I’m not asking for “evidence”. I ask to defend the case.
And died?
I’m not discussing Islam
I don’t ask to prove the existence of God. I ask to defend the concept that a human was God. These are two very different issues in my opinion.
This whole theory claims the existence of at the very least a divided God. Do you claim Christians believe in a divided God? That goes directly against the dogma of the monotheism.
The answer is yes.
Humans have no understanding of God at all. Yet humans received the Messages of God.
The monotheistic religions are based on the definitions I mention in my OP. That excludes any “created” God in whatever form. Jesus was a creation. God is not.
Having done comparative studies Islam/Christianity doesn’t make you an “expert” on “Christianity” as such.
Do you think doing comparative studies is all one needs to do to become an expert on no matter what? Thank you so much.
To me the concept of God is of course not impossible. The concept of a God/human is.
Maybe you could explain further your reasoning why one can’t logically believe in anything if you do believe in the existence of God.
But I don’t think Christians feel they need to worship Jesus as God to feel immortal.
1.Jesus didn’t create, he was created.
2. Since Jesus was human, he wasn’t eternal. He died.
3. Jesus was hardly transcendent.
It is because God is omnipotent that a human can’t possibly be God. Can you explain us in detail how God can be limited to what is a human and still remain God ?
One of the questions I ask Christians whenever we discuss this issue is : Why should God have to pay any price for the sins of His creation? Any at all?
And the second question is : Why should God have any urge to die for humans? They die when God chooses. God doesn’t die when humans choose it. Jesus did die when humans decided for him that he should die.
God can’t be born and can’t die since God is uncreated and eternal = God always was and shall always be.
I “get” the theory behind the concept of the Trinity with no problem. The Christian problem is that Christology wouldn’t exist if the Christians themselves would really “get” what they believe.
Exactly. You make a few of my objections to this “Jesus=God” idea very clear. Thank you.
If that is a true record of what Jesus said (historian coming in with all his precaution and doubts about everything ever written) then he was talking to God. Which makes it clear that at that moment (and earlier, just before he was arrested and during his life whenever he addressed himself to God) he wasn’t God, but simply a human.
It is not a question of “power” and “limits”.
It is a question of where God was while He limited God by becoming a human.
See also the very clear posts of MEBuckner.
If Jesus was fully God, Jesus didn’t need to start talking to God -which you describe here as “different people” - since Jesus was God.
The doctrine “God is One; there is only One God” is what monotheism is all about.
And no, the One God Muslims refer to as “Allah”(which is only the Arabic word used for saying “God”) is not “God the Father”. It is God The One and Only God.
Wrong. God is One is the “key tenet” of monotheism.
I see that it escapes you, but other posters and myself are debating the possibility of God becoming human.
There is in my opinion not said that “earth” should be the only planet with life forms capable of worshipping the Creator.
I’m not discussing anything related to Muhammed or Islam here. If you want to discuss that, make a thread about it please. I shall try to answer your questions and remarks.
Thank you.
Salaam. A
I see… You start living on this website the minute you make a thread, watching it day and night without any sleep or without doing anything else then watching your PC screen and this particular website.
If that is no problem for you, who cares?
Butl I have a life in real life and real time.
Please forgive me that I don’t care that you seem to mind me having such a different life then you say you have.
Salaam. A
I see… You start living on this website the minute you make a thread, watching it day and night without any sleep or without doing anything else then watching a PC screen focussed at this particular website.
If that is no problem for you, who cares?
Butl I have a life in real life and real time.
Please forgive me that I don’t care that you seem to mind me leading such a different life then you seem to lead.
Salaam. A
You still are lost in your conception that God cannot be two places at the same time. God could if he wanted be completely and utterly human could even be you if that was his wish, at the same time he could be someone else or a million something elses, and also be his unlimited self. God is not confined by time or causality. All the same one God can appear to be many places in many different ways whilst remaining One. The body which was Christ’s was made and destroyed, but the spirit or soul that is Christ is eternal and is the same spirit or soul that is God, or so the Christians tend to believe.
When God was in the birning bush, did he not also exist everywhere else as is his want? When the Bush finaly burnt down did God die? When God walked and talked with Adam and Eve was he nowhere else at the same time?
Y’know, Aldebaran, I’m not sure what exactly your question is. Here’s a thought, though:
In Christianity, ALL people are recognized as having ‘eternal’ souls. As yet, these souls have evaded the detection of science, but it is taken as axiomatic that these souls drive our bodies, and yet have existense external to them in a way that will, eventually, allow for burning eternally in hell, among other possibilities.
