Is the Christian God the same as the Jewish God?

[Terry Sampson]

It seems like I don't, as a Christian, have a different idea of who God is.

Really? IMHO, you need to get out more.

 

[Rival]

Let me say it differently (If I am not answering your question... could you expand a little further on exactly you are asking?)

Abraham, known as the father of faith, was the seed of faith that opened the door for the Messiah to come to the earth. The Messiah offered the grace of reuniting mankind with God not on the basis of achieving by works of the law but as a simple gift of grace. The Mosaic law offered a temporal reprieve of sin that required sacrifices every year. Grace was there but the Law, though good, exposed the reality that man has a sin problem that had to be dealt with continually to step on the head of the curse.

The remedy of the sin problem was love that covers a multitude of sin. A grace that says, "I will love you no matter what your performance is - you don't need to earn my love - it is a gift". The Prophet Hosea typified this grace. IMO It dealt with sin once and for all.

Example: Abraham, though he lied about his wife with King Abimelech (Get 20), still came out blessed even after he had done wrong. So, I just lied about my wife, caused her to enter into another man's harem, but after I did wrong, I am leaving with gifts from the man who I lied to? That is grace. (not promoting lying here, just showing how we can do wrong but the grace of God is greater than our wrong)

I see the figs leaves that Adam clothed himself with as man's attempt to clean his wrong. Jesus cursed the fig tree because ultimately man's efforts does not eradicate wrong -it produces no good fruit (if any). Jesus cursed that effort from the very root, the heart of man. It was God's clothing that only He could make, with the shedding blood, that could eradicate sin through grace and change the heart.

Alright, I have some huge disagreement with all of this but as I don't want to derail Harel's thread I'll leave it there.

 

[Gargovic Malkav]

While I was raised knowing that the spread of Christianity helped popularize the notion of Monotheism, more recently I've wondered whether the Christian God is the same as the Jewish God. Setting aside the question of whether or not the Christian deity has a triune nature or if Jesus is god - if we only look at "God the Father" - is he the same as the Jewish God? I personally vote no, for one main reason, better stated than I could ever by Professor Joseph Klausner in his book Historia Yisraelit (Israelite History), Vol. 3 (with my rough translation into English):

"Jesus came and changed, unknowingly, the God of absolute justice with the god of absolute grace. [One] must love the evil men and the good men, the righteous and the vile, in the same manner and quality, for "your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:45). And so sinners and those that don't sin, evil men and good men, wicked ones and righteous ones are equal in their worth before the divinity - and where is the justice? Where is the God of judgment? And if God is merely the God of goodness and grace and love and is not the God of justice and judgment and honesty, then he is not the God of history also. Judaism, whose whole greatness and majesty is - which her God is the God of history ("I am the first and I am the last"), couldn't accept and won't accept this sort of worldview.​

The sinner, that does not repent (for if he does repent, once more he isn't a wicked one, but a completely righteous man and even more - Brachot 34b, Sanhedrin 99a), he confuses the world, he destroys the order of the moral world, and through that - also the order of the natural world. If "the earth is filled with lawlessness" - the "flood" shall come and wipe out the "entire universe" and will break the laws of earth and heaven. In the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, there are all sorts of good and moral attributes: "mighty in compassion, merciful and gracious; slow to anger and plenteous in kindness and truth; doing kindness unto thousands; forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" - but also "yet He does not remit all punishment". The Jew says to his God: "Our Father, our King" in the same breath: He - is not just "the Father of mercy" but also "King of judgement" - God of the society, God of the nationality, God of the history. Jesus' concept of divinity, his God of grace and unconditional love, is too exalted for the individual moral
consciousness. For the general consciousness, the social, national and universal, that which for her "the history of the world is the judgement-day of the world", this concept of divinity is destruction and ruin. Judaism, which is essentially socially-nationalistic, could not accept such a concept in any sort of fashion."
​

Klausner goes on and explains further how Jesus' concept of divinity was emphasized in his various moral teachings, but as it's long, I'll leave it at that for now.

Side reasons to doubt that the Christian God is the same as the Jewish God include discrepancies between the Torah and the NT, which ties into points made, among other times and places, yesterday on RF: how can one accept that a text was given by a supreme divine entity, yet is greatly flawed, with regards to its predecessor-text?

That's my opinion. I wanted to start this thread to hear what others have to say on the matter.

To me it seems that Jesus was mainly preaching about the merciful aspect of God. The OT/Tanakh was mainly focused on the lawgiving, powerful, testing and punishing aspect of Him. I think this is why some people see it as if there are different gods or that God has undergone a change of personality. I also believe that what one is like on the inside, influences how they would experience God. His merciful aspects are hard to find if you yourself can't be merciful. And He can appear as oppressive and unreasonable if you've never learned to humble yourself and be patient.

