Introduction
The God of the Old Testament has been viewed by scholars as something different from that of the New Testament. This mischaracterization is often produced by placing emphasis in the Old Testament on the God’s insistence that infidels be dealt with in a bloody manner (Deuteronomy 9:4-5), whereas God in the New Testament appears to preach mercy and charity and turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:38-40). Yet what the scholars fail to appreciate is that God in the New Testament is just as insistent on due respect being shown to God: after all it is Christ who literally whips the money changers out of the Temple because they are disrespecting the sanctity of the place (John 2:15). It is therefore inaccurate to suppose that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament. The God of the Old Testament is just as merciful and insistent upon charity as is the God of the New Testament.[footnoteRef:2] The Psalms are filled with a sense of God’s love and mercy and protective nature. The story of Ruth and the story of Jonah sent to preach to the Ninevites are both examples of God showing a divine interest in supporting those who are not of the “chosen” people. This paper will further explain how God is the same God in both the Old and the New Testament. It will first provide contextual information, presenting arguments from both sides of the argument. Then it will look at the metaphysical attributes of God, the moral attributes of God, and provide an exegesis of Exodus 3:14-15 with particular focus on God being “I am Who am” and thus showing that God’s nature is unchanging and eternal. The findings of this research will show that God’s character has never changed from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelations: it is complete but complex.[footnoteRef:3] God is love and has created the world because of this, but He also demands submission to His will and does not force His grace upon those who reject Him and His ways. Whether it is Job’s friends questioning God’s reasons for sending suffering to the good Job, or whether it is the Jews questioning Christ about His divinity—those who reject Him are always the same: full of self-love and pride. [2: Baker, David L. Two Testaments, One Bible: The Theological Relationship between the Old and New Testaments. InterVarsity Press, 2010.] [3: Mathewson, Dave. \"Reading Heb 6: 4-6 in light of the Old Testament.\" Westminster theological journal 61, no. 2 (1999): 209-226. ]
Background
The argument of the scholars who claim that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New Testament tend to argue that the Old Testament God is violent, wrathful, uncharitable, and persecuting.[footnoteRef:4] Wright contends, for instance, that the God of the Old Testament is embittered against His enemies and that the language used to describe Him reflects an adversarial tone common among the literature of the times.[footnoteRef:5] In other words, the writers of the Old Testament were not so much representing the character of God as they were their own animosity towards other tribes—such as is Wright’s argument. [4: Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 213.] [5: Christopher J.H. Wright, The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 88.]
The other side of the argument is that the skeptics are not realizing what God demands of humankind, which is respect, love and adoration. He is not a sappy, sentimental God. He is not a God of new age love and spirituality. God is realistic and knows full well the evil in the world, which is why Christ gave the example of fasting and praying in the desert as a means of resisting evil temptations. Paul Copan argues that those who see God’s attitude towards the Canaanites as problematic likely fail to see how they themselves might resemble the Canaanites in their attitude towards God.[footnoteRef:6] Craig likewise argues that God’s actions are always dictated by His love, no matter how harsh or cold they may seem to some.[footnoteRef:7] In short, it is not always given to man to know the mind of God; rather, man should trust that God has his best interests at heart, and moments of suffering or seeming cruelty can be a test of man’s faithfulness rather than a demonstration of God’s lack of love.[footnoteRef:8] [6: Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011), 160.] [7: William Lane Craig “#16 Slaughter of the Canaanites,” Reasonable Faith with William Lane Craig (blog), August 6, 2007, https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/slaughter-of-the-canaanites.] [8: Baah-Odoom, Dinah, and FrimpongWiafe. \"The Importance Of The Old Testament To The Christian Spirituality.\" The International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Invention, Vol. 3.7, 2016]
Why the God of the Old Testament is the Same God of the New Testament
The best way to understand that the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament is to look at God’s unchanging metaphysical...
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