Okay, I dug deeper, reading the comment thread on that piratey blog. From the same comment, I read this, first: Apart from Christ, the only God we can “know” is hidden, wrathful God who drives men to despair.

Wow, that’s amazing. Here I read the O.T. and see a God who is merciful and faithful to His promise from Genesis 12 on, even as His people turn their back on Him over and over again. I see a God who lays down a promise in Genesis 12 (knowing how it will be fulfilled in Christ, though that knowledge isn’t necessary to see the pattern about which I’m talking), and continually arranges things (even things that seem disastrous at first) so that the promise is always kept in from of His chosen people, and that they are reminded of it. I see a God who abstains from judgment even as His entire chosen people turns away from Him. He withholds His wrath! I see a God that responds to His people whenever they call on Him. I think I’ve said before that Judges is a fascinating picture of a recurring pattern in which God’s people turn away from Him, and yet He is always there to deliver them in His mercy whenever they finally call out to Him. I see that God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”

But apparently I’m seeing what isn’t there, because it turns out that all I should be able to see is a hidden, wrathful God who drives men to despair.

So if we’re saying that all we know about God from the O.T. foreshadows Christ, then I’m down with that. Post-Incarnation, we should clearly see things Christologically. But if we’re saying that God was different before the Incarnation, or that God’s mercy could not be seen before the Incarnation, then somebody needs to re-read the O.T., methinks.