We are aware, who are literate in the Western canon, that the Bible, purported legacy of the Universal Creator, comprises two testaments, usually called the Old and New Testament (hereinafter OT and NT). I propose to examine this curious fact and offer an explanation as to why this should be so. Concurrently I shall address certain ethical questions arising from the said situation – notably the apparent ethical disparity between the testaments.
 
Immediately we confront a curious problem. By Testament we mean covenant or bequest. We might say it’s the deck or deal handed to humanity by the Creator, setting forth the terms of relationship between the human nature and the divine. I wish to emphasise that both testaments are understood to originate with God, and that redemption is their aim.

So what is going on here? Did the omniscient creator change his mind? Did the eternal spirit ponder one grey afternoon ‘… this Old Testament doesn’t seem to be working … let me try something new’?
 
This, I suggest, is one of those pivotal questions, were innate preconceptions either enlighten us to spiritual truth or confirm us in our darkness. If we already know that the Bible is hotchpot, as certain bright sparks evidently do, what matter whether there are two covenants or a dozen? Any internal discrepancy can always be explained by the diversity of human authorship. But if we allow the integrity of its prophetic lineage, we face the said conundrum. More, we face the challenge, as enunciated by various commentators, who would basically commend the ethics of Jesus (NT), but find those of Yahweh (OT) abhorrent.
 
To address these issues I shall (1) simply state the truth of the matter as I understand it, and (2) offer textual corroboration along with some theological or spiritual rationale. Whereas a didactic style is here employed for the sake of clarity, the case presented is one which I indeed accept as compelling.

In truth then – divine intent, from the beginning, was invested in one sole covenant – the covenant of grace or mercy, which we call the New Testament. The Old Testament, the covenant of the law, arose in the context of God’s permissive will, and reflects the will of man and (which some may regard as curious) divine acquiescence in the latter. (As a footnote to this curiosity I will suggest that the conception of the Almighty as cosmic autocrat is an example of human projection. The divine nature is rather the most submissive thing in the universe, as intuited also the great pagan philosopher Lao Tse.) Insofar as we are considering concourse between incommensurates – the human nature and the divine – the Old Testament of ritual sanctity represents the human contribution to the relational dynamic. In the greater purpose of God this latter serves as a temporal antechamber to the spiritual sanctuary proper. In a further sense it serves as a setting – as of a precious jewel – for the disclosure of the New Testament of mercy or grace – qualities meaningful only in a context of judgement and law. We see the weakness and ultimate failure of the latter contrasted with the strength and ultimate victory of the former, such that a principle is established.

Scripturally, the original covenant of grace and mercy is hailed from the outset. It is prophetically affirmed from the fall in Eden and quickly reaches apotheosis with the patriarch Abraham – before Moses, before the Old Testament Law was ever engraved on tablets of stone. We find the Abrahamic covenant confirmed before Abraham is circumcised, where circumcision signifies – or later comes to signify – the keeping of the Levitical Law. We find furthermore that circumcision is not peremptorily imposed on the patriarch. The patriarch rather demands of God, ‘what sign will you give that these things I am hearing are so?’ – exemplifying, as per my thesis, the assertion of human nature in the context of divine provision.
 
We now fast forward to the Exodus, the trek toward the Promised Land – the eventual setting, in a physical sense, for the redemptive opus to unfold. The prophetic voice of the Exodus, and lawgiver of the Old Testament, is Moses – a man of whom God testifies that ‘I’ speak with him lip to ear. We find that, under Moses, Israel possesses every necessary provision for a successful campaign – a cloud or pillar of fire to guide them, the miraculous staff of Moses, manna from heaven, a smitten rock issuing the water of life, and a brass serpent for divine healing. But for the congregation this was not good enough, for leaders emerged among them, who addressed Moses somewhat as follows: ‘We understand that you are God’s anointed prophet and ... ah, don’t get us wrong ... we appreciate all these things, but you know, there are others here, schooled in the wisdom of Egypt. We are all holy and we demand that we are consulted in any decision you make,’ yet again illustrating my thesis. Moses, characterised as the meekest man on earth, held his peace more or less.
 