 

[Harel13]

Maybe he his confusing the difference between the Abrahamic Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant?

I don't know. He appears to have dedicated a lot of his research to Jesus. I only have a small portion. What exactly would a difference entail? In Judaism, both of those covenants are part of the whole of Judaism.

Probably the greatest sin of all was the spiritual adultery and high treason of Adam

Was it the greatest sin?

and yet, His mercy and grace rejoiced over judgment.

But man was judged, and punished accordingly. All who took part in the sin were.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

While I was raised knowing that the spread of Christianity helped popularize the notion of Monotheism, more recently I've wondered whether the Christian God is the same as the Jewish God. Setting aside the question of whether or not the Christian deity has a triune nature or if Jesus is god - if we only look at "God the Father" - is he the same as the Jewish God? I personally vote no, for one main reason, better stated than I could ever by Professor Joseph Klausner in his book Historia Yisraelit (Israelite History), Vol. 3 (with my rough translation into English):

"Jesus came and changed, unknowingly, the God of absolute justice with the god of absolute grace. [One] must love the evil men and the good men, the righteous and the vile, in the same manner and quality, for "your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:45). And so sinners and those that don't sin, evil men and good men, wicked ones and righteous ones are equal in their worth before the divinity - and where is the justice? Where is the God of judgment? And if God is merely the God of goodness and grace and love and is not the God of justice and judgment and honesty, then he is not the God of history also. Judaism, whose whole greatness and majesty is - which her God is the God of history ("I am the first and I am the last"), couldn't accept and won't accept this sort of worldview.​

The sinner, that does not repent (for if he does repent, once more he isn't a wicked one, but a completely righteous man and even more - Brachot 34b, Sanhedrin 99a), he confuses the world, he destroys the order of the moral world, and through that - also the order of the natural world. If "the earth is filled with lawlessness" - the "flood" shall come and wipe out the "entire universe" and will break the laws of earth and heaven. In the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, there are all sorts of good and moral attributes: "mighty in compassion, merciful and gracious; slow to anger and plenteous in kindness and truth; doing kindness unto thousands; forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" - but also "yet He does not remit all punishment". The Jew says to his God: "Our Father, our King" in the same breath: He - is not just "the Father of mercy" but also "King of judgement" - God of the society, God of the nationality, God of the history. Jesus' concept of divinity, his God of grace and unconditional love, is too exalted for the individual moral
consciousness. For the general consciousness, the social, national and universal, that which for her "the history of the world is the judgement-day of the world", this concept of divinity is destruction and ruin. Judaism, which is essentially socially-nationalistic, could not accept such a concept in any sort of fashion."
​

Klausner goes on and explains further how Jesus' concept of divinity was emphasized in his various moral teachings, but as it's long, I'll leave it at that for now.

Side reasons to doubt that the Christian God is the same as the Jewish God include discrepancies between the Torah and the NT, which ties into points made, among other times and places, yesterday on RF: how can one accept that a text was given by a supreme divine entity, yet is greatly flawed, with regards to its predecessor-text?

That's my opinion. I wanted to start this thread to hear what others have to say on the matter.

I personally avoid the term "the Christian God," since it suggests there's only one. There are many different Christian Gods. How well each of them can be reconciled with the Jewish concept(s) of God is probably going to be quite variable.

 

[Harel13]

The Mosaic law offered a temporal reprieve of sin that required sacrifices every year.

Well that's not true - and I think the mere fact that we disagree on what repentance was like prior, during and post Jesus's time, strengthens the argument that there are vast differences between the two entities. Justice means doing what is right, always. In some cases, that might be to allow repentance. In others, there's a need for a physical wiping-of-the-slate-doomsday-type-event. Any grace that is given comes because that is the right thing to do, not because God sees us as paralyzed hopeless creatures and he sighs and says: Okay, here's another chance, even though you don't deserve it. What is the driving factor in how God runs the world? Is it through grace or through justice? I argue that if God is driven by his graciousness, that's not the Jewish God.

 

[rosends]

How do you differentiate between character and characteristics?

Imagine a literary approach. In two books, there is a character who goes by the same name. His actions are consistent and what happened in the first book is assumed to be true so that his actions in the second are what logically follow and don't contradict those behaviors. But in the second book the description of him changes enough so that he seems like a different person. The "person" is the same, but the idea behind who that person is has shifted. Moving from a monothesitic view to a trinitarian one, or from an "angry/vengeful" God to a "merciful" one means that the personality/characteristics which define that character are not the same even though the two books speak of the same figure using the same language. The two texts are pointing to a singular being but describing that being very differently because those descriptions are driven by 2 different understandings of what God is.

