Hi Paul, thanks for your thorough reply! Issues like these are some of the main reasons why I’m not fully convinced of the unity of Scripture, so I’d love to press a bit deeper into this subject.
I fully agree with you that there are passages in the Old Testament that describe God as compassionate, forgiving, and merciful, just as there are New Testament passages that describe God as wrathful. And in these passages there is often an easy resolution – God is perfectly just, but in his perfect love he also offers mercy and grace to those who acknowledge their sin and turn from their evil ways.
However – there are many passages in the Old Testament (and probably in the New too) that I think clearly contradict other passages in terms of morality. The most obvious ones for me can be found in the Pentateuch and Joshua.
For example, Deut. 24:16 says that “Children shall not be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.” This concept is reaffirmed as the heart of God in Jer. 31:30, Eze 18, etc.
But there are many stories found elsewhere in Scripture that depict God punishing children for the sins of the parents. For example, there’s the story of the sin of Achan in Joshua 7 that depicts God commanding Israel to stone Achan, his sons and daughters, his animals, and all his possessions as punishment for him taking some of the devoted things.
There are also stories that depict God commanding Israel to do some really horrible things. Such as during the attack on Midian in Numbers 31. First they kill every male, then they take captive as plunder “the women and their little ones, the cattle, the flocks, and all their goods.”
Then, when they return to the camp, Moses instructs them (presumably on the command of God) to kill every little boy and every non-virign woman among the captives, only leaving the young virgin women alive. Then, ironically, he tells them to go purify themselves from their killing for seven days – as if some ritual could take away the evil of what he’d just commanded them to do.
These are just a few of the reasons why I’m open to the idea that the Bible doesn’t present one unified picture of God. Instead, every author depicts God in a different way, from their own cultural worldviews and limited perspectives. And some of them “get God right” better than others.
For example, you said:
That picture of God, as forgiving and pursuing and hoping for repentance, is definitely found in certain Old Testament books and passages, such as Hosea and Jonah. In fact, Jonah is probably my favorite book of the Old Testament since it lines up so perfectly with the character of God as revealed in Jesus. It depicts God as loving the outsiders, of caring for people outside the borders of Israel, of wishing repentance and salvation even on the most evil nations.
But the author of Joshua does not depict God this way. He does not talk about God sending prophets, about wishing Canaan would relent, about sending many prophets and trying to change Canaanite culture from the inside out. It never describes God as wishing He didn’t have to send judgment on Canaan, or wishing they would change. There’s no promise of restoration. You can find those kinds of things in Hosea and Jonah and in the New Testament, but not in the stories of the Canaanite conquest. At least not that I can recall.
In fact, Israel was commanded not to offer Canaan any terms of peace, not to let them surrender, not to give them the opportunity to repent and change. Just take a look at Deut. 20.
Deuteronomy 20:10-18
10“When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. 11And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. 12But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13And when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword, 14but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you. 15Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. 16But in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, 17but you shall devote them to complete destruction,a the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded, 18that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God.
Maybe there’s something important I’m missing. But that seems like a radically different, radically contradictory understanding of God when compared to the picture of God as hinted at in Joshua, Hosea, and other parts throughout the Old Testament, and finally as revealed in Jesus.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of that, and I’d also be interested to know why you believe the entire Bible presents God accurately.