How Do we explain God's anger in the Bible?

[PJM]

Originally Posted by juliamajor
God,being Pure Spirit cannot in reality have emotions.

REPLY to above

EmperorNapoleon;5004129]I disagree. If God cannot have emotions then God cannot love and such a stance directly challenges scripture.

Dear friends in Christ, here’s something to ponder and pray about

Your both right!

How can we both be right you ask?

Because “LOVE” from God is NOT an emotion, it is a intrical part of the Very Nature of God!

Love and prayers,

 

[atassina]

Oh please.Get a grip. If I remember correctly that God is a pure Spirit was in my Baltimore catechism.Scripture is our way of understanding God through the Sacred writer. To reduce God (YHWH) to mere emotions is to reduce Him to the level of humans and other deities.AS per Job how can we really understand who God is ?Through Scripture we just get a glimpse, a piece that our mortal minds can understand in a way that makes sense to us.Our frame of reference are human emotions, human actions- the Scripture writer can only use that which he and his audience is familiar with.Do you think God dictated to the Sacred writer?

Dear Julia: Please answer the question I was asking and not the one you gave a good answer to. Atheists and other non-Christians see God in the Old Testament a punishing, vindictive, cruel and angry. How would you like to be one of the races that was wiped out by the Jews under the command of God? How are you going to explain this? Thanks, Anthony

 

[psalm90]

I’ve been reading some Jewish Bible commentaries and, of course, they have many different perspectives than Catholics do.

But, they have commented on this in the Talmud (“study” that is of scripture) and they note that the different Hebrew names of God display genuinely different characteristics of God.

Elohim is a plural word for God (and sometimes for other spiritual beings) and it refers to the “almighty” side of God, and His providence to judge people and things. For example, in the creation account, Elohim is the word used for God and you see God judging things – the seven judgments that things are “good” or “very good” or that it is “not good” for man to be alone. This is the “judging” side of God.

Adonai is a very respectful word for God our Father. It is the aspect of loving and compassion.

They note the at least the apparent conflict between these different aspects of God.

There seems to be one place in the OT where God is praying to Himself, and they rationalize that as the deliberation of God between those different aspects. “Deliberation” as an anthropomorhizing concept, that we need to understand God.

As a previous post mentioned, God does not wait forever to administer justice, such as the command to slay the Canaanites when Israel goes in to occupy the Promised Land. Inspection shows that the Canaanites practice idol worship which is displeasing to God. Recall that Canaan was the son of Ham, who “looked on his father’s nakedness” (Noah) and so the judgment also seems to be a delayed punishment for the sin of Ham.

There are overlapping ideas about individual responsibility (and God’s punishment therefor) versus the ideas that God rewards to the thousandth generation and punishes to the third or fourth generation.

And, of course, the biggie problems in the OT are related to the breaking of the covenant God made with Israel.

This also trails off to contemporary problems such as why there is pain and suffering and misery in the world, and for example why God allowed the Holocaust of the Jews and millions of others in World War II.

We must all submit to the sovereignty and providence of our Father. The creation account in Genesis assumes that mankind was not immortal, to begin with. Otherwise, the presence of the tree of life in Eden wouldn’t have a purpose. Eating that fruit was supposed to grant immortality, so that implies that mankind was not immortal to begin with, as its origin in the soil of the earth demonstrates. We all will die in the flesh, and we don’t have to assume that God is mad at us at all.

 

[juliamajor]

Dear Julia: Please answer the question I was asking and not the one you gave a good answer to. Atheists and other non-Christians see God in the Old Testament a punishing, vindictive, cruel and angry. How would you like to be one of the races that was wiped out by the Jews under the command of God? How are you going to explain this? Thanks, Anthony

Gee , I thought I answered that in #2?

 

[PJM]

=atassina;5009467]Dear Julia: Please answer the question I was asking and not the one you gave a good answer to. Atheists and other non-Christians see God in the Old Testament a punishing, vindictive, cruel and angry. How would you like to be one of the races that was wiped out by the Jews under the command of God? How are you going to explain this? Thanks, Anthony

My dear friends in Christ,

Let us please remember that are made “in the image and likeness of God” Gen ch.1

Charity in all things.

Perhaps I can add some perspective to the debate.

There is a very human, very natural tendency to try to put into words that, which is beyond human understanding. We all do it

The issue at hand is does God 'HAVE" emotions? Because God is SPIRIT we assume that God does not. And if it means anything I agree with this position.

However, God is our Creator , and the designer of all creations, and in our current conversation, we point out, God is the designer of all of humanity.

Part of our “invisible make up”, mind, freewill, intellect, memory, emotions, are common to a greater or lesser degrees in all of us. So God has to at least have a firm understanding of what they are, and their limitations and capabilities.

Now we fast-forward to Jesus, who is One Person with two COMPLETE Natures, that of God (which He retained) and that of Humanity (which he assumed).

As Humanity, God had the potential and in fact did experience most (all that are not sinful) human emotions. Love, joy, loneliness, happiness, sadness, tears, anger.

Then we bounce back to “God” the Creator who we know has ONE NATURE and three Divine Beings (Persons): Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. ** Key here is that they share ONE NATURE.** What one experiences, desires, wants, commands is actually and effectively pertains to all Three Persons. So “God” has personally experience first hand some of our emotions.

Having sared this, I would point out what we term “anger,” “wrath,” “murder,” “vindictive manifestations” are not in God, what you and I understand to be emotions.
**
Our definition of God is that God is, and God must be** everything that is Good.

So we ask are being “fair” and being “just” good things? Sure they are.

Now I ask, what does it mean to be "vindictive’? It means to pay back or retaliate, to “get even”, get even? Why that sounds like Justice and fairness, and that is exactly what it is.

If one reads carefully these stories of exterminations and mass extinction, it is always the “bad, evil” people who are being zapped! And to show future God’s fairness, He does the very same thing “to His chosen People” when they too become bad and evil. (Disobedient!)

These are manifistations of Divine Justice. Not irrational acts of anger, hate and the like. They are God’s very Nature not emotions, as we know them.

God is and must be God. Fairness and Justice are necessary components of God’s Just Nature. So His actions are based on His Divine and Perfect nature, not on emotions.

 

[atassina]

Dear Psalm90, Julia & PJM: Thank you for your consistently thoughtful replies.:clapping: All of you have improved the quality of this thread. I am gleaning a better understanding of God’s anger as it is shown in the Old Testament.

Does anybody know how St. Augustine approached this topic? I have attempted to search for his response, but I have been unable to find it. Perhaps I should buy that Faith Database, alas, I have an iMac and it doesn’t work on an iMac.

Thank you,
Anthony

 

[atassina]

Easter Monday

Dear Fellow Posters: Thank you for staying on the ship. Tonight I copied and pasted many of the replies you gave. I want to save them in a file for future consideration. I appreciate your help.