Do christians worship God (not Jesus)?

[MustafaMc]

Wa alaikum as salam,

I'm not exactly certain as to why you posit this particular question? Perhaps it is the case that you are testing my ilm. Nonetheless I will give the benefit of the doubt and answer your question.

The Lord has named them People of the Book because they are just that: ahl ul kitaab; those who have received previous revelation. Their status is superior to those of the polytheists and the idolaters, mainly because these are not people of scripture.

Thank you for answering my question.

 

[Grace Seeker]

Anything existing within the universe had an origin - the Son of Mary was in his mother's womb and was given birth thereafter, meaning he was a part of the universe which makes him a material and temporal being.

Materially this would indeed be true.

The bottom line here is if you believe the Son of Mary is God, then you must also accept that God had re-created Himself (in the person of the Christ) by giving Himself a form on earth.

I would prefer the term "incarnated" himself, for "re-created" implies something different -- that God ceased to exist as God or that he has a new beginning. That is not what happened in the incarnation when God revealed himself to humankind in the flesh in the same way you might put on a clothing.

If He in fact did so, this creates serious theological implications;

You are correct. Very much so. In fact discussion of the hypostatic union of Jesus two natures was one of the issues that the early church was forced to wrestle with.

in this case He violated His own law of unity and singleness, even if He retains His position as the Father in simultaneousness.

I don't see this. It would be true if God had not always been, from before the act of creation, a God who existed in Trinity. But we don't believe that God's nature changed in the incarnation of Jesus and we do believe there are hints of this understanding of the ONE God existing in muti-unity even before he spoke to Moses. This was not as foreign to the Jews of Moses or David's day as many today seem to think.

Incarnation is a long way away from true monotheism.

Well, I agree that you understanding of it is, but your understanding of what took place in the incarnation and mine seem to be radically different. My understanding leaves monotheism fully intact.

They indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. {5:17}

Hey, that's close to a line I delivered in my sermon on Trinity Sunday. Let me lift it out of context for you. Isolated from the rest of my sermon you might even agree with it, for I said, "Jesus is not God." That indeed was the complete sentence without any equivocation. Piqued your interest any?

 

[MustafaMc]

The bottom line here is if you believe the Son of Mary is God, then you must also accept that God had re-created Himself (in the person of the Christ) by giving Himself a form on earth. If He in fact did so, this creates serious theological implications; in this case He violated His own law of unity and singleness, even if He retains His position as the Father in simultaneousness. Incarnation is a long way away from true monotheism.

To our Christian brethren:

In what form did the Son of Mary exist prior to being an embryo in Mary's womb. We can relate to his changing form from embryo to his ascension to Heaven. As he sits at the right hand of the Father, what form does he take? Is it the pre-birth, the regular human, the transfigured human or another form. When he returns to earth what form will he take?

If God become a man, did all of Him enter that form or only a portion of Him with the rest existing separately? How can God pray to Himself? How can He have two conflicting Wills at the same time with one submitting to the Other? How can God in the flesh ask the rest of Himself why He forsake Himself on the cross?

 

[MustafaMc]

I would prefer the term "incarnated" himself, for "re-created" implies something different -- that God ceased to exist as God or that he has a new beginning. That is not what happened in the incarnation when God revealed himself to humankind in the flesh in the same way you might put on a clothing.

Would this be analogous to God speaking to Moses through the burning bush?

Well, I agree that you understanding of it is, but your understanding of what took place in the incarnation and mine seem to be radically different. My understanding leaves monotheism fully intact.

As I posted above, did all of God incarnate as Jesus or just a portion with the rest residing elsewhere?

 

[Keltoi]

Would this be analogous to God speaking to Moses through the burning bush?As I posted above, did all of God incarnate as Jesus or just a portion with the rest residing elsewhere?

This seems to be a recurring idea from the Muslim point of view. Did God put "all of Himself" in Jesus or just a part? From the Christian perspective that question doesn't really make sense. It is putting a limitation on God's ability to manifest, as if He is made up of some physical substance that can run dry.

I know that isn't what you mean to suggest, but that question assumes a limitation of substance. Early Christian theologians described it as water from a fountain or a ray of light from the sun. God took a human form on Earth because He willed it to be so. No part of Him was missing or dried up as a result.

