Go now to Roger in Texas, listening on EWTN online. Roger, your question for Tim
Staples. Hi, can you hear me? We can, yes. Great.
Basically the New Testament sees God as a peaceful God, a loving God, one who forgives us.
But in the Old Testament, God is really harsh; like, He condemns Hagar and Ishmael for
sins they have committed. I'm thinking about how the sons of Egypt are killed because
that's what the Lord decrees during Moses' time. So my question is, well
how do you reconcile God, who we believe is just and right, with the kind of
unjust things that he does? Or seems to do, at least. Yeah, it's a great question, and I
would make two main points in response. First is, I think, and I'm obviously not
accusing you of teaching there's two Gods, but back in the second century
there was a famous Gnostic heretic you may have heard of named Marcion. And
Saint Irenaeus was one of his-- well, certainly his most famous
interlocutor, that, you know, he was dealing with Marcion, and he writes
about...Marcion took your premise here to an extreme. He so much could not
reconcile Old and New Testaments that he said there have to be two Gods, if you
will. There's an evil God of the Old Testament that is the source of all that
chaos, and is the source of the material world, and there's a good God of
the New Testament that is the source of all spirit and good. And of course we're
talking about a Gnostic heresy here. And what Irenaeus says is fascinating.
In responding to him he says, "Marcion's got it wrong. It's not that God changes.
There's not two gods, and there's no change in God. It's that we change." The
reason why there is a tendency to be a difference between Old and New
Testaments is because-- think of it this way: I have seven kids.
If I treated my two-year-old or my four-year-old the same way I treat my
thirteen-year-old, we would have some really messed-up kids, right? Because you
treat them differently because they're they're very different in their
mental abilities, their maturity, and so forth. So what we're talking about
here in the Old Testament is a tribal and very barbaric culture out of which
God calls Abraham. Remember, if you go back to Adam and Eve in the beginning,
God created all things in perfection. There was no sin, there was no war, there
was not even any pain until Adam and Eve chose to sin, and that's where the chaos
started. So it doesn't come from God at all, it comes from man, and then sin
proliferates, as we see there, because of Original Sin, but God keeps coming and
bringing prophets, you know, Abraham and then the prophets and David and
so forth, until the fullness of the revelation of His life and His love
comes in and through Jesus Christ. So the bottom line is, it's not different Gods;
we're talking about a very ancient and tribal people where God has to deal with
them very differently than He does with the fullness of the revelation we have.
That's point number one. Point number two, though: we have to remember that God is a
merciful and loving God in the Old Testament as well as a God of justice. I
mean there's no doubt, you read Psalm 136, "The mercies of the Lord are
without end." Over and over and over, the mercies of the Lord, the love of God, the
way He loves his people and He woos them even though they reject Him.
I mean, you read Song of Solomon, read Hosea, you know, Jeremiah,
where He talks about being spurned by his lover Israel, and yet He keeps coming
with more prophets, and they kill the prophets and He sends them more, and
He loves them. So then you go into the New Testament, and certainly, yes we have
a God of love, Jesus Christ is love manifest, but you also have Ananias and
Sapphira in Acts chapter five, who, you know, to whom much is
given, much is required, but God brings judgment upon them through Saint Peter
in Acts chapter 5; as we see also with Simon the Sorcerer in Acts chapter 8,
where is that, about, oh 14 through 17, right in there, you know. So we have the
same God in both covenants; what's really different are the the people. God has
given us more grace, we are more mature in the New Testament. And let me make
just one more point, this will be a third point. A lot of folks misunderstand this
very important point, though. In one very crucial way, God deals with his
people much more harshly in the New Testament than he does in the Old. In the
Old Testament, yes, there were, you know, the plagues you mentioned, and the
judgments in this life. There was the death penalty for a lot of things that there
is not anymore and all of that, right? But there is a sense in which, you know, we
say in the New Testament, for example, that those people who were even judged
by God did not necessarily go to Hell. Some of them went to Heaven. In fact, we
read about that in in 1 Corinthians chapter--oh, not 1 Corinthians, that would be 1
Peter 3:19-21, where the Scripture talks about how, when
Christ died on the cross, He went down into "phulake," the prison, or we would
say Limbo of the Father's, proclaimed the truth to those--and some of them were
disobedient from the time of Moses, He says, and yet they make it to
Heaven. So, you know, a lot of times we look at everything in a "this worldly way,"
while God has an eye to eternity. So really, in the New Testament, we're judged
much harsher than in the Old Testament because of the principle we find in Luke
12:48: "To whom much is given, much is required." And this is why, in the Old
Testament if you disobeyed God's authority, His prophet, you're not
necessarily going to go to Hell--although that's a possibility, you know, God is
ultimately a judge. But we know that some of those people who were
even disobedient still made it to Heaven; whereas in the New Testament, man,
whoo, you have some strong words from our Lord, where He says, for example, in
Matthew 18:15 -18, right, if your brother offends
against thee, go tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears,
you have gained your brother. If he won't hear you, take one or two
with you. If he doesn't hear them, tell it to the Church. And the one who fails
to hear the Church is to be as a heathen and a publican, for whatever you bind on
Earth is bound in Heaven, right? That is talking about excommunication. If you
disagree with the Church in the New Testament, you're cut off, cut off from
the Sacraments, and in fact, you're in danger of Hellfire. I mean, how many times
does Jesus say that? In the Sermon on the Mount, right, what is it, Matthew
5:22, if you hate your brother in your heart, you're in danger
of Hellfire, right? Matthew 5:28 and 29, if you look upon a woman with lust in your
heart, you know, you're in danger of Hellfire.
He says it's better to pluck out an eye, cut off your hand, right, you know, because
it's better to go to Heaven without a hand-- of course you're going to get it back in
the resurrection of the body--than to have a healthy hand or healthy eye and
be cast into Hell. So Jesus seems to up the ante, let's put it that way, to where
Hellfire is the real possibility, not just the judgment in this life
that is really focused upon in the Old Testament. So I guess with those three
points, I would challenge you to try to think about these things a little
differently.
Can I read about this somewhere? Could you give me some references that I could look at?
Sure, yes, absolutely. We have a great book that one of our apologists
just put out called "Hard Sayings," and there's a section in that book where he
deals exactly with this question, but he deals with a whole lot more than that.
It's by our apologist here Trent Horn. I did the apologetic review on that book,
that means I checked it for errors and stuff, and I can tell you that book is
exceptional. But he deals with this and a whole lot more. Thank you very much for
that question.