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, 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.