 

[Grace Seeker]

Would this be analogous to God speaking to Moses through the burning bush? As I posted above, did all of God incarnate as Jesus or just a portion with the rest residing elsewhere?

As I best understand it, the burning bush would be a theophany. In other words God was truly present making himself known, but he wasn't the bush, he was using the bush. And I think this next will help us with the second part of your question.

God wasn't just in the bush. It isn't like God was not also all the other places and doing all the other things that God always is and does. So, too, when God was incarnate in Jesus Christ, God wasn't present in Jesus and not still and at the same time also in all the other place and doing all the other things that God always is and does. Yet, it would also be wrong to think that we can divide God into parts (yes, Christian language about the Trinity has a problem with appearing to do this -- that's a problem with our language not God though) and say that a part of him was in the bush. But we do have Paul's words to us regarding the Christ that "in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9).


As for the questions you asked in your other post above, I have asked some of them myself, and can't claim to have arrived at a satisfactory answer. Does Jesus physically reside at the right hand of God? Well, we have plenty of biblical testimony to this. (See Mark 16:19, Acts 7:55-56, Romans 8:34, Colossian 3:1, Hebrews 10:12.) Yet, I am struck by how much of the Bible is metaphor as well. So, are these passages metaphor, especially given that Jesus himself declares, "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24)? Or are these passages showing us a physical manifestation/expression of a spiritual reality? Or are these passages simply showing inherent contradictions within scripture itself? Well, if they were all from one writer (like all from Paul) we might say that he was in error, but we have at least 4 different writers involved saying the same basic thing, so I think that rules out that they are wrong in referring to Jesus at the right hand of God. Might it be that John (a single voice) is wrong and misquoted Jesus? Perhaps God really isn't spirit? Even a casual reading of the Bible shows that to be the basic understanding of God throughout, Old Testament, New Testament, even those who speak of Jesus at the right hand of God. So, that leaves me with the understanding that these writers are using metaphor to speak of mysteries that are beyond full explanation. And I have to accept that.

I don't know if Jesus is in a physical body someplace, but I personally don't think so. I think that he has a spiritual body, like Paul speaks of the rest of us humans being raised with in 1 Corinthians 15. So, I think that means Stephen's experience of seeing Jesus standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55-56) was also a theophany, just like Moses' burning bush. But just as after his resurrection Jesus assumed a physical body, yet completely different from our physicall bodies for it could pass through walls (John 20:19 & 26), I assume that Jesus will return in physical body. Will the body look like the one that the disciples became accustomed to on earth, or will it look like the one that John saw in his vision of Christ in heaven

dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. (Revelation 1:13-16)​

It is primarily speculation, but based on Revelation 19, I think more likely in a body like what John saw in his vision.

Then I saw Heaven open wide—and oh! a white horse and its Rider. The Rider, named Faithful and True, judges and makes war in pure righteousness. His eyes are a blaze of fire, on his head many crowns. He has a Name inscribed that's known only to himself. He is dressed in a robe soaked with blood, and he is addressed as "Word of God." The armies of Heaven, mounted on white horses and dressed in dazzling white linen, follow him. A sharp sword comes out of his mouth so he can subdue the nations, then rule them with a rod of iron. He treads the winepress of the raging wrath of God, the Sovereign-Strong. On his robe and thigh is written

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.​

(Revelation 19:11-16)​

As to Jesus' pre-incarnate appearance or form, again we are not told. But first, I would agree with those who have said that he wasn't Jesus. Jesus as a human being did not come into existence until his conception in Mary's womb. What/who was in existence prior to the incarnation was not Jesus but the infinite God. And that God included all three persons of his singluar being. So, I suspect this 2nd person of the divine Trinity (using the term "person" as the ancient Greeks did meaning persona, NOT as modern thinkers do meaning a separate individual) was spirit simply because God is spirit.

Sorry, I have to interrupt my own thought with an aside---
I wonder if part of the problem that we Christians have in explaining this to Muslims is because we have different understanding of when humanity begins? What I mean is I remember someone telling me once that Muslims believe that God has created each of us already before we are born and that we exist in heaven (or someplace, like in storage) until the phyical body is conceived. So, rather than creating the person by the union of egg and sperm cells and at that time giving it a soul, as if continuing to create ex nihlio, that the Muslim understanding is that we already were created back in the beginning and God merely implants the person into the mother's womb. I wonder if this is part of why the idea of the incarnation leads Muslims to think that God must have likewise created Jesus back at the beginning as a seperate being?


