In my post for February 22, I talked about what Luke Timothy Johnson calls "cognitive dissonance" as an experience of the first Christians. It is the tension one feels when there is conflict between our convictions and our experience. Please read that post to make sense of this one.

The first Christians resolved the tension of cognitive dissonance by reinterpreting the convictions that came from Torah. A good example is found in today's reading from Hebrews 10:1-25, expecially verses 5-7, which read:

5Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: "Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; 6with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. 7Then I said, 'Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, O God.'"

This is a quotation from Psalm 40:6-8 taken from the 2nd century B.C. Greek translation known as the Septuagint (often abbreviated LXX, or 70, in our Bible footnotes). If you look up Psalm 40:6-8 in your Bible, it will be a bit different:

6Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. 7 Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. 8 I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart."

The writer of Hebrews is reading Psalm 40 Christologically, i.e., as if it is Christ speaking to God. This is typical of the way first Christians reinterpreted Torah to resolve their cognitive dissonance. OT scripture -- read in the Septuagint version -- suddenly appeared to foreshadow Christ at every turn. In v. 5, "a body" is from the LXX, which understands the Hebrew "ears you have pierced" (or, "ears you have dug for me" literally) as the creation of a body out of clay, as of Adam in the beginning. Here, our author finds a reference to the incarnation. It is not likely the author of Psalm 40 had that in mind originally, but now Christians are finding references to Christ everywhere. This is apparently what Luke understood, too, as in Luke 24, Jesus opens up the Law and the Prophets to the travelers on the road to Emmaus.

The same can be said when the author of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31:33-34, which he uses in 8:8-12 AND in 10:15-18. He understands that the coming of Christ makes further sacrifices unnecessary.

Cognitive dissonance. A sociologist's fancy word for the tension we call "doubt." Yet, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it became the source of new faith for the first Christians and all who followed. We need not fear our doubts!