Claim: The Old Testament God is different from the New Testament God.
This is a very ancient heresy, in fact it goes back to the 2nd Century AD
Yahweh is good
Some people say that the Old Testament God is not the same as the New Testament God, and that Yahweh is (God forbid!) an evil god, and these people say that Jesus’ Father is the good God.
This view is a very old heresy, which means it’s wrong, called Marcionism1.
Marcionism is a heresy that has reappeared in various forms throughout the past 2000 years. I believe the great poet Blake seems to have sometimes tended to this direction in his prophetical ramblings, although he does seem to have changed his mind in his later life and become more Christian in his views. Wagner the opera composer and librettist certainly did hold this view (this particular heresy is often associated with hatred of the Jews ) as did Hitler did also and the Nazi party, following Wagner’s lead.
In other words, it’s a nasty one, much to be avoided.
For to say that the Old Testament God is evil in any way shape or form is absolutely untrue: God is completely good, all throughout the Bible.
The Bible is not at fault: we are, if we can’t see God’s goodness.
When we cannot see this clearly, that God is good throughout the Bible, it is not the scripture that is at fault: unfortunately, it is us. Unfortunately, we are capable of being blinded to God’s goodness by our own sinfulness and the general cultural blindness that exists today, which is in our own heads so often as well; so then we must hold fast to the truth, by faith, for we can’t see it by sight.
As the KJV translation of James’ epistle 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
We cannot know the truth about God without knowing Him.
Indeed it is necessary for us to seek God actively, in order to know the truth about Him, and the plain fact is that we cannot truly know God’s nature and character without actually knowing Him and loving Him, and being loved by Him; and let me add, it is also necessary to love and forgive our neighbours as well, for us to know God.
This is so important I’m going to state it again: we cannot know God’s nature and character without actually knowing Him and loving Him, and being loved by Him.
This is because God is eternal and infinite and beyond all creation, and not an object within the world that we can categorise and limit and place a finite value on as an accountant does – the only way to truly know about God is to know Him - and the only way to know Him is to know Jesus - who did become a person in this world (not an object, or a number, for no person should be objectified or numbered, least of all the Son of God ) - but a person with all the limitations and finitude and mortality and suffering that this implies - even though He was indeed eternal and infinite and beyond all creation. Indeed, he suffered the most cruel and tortuous of deaths on the cross, so that the world might be saved.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. John 3:16-17
Yahweh is Elohim
Along the same lines as Marcionism, some people wrongly distinguish between Yahweh and Elohim, saying that they are different gods. This is untrue also: while ‘elohim’ can mean gods, Elohim generally means God in the Old Testament (there is no capitalisation in Hebrew though: the plural and singular treatment surrounding the word makes it clear which one is which; it is much like the Queen referring to herself as ‘We’; soon the King, actually. )
Yahweh is Elohim’s (God’s) personal name. Whenever the scripture is talking about God in relation to those who believe in God’s existence but do not know Him, the scriptures use the word Elohim. Whenever people mentioned in the scripture know God and are known by Him personally in the Old Testament, He is called by His name, Yahweh, which was revealed to Moses in Exodus chapter 3, through the burning bush theophany2.
By the way, Jesus actually means “Yahweh saves,” so Jesus’ name is intimately related to God’s name, and indicates His role as God’s Son, for Jesus is as much the eternal God as is the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet “not three Gods but one God”, as the creeds say.
The Marcionite heresy apparently originated with Marcion of Sinope in the early 2nd century AD, which is why it is called Marcionism - and Marcionism was rejected as heretical by the church from the time it arose onwards.
I know that many people would not want to listen to me about this because they believe the church was wrong about heresies, for they see the church as a close-minded authority figure and as a lifeless institution that suppressed the ‘heroic’ heretics who were the ‘artists’, the ‘original thinkers’, of the day, etc: well, in fact, the church had a surprisingly modern view about what facts are and what truth is and who you should listen to. They believed that the eyewitnesses of the actual events were the ones you should actually listen to. The eyewitnesses were in fact the apostles, the disciples of Jesus whom He sent out (apostolos means sent out) to bear witness that they had seen Him risen from the dead3.
In fact, the Bible specifically mentions that an apostle had to be an eyewitness of the resurrection of Jesus, Acts 1:22.
And the church, which is the fellowship of all who put their faith in Jesus4, despite many problems and in particular its association with the bourgeoisie and the worldly powers in the past ( an inevitability for the church that was at the time the political signpost of God; I believe it has been replaced by Israel today ); indeed, the church did its job remarkably well until the late 1960s, actually, as the guardian of the truth about God and the scriptures. Since then, not so much, to the point where Christendom is now firmly in the grip of apostasy, indeed, it is hard to believe that this is not the great apostasy5 mentioned in the New Testament, for no longer is the eyewitness testimony believed widely at least in the Western World.
