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I saw the question here, but that's not exactly what I want to know about christianity, I just want frank explicit answers, not on the nature of God (that I accept that The full nature of the infinite God cannot be fully understood by the finite human intellect, mentioned by Patrick Szalapski here) but on how to be able to distinguish between God and his creatures in practice (not theory, by counting the God's attributes and explaining the lack of such attributes in his creatures)?

Let clarify my question better for your answers to be able to be more explicit. Those who believe in divinity of Jesus:

  1. If God can be incarnated in a human appearance, then why God has sent many prophets before the Christ, instead of himself coming to the earth guiding his creatures? So the first question is "What's the reason for sending prophets?"

  2. If God can be incarnated in a human appearance, why can't he be incarnated in animals' appearances, the plants' appearances, the stones' appearances? Is there any constraint to answer why he has come to his created earth only once before and in the appearance of one person, Jesus? If not, i.e. there is no such constraint, can you assure he is not right now somewhere in the form of a human being, an animal, an insect, a fish, a plant, a piece of rock or a star or else in his created universe? If there is a constraint please note it explicitly and if not please mention how you can get sure who/what is creature and who/what is God? (Certainly you should have a criterion for that which turns to be an implicit definition of God, without requiring to touch the quality of his infinite existence!) Then conclude what's the difference between an idolator and a Christian, both may pray a God in the shape of stones and stars and etc.? And last, is it possible that Pharaohs of the times of Moses and Abraham, who also used to claim to be God, actually have been God? If not they're guilty merely because they introduce themselves as another guy, being simple liers?

  3. How God --creator of the senses-- may himself experience the feeling of e.g. pain, being teased on a cross and eventually die due to pain excess or lack of blood in his body? Is he able to live a life in a world made by himself? Requiring oxygen to breath, food to eat, sleeping, taking bath to get cleaned, going to WC and etc isn't considered as any weakness for a God who is to be perfect? I guess you probably say that wouldn't be a weakness for God the father anyway, but then if two existences are such different that one is perfect and the other is full of need how would you then express them one thing? Maybe you consider them as two aspects of one thing, then the question changes to asserts that the whole concept in general will then no longer be perfect, don't you think so? (A concept being perfect in one aspect and needfull in another aspect is not perfect as a whole, a total perfect should be perfect in all respects, shouldn't it?) If no, why?

  4. Was Jesus PBUH worshipping and fasting any? If yes who was he praying if he was God?

Through the few past days that I was studying Christian beliefs these are the most questionable parts to me. I asked a similar question alongside my answer to this question, however decided to ask this one to get a clear explicit answer to my misgivings, anyway the Christians can defend themselves better than others defending them not knowing their beliefs as good as themselves.

Thanks in advance

Community
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owari
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    I'm voting to close. Not because that this question shows lack of effort, on the contrary, it shows a LOT of effort. However you could write books on the subject. I suggest breaking these questions down into simple achievable / answerable questions. I think this is a very important topic, however it's too broad of a scope. –  Sep 14 '12 at 01:57
  • Oh an you may want to narrow it down by denomination. Such as Orthodox Christianity may describe God one way but non-Orthodox would be completely different. I'll try not to muddy the waters by explaining this further. –  Sep 14 '12 at 02:00
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    Voting to close with Dan because I agree on his first comment. This really needs to be broken down into something manageable. – David Stratton Sep 14 '12 at 03:24

1 Answers1

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One classical definition widely accepted among Christians : God is a pure spirit, infinitely perfect, creator and ruler of all things and beeings.

1)There are a lot of explanations, please focus on one or some theologies. One would have to start from the original sin. One explanation is that the world had to be somehow prepared. And God doesn't send prophets the same way he sends the Messiah.

2) In the Book of Exodus, God appears in a cloud or in a fire, so why couldn't he take another form ? One could say that God is everywhere, but more particularly in some places of objects (example : a tabernacle). This is not a consensus among christians. If you believe that God is perfect and infinite, you assume taking an imperfect human form doesn't limit his perfection (see my answer to your third point).

In other words, God doesn't stop beeing God by "sending his incarnation on earth".