With this psychology they came to Sinai, the Mount of God, where things got scary. If they – the gainsayers – were out of their depth from the beginning, they surely hadn’t reckoned with this. For fire descended on the mountain and the I AM in the fire, and a trumpet shook the earth and was still getting louder. And Yahweh called Moses into the mountain. As for the rest – more than just a little freaked, as the amiable saying has it – they cried, ‘let Moses speak and we will hear, but let not God speak, lest we die.’ Let not God speak, those fateful words – and I am telescoping a complex plot – but in those words is distilled the human psychology evinced by Israel at Mount Sinai. First hubris, then fear. And in the upshot, ‘let us not face the issue, let us have rationalisation. Let us have legislation, let us have a code of conduct’. This they obtained in what became known as the Jewish Law.
 
And how did it serve them? Whereas they would have crossed Jordan within days, they wondered in the wilderness forty years. Out of two million souls who left Egypt, two entered the promised land. Moses, as symbolic type of the law, did not physically enter the land (though 700 years later he stood with Jesus and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration). When Israel in the flesh finally did cross over, it was under Joshua (Jesus), signifying again the covenant of grace.
 
More such lessons could be drawn, but we will proceed to the spiritual application of these stories. I believe they illustrate God’s perfect provision and the insistence of human intellect, against this provision, to get its own hands on the tiller. They reveal the pain and failure that attend such insistence. And the moral I am deriving here is not confined to biblical Israel. All cultures have an ethical and sacramental code, enshrining the concept of reward or salvation through merit. All cultures, in other words, are established in some variant of the Old Testament. The disclosure of the New Testament, unique to this prophetic transmission, reverses this universal conception. Whereas an ethical and aesthetic sensibility is appropriately cultivated of the fallen nature, the approach to the divine, the path of redemption here revealed, is that of unconditional or unmerited grace.
 
Let us pause here and reflect that the question of good and evil has exercised philosophers of all ages and climes. The greatest among them intuitively perceived in this dichotomy something of a dilemma, an imposture, an intolerable intrusion upon contemplative tranquillity. ‘If you want the plain truth’, wrote the Taoist poet Seng-ts’an, ‘be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind’. Western writers of the modern era – Rabelais, Nietzsche, Crowley – have similarly sought to forge a path beyond the confines of good and evil, concerned to cast off the shackles of a hypocritical and stifling morality. An amoral ethos eventually supervened, culminating in various forms of pragmatic relativism, inclusive of such chilling vistas as contemplated within the mystic coteries of the Nazi SS.
 
What then of the said covenant of unconditional grace? Does this mean that law is abrogate? On the contrary. Whereas under the Old Testament the punishment for adultery was death by stoning, Jesus, lawgiver of the New Testament is quoted saying, that whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. The law, in other words, has become spiritual, subtle, extended beyond the reach of ordinary human sensibility. In the context of such a law our condemnation is implicit. Yet the administration of this law is through mercy and grace. There is no condemnation or divine retribution, for mercy and grace are accepted of God for righteousness, and this is the original and authentic covenant which God made with man, whereas the concept and covenant of the law, as among the more bitter fruits of the tree of knowledge, constitutes a rationalisation of the unregenerate mind.
 
Contrasted then for our edification are two covenants – two spiritual attitudes or paths. We noted that universal approbation is accorded the law, whereas mercy ... where is it actually spoken of mercy? And as to the spiritual implications? While rule of law may be a necessary aspect of social organisation, as a spiritual attitude it engenders the wrath of God. Conventional wisdom may take exception to this, yet I suggest that a little insight will reveal this to be self-evident. To invoke the law as one’s spiritual covering is to invoke the full weight of condemnation inherent in the law. It is to face head-on the fiery sword that is guarding the tree of life. It is to confront the wrathful deities in the bardo vision, and the apparition of the dreaded Lord of Death. It is to be sifted in the Judgement Hall of Tahuti, and in the light of the apocalyptic Great White Throne. It is to remain outside the sanctuary, where reigns spiritual death.  
 
Contrariwise, for the soul that embraces mercy, there is no condemnation. It has already passed through the judgement. It has judged itself worthy of condemnation under the law, and accepted the provision of mercy. An illustrative metaphor, employed by biblical writers, is that of marriage and divorce. The soul (which is female in relation to spirit) is married to the saviour – the principle of divine grace. This means she must divorce her old husband – the law – so that she may live for her new husband – Christ, the mercy and grace of God. Such a soul, as no longer under the law, is free from all condemnation as occasioned by the law. Such a soul is free in the ultimate sense.
 
Here then, in the adumbration of two Testaments, is the boon which the philosophers have sought – the emancipation that cuts to the root of humanity’s moral plight. Affirming natural law, it simultaneously offers freedom from the law. In so doing, it makes of the two one, thus healing the breach whereby the human nature is separated from the divine.