SPLIT PERSONALITY OF GOD

 

 

 

The marriage of the Old and New Testaments is a source of contradiction and conflicting philosophies. The God of the Old Testament appears vengeful, full of wrath, mercurial more akin to Zeus and the foibles of other Olympian deities than the image of the Father depicted in the New Testament by Jesus as loving, accepting, forgiving.

This marriage arose from a divorce. The early Christian church was not Christian but a new Jewish sect, for Jesus was a rabbi who taught to Jews, and his disciples and followers were Jews. To legitimize his teachings, his followers cited Old Testament prophecies of a messiah and asserted he fulfilled them. The authority of the Old Testament became a mantle in which Jesus became cloaked even though his teachings formed a radical departure from old beliefs.

Marcian, in 150 CE, recognized the inconsistent spirit of the Old and New Testaments. His answer? He proposed two Gods: an inferior God of the Old Testament; and a superior, more benign, more loving God of the New Testament. (Hoeller, pp.124-25).

. . . what might have happened if his opinion had been followed and the crude and cruel preachments and stories of the Old Testament had not been available for the use of inquisitors and bigots to justify their witch burnings, their racism, their condemnation of homosexuals, and many other enormities, which all could be designated as quite biblical.

 

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