Anyway, Christians understand that God is now who he has always been. And that was just as true when Jesus was on earth, the only difference was the manner in which he revealed himself to us by also incarnating himself (i.e., putting on flesh). There is no real difference in the nature of who God is, it is only our knowledge of him that is better informed now than before, because of how effective Jesus was in making God's self known to us.

 

[barney]

Id like to address all my earlier woffling to an actual christian.

Why did God suddenly develop a completly different personality. What happened to the Kidslaughtering and the city destroying?

Normaly when somebody does that the stock question is "Hey...did they get religion?"

Do you think Jesus was the same entity that tore apart babies? Why did he suddenly mellow that side of him out into a bit of sword-rattling, property destroying and anti-family values?

 

[Armand]

Thank you for answering my question.

You're welcome.

Hey, I received your PM, but I'm not allowed to send or reply to PM until I have 50 posts. I am far, far from being knowledgeable. Ironically, the reason I said that was because I thought the exact same of you! But yeah I was like, uh oh, they're testing my knowledge (or the lack thereof).

Wa salaam

 

[Armand]

Peace Grace Seeker, and thank you for taking time to kindly peruse and reply to my post,

I would prefer the term "incarnated" himself, for "re-created" implies something different -- that God ceased to exist as God or that he has a new beginning. That is not what happened in the incarnation when God revealed himself to humankind in the flesh in the same way you might put on a clothing.

Fair enough. I will try and clarify my statement below.

I don't see this. It would be true if God had not always been, from before the act of creation, a God who existed in Trinity. But we don't believe that God's nature changed in the incarnation of Jesus and we do believe there are hints of this understanding of the ONE God existing in muti-unity even before he spoke to Moses. This was not as foreign to the Jews of Moses or David's day as many today seem to think.

I wasn't alluding to a change in nature. Would you like to share with us a few of these "hints", as you say, of God's "multi-unity" from the Old Testament?

Hey, that's close to a line I delivered in my sermon on Trinity Sunday. Let me lift it out of context for you. Isolated from the rest of my sermon you might even agree with it, for I said, "Jesus is not God." That indeed was the complete sentence without any equivocation. Piqued your interest any?

I'm not exactly certain what you are implying here by putting "out of context" in bold in your response to a verse I cited from the Qur'an where the Lord reprimands Christians for their idolatry.

As promised, allow me to expound on my questions regarding the nature of Christ. Jesus' physical body was created, I'm sure you would agree?

Your claim to salvation through the blood of Christ (pbuh) is most amusing when you consider the fact that his blood was created by God. On what grounds does the Vicarious Atonement stand in the light of this?

Peace and Guidance,

Armand

 

[glo]

Id like to address all my earlier woffling to an actual christian.

Why did God suddenly develop a completly different personality. What happened to the Kidslaughtering and the city destroying?

Normaly when somebody does that the stock question is "Hey...did they get religion?"

Do you think Jesus was the same entity that tore apart babies? Why did he suddenly mellow that side of him out into a bit of sword-rattling, property destroying and anti-family values?

Hi Barney

I like your questions the best!
I may not always get round to replying, but they always make me think ...

Some people seem to think that “the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath while the God of the New Testament is a God of love”, and your thinking seems to be along the same lines ...

Most Christians will tell you that God's nature (or 'personality', as you put it) does not change, and that his judgment and his love are presented in both the OT and the NT.
I am copying this text from a Christian site, to save myself writing it all out. (I have been told not to post links to Christian websites, so I cannot post the actual link)

For example, throughout the Old Testament, God is declared to be “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abundant in loving-kindness and truth” (Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 4:31; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 86:5; Psalm 86:15; Psalm 108:4; Psalm 145:8; Joel 2:13). Yet in the New Testament, God’s loving-kindness and mercy are manifested even more fully through the fact that “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Throughout the Old Testament, we also see God dealing with Israel much the same way a loving father deals with a child. When they willfully sinned against Him and began to worship idols, God would chastise them, yet each and every time He would deliver them once they had repented of their idolatry. This is much the same way that we see God dealing with Christians in the New Testament. For example, Hebrews 12:6 tells us that “For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives."

