DID GOD CHANGE BETWEEN THE
OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENTS??
What is God like in the Old Testament?
What is God like in the New Testament?
I recently finished reading the book, God’s Problem, Why
We Suffer by Dr. Bart Ehrman, a professor of religious
studies at UNC.
God’s Problem involves three assertions that all appear to
be true, but if all are true there appears to be a
contradiction.
God is all powerful.
God is all loving.
There is suffering.
Do you agree that all are true, and if so, how do you
explain why there is suffering in the world?
Marcion, the founder of an early Christian sect around
100CE asked similar questions.
What kind of God creates a world racked with pain, misery,
disaster, disease, sin and death?
What kind of God creates a world and then brings love,
mercy, grace, salvation and life?
Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God of the
Old Testament was a separate and lower entity than the
all-forgiving God of the New Testament. This is a dualist
belief system.
In his book, Dr. Ehrman chooses to believe that God does
not exist at all, and I choose to believe that He does, which
means that I have to take his arguments and recast them
into my belief system.
His book has made me completely reassess the way I view
the Old Testament. I had trouble reconciling the God of the
Old Testament who was wiping out and killing people right
and left and causing a lot of suffering with the God of love
that I see in the New Testament through Jesus Christ.
How much of the good things that happen today do
you attribute to God?
How much of the bad things that happen today do
you attribute to God? What about natural events like
floods and hurricanes?
How do you reconcile your current view of God with
the God of the Old testament?
Did God change between the Old and the New Testament?
In Old Testament times how did the pagans like
Egyptians view their gods in terms of being an active
part of their lives for example, regarding crops?
Is it possible, that the writers of the Old Testament
looked at the events around them and, like most others
of that day, put the blame on God?
In other words, perhaps God did not change between
the Old and New Testaments, and the only thing that
changed was man’s understanding of God.
The writers of the Old Testament picture a very active God
in not too pleasant ways. I think that they did what most
others did, just look at the world around them and try to
create reasons for why things happened which seems to be
to blame God or gods.
I understand that most of the events in the OT were based
on stories passed from generation to generation. I’m
beginning to think that maybe God is much more passive
and works through people and just lets nature take its
course such as in Weatherhead’s idea of circumstantial will.
We see this in the New Testament in terms of healings and
God working through Jesus and the disciples.
If I apply this line of thinking to an event in the Old
Testament, for example the flood, I can come up with a
different idea than the one presented by the OT writers.
There are over 500 Flood legends worldwide. Ancient
civilizations such as (China, Babylonia, Wales, Russia,
India, America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, Sumatra, Peru, and
Polynesia) all have their own versions of a giant flood.
These flood tales are frequently linked by common elements
that parallel the Biblical account including the warning of the
coming flood, the construction of a boat in advance, the
storage of animals, the inclusion of family, and the release of
birds to determine if the water level had subsided.
The overwhelming consistency among flood legends
found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were
probably derived from the same origin, but oral
transcription has changed the details through time.
Perhaps the second most important historical account of a
global flood can be found in a Babylonian flood story in the
Epic of Gilgamesh.
When the Biblical and Babylonian accounts are compared, a
number of outstanding similarities are found that leave no
doubt these stories are rooted in the same event or oral
tradition.
Therefore, it is safe to assume that a catastrophic flood event
happened historically.
According to the OT writers, why was there a great
flood?
Read Genesis 6:1-7
So what we have here is a very active, wrathful God
killing many many people.
Can you understand why someone writing in OT
times would take that view?
But floods can be caused my several different natural
events, rain, earthquakes with tsunamis, a comet hitting
the water, etc.
What if God stays on the side lines and let’s nature take
its course and sees a natural disaster coming, for
example, an asteroid hitting or earthquake causing a
tsunami that will create a flood and wipe out all creation.
Then God works through Noah (maybe God told others and
they didn’t obey) to save people and animals rather than
being the cause of their destruction as the OT writers
present.
Read Genesis 6:13-14
This would be the God of love we see in the NT telling Noah
that if you want to be saved then do this.
A similar argument can be used for Sodom and Gomorrah.
The OT writers say that God is going to destroy them and
their cities because of their wickedness.
Read Genesis 19:13, 24-25
Fire and brimstone is another natural event not caused by
God, but allowed to happen by God. God sees disaster
coming and once again we see God offer a way for some to
live. There is an earlier discussion about saving up to 50
people.
Read Genesis 19:15-26
Lot’s wife does not obey and dies.
One final example might be the last plague in Egypt.
According to the OT writers, God is going to kill the first
born and use this as a reason to get Pharaoh to let
Moses’ people go.
Read Exodus 11:1-5
What if it was a natural epidemic spreading death
throughout Egypt. Then God tells Moses a way that his
people will not die.
Read Exodus 12:1-13
In each case, we see not a wrathful God causing these
events, but a God not interfering with nature.
God does not just step in and save them, but man has to
do something in order to be saved, build an ark, leave a
city, put blood on the door.
God tells people to do something and they will be spared,
saving lives from a natural occurrence. Man has free will
to make the choice.
Moving to the New Testament, God essentially says that
mankind does not understand Him, so He will show them
what He is like through Jesus.
He says if you want to know what I am really like, watch
Jesus, see His love, see His compassion, see how He
treats others.
In the New Testament, the all loving, all powerful God,
knowing that everyone will eventually die physically, offers
an eternity for the soul. He says do this and you will have
eternal life.
So, I have tried to show that maybe God has been a
loving God all along, just misunderstood. If God is all
powerful and and all loving, why does suffering exist
in the world?
In each of the cases in the OT, we have seen that God
didn’t just step in, but gave man a choice, and man must
take action based on free will.
I’m still working my way through these new thoughts and
ideas. But I can envision and all powerful and all loving
God creating a world with everything we need and placing
us here with free will.
God can work through us via the Holy Spirit, but only if we
let Him. There is enough food in this world so that no one
need go hungry. We have found medicines that were
always available to cure many of the illnesses that were
deadly in the past.
Suffering still exists, but we have the means to alleviate
much of it, but find barriers in greed, politics, etc.
Each one of us can choose
to let our all loving God
work through us to alleviate
suffering wherever we find
it.