Old Testament versus New Testament

[jon27]

Old Testament holds to much of a violent, rathful,jealous God in sharp contrast with New Testament, it portraying love of thy brother,helping the poor etc.

I as a Catholic, have always struggled with the full meaning of the two Testaments, and how they intertwine. It appears they are contradicting forces in one faith.

I would however like to believe The Apostle Saint John in his profound interpetation that God is pure love.

 

[benedictgal]

Old Testament holds to much of a violent, rathful,jealous God in sharp contrast with New Testament, it portraying love of thy brother,helping the poor etc.

I as a Catholic, have always struggled with the full meaning of the two Testaments, and how they intertwine. It appears they are contradicting forces in one faith.

I would however like to believe The Apostle Saint John in his profound interpetation that God is pure love.

I would warn you against treading on the very dangerous waters of Marcionism. Marcion lived during the early stages of the Church and held much of what you are saying. He claimed that the God of the Old Testament was nothing like the God of Jesus Christ. He was branded a heretic.

You have to remember some very important things here. Yahweh established a very personal covenant with Ancient Israel, pledging to be their God and they pledged to be His people. Time and time again, Ancient Israel broke the covenant. Even David failed to live up to his end of the bargain. What Ancient Israel suffered was a consequence of their actions. God had warned them, but, they kept going on their merry way. Read Hosea, Ezekiel and Amos where it notes God’s passionate love for His people and how they constantly spurned Him.

Now to simply look at Jesus as going around and doing nice things for people is to have a superficial image of Him. That is not the Jesus of the Gospels. I would urge you to read Pope Benedict’s book, Jesus of Nazareth. This should help put things into their proper perspective for you.

 

[jay29]

Jesus Christ wasn’t all about flowers and love! He didn’t come to start a peace camp! He talks about hell and damnation 90 times in the NT vs. 27 times of heaven. People get stuck on the lovey dovey parts and forget about the OTHER HALF of His entire message.

 

[juliamajor]

Jesus Christ wasn’t all about flowers and love! He didn’t come to start a peace camp! He talks about hell and damnation 90 times in the NT vs. 27 times of heaven. People get stuck on the lovey dovey parts and forget about the OTHER HALF of His entire message.

Your not reading it right. You really need some guidance.Get in a Catholic Bible study wherever you are or get some decent commentaries-like collegeville or NJBC .Collegeville does Individual books of the bible in a booklet type form,with text and commentary- very inexpensive and good. Start OT with Genesis- then rest of Pentateuch.By then you should have a solid grounding in OT theology. Good Hunting!

 

[jon27]

Sir, you make on as if I speak about woodstock, if Jesus did not come to proclaim peace and love and gentleness what is your interpretation of the other half. Surely to be mysteriously crucified for the redemption of sin,however this being done with total surrender for the love of man, for mans eternal salvation.
This sacrifice springs from love. He is the Lamb of God, not the Lion of God. Christ loved his enemies,forgave from the cross those
who percecuted him.
Listen when he says that man cannot serve two masters.He is clearly speaking that if you serve the God of love, you cannot serve the things of the world which encompasses hatred, lies ,murder,greed etc.The Kingdom of God (which you must believe is all good in its nature] is within you.Christ himself proclaimed this, The Perfect Man, The Perfect God. Perfect Love.
Sir I believe that God has no contradiction because of his Holy Divinity. God and his Son are incapable of being anything other than pure love.

 

[Robbinson]

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8)

The idea that the God portrayed in the Old Testatement is different than the God protrayed in the New Testatement is incorrect. I agree with the prior respondent - while Jesus certainly focused our attention on the spiritual aspects of the law and the importance of love - those principles are also contained within the Old Testatement. The God of judgement in the Old Testatement is very much with us in the New Testatement and the trials of the end times will make prior periods of tribulation pale in comparision.

We can’t focus only on the element of God’s character that focuses on love without judgement - that is a manmade construction of God.

The God of the Bible (Old and New Testatment) is mulitdimensional. While God is love and His love for us flows through the scriptures, He has been and always be a Holy God who will not tolerate sin without sacrafice to atone for that sin. Jesus paid the price for us as told in the New Testatment - for those who believe in Him and repent of their sins. But the God of judgement remains unchanged.

Blessings,

Brian

 

[richardeekw]

Old Testament holds to much of a violent, rathful,jealous God in sharp contrast with New Testament, it portraying love of thy brother,helping the poor etc.