Certainly Christians believe that Jesus has existed since the beginning of time - so in that sense, yes, he is the same entity as the God of the OT.

But I expect your actual question is of a different nature:
Why is there so much blood-shed and slaughter in the OT, when Jesus seems to present a much more peaceful image?

You are not the first to ask that question.
Indeed some people at Jesus' time thought similarly: they expected that Jesus had come to overthrow the Roman rule and make Israel the powerful nation again, which it once was ... and they were very disappointed when he didn't!

I have no authoritative answer to your question, only my own thoughts. (Perhaps somebody else can add to this and/or correct me)

God is the one and only God he has ever been, and he always will be. He does not change!
But that does not mean that he does not speak to people differently throughout the ages.

I guess that's where Judaism and Christianity may be different from Islam. Whereas Islam believes that God's message has always been the same to all the prophets, the Bible/Torah seems to say otherwise.
According to the Bible/Torah each convenant which God made with his prophets was different. The convenants did not contradict each other, but built onto each other, to gradually reveal God's relationship with and purpose for his people ...

The Israelites were an expanding warring desert tribe, fighting for their survival.
At Jesus' time the situation had changed.

A question I always ask myself is how Jewish thinking has changed over the millenia. After all, they don't claim that Jews brought a new era and covenant ... and yet, they don't advocate the slaughter of children and destruction of entire cities (I am aware that I am opening a HUGE way here for debate around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. :X That is not what I mean. I am speaking about Jews across the world as a religious group, not the political and secular state of Israel!)
As I understand Judaism has always had a tradition of reading and studying Torah, and discussing it in the light of the present time ... therefore the human understanding of God is forever evolving.

In that sense it is not God who is changing, but our understanding of him. That makes sense to me ...

Now I am waffling too ... so I'll leave it at that!
You really bring our the philosopher in me, Barney!

Oh, before I go, can you explain what you mean by 'God's anti-family values'? Ta muchly.

Peace

 

[Grace Seeker]

Actually glo, I was going to say something along the very same lines as your closing thoughts. People tend to point to Jesus' words about love and think that because they see a warring God in the OT and a loving God in the NT that OT and NT are two different gods. But look at the Jews. One could never accuse the Jews of having 2 different gods, yet it seems that the God whom Jews worship today isn't any more warring than the God that Jesus talked about. So, it isn't about OT and NT, because the Jews don't have them, they just have one Bible, what we Christians tend to call the Old Testament. Yet this OT God is just a loving as the NT God after all. In other words it is a false dichotomy.

Well, then from whence does the apparent difference come? If not from God, then from people. People who progressively grew to understand God better and to interpret his actions better and understand his true involvement in the world better.

While there are some Christians (and I suppose some Jews) who believe that the Bible was basically dictated, that is not the dominate view held by most.

My own understanding (I will not suggest that it is held by others, though it might be) is that, in contrast to the Qur'an, the Bible was written by inspired people, but their own humanness does become a filter, only rarely do we have the actual words that God (or even Jesus) spoke. What we predominately have are the inspired understandings of God filter by human beings who were very much also conduits of their own personal experiences and prejudices. I think as they came to reflect more on their experience with God, they learned that while they might have at one time perceived God to be acting in judgment with every victory or defeat as if it were a referendum on their righteousness, the reality was closer to what Jesus taught that the rain falls on both the righteous and unrighteous. God didn't change. His word didn't change. But our perceptions of him and our interpretations of his word have.

And then you add Jesus to the mix, and we see that he often takes ideas that where commonly accepted in his day, interpretations of passages of the Tanakh that had come to be accepted standards and he stands them on their head show that God wanted us to see something different in those passages than we got out of them.

Thus I suggest to you that God has in fact always been predominately a loving God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast mercy. We see this even in the very beginning, for Adam and Eve, though kicked out of the garden and provided for by God who clothes them and makes sure they are able to continue to feed themselves from the abundance of the earth (even if it is going to take more work than before). And he continues in saving remnants of people even when they are so bad (as in the days of Noah or the community in which Lot lived) as to deserve judgment. Read that way, the story of even the OT is of a loving God who seeks to save and redeem his people, and we see that ultimately happening in the sending of the Messiah to bring us back to God.

