OT God vs. NT God

[bsdman]

I’ve always been aware that God’s underlying intentions for us have been consistent over time. That means different holy interventions for different times. In OT times, God established the Isrealites as the chosen people through what we would call tough love. He punishes his own people, sends wrath upon enemies of Isreal and the like. However, Jesus fullfills the promises of the OT by opening the gates of Heaven to the gentiles and Jews who accept Jesus as the Son of God.

One thing I need help understanding. My father, a cradle Catholic and who I would consider devout, is very well educated in the faith and just plain ol’ smart all around (he’s a lawyer), says that the “Church has painted itself into a corner by saying it has a clear understanding of the OT God” because they are two distinctly different Gods.

I didn’t push the issue because I wasn’t prepared for a heavy theological discussion after a long and hot day the the ball park.

Does the Catholic Church have a good grasp and clear explanation of the apprarently different personalities God exhibits between the OT (God of wrath and fear) and NT (God of love and forgiveness)?

 

[NotWorthy]

Think of Israel as a child growing up. Do you treat that child the same at 2 years old as you do at 10? 15? 20?

This, to me, helps to clarify what’s going on in the OT. God is letting His child make mistakes and shows him that there are consequences for those mistakes.

Just as there are consequences for our mistakes. We just don’t see them as clearly until after we die. The story of Israel helps to illustrate these consequences.

 

[Teflon93]

I’ve always been aware that God’s underlying intentions for us have been consistent over time. That means different holy interventions for different times. In OT times, God established the Isrealites as the chosen people through what we would call tough love. He punishes his own people, sends wrath upon enemies of Isreal and the like. However, Jesus fullfills the promises of the OT by opening the gates of Heaven to the gentiles and Jews who accept Jesus as the Son of God.

One thing I need help understanding. My father, a cradle Catholic and who I would consider devout, is very well educated in the faith and just plain ol’ smart all around (he’s a lawyer), says that the “Church has painted itself into a corner by saying it has a clear understanding of the OT God” because they are two distinctly different Gods.

I didn’t push the issue because I wasn’t prepared for a heavy theological discussion after a long and hot day the the ball park.

Does the Catholic Church have a good grasp and clear explanation of the apprarently different personalities God exhibits between the OT (God of wrath and fear) and NT (God of love and forgiveness)?

Hmm, I think you’re oversimplifying here. We didn’t go from Yahweh to Buddy Christ, you know. The New Testament is rife with calls to repent, to fear God’s wrath, etc.

Christ did fashion a whip to run the moneylenders out of the temple. It in fact is the only object we know this son of a carpenter to make.

And is there any more chilling Jesus quotation than “Let the dead bury the dead.”?

Doesn’t sound like different Gods to me.

 

[Della]

I think the problem your father arises from reading the OT as if it were a bald telling of facts instead of a collection of many books of varying styles and intent. It is like the blind men and elephant example. Each author of the OT wished to tell us something about the same Person, but each one saw Him from a different aspect and wrote of Him according to what they were conveying to their audience.

This does not mean that they didn’t write the truth about God, it only means that they wrote what they knew or what God revealed. God revealed himself as all the things we see in the OT: loving father, harsh judge, gentle Shepherd, angry sovereign, lover of men, demander of justice, the all merciful One, the king of the universe, and so on.

God has not changed in the least, what has changed is how he deals with men after Jesus died on the cross and satisfied divine justice. That began the age of grace, in which God deals with us in the light of the redemption of Christ, which fulfilled the OT demands for sacrifice. God’s grace and mercy have been poured out because of this, which is why it appears that God has changed when actually he has merely fulfilled his own promises to humankind in the person of His Son.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

I’ve always been aware that God’s underlying intentions for us have been consistent over time. That means different holy interventions for different times. In OT times, God established the Isrealites as the chosen people through what we would call tough love. He punishes his own people, sends wrath upon enemies of Isreal and the like. However, Jesus fullfills the promises of the OT by opening the gates of Heaven to the gentiles and Jews who accept Jesus as the Son of God.

One thing I need help understanding. My father, a cradle Catholic and who I would consider devout, is very well educated in the faith and just plain ol’ smart all around (he’s a lawyer), says that the “Church has painted itself into a corner by saying it has a clear understanding of the OT God” because they are two distinctly different Gods.

I didn’t push the issue because I wasn’t prepared for a heavy theological discussion after a long and hot day the the ball park.

Does the Catholic Church have a good grasp and clear explanation of the apprarently different personalities God exhibits between the OT (God of wrath and fear) and NT (God of love and forgiveness)?

They are the same God ​

The OT contains a great about God’s love, pity, compassion, mercy. The NT contains some terrifying passages about “the fury of the wrath of God” - judgement, anger, punishment, are very much part of the NT; just as relenting, forgiveness, propitiation, are prominent in the OT.

Hell is explicit in the NT - not in the OT. It is Revelation in the NT which has supplied many of the familar images for eternal damnation.

The NT is thoroughly OT in the categories of thought it uses:

• creation
• blessing
• redemption
• covenant
• promise
• Messiah
• Kingship of God
• Divine Wrath on the impenitent
• predestination
• election
• Divine faithfulness
• the Exodus

• are just a few of the very numerous themes which the NT takes over from the OT: it really is true, truer than could have been imagined, that the Old lies open in the New, & the New lies hid in the Old. They live in each other - & cannot be separated.

For instance - the answer to Prov. 30.4, is to be found in John 3.13

• Revelation 4 is clarified by Ezekiel 1.26-28
• Mark 4.11 becomes clearer if read in the light of Isaiah 6 - which it quotes
• Exodus 34.6 is complemented by Luke 1
  If there are in some sense two different Gods - why is Jesus so utterly committed, so zealous, so uncompromising, in doing the Will of His Father in Heaven ? IMHO it’s interesting that:
• He quoted some of the passages that worry people on moral grounds - such as the Flood
• He uttered several woes, on places and people - just like some of the Prophets
• His commitment to His Father mirrors the “jealousy” of God (which is not envy, but intense concern, for His Name & for Israel; hence His enormous reluctance to destroy Israel & Judah for their sins). This commitment is seen in Matt 16 & Luke 9 (to name only two passages).

Besides, there is plenty of development in the OT in the ideas people had of God.