The So-called "Old Testament God"

Is the God of the OT angry vs. the NT God?

The So-called “Old Testament God”

The number of times, if one is listening, one hears someone speak of the Old Testament God as if the OT God is not the NT God staggers (and boggles). The stereotype is this: The OT God is all wrath, the NT God is all love. The hyperbole is not far from the mark for many.

Many who opine about God’s meanness in the OT don’t read the OT very often or deeply.

Is the God of Jesus the God of the OT? Is the God of Paul the OT God? Is the God of Peter, John, James, and Hebrews the God of the OT? Same answer. (We are looking at Brent Strawn, Lies My Preacher Told Me.)

Strawn lays down this reading rule: “Whatever we say about God in the Old Testament will have to be predicated, also, of God in the New.”

Yes, he admits, there’s lots of wrath on the part of God in the OT. And in the NT, he counters. Lots of judgment in the NT. An OT prof once said to me, “Jesus talks more about hell than the rest of the Bible combined.” Read these words from Jesus and what he thinks of God the Father:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.  He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.  You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.  Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.  Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned (John 15:1-6).

Judgment and wrath go together. I’d say this too: justice and judgment go together. One can’t want justice and not want evil and sin to be judged and erased and eliminated. Abraham Heschel said we should distinguish between “the wrath of God” and a “God of wrath.” I agree: the first is an act of God, the second more about God’s essence.

Wrath warnings prompt repentance, God’s judgment is an instance of God’s love:

Say to them, As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezek 33:11)

What prompts God’s wrath/anger in the OT? God, Heschel said, “is not indifferent to evil…. He is a God of pathos.”

Injustice
Sin

Psalm 7:11 (CEB):

God is a righteous judge,
a God who is angry at evil
every single day.

Warning of them is the “chance to change.” God’s anger then has a therapeutic design. Resistance to this tells us more about us than about God or the Bible.

God is salvifically angered about what matters most about life in God’s world.

Are we?