The Pharaohs didn't claim to be God, but rather one particular deity among other, which God wouldn't say (For a variety of reasons, it is assumed that God doesn't lie). Before calling them liers, we should focus on what they exactly meant by "gods", because it was very clear that they were dying just like other humans.

The question of idols is another complicated point. What is "worshipping" ? Christians worship God as a spirit (or at least spirit-like) beeing, so even if God was in a stone they wouldn't worship the stone, but God, the same way worshipping Jesus doesn't mean worshipping his little finger.

3) First I want to point out the difficulty of defining perfection. I can't because I'm imperfect. If you consider the bodily needs of Jesus, they are no needs for God. Jesus beeing hungry doesn't make God want to eat something. On the other hand, not beeing able to fully feel hunger or experience death can be considered an imperfection.

There is a variety of more or less complicated answers to your point focusing on Jesus: For example, the human and God in Jesus are separated in essence in Jesus, or Jesus is 50% divine, 50% human. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian point of view is the hypostatic union: Jesus is fully God and fully Human, and (Ratzinger recently wrote about it, I'm trying to express it in English) Jesus is divinely perfect in his following of the will of God (if it wasn't the case there would be no point in a christian religion or worship), and the rest is bit more complicated to analyse.

4) There are occurences of Jesus praying, fasting, and beeing tempted by the devil in the Gospels. The rest of your question is rather sensitive and I can't objectively answer it here because it would be very long. I recommend you read the New Testament and be careful about the Transfiguration, and expressions like "Son of Man" and "Son of God" and their meanings or interpretations. Jesus taught his disciples to pray as himself did, addressing to God as Abba, "Father".

Yves
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  • Thanks for your answer, I appreciate it as I did mean such answers not as broad discussions as was considered by some friends. However, there are some points that we should get more clear about. Perfectness if be considered the main difference between God and his creatures (acceptable to me), then practically I should have an understanding of it, otherwise how to know if something/one can be God or not? To me, the best definition of perfectness (when there is no direct way to know it as you mentioned) is by removing the possibility of any imperfection there. One way of getting closer to the – owari Sep 14 '12 at 22:02
  • correct answer is by removing the wrong answers from the list of choices. See this text for example: "The foremost in religion is the ackowledgement of Him, the perfection of acknowledging Him is to testify Him, the perfection of testifying Him is to believe in His One-ness, the perfection of believing in His One-ness is to regard Him Pure, and the perfection of His purity is to deny Him attributes, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute. – owari Sep 14 '12 at 22:07
  • Thus whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognises His like, and who recognises His like regards Him two; and who regards Him two recognises parts for Him; and who recognises parts for Him mistook Him; and who mistook Him pointed at Him; and who pointed at Him admitted limitations for Him; and who admitted limitations for Him numbered Him. Whoever said in what is He, held that He is contained; and whoever said on what is He held He is not on something else. He is a Being but not through phenomenon of coming into being. He exists but not from non-existence. – owari Sep 14 '12 at 22:07
  • He is with everything but not in physical nearness. He is different from everything but not in physical separation. He acts but without connotation of movements and instruments. He sees even when there is none to be looked at from among His creation. He is only One, such that there is none with whom He may keep company or whom He may miss in his absence.", and also other things like he created the world without even thinking for a moment on how to create or what to create, he knows without having eyes or ears and etc. and how doesn't know while he himself has created what to see or hear, etc – owari Sep 14 '12 at 22:17
  • with no doubt being needful is an imperfection, even having a single need would be an imperfection. For example everything that need God for it to become existence from nothingness would be imperfect and so is not God, the complete perfect. Now if God himself has parts, he would need all his parts to remain God, and this way God himself would become imperfect, the perfect being imperfect is a clear contradiction. So would be him having position, size, shape, bounded to time, and all such boundedness would be imperfections, so God the perfect MUST be free of them to be God. – owari Sep 14 '12 at 22:36
  • I really doubt in this expression that "God doesn't stop beeing God by sending his incarnation on earth", either the incarnation is not God any longer as it will be needful, requiring God the father, filling the space living in time evolving from child to young and etc., either the incarnation is not a concept that is usable for God, but maybe for the angels and even jinni's. I can accept both of these conclusions, even in Quran it is stated that God has created Adam's body from dust then blew of his soul in his body, though we believe "his soul" is a translative phrase as God hasn't parts – owari Sep 14 '12 at 22:47
  • from this viewpoint you may use the word incarnation but the incarnated wouldn't be God anymore, but a human that can get closest of all the other creatures to God, as he has given a soul which was as high as God has named it his soul! This potential exist for all humans but only those who live by the will of God and choose his will on their own will evolve to such a high degree. Also would you inform me of any message in bible mentioning if Jesus has even done any worship at all, I mean an answer to my fourth question in the original post. – owari Sep 14 '12 at 22:53
  • In clear, as God is almighty, the only way to recognise him if he was to be incarnated would be his will to be recognized from you, and your faith....There are (once more, in the Catholic faith on which you seem to focus) stories of Saints (Martin, Vianney) who were "offered" apparitions of spirits presenting themselves as God, promising for example wealth or glory. – Yves Sep 16 '12 at 13:27
  • Considering God cannot have attributes is definitely not a Christian point of view (although these attributes cannot constitute God). Your reasoning that a limitation must be an imperfection is also not pertinent regarding the Christian theory of incarnation. You can find the Roman Catholic view here : vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1J.HTM, but regarding perfection you can also read the Gospels where Jesus is fastening or curing sick people. – Yves Sep 16 '12 at 13:38
  • Once again, "God doesn't stop beeing God by sending his incarnation on earth" means that God wanted to grow as a human, to eat, to be a child, etc...

