The Heelers Diaries

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Monday, December 17, 2018

comparative notions of the divine

The Muslim understanding of Deity is similar to the Christian understanding in some respects.
When Muslims hold that God is one, that God is all powerful, that God is all knowing, and that God is the Creator of all, I cannot see much difference between their insight and that of Christians.
Differences in understanding become apparent when we consider that many Muslim thinkers say God could not under any circumstances have a son.
In a sense all human beings who believe in God will accept that we are each his sons and daughters.
But somehow that is not quite the sense in which Christians say Jesus is the Son of God.
Nor is it the sense in which Muslims say God cannot have a son.
Christians claim that Jesus is God made man, that he always existed with God the Father in eternity, and that he came to earth when a virgin girl became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit who is himself also co eternal with Jesus and the Father, and who is himself also God.
It is this notion of sonship that Muslims dispute as well as the Triune concept held by Christians, the notion of the Trinity in which God is revealed as being three persons in one God.
So Christians claim that the Holy Spirit whose power made Mary pregnant, is also a person of God and has also always existed with the Father and the Son in eternity.
For many Muslims these notions are refuted by the clear assertion that an eternal God cannot have a son born of a human being in time and that it is simpler and therefore more logical and therefore more likely to be true, that one eternal God will not contain three persons.
I would answer the idea that God cannot by his nature have a son who is human, by referring back to the insight that God is all powerful.
If he is all powerful, I suggest he can do anything including this.
Becoming fully human as a man would not in any sense be difficult for God.
If we agree God is all powerful, we may also agree that he could have a son born into human history as evidenced for Christians by the person of Jesus.
Let's not forget Christian thinking is that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three persons in one God, that is to say that they are each distinct persons of a single Godhead, and yet always one and always God.
Christians seek to elaborate that the spirit of love between Father and Son from before all ages is the third person of the Godhead, known as the Holy Spirit.
There is a seeming paradox in the Christian view.
While insisting that God is three persons in one God, Christians still maintain God is one, that he is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, all wise and all true.
The three persons of God are distinct yet somehow also mystically and eternally one.
The starting point for Christians of three persons in one God remains intellectually and spiritually unacceptable to many Muslims.
Not so much a paradox as an inherent contradiction and therefore untrue.
Their primary assertion in viewing these matters, remains that a supernatural God cannot have a human son.
I say to you, he can.
I say to you that with regard to his limitless power and authorship of every reality, he can do whatever he chooses.
The issue we have to decide is... did he?

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