 

[gang4]

...
While there are some Christians (and I suppose some Jews) who believe that the Bible was basically dictated, that is not the dominate view held by most.

My own understanding (I will not suggest that it is held by others, though it might be) is that, in contrast to the Qur'an, the Bible was written by inspired people, but their own humanness does become a filter, only rarely do we have the actual words that God (or even Jesus) spoke. What we predominately have are the inspired understandings of God filter by human beings who were very much also conduits of their own personal experiences and prejudices. I think as they came to reflect more on their experience with God, they learned that while they might have at one time perceived God to be acting in judgment with every victory or defeat as if it were a referendum on their righteousness, the reality was closer to what Jesus taught that the rain falls on both the righteous and unrighteous. God didn't change. His word didn't change. But our perceptions of him and our interpretations of his word have.

And then you add Jesus to the mix, and we see that he often takes ideas that where commonly accepted in his day, interpretations of passages of the Tanakh that had come to be accepted standards and he stands them on their head show that God wanted us to see something different in those passages than we got out of them.
...

wow..http://www.islamicboard.com/images/icons/icon14.gif
Thumbs up

respect for your honesty...

...Among the People of the Book are some who display honesty...

 

[MustafaMc]

This seems to be a recurring idea from the Muslim point of view. Did God put "all of Himself" in Jesus or just a part? From the Christian perspective that question doesn't really make sense. It is putting a limitation on God's ability to manifest, as if He is made up of some physical substance that can run dry.

I understand your perspective that it appears we are putting limitations on God's abilities to become flesh, but it is more I think an inability to comprehend that the Almighty could become part of His creation. In Islam, we don't have a concept of Allah being Omnipresent - except in His Knowledge. My understanding is that He is closer to us than our juglar vein because He knows our innermost thoughts and intentions. Ayat Kursi (Quran 2:255) explains our fundamental beliefs about Allah that better explains how Allah is distinct from His creation.

I know that isn't what you mean to suggest, but that question assumes a limitation of substance. Early Christian theologians described it as water from a fountain or a ray of light from the sun. God took a human form on Earth because He willed it to be so. No part of Him was missing or dried up as a result.

Part of our difficulties is in trying to define the undefinable and in Islam we err when we use metaphors and analogies to try to do so. The best that we have is an ayat about lamp in a niche, but I don't have the Alim software with me to look it up. Perhaps, another Muslim can quote this ayat for me.

 

[MustafaMc]

Thank you for your patience and thoroughness of reply.

As I best understand it, the burning bush would be a theophany. In other words God was truly present making himself known, but he wasn't the bush, he was using the bush. And I think this next will help us with the second part of your question.

God wasn't just in the bush. It isn't like God was not also all the other places and doing all the other things that God always is and does.

This is one of the things that I don't understand, but I agree that God was not confined to the burning bush when speaking to Moses. Perhaps, it was a hologram kind of thing that He temporarily created for the purpose of communicating with Moses through a physical medium. ...and Allah knows best.

So, too, when God was incarnate in Jesus Christ, God wasn't present in Jesus and not still and at the same time also in all the other place and doing all the other things that God always is and does. Yet, it would also be wrong to think that we can divide God into parts.

...but that does not explain Jesus praying to the Father and having a different will than the Father in that prayer in Gethsemane.

As for the questions you asked in your other post above, I have asked some of them myself, and can't claim to have arrived at a satisfactory answer. Does Jesus physically reside at the right hand of God? Well, we have plenty of biblical testimony to this. (See Mark 16:19, Acts 7:55-56, Romans 8:34, Colossian 3:1, Hebrews 10:12.)

In Islam we believe on Judgement Day, there will be people who receive their books in their left hands behind their back (dwell in Hell), those who receive their books in their right hands (dwell in Paradise) and those of the highest honor and are brought near to Allah. Could brought near be equivalent to at the right hand of?

Yet, I am struck by how much of the Bible is metaphor as well. So, are these passages metaphor, especially given that Jesus himself declares, "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24)? Or are these passages showing us a physical manifestation/expression of a spiritual reality? ... Perhaps God really isn't spirit? Even a casual reading of the Bible shows that to be the basic understanding of God throughout, Old Testament, New Testament, even those who speak of Jesus at the right hand of God. So, that leaves me with the understanding that these writers are using metaphor to speak of mysteries that are beyond full explanation. And I have to accept that.