I as a Catholic, have always struggled with the full meaning of the two Testaments, and how they intertwine. It appears they are contradicting forces in one faith.

I would however like to believe The Apostle Saint John in his profound interpetation that God is pure love.

The Old is revealed in the New…and the New is hidden in the Old.
May I suggest youget through the SALVATION HISTORY story

• Jeff Cavins 24 lecture in “Adventure in the Bible Timeline”
• Dr Scott Hahn - Catholic Adult Education Course on “Salvation History”
• Go to salvationhistory.com/

Also Dr Margaret Nutting Ralph’s series of books may help.

 

[John_Hiner]

Sir, you make on as if I speak about woodstock, if Jesus did not come to proclaim peace and love and gentleness what is your interpretation of the other half. Surely to be mysteriously crucified for the redemption of sin,however this being done with total surrender for the love of man, for mans eternal salvation.
This sacrifice springs from love. He is the Lamb of God, not the Lion of God. Christ loved his enemies,forgave from the cross those
who percecuted him.
Listen when he says that man cannot serve two masters.He is clearly speaking that if you serve the God of love, you cannot serve the things of the world which encompasses hatred, lies ,murder,greed etc.The Kingdom of God (which you must believe is all good in its nature] is within you.Christ himself proclaimed this, The Perfect Man, The Perfect God. Perfect Love.
Sir I believe that God has no contradiction because of his Holy Divinity. God and his Son are incapable of being anything other than pure love.

Laudatur Iesus Christus.

Dear jon27:

Welcome to the forums. Thanks for raising an interesting and challenging issue.

It is easy to overly focus on “love” in a “popular” sense, unless one is careful to discern the depth of meaning associated in the Gospel with this idea. For example, one of the passages to which your post refers says:

“No one can serve two masters. He will either **hate **one and **love **the other, or be **devoted **to one and **despise **the other. You cannot serve God and mammon,” (Matthew (NAB) 6:24).

In this passage the Lord Himself ties the ideas of “love” and “hate” together. He says that “to love” one master implies “to hate” or “to despise” the other. Hence, one might fairly say that in this very passage Christ teaches love and hate equally. The challenge is to know what He means by “to love,” “to hate,” and “to despise.”

Further, your post says, “He is the Lamb of God, not the Lion of God.” The Book of Revelation, written by St. John, the author of the fourth Gospel, says:

And I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals; and I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, “Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth; and he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. (Revelation (RSV) 5:1-7.)

The Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God are the same.

One must strive to understand this to discern how Jesus can be the Lord of the real world. The world where there is war and terror and murder, the world where extinctions happen and diseases spread, where mothers and children die. The God of Love is the God of the real world, and this takes a deep and nuanced understanding of the meaning of God and of His love. (Otherwise God is reduced to mere “pie in the sky.”)

Since the rebellion of Satan, love has been a choice. That choice implies love and hate; the question is whether one chooses to love God and to hate any alternative to Him, or whether one embraces one of the alternatives to God, and effectively hates God, as the Lord explained when He taught that “no one can serve two masters.”

The Jesus of the New Testament is the God of the Old Testament:

Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” (John (NAB) 8:56-58.)

In the old Vulgate manuscript tradition, from which the Douay-Rheims, English translation was made, St. Jude’s letter reads:

“I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not,” (Jude (DRAE) 1:5).

So, I invite you to discuss these issues fully. After all:

“every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old,” (Matthew (RSV) 13:52).

Spiritus Sapientiae nobiscum.

John Hiner

 

[jon27]

Allow me please to elaborate on some ideas, for it seems you continue to quote Scripture,and for that I am grateful. However in doing so you force me to cite the very same Scriptures to enhance my theory.

In looking at The Commandments God tells us that we should not kill. In the Old Testament God Himself kills.

In matters of love, God through his prophets tells us jealousy has no place in love, yet God speaks of Himself as a jealous God.

In the old Testament God is Truth, and His Truth set The law fro the Jews, guidlines and rituals to be adhered to by his people.The sacrificing of animals for the atonement of sin.Permision to divorce and so on. He then sends the Word, The Christ, who was there from the begining into this world to proclaim this was not the way to salvation. What happened?
Do you honestly believe that The Supreme Being changed his mind? Why do you think the Jews killed him? Is it an eye for an eye,or is it to turn the other cheek? May we divorce or is it let no man put assunder what God has joined.