Now imagine that two books have the same named character but in the second, the claim is that the events of the first didn't happen, or the person acts as if they didn't happen. The characteristics behind the person are the same (the behaviors, attitudes etc are all teh same) but in the second book, the character is different. If Islam says that events in the Torah didn't happen as described (Yishmael offered and not Isaac) then the actor must be a different figure because both characters can't co-exist in the same name as the two different sets of events are mutually exclusive. So the idea of what constitutes God is the same, but the texts are pointing to two different iterations.

 

[rosends]

What you say doesn't seem to make the case for the idea that the God of Islam is different from that of Judaism, though. What makes the God of Islam different?

That that god incarnation is claimed to have done something that the god incarnation of Judaism simply didn't do. So while the underlying god-image is the same (shared characteristics) they can't be the same entity (different actions).

 

[Harel13]

Now imagine that two books have the same named character but in the second, the claim is that the events of the first didn't happen, or the person acts as if they didn't happen. The characteristics behind the person are the same (the behaviors, attitudes etc are all teh same) but in the second book, the character is different. If Islam says that events in the Torah didn't happen as described (Yishmael offered and not Isaac) then the actor must be a different figure because both characters can't co-exist in the same name as the two different sets of events are mutually exclusive. So the idea of what constitutes God is the same, but the texts are pointing to two different iterations.

Is this different from Christianity "squeezing" itself into the Torah and coming back to Jews and saying: "Oh, hey, it was this way the entire time - God was always triune, the Torah laws were always meant to be temporary, etc"?

 

[rosends]

Is this different from Christianity "squeezing" itself into the Torah and coming back to Jews and saying: "Oh, hey, it was this way the entire time - God was always triune, the Torah laws were always meant to be temporary, etc"?

That is (in my understanding) Christianity's way of saying "we actually have the same idea of God, but you Jews don't really understand that idea."

 

[Harel13]

That is (in my understanding) Christianity's way of saying "we actually have the same idea of God, but you Jews don't really understand that idea."

And you still argue that Jews have the same God as that of Christians (i.e. just one of the two has a false understanding of God)?

 

[bobhikes]

How is God's knowledge conveyed to mankind, in your opinion?

I would think directly with images not words with the exception of God being on the earth in which actions, metaphors and stories which we can relate to.

 

[Thief]

answering the title directly........yes

there is only ONE Almighty

 

[Windwalker]

"Jesus came and changed, unknowingly, the God of absolute justice with the god of absolute grace. [One] must love the evil men and the good men, the righteous and the vile, in the same manner and quality, for "your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:45). And so sinners and those that don't sin, evil men and good men, wicked ones and righteous ones are equal in their worth before the divinity - and where is the justice? Where is the God of judgment?​

Right off the bat the problem lays in his perception. Jesus did not change how God was viewed. You can find those same views expressed in the books of the Christian Old Testament as well.

One can say he emphasized that view of God of Grace and Love, the God of "distributive justice", as opposed to the equally present view of God as the the God of "retributive justice", the God of vengeance and violence. Both images of God are present in the OT books, as well as in the NT books, once you add the most violent book in the entire Bible, the book of Revelation.

I started a thread on this awhile ago, inspired by my having been reading the work of the modern scholar John Dominic Crossan. To quote myself from that post for convenience sake:

In a quick nutshell, his historical research and cross-disciplinary scholarship takes note of a shift in the various images of God arising at one time under surrounding circumstances set in the ancient Near East, as a Priestly image of God as one of non-violent, distributive justice, where all receive fair share of the bounty, to a radical shift to the Deuteronomic image of God as a violent, God of retributive justice, punishing, threatening, and cursing. He details all the verses and the scholarship behind the authors and their times. The contrast is plain to see, as in the above verses about Jesus I included.

His observation, and I'd call it a very, very good one, is that this swing between the non-violent God of distributive justice, and the violent God retributive justice pulses back and forth in what he terms "the biblical heartbeat". You see this swing of culture everywhere actually, all the way to today. We swing from the progressive, to regressive, to progressive, etc., patterns in cyclical patterns, as we are even today in our social and political climates. That was no different then. And what you see in the Bible, is simply a wonderful collections of writings reflecting those social and cultural swings, that cyclical pattern, that we see today​

Link: How to Read the Bible, and Still be a Christian

And if God is merely the God of goodness and grace and love and is not the God of justice and judgment and honesty, then he is not the God of history also.
​

​

God is the God of justice in both systems of thought about God. It's just a matter of what style of justice do we attribute to God? Non-violent distributive justice, where all have plenty and all are invited to participate? Or violent retributive justice where order is imposed through force on others, sparing the righteous and destroying the wicked?