Honestly, there is much that we can't comprehend and accept what limited understanding our respective Books convey to us. To say that God is or is not a spirit is impossible to say - for one thing can we even define what a spirit is?

I don't know if Jesus is in a physical body someplace, but I personally don't think so. I think that he has a spiritual body, ... But just as after his resurrection Jesus assumed a physical body, yet completely different from our physicall bodies for it could pass through walls (John 20:19 & 26), I assume that Jesus will return in physical body.

...but didn't Jesus eat food and Thomas feel of his wounds? This would indicate a physical body.

Will the body look like the one that the disciples became accustomed to on earth, or will it look like the one that John saw in his vision of Christ in heaven ...It is primarily speculation, but based on Revelation 19, I think more likely in a body like what John saw in his vision.

...or could those descriptions also be metaphorical with a meaning beyond the physical description?

As to Jesus' pre-incarnate appearance or form, again we are not told. But first, I would agree with those who have said that he wasn't Jesus. Jesus as a human being did not come into existence until his conception in Mary's womb. What/who was in existence prior to the incarnation was not Jesus but the infinite God. And that God included all three persons of his singluar being. So, I suspect this 2nd person of the divine Trinity (using the term "person" as the ancient Greeks did meaning persona, NOT as modern thinkers do meaning a separate individual) was spirit simply because God is spirit.

...but, according to Christianity, for 33 years God would have not been identically the same as before Jesus' birth and life on earth or after his accension to His right hand.

Anyway, Christians understand that God is now who he has always been. And that was just as true when Jesus was on earth, the only difference was the manner in which he revealed himself to us by also incarnating himself (i.e., putting on flesh). There is no real difference in the nature of who God is, it is only our knowledge of him that is better informed now than before, because of how effective Jesus was in making God's self known to us.

Yes, I understand how you can say this and hopefully you can understand what I am trying to say.

 

[glo]

Actually glo, I was going to say something along the very same lines as your closing thoughts. People tend to point to Jesus' words about love and think that because they see a warring God in the OT and a loving God in the NT that OT and NT are two different gods. But look at the Jews. One could never accuse the Jews of having 2 different gods, yet it seems that the God whom Jews worship today isn't any more warring than the God that Jesus talked about. So, it isn't about OT and NT, because the Jews don't have them, they just have one Bible, what we Christians tend to call the Old Testament. Yet this OT God is just a loving as the NT God after all. In other words it is a false dichotomy.

[...]

What we predominately have are the inspired understandings of God filter by human beings who were very much also conduits of their own personal experiences and prejudices. I think as they came to reflect more on their experience with God, they learned that while they might have at one time perceived God to be acting in judgment with every victory or defeat as if it were a referendum on their righteousness, the reality was closer to what Jesus taught that the rain falls on both the righteous and unrighteous. God didn't change. His word didn't change. But our perceptions of him and our interpretations of his word have.

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Grace Seeker.

I really have to learn more about Jewish theological thinking. As a Christian I could really learn from it.

Do you think the Bible is a chronological record of how people's understanding and perception of God matured and changed?

 

[MustafaMc]

I thought to look on islamicity.com for the ayat I was thinking of.

Quran 2:255 Allah. There is no god but He,-the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there can intercede in His presence except as He permits? He knows what (appears to His creatures as) before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He wills. His Throne does extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feels no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme (in glory).

Ayatal Kursi explains above that Allah does not require food for sustenance and He does not sleep or ever get tired. Since he owns whatever is in the heavens and on earth, He can't be tempted with what is already His. He knows all about us, but we know only of Him what He wills us to know, hence our difficulty in explaining His "Essence" to each other. His Throne is over the heavens and the earth, hence He is not bound within them.

The best description we have is that Allah is "the Light of the heavens and the earth," hence He surpasses our limited concepts of what a "spirit" is. Quran 24:35 Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The Parable of His Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp: the Lamp enclosed in Glass: the glass as it were a brilliant star: Lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth guide whom He will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men: and Allah doth know all things. ...and yet even this is apparently put forth in parable form. And Allah knows best.

