If the Gospels were works of fiction, one of the many things that would be difficult to explain about them would be how well they complete the Old Testament.  There are so many threads in the Old Testament that are only tied together in the New that one staggers at the happenstance that could lead mere fiction writers to stumble on such a brilliant “sequel”.

Take one small example.   What is Melchizedec doing in the Old Testament?  He stands out like a sore thumb – but only briefly: once in Genesis (Gen. 14:18 -21), and again, but only as a puzzling allusion, in Psalm 110:4.  Melchizedec appears as a mysterious priest of God before God had priests; we are told he is in some sense eternal; he comes from Salem, i.e. Jerusalem; and he brings bread and wine.  And if the New Testament books were indeed a form of fiction, then one would have to wonder a few things:

  1. Why is such an odd and glaring loose end left hanging in the Old Testament, and only explained in the New?
  2. How did the authors of the Gospels manage to dream up a figure – Jesus Christ – who so perfectly fulfills what the enigmatic figure of Melchizedec merely suggests?
  3. And how is it that the further development of the Church saw even more in Melchizedec than the “novelists” of the New Testament did, particularly in the Eucharistic symbols of bread and wine, which become even more alive in the historical Church than in the inchoate accounts of the Eucharist in the Gospels and in I Corinthians?  In other words, if the NT writers were writers of mere stories, they manage to account for Melchizedec&rrsquo;s bread and wine in their plot element we call the Eucharist, but their account of the Eucharist itself has some loose ends, which are only tied together over the centuries as the early Church actually experiences and acts out this Eucharist – and thereby begins to understand it better.   We see more in Melchizedec’s bread and wine than, for example, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews seems to.

Indeed, if a novelist were given the assignment to take an unfinished mystery story and complete it, he would be in much the same boat as the “novelists” of the New Testament were.  For the Old Testament is wildly unfinished; the whole long story builds – with historical narrative, poetry, prophecy, aphorisms, even erotic imagery – to a kind of climax that never comes.  If the hard-nosed editor were to say to the young hack writer, “Son, we have here an unfinished mystery story.  There are clues lying about all over, and since the author left it unfinished, we have no idea what the solution is.  But we think it could be a hot seller, so come up with a solution that fits.”

Now a number of solutions could be made to fit an unfinished mystery; but the right solution – the one the original author intended – will “click” … like a key opening a lock.  And every reader will know at once it’s the right solution, for it satisfies everything in the “set up”; the solution will satisfy, and the conclusion will be conclusive.

That’s because a mystery story is written backwards.  The author knows the solution beforehand and writes the clues into the story so that the entire story points to the solution.

This is the relationship between the books of the Old and the New Testament.  Even if the New Scriptures are fictional, even if they’re only a story, we can at least say it was just this story that the authors of the Old Scriptures had in mind.

Though it’s obvious they did not have it in mind.  It’s obvious the New, while perfectly fulfilling the Old, is utterly a surprise.  It is the perfect and yet the undreamed of solution to which all of the Old was building.

Of course the Gospels are not works of fiction.  Neither are our lives.  God is the author of both.   But see His great skill as a writer!  And imagine how surprised we’ll be when our own solutions come, when the great conclusion to which all of our lives have been building arrives.  “For I consider that the sufferings of this present age are nothing compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”