How can the God of the Old Testament be the same as the God of the New Testament? In the Old Testament, God commands genocide, strikes down children, wipes out nearly the entire human race in a flood, unleashes plagues and devastation, and — if we take the biblical writers at their word — creates all people yet chooses to reveal Himself and His laws to only one nation, leaving the rest condemned simply for being born elsewhere. In John’s Gospel, the scribes say to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery. In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman.” Then in the New Testament, this same God is proclaimed to be love and mercy itself, calling His followers to peace, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice in the example of Jesus, who refused to resist even His executioners. I can affirm the beauty of the New Testament vision, but how can anyone seriously reconcile it with the claim that God is “the same yesterday, today, and forever”?
– Patsy in the diocese
Yours is a question that I think most people have had when trying to reconcile what they know of God’s revelation in the person of Jesus Christ (i.e., the New Testament) with their understanding of the Old Testament. It’s a complex topic, so I’ll try and treat it as thoroughly as possible, given our limited space.
It’s important to recognize first that the Catholic Church has always and consistently confirmed that the Old Testament is the true Word of God, an indispensable part of God’s revelation of Himself, “even though [the books of the Old Testament] contain matters imperfect and provisional” (CCC 122). In fact, there was a heresy condemned in the early Church called Marcionism, which claimed that everything revealed in the New Testament effectively “voided” the Old Testament. This has never been the teaching of the Church.
Rather, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches us that the Old Testament “books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value” (CCC 121). But they reveal to us a divine pedagogy, which is to say a way that God has taught us about Himself throughout the centuries. Much like the way we educate our children about the world, God didn’t start with the whole truth all at the same time. He revealed Himself in His own time and at a pace we could comprehend. To quote Pope Benedict XVI in Verbum Domini, “God’s plan is manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stages and despite human resistance. God chose a people and patiently worked to guide and educate them” (42).
In the Old Testament, we can indeed find the God of love and mercy. For example, Exodus 34:6, says, “So the LORD passed before him and proclaimed: The LORD, the LORD, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love and fidelity.” Where we read passages of violence in the Old Testament, a closer inspection will reveal that God is often responding to unrepentant wickedness: having elaborated the path forward of life and freedom through the revelation of His sacred law, He nevertheless allows those who choose their own path to experience the destruction to which it inevitably leads. This is by no means a comfortable reality, but it’s nevertheless true: When we turn our backs on God, bad things happen.
You’re also right to point out how surprising it is that God would reveal Himself to a certain people, even while He’s supposed to be saving everyone. But it’s essential to keep in mind that when God chooses Israel, He does so that they might be a light to the nations, not so that they could gloat in a salvation that was meant for them alone (and importantly, we don’t ascribe to a view that God was simultaneously damning the Gentiles, whilst saving His chosen people).
A Scripture professor of mine once called this the “scandal of particularity,” that God chooses one, but always for the sake of the whole. You can see evidence of this in many places throughout Scripture, including the fact that Jesus took on the particular flesh that He did, that of a Hebrew male of the first century, as opposed to another’s. When God acts, we must affirm that it is always for the salvation of all. In fact, even when delivering plagues or allowing military victories and defeats, He does so to turn the hearts of children back to their Father (to paraphrase Malachi 4:6). To belabor the point a little: if God simply wanted to destroy pharaoh from the beginning, there would have been no need for 10 plagues; He could have jumped to the last and most drastic one. But clearly, the action of God was meant to convert pharaoh and the people of Egypt. It was their choice not to assent to God after the clear manifestations of His power — a choice which we see repeatedly in the Scriptures has consequences.
While it’s not possible to go into every situation of the Old Testament to prove my point, my hope is that, with an appreciation for the divine pedagogy, you can encounter these stories of God’s revelation with new eyes of faith: not as evidence of an angry God, but as one who is teaching Israel (and the world, through them) as well as the new Israel, the Church, how to be God’s Chosen People, to witness His saving love to the world.
Ultimately, we can only receive God’s revelation of Himself in great humility — far be it from us to question how the God of creation chose to manifest Himself to that creation! This is not to say that we cannot put intelligent questions to the Lord, as you have, but that ultimately, the only satisfying answer comes with faith in the God who has revealed to usthat He, in fact, is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
- Father Michael Friedel is pastor of Blessed Sacrament parish in Springfield.