It is incomprehensible to a Muslim that Allah would take the form of a human, but this makes sense to Christians as the only means possible for them to be cleansed of sin. Is the Christian concept of Trinity and the Christian "plan of salvation" supported in the OT?

 

[Keltoi]

The OT and the NT describe two different covenants with God. Yes, Christians believe evidence of God acting as a Trinity can be found in the OT. Of course Christ is the third manifestation, so obviously the OT part of the equation centers on God as the Holy Spirit.

As for salvation, that is part of the new covenant with God brought about through Jesus Christ.

 

[جوري]

I think the Jews on board are best to answer that question ("plan of salvation" supported in the OT') .. 'Trinity can be found in the OT' is very questionable unless of course it is the christian rendering... or why else would they stay Jews?

 

[MustafaMc]

Yes, Christians believe evidence of God acting as a Trinity can be found in the OT. Of course Christ is the third manifestation, so obviously the OT part of the equation centers on God as the Holy Spirit.

...but in the OT there was no concept of Jesus as he had not yet been born. Was it the "Word" that became flesh such that the OT concept was Father, Word, and Holy Spirit (no I am not being facetious)? What OT verses would support this idea or an even better explanation of OT Trinity? Since I don't believe that God changes or evolves over time, there should be a continuity between OT and NT concepts of God even if there is a different covenant or relationship with man over time as we do grow collectively.

Edit: Perhaps the Christian understanding is that, although God does not change, He manifests or reveals of Himself differently to different peoples and times.

 

[Grace Seeker]

...but in the OT there was no concept of Jesus as he had not yet been born. Was it the "Word" that became flesh such that the OT concept was Father, Word, and Holy Spirit (no I am not being facetious)? What OT verses would support this idea or an even better explanation of OT Trinity? Since I don't believe that God changes or evolves over time, there should be a continuity between OT and NT concepts of God even if there is a different covenant or relationship with man over time as we do grow collectively.

Edit: Perhaps the Christian understanding is that, although God does not change, He manifests or reveals of Himself differently to different peoples and times.

That last part is called modalism, it is something that creeps into every discussion about the Trinity, but was declared to be a heresy from its inception. Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the vast majority of Christians are actually modalists without realizing it.


With Skye Ephémérine I would agree that Jews are perhaps best to explain any plan of salvation to be based on the OT alone. And my guess is that their answer both to that question and to any expression of the Trinity in the OT would be very different from that of a Christian. That doesn't preclude Christians from looking back and seeing what I call "hints" of the Trinity in the Tanakh. Just as some Muslims tend to see Muhammed in passages of the Bible, so Christians tend to see a triune God in the Tanakh. And just as I think that Muslims are reading things into the Bible that are not there when they make those great leaps, no doubt Jewish readers of the Tanakh would say the same to me.

But for me, to worship Jesus is no different than worshipping the God of the Old Testament. I can't give them all here, but let me cite one example:

Paul, the writer of Philippians, is saying about Jesus what Isaiah 45:23 ("But in the LORD all the descendants of Israel will be found righteous and will exult.") says about the LORD. Now Isaiah is an OT passage and so clearly isn't talking about Jesus, but Paul then concludes that Jesus is LORD, that is, the same LORD God of the Old Testament.

Of course, this doesn't prove anything. It could be that it is merely Paul who is showing his views, and perhaps he is in error in drawing the conclusion that he does. Accept, that he isn't alone in doing so. We see Peter doing the very same thing in Acts 2, while Paul is still breathing out threats against Christians for this very act of equating Jesus with God.

But more than this, I would like to submit to everyone reading this thread that even the Jewish understanding of monotheism is NOT what many have been led to believe. Now some like to turn to Genesis 1:26 ("Let us make man in our image.") and point to the plural pronouns. For myself, I am quite willing to concede to scholarship that suggests this is nothing more than the royal "we" and give that passage little weight in my argument. However, I do think a little more weight needs to be given to the "angel of Yahweh" who appears to Abraham in Genesis 18 as perhaps a pre-incarnation appearance of the second person of the Trinity.