The very act of circumcision which is paramount to the Jews was deemed to be a non issue to the Gentile Christian. Why?
Why am I, as a Christian not permitted to participate in this Holy act?

Christ was crucified, yes for the salvation of man, however that is not why the Jews killed him, but rather he was slain because of the newness of His Covenant which nullified much of the Jewish Laws and traditions.

The Trinity is Truth - One Truth - and Truth cannot waiver…

 

[benedictgal]

Allow me please to elaborate on some ideas, for it seems you continue to quote Scripture,and for that I am grateful. However in doing so you force me to cite the very same Scriptures to enhance my theory.

In looking at The Commandments God tells us that we should not kill. In the Old Testament God Himself kills.

In matters of love, God through his prophets tells us jealousy has no place in love, yet God speaks of Himself as a jealous God.

In the old Testament God is Truth, and His Truth set The law fro the Jews, guidlines and rituals to be adhered to by his people.The sacrificing of animals for the atonement of sin.Permision to divorce and so on. He then sends the Word, The Christ, who was there from the begining into this world to proclaim this was not the way to salvation. What happened?
Do you honestly believe that The Supreme Being changed his mind? Why do you think the Jews killed him? Is it an eye for an eye,or is it to turn the other cheek? May we divorce or is it let no man put assunder what God has joined.

The very act of circumcision which is paramount to the Jews was deemed to be a non issue to the Gentile Christian. Why?
Why am I, as a Christian not permitted to participate in this Holy act?

Christ was crucified, yes for the salvation of man, however that is not why the Jews killed him, but rather he was slain because of the newness of His Covenant which nullified much of the Jewish Laws and traditions.

The Trinity is Truth - One Truth - and Truth cannot waiver…

I am afraid that there is too much of Marcion’s heresy that is influencing this perspective. Please read what the Church said about Marcionism:

Expounding on Paul’s characterization of the Mosaic Law as the cause of sin, Marcion desired a Christianity untainted by any elements of Judaism. He saw the God of the Old Testament as cruel and vengeful, an embarrassment and a stumbling block in the evangelization of the Gentiles.

How could the God who commanded adulterers to be stoned be reconciled with the God who let them go free? This was overcome by postulating the existence of two gods. Marcion concluded that the tyrannical Creator-God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, was in opposition to the merciful and loving God of the New Testament.

The material I quoted comes from the 1994 edition of This Rock, which is also found in the Catholic Answers website. The author, Mark Wheeler, further explains that:

Although Marcion’s teaching strongly resembled the good god/bad god dualism that would achieve its full flowering in Manichaeism more than a century later, his theology was neither systematic nor deep. His chief motive in reducing the canon and renouncing the God of the Old Testament was to avoid any connection between Christianity and Judaism. He cared little for the philosophical and theological inconsistencies that his doctrines entailed. He set up his rival sect to purify the Catholic Church of what he considered to be its Judaizing tendencies.

Marcion created a biblical canon of his own by seizing on Paul’s claim to have received the gospel not from man but directly from the Lord (Gal. 1:11-12). He rejected all the books of the Old Testament and retained only those of the New which were clearly authored by Paul, purging any texts which conflicted with his personal beliefs. A version of Luke, minus the infancy narrative, was acceptable to Marcion since Luke was the loyal companion of Paul and faithfully handed on Paul’s words.

This is what the Church’s response was (and remains to this day):

The Catholic Church responded vigorously to the threat posed by the Marcionites. Since Marcion’s argument was dualistic in nature (good vs. bad gods), apologists such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Tertullian insisted on there being only one, perfectly good God. (Tertullian, for example, produced Against Marcion, a five-volume defense of the traditional faith; later Tertullian himself would fall prey to a different heresy, Montanism.)

These writers developed systematic treatises on the chief doctrines challenged by the Marcionites: monotheism, the Trinity, the holiness of marriage (Marcion rejected matrimony and allowed only vowed celibates to be baptized). Many of the Church’s arguments were drawn from Paul’s epistles, especially Galatians, to show that Catholics were not “Judaizing” the faith by accepting the Old Testament and by teaching that the God of the Old and New Testaments is one.

Now, Marcionism regurgitated itself when Martin Luther came on to the scene. In fact, as Wheeler points out:

In the sixteenth century Martin Luther likewise sensed a conflict between the works of the Law and the faith of the gospel. This led him, like Marcion, to reject canonical books from the Old Testament, to attempt to remove from the New Testament books conflicting with his perception of the gospel, and to mistranslate texts to suit his beliefs. Some of the churches spawned by Luther continue to propagate the attitude he shared with Marcion. Whenever one hears that the Old Testament’s moral law is no longer in force, one is hearing an echo of Marcionism.