Neither system allows for or excuses wrongdoing. It is simply a matter of how one sees and approaches God. Is God the Nurturing Parent inviting all to growth, or the Strict Father, violently punishing people for infractions of the rules? As I said, it's not a different God, but one seen through different lenses, which I believe in no small way reflects our own home lives growing up, not always though.

​

Side reasons to doubt that the Christian God is the same as the Jewish God include discrepancies between the Torah and the NT, which ties into points made, among other times and places, yesterday on RF: how can one accept that a text was given by a supreme divine entity, yet is greatly flawed, with regards to its predecessor-text?

Not everyone needs to view scripture as something beyond human flaws in order for it to still speak Truth to them. And as I've pointed out, the OT books are not one image of God, and the NT books a different image. Both images of God, one of non-violent distributive justice, and one of violent retributive justice is found in both collections. "Love your enemies", Jesus is there, as well as the violent Jesus dipping his robes in the blood of kings and feeding their flesh to vultures. These are clearly contradictory characteristics of the same God. Grace sees Grace, Fear sees Fear.

So I think you need to not see that the NT God is one thing, and the OT another. Those different views of God", are in both collections of scriptures respectively.

 

[Harel13]

I would think directly with images not words with the exception of God being on the earth in which actions, metaphors and stories which we can relate to.

I guess it's no wonder every person interprets it differently...

 

[rosends]

And you still argue that Jews have the same God as that of Christians (i.e. just one of the two has a false understanding of God)?

It isn't my argument particularly - it just seems to be the approach of the each theology, that the 2 Gods are the single character, but the "other's" understanding of the characteristics of that God is wrong.

Now that i think about it, it might explain some opinions about whether Islam or Christianity are forbidden idolatry according to Jewish law. Jewish law would say "you are not allowed to have a different idea of god but you are allowed to have the same idea but make different claims about the stories related to his actions".

 

[Harel13]

answering the title directly........yes

there is only ONE Almighty

I don't think we disagree on that. I wasn't suggesting that there actually two different deities; rather that it seems that there are two different concepts of God. So the question would be, in other words, are the two different concepts - and thereby, our views of God - the same or not? If not - as I hold - then the ramification is that one group is worshiping a false image of God. It would be similar to me calling God Zeus - that's not one of His names; is a false attribution, therefore.

 

[Thief]

I don't think we disagree on that. I wasn't suggesting that there actually two different deities; rather that it seems that there are two different concepts of God. So the question would be, in other words, are the two different concepts - and thereby, our views of God - the same or not? If not - as I hold - then the ramification is that one group is worshiping a false image of God. It would be similar to me calling God Zeus - that's not one of His names; is a false attribution, therefore.

well it is written somewhere......Ye ARE gods

and I believe in hierarchy
so.....at the top of the list........Almighty

a false god would be someone of ability
masquerading AS the Almighty

 

[Harel13]

One can say he emphasized that view of God of Grace and Love, the God of "distributive justice", as opposed to the equally present view of God as the the God of "retributive justice", the God of vengeance and violence. Both images of God are present in the OT books, as well as in the NT books, once you add the most violent book in the entire Bible, the book of Revelation.

I started a thread on this awhile ago, inspired by my having been reading the work of the modern scholar John Dominic Crossan. To quote myself from that post for convenience sake:

In a quick nutshell, his historical research and cross-disciplinary scholarship takes note of a shift in the various images of God arising at one time under surrounding circumstances set in the ancient Near East, as a Priestly image of God as one of non-violent, distributive justice, where all receive fair share of the bounty, to a radical shift to the Deuteronomic image of God as a violent, God of retributive justice, punishing, threatening, and cursing. He details all the verses and the scholarship behind the authors and their times. The contrast is plain to see, as in the above verses about Jesus I included.

His observation, and I'd call it a very, very good one, is that this swing between the non-violent God of distributive justice, and the violent God retributive justice pulses back and forth in what he terms "the biblical heartbeat". You see this swing of culture everywhere actually, all the way to today. We swing from the progressive, to regressive, to progressive, etc., patterns in cyclical patterns, as we are even today in our social and political climates. That was no different then. And what you see in the Bible, is simply a wonderful collections of writings reflecting those social and cultural swings, that cyclical pattern, that we see today

So per the Gospels only, supposedly the teachings Jesus taught during his lifetime - as opposed to the later books of the NT, which include teachings of other Christians and revelations of ascended Jesus - would you say that Jesus spoke only of this "distributive justice"?