But, please, don't construe my statements as saying that there is a specific formulation of the Trinity present in the OT. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that things like the use of the plural term Elohim to speak about God along with the personification of ruach (God's Spirit) and dabar (God's Word) in various OT narratives simply point to both the concepts of plurality and relationality as being foundational in even the Hebrew understanding of the one God.*

Even before the birth of Jesus and the writings of the NT, there is an incipient pluraity in the one God expressed in terms of "Wisdom," "Word," and "Spirit," which serve as (semi-)personified agents of divine activity. In other words, even in monothesitic Judaism, the existence of personified agents, pointing to the idea of plurality in the one God, was NOT seen as a threat to monotheism.**

Some examples: Word, beginning from the first creation account (Genesis 1:1-2:4a) appears as the agent of God; it was through the Word (and Spirit) that creation was accomplished (Psalms 33:8-9), and the Word is able to accomplish its God-given purposes (Isaiah 55:10-11). Spirit, sometimes coupled with either Word or Wisdom brings about and sustains life (Genesis 1:2), sustaining all life (Genesis 1:2; Psalm 104:29-30).

In addition to these semi-personified agents of the one God, the Jewish Tanakh knows others, such as the name of Yahweh, especially in Deuteronomic theology. Note that the "name of Yahweh" dwells in the temple (Deuteronomy 12:5, 11, etc.) while, at the same time God is in heaven. (Deuteronomy 26:15). Still one more example is the "glory of God" that acts as an agent separately from, yet sent by, Yahweh -- the book of Ezekiel (especially 43:4-7) is a collection of prime examples.

Theologian Richard Bauckham (God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament) maintains that the early Jewish definition of God could include the person of the Son WITHOUT a violation of traditional monotheism. The key is to understand that even the highest angels or heavenly powers, while participating alongside God and sharing in God's rule over the earth, did NOT share in God's essence. God was not just at the top of a hierarchy of beings, God was/is a totally unique being, completely uncomparable in nature to any other. However, ruach and dabar do share God's essence, for they are a part of God. Thus, distinctions within the one God , such as between God's Word and God's Spirit, were not understood as compromising God's inherent unity. Therefore, Bauckham concludes: "The Second Temple Jewish understanding [that in operation in the first century] of the divine uniqueness...does NOT make distinctions within the divine identity inconceivable."


Sad to say, but I fear that many, on seeing this the length of this post, will either completely skip over it, or begin to critique it point by point from the top. If they do so, they will completely miss reading it in the context of what I am about to say next:

None of the above implies that there must be a Trinity. It just means that when early Christians (all Jews) began to try to make sense out of their experience in which they on the one hand had the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4 -- "Hear, O Israel: 'The LORD our God, the LORD is one'.") and on the other hand were experiencing God's presence in their lives through the Spirit at Pentecost, that they already had a framework within monotheistic Judaism in which they could conceive of this. As Wolfhart Pannenberg said, "Christian statements about the Son and Spirit take up questions which had already occupied Jewish thought concerning the essential transcendent reality of the one God and the modes of his manifestation" (Pannenberg, Systematic Theology).

The vivid personfications of Wisdom/Word and Spirit already present in the Tanakh, inasmuch as they were not only identified with God and God's divine activity but also (and paradoxically) at the same time distinguished from God, served to open up the way for 1st century Jews who were finding salvation to be anchored in God's Messiah and who were experiencing God's Spirit as interacting with them in their personal lives to recognize God as being tripersonal. I don't think they would have made that leap, for it is a big one, if these divine personifications and Father/Son language was not already present for them in their existing Bible.

No doubt today, Jews who have not had the same experience that these early Christ-following Jews had, would look at the same texts differently. But with both these things --the foreshadowings in scripture and their own experience-- it is possible for a Christian today to look back and see what was missed by those who lived the OT, that is the one and only God is indeed a multi-personal being who has always existed in inter-personal relationship within himself.

In many respects, in the older testament regarding God's covenantal relationship with humanity, many things are seen from Israel's attempt to project the Father's point of view; wheras, what we have in the newer testament is the church's attempt to project a portrayal of the Father from the Son's point of view.





*For a further discussion of this idea, see Ben Withington and Laura Ice, The Shadow of the Almighty: Father, Son, and Spirit in Biblical Perspective; Robert Letham, The Holy Trinity In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship; and Herman Bavinck, In the Beginning: Foundations of Creation Theology.

**For more detailed discussion of this, see Gerald O'Collins, Tripersonal God.