It being the case that it is taken as axiomatic that EVERY person is driven by some being with an unlimited warranty, why are you surprised that God has driven a person at some point in history?
Christianity presents all human bodies as something like apparel, worn by spiritual entities. As this ‘connection’ is as yet entirely outside the realm of study, there is no reason to think that God could not have donned a human body as a temporary fixture, without making himself something other than God.
If you’re going to accept that people live on after they die, in any form, then there is no reason to believe that God (or some part of God) couldn’t have animated a human body for a time.
That is not the question at all.
The question rather is: can God be limited to be in one place and be limited to be a human.
I think you should re-read the posts made by EBuckner to see what I mean.
That is what I believe not to be possible at all. God is not limited to “spirit” or “soul”.
God was not “in” the burning bush whihc was only a vision.
You talk about God as “being” somewhere or someone where I talk about a transcendent, eternal and uncreated God = an unlimited God. Once you limit God, you have no God but a limited creation of your fantasy.
No creation can ever “be” God due to the fact that everything created by God is limited because it is creation.
By the way: I take the Adam and Eve story and the whole story of the Creation as told in the OT as a metaphore.
Salaam. A
Nah. Speaking for the Catholics, we’re taught that God is three persons in one nature. It’s hard to say exactly what that means, since we’re taught that it’s a “mystery.” In theological terms, a “mystery” is something that’s revealed to be true but beyond human understanding.
Still, I’m sure there’s plenty of Catholic (and non-Catholic) writings on the meaning of the Trinity. Here’s part of the Church’s own official statement from The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Aldebaran, are you essentially saying that there should be no insoluble mysteries regarding the nature of God?
No; according to Christian theology, the person of Jesus existed eternally as God together with the other two persons of God - three persons, but not three Gods, but each person being fully God (it isn’t supposed to be logical)
The only sense in which Jesus was ‘created’ is that a human body was born, which he fully inhabited - he was ‘made flesh’, not made of flesh’.
The mortal body of Jesus was killed, yes, but the spiritual person of Jesus was not (explanations of exactly what happened here are confusing and varied)
(again, according to Christian theology) Death was not able to hold Jesus and he rose from the dead, reoccupying and transforming the body that had been killed.
Actually, there should be no insoluble mysteries regarding the nature of God, give or take his personal life (we expect full disclosure of our leaders).
The whole of Creation is “driven” by God constantly.
The human remained human with all the human limitations and needs. God has no limits and no needs.
Jesus even died begging God not to leave him alone. Would God call God not to leave him? Would God ask God not to let him die?
And then we don’t even touch here all the other aspects of the life of Jesus as told in the NT. That is the lifestory of a human.
How do you “part” God when God is uncreated to begin with?
And since we all are “animated” by God since we are part of Creation, there is no difference at all between one human and an other in this “being animated”.
And you also overlook in your description of God “animating” a human body the whole Christology debate which only serves to figure out “how fully” Jesus was God and “how fully” Jesus was human and so on…
Sorry, but you suppose God became a human and wanted the world to know that, as Christians claim was the goal of the Jesus/God appearence.
Well, to begin with (all the other objections I have left aside for a second) I suppose that He would leave no doubts left about this appearance at all. There wouldn’t be endless debating necessary spread over centuries to find out what Christology until this very day coulnd’t figure out at all. With all the differences in interpretations leading to hostility and bloodshed and whatever that was the result of all these discussions among humans.
Salaam. A
He was born out of a woman. That means: he was born out of a human. That means: he was “flesh out of flesh” and not “made flesh” without the help of a human.
That means that he was created by God out of a human just like all humans are created by God out of a human.
By the way: Before you start about “virgin birth” - which isn’t even an issue since Mary still remainss a woman giving birth to a human - there is research published on woman’s eggs developping foetus-like tissues and even hair without any sperm being around from far or nearby.
(Now don’t cry “cite” since I don’t even have it anymore. I received that information a few years ago from a doctor.
But since you people are so in love with the internet and find it worthwile reading articles published on it, I’m sure you can find publications somewhere.)
This, I believe, would depend on your Christian faction. Most factions allow for an element of free will, otherwise most of the bible is total shlock. (If there are no souls besides God to control people’s actions, then what’s going to be judged?) And if you’re not arguing from within a Christian frame, then you’re wasting our time. The question of wether Jesus the incarnate God is feasable within Christian ideology is interesting. The question of wether a non-believer can deny it, is not.