Please, please re-think your position and read the Holy Scriptures with the mind and heart of the Church, lest you fall victim to heresies like Marcionism.

 

[John_Hiner]

Allow me please to elaborate on some ideas, for it seems you continue to quote Scripture,and for that I am grateful. However in doing so you force me to cite the very same Scriptures to enhance my theory.

In looking at The Commandments God tells us that we should not kill. In the Old Testament God Himself kills.

In matters of love, God through his prophets tells us jealousy has no place in love, yet God speaks of Himself as a jealous God.

In the old Testament God is Truth, and His Truth set The law fro the Jews, guidlines and rituals to be adhered to by his people.The sacrificing of animals for the atonement of sin.Permision to divorce and so on. He then sends the Word, The Christ, who was there from the begining into this world to proclaim this was not the way to salvation. What happened?
Do you honestly believe that The Supreme Being changed his mind? Why do you think the Jews killed him? Is it an eye for an eye,or is it to turn the other cheek? May we divorce or is it let no man put assunder what God has joined.

The very act of circumcision which is paramount to the Jews was deemed to be a non issue to the Gentile Christian. Why?
Why am I, as a Christian not permitted to participate in this Holy act?

Christ was crucified, yes for the salvation of man, however that is not why the Jews killed him, but rather he was slain because of the newness of His Covenant which nullified much of the Jewish Laws and traditions.

The Trinity is Truth - One Truth - and Truth cannot waiver…

Laudatur Iesus Christus.

Dear jon27:

Please do quote Scripture. Your claims that the “prophets” condemn jealousy does not ring a bell. One must be careful of the words that are used when judging the meaning of such subtle distinctions as must be made in these matters.

Besides what is “love” one must ask what is “jealousy” and what is “sacrifice.”

I would suggest that there is no reversal between the Old and the New Law, but an expansion and deepening, what Jesus called the completion of the Old Law.

For example, the Old Law said “you shall not strike down,” which is usually translated as “you shall not kill.” However, to strike something down is not strictly the same as to “kill.” We might kill an animal for food, but we do not humiliate it or torture it. This fuller meaning is evoked by Jesus’ perfection of this law:

"You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment, and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raqa,’ will be answerable to the Sanhedrin, and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna. Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew (NAB) 5:21-24)

Hence, what one might think is a blanket prohibition on killing is actually more nuanced and much more extensive. One must not humiliate a man or degrade him. One must not insult a man or make him small. For these are the spiritual extensions of the “striking down” which is prohibited in both the Old and the New Law.

This extension and intensification of the law is similar to the development of sacrifice as one moves from the Old to the New Law. Under the Old Law, one symbolically dedicated a part of one’s livelihood and substance to God. One gave the first born of one’s flocks and a tenth of one’s produce. This dedication of part of one’s living to the Lord was a precursor, an introduction of men to the much greater demands of the New Law. Under the Old Law one gave the first and a tenth. Under the New Law one gives everything, all of oneself and all of one’s goods to the service of God.

Rather than a symbolic death on one’s behalf by a representative of one’s livestock – one’s livelihood – one must die to self and become a new man:

We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin. For a dead person has been absolved from sin. If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. (Romans (NAB) 6:6-8.)

So, again, the symbolic sacrifice has not been done away with, but intensified. It is no longer a part of our property, but ourselves which must be sacrificed. Each Sunday, as our gifts are taken to the altar, the bread we offer expresses our offering of ourselves – we are the wheat, united in the one bread which we offer: “He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire," (Matthew (NAB) 3:12; Luke 3:17). The wine we offer is the offering of our works – “He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you,” (John (NAB) 15:2-3). These gifts of ourselves and our works are offered to Christ at Mass. We offer not our livestock or part of the proceeds of our work, but ourselves and all that we do. This is taken up by Christ, through His priest, turned into the Body and Blood of Christ Himself, and is offered to the Blessed Trinity as the only worthy worship.

This is the fulfillment of the Temple worship, in the new temple of the Church. It is not a reversal, but a fulfillment of the Old Law.

I hope this is helpful.

Pax Christi nobiscum.

