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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Orange Wizard]

New Testament God is the nice-ish one.

New Testament God is the same God, it's just that most of the interaction is happening through Jesus who is nice.

Deep

Deeper than hell

Which is here

Hell is where the heart is

[TD1]

Yea, Jesus is the nice-ish New Testament God. Old Testament God is...well, God.

[Loud Whispers]

New Testament God is the same God, it's just that most of the interaction is happening through Jesus who is nice.

Suspiciously nice. What's his angle? What's his agenda? Something fishy about the guy, and it's not just that he conjures fish from thin air.

[Rolan7]

New Testament God is the nice-ish one.

New Testament God is the same God, it's just that most of the interaction is happening through Jesus who is nice.

Does the New Testament God do literally anything?  I'm trying to remember but I'm drawing a blank.
Mary gets visited by angels, instead of God speaking through a prophet like normal...
I guess He impregnates her
Other than that though...?

[Orange Wizard]

The Father does basically nothing in the NT, yeah. He does make an announcement at Jesus' baptism - "This is my son, with whom I am well pleased" - and I suppose you could attribute the miracles around the time of the crucifixion to him.
Beyond that it's mostly just Jesus doing miracles (when he isn't scolding the apostles).

[Loud Whispers]

God doesn't genocide the Romans when they turn Jesus into biltong

[Orange Wizard]

Indeed. The Jews were fully expecting him to, as well. Every time God sent someone to save the Jews beforehand it had always been to kill whatever people were oppressing/trading with/allied to/in the general vicinity of Israel at the time, so having Pacifist McHealings turn up was quite the shock.

[Descan]

The OT is basically Jewish origin story and cultural mythos, a la the stories of Homer and the Roman mythologies, the Vedas and the Eddas. As such, they're gonna include stories about the gods, though in this case it's been editted down to just one God, and the other guys' gods were editted out to be still the one God, even when it makes no sense. Ra hardening a heart and all that.

The NT is basically letters written by early Christians espousing and talking about a single person. They more personal, and more direct. Thus the only time God is mentioned is when they bring him out of their packs to prop up Jesus.

It's like the difference between the Silmarillion and the Hobbit. Ones grand myth-building, the other is one persons story plus the people around him.

[Rolan7]

The Jews were also expecting God to intercede for Jesus, if he really was the messiah.  I know Satan made that argument at least.

Ah, yeah:

38 Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left.
39 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads
40 and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!”
41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him.
42 “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.
43 He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ”
44 In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

(bleh, the Skeptics Annotated Bible copy-pastes with a lot less hand-editing than Biblehub, but apparently people find SAB offensive and say the KJV doesn't count)

Fakedit:  It's weird that God wouldn't intercede or interact with what is supposedly the most important event in all of human history.  The doctrine is that it's all according to his plan, sure, but he's suspiciously and uncharacteristically hands off.

It's like he's a different entity (Cathars, gnostics) or that this is a false account (Jews).

[Loud Whispers]

God confirmed for Tzeentch all according to keikaku (that means plan in Godonese)

[Orange Wizard]

There's a bunch of supernatural shenanigans going on during the Crucifixion, though. Darkness, earthquakes, the temple's curtain getting rekt, a bunch of Jews getting resurrected... I'd say it's a difference in writing style more than anything else. If this happened in the OT we'd have lots of extraneous "And so the LORD did X, declaring, "Y!" Thus says the LORD."
The way things are recorded in the gospels is dry by comparison. "Jesus then went to the Decapolis. He drove demons out of a man and into a herd of pigs. The herd of pigs jumped into a lake. Jesus then went to Galilee." It's written as a report, rather than a "founding mythos" as Descan describes the OT.

[origamiscienceguy]

The God in the Old Testament is the same as the God in the New Testament. He is extremely scary, but loving in both.

[Egan_BW]

loving

I never got that impression.

[TD1]

More territorial, if anything.

[penguinofhonor]

It is intentionally jarring that God doesn't intercede. On some level, even Jesus thought he was going to if "My god, my god, why have you forsaken me?" is to be believed.