Aren't the cruel God of the Old Testament and the Father of Jesus really different gods?

🔥The question: “The Old Testament is judgment and the New Testament is love, so didn't God change?”

🛡️The Church's answer: The God of the Old Testament and of the New is one. The Old Testament has the Book of Exodus, in which God frees slaves; the commandment to care even for an enemy; and forgiveness and mercy again and again; the New Testament has severe warnings about sin and judgment. So the Bible will not split into “Old Testament wrath, New Testament love.” At the same time there really are texts, such as the language of total destruction in the Book of Joshua, that stand in severe tension with Jesus' love of enemies. The Church does not hide that tension. It reads God as having led a people through a violent history step by step, and reads his face and his will as most clearly revealed in the Christ who gave himself on the cross. It is not that the same God changed, but that the revelation given to human beings, and the history of their understanding it, came to completion in Christ.

A further note — “gradual revelation” does not make violence good

“Gradual revelation” is not a phrase that turns violent expressions into something good or trivial. Without erasing the earlier texts, we reread them by the measure of Christ's life, death, and resurrection, asking what prepared for salvation and what exposes human hardness of heart. We do not claim that this one principle resolves every historical and moral difficulty in each violent episode.

🧐If they press further: “So the Old Testament is outdated and there's no need to read it?” — No. The Old Testament was the Scripture of Jesus and of the early Church, and without it you cannot adequately understand creation, covenant, exodus, prophecy, or the mission of Jesus.

✨In one sentence: “There is one God in the Old Testament and the New. In Christ the same plan of mercy and justice is revealed in its fullness.”