John Hiner

 

[Verisimilitude]

Allow me please to elaborate on some ideas, for it seems you continue to quote Scripture,and for that I am grateful. However in doing so you force me to cite the very same Scriptures to enhance my theory.

In looking at The Commandments God tells us that we should not kill. In the Old Testament God Himself kills.

Christ gives a parable in which the Owner hires men to work in His fields throughout the day and pays they first as well as the last and when those who workede longest complain the Owner says he can do what he wants with his own. God asks Job- 'where were you when I created the foundation of the world…

In matters of love, God through his prophets tells us jealousy has no place in love, yet God speaks of Himself as a jealous God.

Applying human emotions to God is incorrect. The reason I think God commanded the Jews to kill in the OT was because of the influence the other people and their beliefs would have had on the Jews and God was keeping them pure in that sense so for a very limited time and reason did God command the Jews to kill. It was not perpetual war like Islams call to fight for god. When you think of the Flood;a few tribes in Caanan over a generation 3000 years ago can be put into a better context.

In the old Testament God is Truth, and His Truth set The law fro the Jews, guidlines and rituals to be adhered to by his people.The sacrificing of animals for the atonement of sin.Permision to divorce and so on. He then sends the Word, The Christ, who was there from the begining into this world to proclaim this was not the way to salvation. What happened?
Do you honestly believe that The Supreme Being changed his mind? Why do you think the Jews killed him? Is it an eye for an eye,or is it to turn the other cheek? May we divorce or is it let no man put assunder what God has joined.

Jesus answered divorce directly:
Mark 10:5"It was because your hearts were hard that **Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. 6"But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’[a] 7’For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8and the two will become one flesh.’[c] So they are no longer two, but one. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

The very act of circumcision which is paramount to the Jews was deemed to be a non issue to the Gentile Christian. Why?
Why am I, as a Christian not permitted to participate in this Holy act?

You are permitted, but not required and discussed in Acts.

Christ was crucified, yes for the salvation of man, however that is not why the Jews killed him, but rather he was slain because of the newness of His Covenant which nullified much of the Jewish Laws and traditions.

The Jews made a golden calf after escaping Egypt following the signs showed the Jews…stubborn people. It takes a great deal seemingly to make a point and God goes to great lengths to make it.

The Trinity is Truth - One Truth - and Truth cannot waiver…

It doesn’t.**

 

[Lev23]

Old Testament holds to much of a violent, rathful,jealous God in sharp contrast with New Testament, it portraying love of thy brother,helping the poor etc.

.

An excellant example of how the God of Israel cared for all people in the OT.

Leviticus 23:22
And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God."

 

[PJM]

One cannot doubt that everything has a purpose. So the question that is asked is both good and valid.

As an overview of these books, I see both natures of man acted out,i.e. Good and Evil, followed by God’s consistant Justice and Mercy being manifested. God prevails, evil is delt with, and we are given yet another chance to prove our fidelity to the One true God.

Clearly we see time an again that sin has consequences.

One should also factor in the merits of these books as a historical account of the early developing church.

Were the middle ages any less gruelsome? How about the past hundred years. I see some similarities.

God Bless, PJM

Has mankind learned our lesson?

 

[Douglas_Naaden]

As richardeekw suggested, I’d highly, highly recommend Jeff Cavins lecture series, The Great Adventure: The Bible Timeline. It outlines what God was doing in the OT, and why there was harem warfare.
Here is a brief answer on the slaughter of non-Jews I posted.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=4162084#post4162084

Is it an eye for an eye,or is it to turn the other cheek?

The eye for an eye passage is supposed to impose a limit on judgments, so that if someone pokes your eye out, you don’t kill his son; at most you take his eye (or something of equivalent value.) So it’s not a contradiction of the turn the other cheek principle. I wish I had time to answer your other questions.

 

[Chancellor]

Old Testament holds to much of a violent, rathful,jealous God in sharp contrast with New Testament, it portraying love of thy brother,helping the poor etc.

I as a Catholic, have always struggled with the full meaning of the two Testaments, and how they intertwine. It appears they are contradicting forces in one faith.

I would however like to believe The Apostle Saint John in his profound interpetation that God is pure love.

Great question.

It seems like there are a lot of bizarre attempts these days to demand that the ancient Hebrew scriptures be accepted as literal history. No one is doing God a favor by this approach, in fact it makes faundmentalist protestants and increasingly fundamentalist Catholics look shallow spiritually. As a Catholic a good place to look is in the early church fathers, all of whom interpreted the old testament histories in ways that draw out the spiritual lessons to be learned.

