Reconciling the “Gods” of the Old and New Testaments

A common criticism of Christianity is that the God of the Old Testament is irreconcilable with that of the New. Critics charge that Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, is a wrathful, vengeful God while Jesus, his Son, is loving and forgiving. 

In his work The God Delusion, British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins rants: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser….” Of Jesus, he says: “From a moral point of view, Jesus is a huge improvement over the cruel ogre of the Old Testament.” He is “morally superior” to Yahweh, and “was not content to derive his ethics from the scriptures of his upbringing. He explicitly departed from them.” 

I do not know whether Dawkins has read the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, but his views reflect very selective summaries of each. His conclusions are fiction. To refute them properly would be a book-length endeavour, but a little Scripture goes a long way to get us started.

I imagine the risen Lord, seated at the right hand of the Father, raising his eyebrows in amusement at the notion that he abandoned the Hebrew Scriptures. They were on his lips nearly constantly. From his first public sermon on Isaiah 61 to his refutations of Satan’s wilderness temptations to his last utterances from the cross, Christ frequently quoted the Old Testament, so much so that it’s hard to quote him without simultaneously quoting the Old Testament.

Who is Yahweh?

As to the character of the God of the Old, let’s allow him to speak for himself. In Exodus 34, Yahweh, the great I Am, reveals himself to Moses on Mt. Sinai:

Yahweh descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, ‘Yahweh.’ Yahweh passed before him, and proclaimed, ‘Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation’” (Exodus 34:4-8).

Notice God’s priority on patience, love, and forgiveness before he mentions dealing with sin. And he backed up those words with action – the Old Testament is replete with examples of his mercy toward his wayward creation. 

When the first humans sinned, Dawkins’ “cruel ogre” would have taken pleasure in annihilating them on the spot. Instead, even as he issued punishments for Adam and Eve, God’s curse was pregnant with promise about a future Deliverer who would crush the serpent’s head. 

Similarly, when Cain killed his brother Abel, God’s righteous judgment of the crime included a protection for the guilty Cain. Along with countless others, he forgave Moses the murderer, Rahab the prostitute, and David the adulterer, even weaving their stories into his grand plan of salvation. 

The whole book of Hosea is a living metaphor God chose for himself – that of a jilted lover. According to the Old Testament, he is the one scorned, not the other way around. And, as we’ll soon see, he often had that in common with Jesus as well.

What did Jesus think about the Old Testament?

Flipping to the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews claims the “two” Gods are not only wholly reconcilable, but one and the same: 

“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word….” Hebrews 1:1-3

At the Last Supper, replying to a disciple’s request that he show them the Father, Jesus put it even more plainly: 

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

If this is true, Jesus didn’t introduce a new morality. Rather, he reflected God’s moral excellence as revealed in Exodus 34.

Certainly, Christ embodied God’s mercy and grace in spades; sinners flocked to Jesus because of his patient, steadfast love. He forgave the paralytic man’s sins before healing his body, dined at Zacchaeus the tax collector’s home, and went out of his way to meet the Samaritan woman at the well. He promised the thief on the cross paradise, that very day, and forgave Peter his personal betrayal. 

What about God’s judgment? Why doesn’t it bob to the surface of the popular understanding of Jesus? I can only guess it’s because judgment in general is extremely out of fashion in our day. But it’s right there in black and white on the pages of the Gospels.

The temple moneychangers who were trampling that holy space for profit got a taste of the Son’s wrath when he overturned their tables and drove them out (quoting the Old Testament again). So did the Pharisees, regular recipients of Christ’s blistering rebukes – he called them sons of hell and told them their father was the devil (John 8:44).

When Jesus was preparing his disciples to go and preach the good news of the kingdom, he said this of towns that would not hear their message: “Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town” (Matthew 10:15).

It may surprise Dawkins to learn that Jesus spoke of hell more often than heaven. He described a place “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12), and where “the worms that eat them will not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:48, yet again quoting Isaiah). Of those who would harm children, he issued this bleak warning: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea” (Mark 9:42). 

Interestingly, popular culture, and even some Bible teachers, seem to summarize Jesus’s message as something like, “You do you. Never change, you special angels.” But this is a fantasy. If there’s any doubt left, consider John’s visions of the ascended Christ in the book of Revelation.

God’s nature doesn’t change

I contend that both constructs – the Old Testament God as always angry and Jesus as forever merciful with no requirements of humanity – are fictitious. When we read the Bible holistically, it’s plain there is one triune God from Genesis to Revelation who does not change (Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8). He is merciful and just, long-suffering and intolerant of sin. A much-forgiven Peter wrote, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). 

That goes for Richard Dawkins, too.

So, how do we know what we will get with God? Will we encounter his mercy or his wrath? C.S. Lewis answers the burning question in Mere Christianity: 

“God is the only comfort, he is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves his enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger – according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.”

Bingo. Whether we encounter a wrathful or merciful God depends entirely on our own choices, from creation to now. He is a Comfort or a Terror, depending on an individual’s reaction to his provision for salvation. 

A humble, repentant heart has never met God’s wrath, and a proud, defiant one has yet to meet his mercy. Jesus—the exact representation of his nature—said it like this, once again quoting the Old Testament: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench….” (Matthew 12:20 quoting Isaiah 42:3).

All that said, something absolutely profound did change between the Old and New Testaments. I’ll explore that change more in a couple weeks but, for now, take a moment to ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand the degree to which you’re serving the God of the Bible or a god of your own making. Any understanding of the Lord that does not make equal room for both his wrath and his mercy will necessarily fall into the latter category.

Which will you serve today?