Firstly, the properties of being indivisible and being uncreated (and, presumably, existent) are not related. There is no inherent reason that something that existed at the start of time would be incapable of dividing itself. Particularly if it were all powerful.
But, again, this is beside the point. Consider your own situation. You exist in the form of a nine-letter screen name, and the set of all messages you have generated under that screen name. Within the universe of this message board, that is what you are. Yet, (presumably) you also exist as a living, breathing being. When you created the limited, confined manifestation of yourself on this message board, you did not in any way lessen yourself physically, nor are your actions outside the message board confined by the fact that you have a manefestation within it.
Why should god be any more limited than you are from having an avatar? Being omnipresent, he wouldn’t even have to leave it to catch a snack or go to the bathroom.
Actually, such a discussion is a totally separate issue. We call Jesus a human because he (reportedly) looked like a human, walked like a human, and quacked like a human. It’s convenent to call him that. However, since his body was started secretly hidden away within Mary’s womb, we haven’t a clue what is physical makeup actually was. For all we can tell from the text, he was half human, one third diety, and a sixth rottweiler. Whatever he was, he was convincingly human even when being cut up, and claimed he was both a man and a first-generation descendant of God. Maybe if we get a sample of his DNA we can know for sure, but until then people can speculate wildly about it to their heart’s content. (On preview: just because you know of another way that the virgin birth might have happened, doesn’t mean it happened your way. Of course.)
Regarding Jesus chatting with God on the cross, see the aforementioned (and ‘officially’ confusing) trinity business.
No; (in Christian theology) it simply doesn’t mean that (well, perhaps it does mean that in your personal view/interpretation) - the event of Jesus’ birth is explicitly described as a singular and special event.
Now, of course, all kinds of skeptical and scientific arguments can be made about why God can’t exist and why the virgin birth can’t have happened and why Jesus probably wasn’t who the Bible says he was etc… but (unless I’m mistaken) this thread assumes the existence of a god and is about whether or not he could in any way become human if he so desired.
Can God be limited to being Human in one place?
Whom does that limiting? If God does the limiting than I see no reason to say he cannot limit himself to being Human. Or at least to being that part of a Human body which we describe as conciseness, or spirit, or soul.
But then is this self limited being still God? I think that by exercising restraint something does not become something else, and can think of no reason why it should.
Another defining property of God is I believe, that God has Free Will, this if accepted means that God can choose to not use his perfection of knowledge and power…
In fact the Creation taking 7 days is proof of this, for if God used his infinite power the Creation would have taken no time at all, he instead chooses to use the finite power necessary to make creation in a non zero period of time (not that I believe creation, but it is a story shared by Jew, Christian, and Muslim).
He exists outside time and space, how he chooses to exist within time and space is his own decision, after all he made all time and space.
The topic for the thread, as mentioned above, is that of God’s ability to be realised in flesh.
A more significant question may be to ask why be realised in flesh? The theme of the thread seems to be for reasoned & rational (no baiting intended for using such loaded terms) arguments for establishing something about divine nature without extensive quoting of scripture and appeal to theological dogma.
So, lets loosely apply some secular dogma - Ockham’s Razor; “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate” Decide which option is the simplest. The notion of simple elegance is apparant in all religious truths I have come accross; it should be the case here. Obfuscated complexities or artificial subtleties are often a symptom of human innovation rather than divine knowledge. It remains then to ask:
Which proposal is more elegant?
God is one, numerically identical to himself only, “the greatest conceivable being” to para-quote Anselm, creates all and is sole master of Judgement.
God is one in three distinct persons, each of equal divinity. God realises himself as a “consubstantial” human being, and from God via this human being the third divine aspect - the Holy Spirit, flows. Judgement is intricate and salvation is achieved only by “accepting” the sacrifice God makes in his human form.
I do not see any fundamental flaws in my presentation of the two proposals, there are obviously many qualifications to place on them but I feel they capture the essence.
I can see why appealing to a notion as subjective as “elegance” or “simplicity” may not have the force required for this debate but it is an aspect that has not been raised so far and it deserves some air.
Since you agree that God [Allah] can do things beyond the comrehension of human beings, it’s quite simple to say that God is/was present in the being of J.C. and that how that came to be is beyond our comprehension. I believe Christians call it “the mystery of faith”.
In short, religion is the realm of faith, not reason. You cannot reason your way through a religious doctrine, especially when you accept that God can do things beyond our comprehension. Anything is possible. Anything.