    This also has to do with the Freedom of Man, another basic Christian concept. However, your fourth comment is closer to the definition of God in most Christian faiths.

     – Yves Sep 16 '12 at 13:39
  • Just as a comment, your use of the word "translative" is a good way to describe how Christians "give attributes" to God. For example, Christians say "God is Allmighty", even if he is, in the Christian faith, allmighty in a way we cannot imagine, because he is perfect. – Yves Sep 16 '12 at 13:47
  • On Humans fulfilling the will of God, in most Christian faiths, only Jesus does that perfectly, and he did that to "show mankind the way" (see more on that Vatican link I indicated). So, no matter how good the individual is (a common example, the virgin Mary, even for the Christian who believe she was preserved from sin, can't be as close as Jesus to God, because Jesus is God). – Yves Sep 16 '12 at 13:52
  • Sorry if it appears to you as a noob question but I really don't understand. If God by definition be the real meaning of perfection, then he being incarnated in the form of any imperfect being, be it a human, offered spirits, a cloud or fire, then can we say that God has created an earthly representation for himself, say, visible to us? I mean like vicegerent? Someone who lead the people by the will of God, the one perfect, whose will is the will of God?To me sounds like obvious that such imperfect beings cannot be the perfect God himself, but a representation of it is ok.Christians agree? – owari Sep 16 '12 at 14:01
  • If the idea in the previous comment is true then is there anything in bible to prove it? Maybe for example statements like jesus used to worship or fast for God? – owari Sep 16 '12 at 14:05
  • Precisely, the Credo of most Christian Churches (the Nicene Creed) states that Jesus was "begotten, and not made" or "fathered, and not created". There are texts in the Gospels which show Jesus is not a leader of men, but rather an example. (In the Christian faith, this would contradict the freedom of choice of the Man). Only once in the New Testament is Jesus said to "appear as God" (its called the transfiguration). Most Christian say that Jesus is not only an imperfect beeing, but also God. – Yves Sep 16 '12 at 14:20
  • The point of the will of God is an important point: God limited himself in Jesus because he wanted it and because he could do it (as he is almighty according to the Christian theology). However, the only absolute limitation is his will. – Yves Sep 16 '12 at 14:20
  • "Jesus is not only an imperfect being, but also God" seems difficult to swallow if we think of God as perfect?! Also "being begotten instead of being created" is not understandable to me, an imperfect being fathered by a perfect being, so where is the relation or genetics? But suppose Jesus be God, another personality that he should have beside that of the father God (as they cannot be one God, a perfect and an imperfect do not sum to one imperfect being, do they?) Jesus must have a "will" independent of his father's, then is there any guarantee that their wills would not contradict? – owari Sep 16 '12 at 21:58