chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel masterfully weaves the ties binding the testaments not in abstract terms, but in the concrete persons of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. What Luke says of Zechariah and Elizabeth, can be said, a fortiori, of Mary and Joseph: “they were righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly.” (Luke 1:6) Yet notwithstanding this clear embeddedness in the faith of Israel, there also emerges, gradually but unmistakably, the newness that will become manifest in the Good News of Jesus Messiah.
Already the angel’s double annunciation heralds the newness. Announcing to Zechariah the birth of the Baptist, Gabriel proclaims that