 

[Samantha Rinne]

While I was raised knowing that the spread of Christianity helped popularize the notion of Monotheism, more recently I've wondered whether the Christian God is the same as the Jewish God. Setting aside the question of whether or not the Christian deity has a triune nature or if Jesus is god - if we only look at "God the Father" - is he the same as the Jewish God? I personally vote no, for one main reason, better stated than I could ever by Professor Joseph Klausner in his book Historia Yisraelit (Israelite History), Vol. 3 (with my rough translation into English):

"Jesus came and changed, unknowingly, the God of absolute justice with the god of absolute grace. [One] must love the evil men and the good men, the righteous and the vile, in the same manner and quality, for "your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." (Matt. 5:45). And so sinners and those that don't sin, evil men and good men, wicked ones and righteous ones are equal in their worth before the divinity - and where is the justice? Where is the God of judgment? And if God is merely the God of goodness and grace and love and is not the God of justice and judgment and honesty, then he is not the God of history also. Judaism, whose whole greatness and majesty is - which her God is the God of history ("I am the first and I am the last"), couldn't accept and won't accept this sort of worldview.​

The sinner, that does not repent (for if he does repent, once more he isn't a wicked one, but a completely righteous man and even more - Brachot 34b, Sanhedrin 99a), he confuses the world, he destroys the order of the moral world, and through that - also the order of the natural world. If "the earth is filled with lawlessness" - the "flood" shall come and wipe out the "entire universe" and will break the laws of earth and heaven. In the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, there are all sorts of good and moral attributes: "mighty in compassion, merciful and gracious; slow to anger and plenteous in kindness and truth; doing kindness unto thousands; forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" - but also "yet He does not remit all punishment". The Jew says to his God: "Our Father, our King" in the same breath: He - is not just "the Father of mercy" but also "King of judgement" - God of the society, God of the nationality, God of the history. Jesus' concept of divinity, his God of grace and unconditional love, is too exalted for the individual moral
consciousness. For the general consciousness, the social, national and universal, that which for her "the history of the world is the judgement-day of the world", this concept of divinity is destruction and ruin. Judaism, which is essentially socially-nationalistic, could not accept such a concept in any sort of fashion."
​

Klausner goes on and explains further how Jesus' concept of divinity was emphasized in his various moral teachings, but as it's long, I'll leave it at that for now.

Side reasons to doubt that the Christian God is the same as the Jewish God include discrepancies between the Torah and the NT, which ties into points made, among other times and places, yesterday on RF: how can one accept that a text was given by a supreme divine entity, yet is greatly flawed, with regards to its predecessor-text?

That's my opinion. I wanted to start this thread to hear what others have to say on the matter.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is explicitly God. Jews may reject the idea of Trinity, but I don't think it matters much.

The Muslims however are NOT worshipping the same god, so get that idea out of your head. They tell their followers not to associate with Jews and Christians (1), while ostensibly they name drop OT figures many of the details are wrong or miss the point of the original text (2), and while it is comforting to think that being People of the Book means the Muslims accept you, they extend this "award" to Hindus and Sikhs as well but it really involves tax payment (3).

For these three reasons, it can safely be said that this is not the same as God. The tax in particular is a close byt no cigar award (as in, "you still haven't converted to Islam, so we're goung to impose penalties until you do"). The Quran is written with OT figures only to secure legitimacy as a Judeo-Christian religion, in the same way as I would write a cult manual that venerates Ungorr the Untamed (I use this ersatz deity who has the traits of being a musclebound dudebro a fair amount as an example false religion).
If I made such a manual, maybe 1/3 of it would be about Ungorr flexing his beauteous muscles, another 1/3 would be about offerings or laws or how to praise Ungorr, and a last 1/3 would be to give it Biblical legitimacy by having Ungorr meet Moses, Jacob, Noah, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus (even though someof these characters are anachronistic) while he flexes and preens.

This is more of less the problem of accepting these as "basically the same God." If Allah were actually the same as God, Jews and Christians would not have to convert ( you do not see many Christians trying to concert Jews, most of them accept that belief in God fulfills their covenant). And they certainly wouldn't have to pay a tax like lesser people.

Yes, I know, I'm talking a great deal on Islam which was never discussed. But showing what isn't an example of the same God, shows us what is an example of the same God. The Jews, so far as I know, treat Christians mostly the same aside from seeing them as Gentile. They don't treat them as third-class citizens, they allow them to live and worship in their country.