To read the OT literally is to see a God who is contradictory, genocidal, raging, boastful, jealous and relatively easy to manipulate. Of course we dont believe in a God like that, mostly because its not the God that Jesus taught.

excuses like “God can do anything He wants”, or “God’s ways are higher than Man’s ways” are not in any way answers but simply bland ways of avoiding the questions.

Literalist scripture is dead scripture. It is the letter that kills as St. Paul taught. Jesus always taught in parables and when He quoted the OT it was in service to His teaching.

The difference between seeing the OT as inspired and seeing the OT as a historical news report is that inspired text his ongoing value as a source of teaching about God’s ways with His people.
As history it just shows a homicidal monster running amuck. Maybe that’s why Jesus said that we had to look with spiritual eyes and listen with spiritual ears.

I pray that our spiritual eyes and ears will be open and that we will be able to ignore those who try to keep us on the surface.

The Chancellor

 

[Jack_245814]

An excellant example of how the God of Israel cared for all people in the OT.

Leviticus 23:22
And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the LORD your God."

True that, and there are many more examples throughout the Torah. The Book of Deuteronomy shows in particular a more “loving” God than some of the others.

 

[Douglas_Naaden]

To read the OT literally is to see a God who is contradictory, genocidal, raging, boastful, jealous and relatively easy to manipulate. Of course we dont believe in a God like that, mostly because its not the God that Jesus taught.

God is pretty consistent, actually. It’s always the peoples He’s dealing with that are constantly shifting. The God of the OT is the same God of the NT. You just have to know how to read the OT, and understand what’s going on.

excuses like “God can do anything He wants”, or “God’s ways are higher than Man’s ways” are not in any way answers but simply bland ways of avoiding the questions.

As history it just shows a homicidal monster running amuck. Maybe that’s why Jesus said that we had to look with spiritual eyes and listen with spiritual ears.

Spiritualizing it away is not much different that just saying God can do what He wants. I’m glad you called out the people who just say that, but you don’t offer a real alternative.
The series of questions have to be:
What exactly does the 5th commandment forbid? (murder)
Why is it forbidden (to man)? (i.e. the universal moral principles behind it)
On what ground is God “bound” by said moral principles? (in virtue of His nature, i.e. He cannot contradict Himself)

 

[Chancellor]

God is pretty consistent, actually. It’s always the peoples He’s dealing with that are constantly shifting. The God of the OT is the same God of the NT. You just have to know how to read the OT, and understand what’s going on.
Spiritualizing it away is not much different that just saying God can do what He wants. I’m glad you called out the people who just say that, but you don’t offer a real alternative.
The series of questions have to be:
What exactly does the 5th commandment forbid? (murder)
Why is it forbidden (to man)? (i.e. the universal moral principles behind it)
On what ground is God “bound” by said moral principles? (in virtue of His nature, i.e. He cannot contradict Himself)

Douglas;

These are great questions. I agree completely that it is the people who are constantly shifting. We (Catholics) believe in a God who is both unchanging and infinitely creative, what a paradox!. You are also correct that I did not offer a lot of alternatives. In my brief time on these threads I see people (myself included) going off into personal agendas and off the main question so I am trying to respect the questioner.

My main point is that many of the OT stories are parables, teaching tales, poetry, case studies and so forth. They are completely true and inspired if we can see them for what they are.
Lack of what Jesus called spiritual eyes and ears can only lead us to the erroneous conclusion that God is a monster, or the equally erroneous conclusion that we are supposed to make excuses for a monstrous God in the name of orthodoxy.

Thank for your response.

Chancellor

 

[Douglas_Naaden]

My main point is that many of the OT stories are parables, teaching tales, poetry, case studies and so forth. They are completely true and inspired if we can see them for what they are.

Chancellor,
I agree, there are a lot of spiritual lessons there. For instance, when we try to eradicate sin from our lives, if we expect to really live for God in the peace He promised, it has to be total war against sin; no shady alliances with the enemy. Harem warfare, like in the book of Joshua is a fantastic allegory of this, and what happens when you don’t go all out.

It’s really great, though to hear Scripture scholars like Scott Hahn and Jeff Cavins who do not shy away from the literal historical problems, but show why God acts like He does and how it fits into His plan of hope and salvation for humanity.