But the early bishops above all prized the testimony of the eyewitnesses.
The eyewitness testimony (apostles had to be eyewitnesses of the resurrection Acts 1:22, John 15:27, and John 21:24, also the prologue to Luke ) rules out the Marcionite interpretation as every book in the New Testament treats the Old Testament as Holy Scripture6, indeed Jesus certainly treats the Old Testament as scripture through and through: in Matthew 4:4 when Jesus replies to Satan, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God,” He is talking about the Old Testament; Jesus says every word, not some words, not most of them, but every word.
Jesus himself quotes the words of Yahweh in the New Testament7, He identifies Yahweh as His father, and even identifies with Yahweh, whose name means “I am that I am” Exodus 3:14 - Jesus said “Before Abraham was, I am” John 8:58. Also by walking on water: Job 9:8. Jesus speaks of Daniel’s vision of the Ancient of Days coming on the clouds of heaven as applying to Himself:
Again the high priest questioned Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” “I am,” said Jesus, “and you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven. Mark 14:62
In my vision in the night I continued to watch, and I saw One like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into His presence. And He was given dominion, glory, and kingship, that the people of every nation and language should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and His kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. Daniel 7:13
This is clearly a claim of divinity; Jesus authority derives from the God of the Old Testament.
Marcion cut out most of the Bible from his Bible.
Marcion cut the whole Old Testament out of his Bible.
And in order to justify his heresy, Marcion also had to cut out most of the New Testament, in fact: his Bible contained only a shortened version of the gospel of Luke, and ten Pauline epistles. He obviously cut out the entire Old Testament, the other gospels, the other epistles, Revelation, because all of these books roundly condemn his point of view.
The Bishops kept the whole testimony of the eyewitnesses, and rejected Marcion’s truncations of the truth.
The bishops of the generations following the apostles traced their lineage back to the apostles, and measured their teaching by what they had been taught by the eyewitnesses.
The bishop of Smyrna in the late 2nd century, Irenaeus, was the second generation of bishops after the apostles, having been taught by Polycarp, who was taught by John the apostle himself. Irenaeus has this to say about Polycarp his teacher, and Marcion the heretic:
But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic Churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time,-a man who was of much greater weight, and a more stedfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics. He it was who, coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the apostles,-that, namely, which is handed down by the Church… And Polycarp himself replied to Marcion, who met him on one occasion, and said, "Dost thou know me? ""I do know thee, the first-born of Satan." Such was the horror which the apostles and their disciples had against holding even verbal communication with any corrupters of the truth; as Paul also says, "A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself." Against Heresies, Irenaeus III:48
Furthermore Irenaeus points out that the Prologue of John’s gospel explicitly contradicts Marcion’s point of view:
John, however, does himself put this matter beyond all controversy on our part, when he says, "He was in this world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own [things], and His own [people] received Him not." But according to Marcion, and those like him, neither was the world made by Him; nor did He come to His own things, but to those of another. And, according to certain of the Gnostics, this world was made by angels, and not by the Word of God. But according to the followers of Valentinus, the world was not made by Him, but by the Demiurge. For he (Soter) caused such similitudes to be made, after the pattern of things above, as they allege; but the Demiurge accomplished the work of creation. For they say that he, the Lord and Creator of the plan of creation, by whom they hold that this world was made, was produced from the Mother; while the Gospel affirms plainly, that by the Word, which was in the beginning with God, all things were made, which Word, he says, "was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Chapter IX:29
Christians, we must learn our theology even better in these troubled times and be even more sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading, than Christians in the past, even in the apostolic times, for it has become much harder, indeed it has become impossible, to avoid those who teach inaccuracies and lies about God, albeit online but also even in our own circles of friends and acquaintances.
Endurance and perseverance are needed, and above all, love. I pray God will grant these virtues to you; please pray He will grant these virtues to me as well.
Note that theology is just as much a science as any other science, however it relies on spiritual revelation through the Word of God (Jesus/ the scriptures) and the Spirit of God, not natural reason.
theophany simply means appearance of God.
And this was the young church - these were martyrs and faithful pacifists who had seen Jesus risen from the dead or had known those personally who had seen Jesus risen - before the intricate labyrinthine politicking of Byzantium, the power grabs of the Popes, the horrors of the Inquisition and the dreadful Protestant/Catholic wars and the spiritually dead bourgeois law-ridden church of the era of Kant and Hegel.
Yes there is a multiplicity of churches: however all Christians share fellowship in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, and they share in their sufferings and persecutions.
See Thessalonians 2:3, “No one should deceive you in any way, because it is not until the apostasy shall have come first, and the man of lawlessness shall have been revealed--the son of destruction, ”(…that Jesus will return) Berean Literal Bible
Thank you for this important article in, as you recognize, these last days of strong deception.
I enjoyed this so much. It rings true to me personally.