My question is I am a Christian what do I say to Muslims who say God can't become a man/human ?

[Peace_of_cake]

God “CAN’T” ?

Surprised by some comments??? The discussion on the impossibility of God doing certain things is well known in theology. Can God make another God like Himself? However you answer this question is wrong. The actual answer is that should God create another God then He is no longer absolute and thus this event is logically impossible. It’s a bit like asking can God make a four sided triangle? As soon as a triangle has another side it becomes a quadrilateral and no longer a triangle by definition! So God can do all ‘possible’ things, he cannot do logically absurd things like not exist etc
I’m sure Aquinas has something on the question in point, but I’ll have to look that up.

 

[Wesley7]

Because He (The Word) could. Became Incarnate of the Holy Ghost by the Virgin Mary

 

[Peace_of_cake]

**Reply to Objection 4: As Augustine replies (Ep. ad Volusian. cxxxvii): “The Christian doctrine nowhere holds that God was so joined to human flesh as either to desert or lose, or to transfer and as it were, contract within this frail body, the care of governing the universe. This is the thought of men unable to see anything but corporeal things . . . God is great not in mass, but in might. Hence the greatness of His might feels no straits in narrow surroundings. Nor, if the passing word of a man is heard at once by many, and wholly by each, is it incredible that the abiding Word of God should be everywhere at once?” Hence nothing unfitting arises from God becoming incarnate.

Aquinas has a good response, but it can be argued just like any other theological argument. There is no such thing as a knock out argument.
As someone said, the way to convince people I’d by loving them… That’s how faith spreads not by higher order logical discourse.

 

[KathleenGee]

After awhile, though, loving emotions pan out…people go so far and then they start to have questions…alot of human brains are out there like that…they join a Christian organization, really like it for years, get exposed to new ways of looking at things, and then began to re-analyze their choices, where they are going, and where they will end up.

 

[PJM]

=missouricitizen;8441156]My question is I am a Christian what do I say to Muslims who say God can’t become a man/human and or he would not because it would contradict His divine attributes they say God would not do things such as forgetting sleeping repenting growing or eating since a Spirit does not need to do these things God does not need to sleep eat or drink therefor they say what makes you Christians think God the Creator can become a man or become his own Creation I tell them that God can do all things therefor God can become man but is there a better answer I can give ?

Therefore, the term “all things” in the phrase “God is able to do all things” excludes the absurdities. It cannot include things that contradict His divine attributes; things that would make Him less than God, like, forgetting, sleeping, repenting, growing, eating, etc. Instead, it includes only “all things” that are consistent with Him being God. This is what the statement “God is able to do all things” means. It cannot be understood in the absolute sense; it must be qualified.

missionislam.com/comprel/godman.htm

WHY? Does God lack the Power or authority to do so?

God Bless,
Pat

 

[LUV4ALL]

I am not asking on a theological level the need for God to appear as human but at a logical level. Is there any logic in explaining why God would have a need to come as a Man.

can u answer this question without any scripture just with your common sense, i am appealing to logic not scripture, here.

 

[Cavaradossi]

I am not asking on a theological level the need for God to appear as human but at a logical level. Is there any logic in explaining why God would have a need to come as a Man.

can u answer this question without any scripture just with your common sense, i am appealing to logic not scripture, here.

He emptied Himself and became one of his own creations out of love for us, and in doing so, He provided for a more intimate relationship between humankind and the divine. The incarnation happened out of love, and probably would have happened even if Adam and Eve had not fallen.

 

[Loboto-Me]

I am not asking on a theological level the need for God to appear as human but at a logical level. Is there any logic in explaining why God would have a need to come as a Man.

can u answer this question without any scripture just with your common sense, i am appealing to logic not scripture, here.

But then we’d have to ask what logical NEED for God to even make human beings since He is completely and perfectly happy and has always been and will always be. Answer me why He would have logically created humans? To you it may not seem logical that He would come as a man, but yet accept that it was logical to create man?

He logically became man for many reasons that were explained previously, also, since He created man, why would it not be logical to “walk in Man’s shoes?” in order to save man from sin? Why would God not want to understand fully what it feels like to be tempted and to feel pain as we humans feel it?

 

[KathleenGee]

Jesus died for all mankind, including the illogical.

 

[LUV4ALL]

Forget the question that what need god would have to have humans because the fact is that humans do exist, LOL. Try to answer my question without regurgitating Christian theology.

Both of your replies reiterate christian philosophy instead of a real logical answer.

Are you saying that God does not trust his own creation to judge from right and wrong after all the time spent by messengers to give us a guide on how to live life and what is wrong or right. Are we not capable to trust in our own faculties to decipher how not to sin. I dont know about you but it is clear to me according to my beliefs what is right and what is wrong, I really don’t have the need for God to appear as a man to believe in his existence or to “help” me from sinning.

FInally if God was going to appear as a person WHy then did he send all the prophets and why did he not just do the work himself by appearing as a man.

 

[Loboto-Me]

Umm, He did come as fire, He did come as a voice, He did come through angels, He did speak through prophets and yet Man “forgot” and Man disobeyed

You’re right humans do exist, but why? You tell me what the logical answer is for that. You’re the one looking for logical answers, we Christians don’t since we don’t feel a need to ask God why. We just know that He has His reasons, and that His thoughts are not our thoughts. You’re coming from a basis of God didn’t become man when it has already been revealed to us that He has become man through Jesus.

Why is your premise more accurate than ours?

Humans existing is not a reason we should disregard God becoming man.

 

[KathleenGee]

What would this world be like without Christ???

The Catholic Church was the center of Western Civilization. After the period of persecution passed, then there was the invasion of the barbarians and the Dark Ages.

Finally, the Church was able to be better established and faith grow in society. The Church was responsible for the building of hospitals and hospice, education and universities for people of lesser means, the establishment of law and order integrating JudeoChristian values and moral code, science, the expansion of philosophy beginning with St. Thomas Aquinas who used logic to prove the existence of God in the Aristotelian method, the foundation for the appreciation of the arts and music, the works of artists and musicians appreciated by the entire world today.

In the New World, it was Catholic Mexico that was the center of learning, the native Indians becoming highly educated to having their own professors and universities there in the 1500’s under Bishop Zumarraga. Women and girls were given a right to an education 300 years before North American women were.

Christ named Himself ‘Truth’ before Pontius Pilate. You can have a set of moral codes to follow, but people break them. Jesus Himself is Living Truth, Living Morality Who inspires us to live lives of truth and beauty and peace.

Only the Catholic Church upholds the sanctity of human life in the most absolute terms more than any other human institution or religion.

Where would this world be without Christ??? May be that is the right question.

 

[Cavaradossi]

Forget the question that what need god would have to have humans because the fact is that humans do exist, LOL. Try to answer my question without regurgitating Christian theology.

Both of your replies reiterate christian philosophy instead of a real logical answer.

I guess the concept of love (specifically, God loving humanity) is hard for you to understand. What a pity.

Are you saying that God does not trust his own creation to judge from right and wrong after all the time spent by messengers to give us a guide on how to live life and what is wrong or right. Are we not capable to trust in our own faculties to decipher how not to sin. I dont know about you but it is clear to me according to my beliefs what is right and what is wrong, I really don’t have the need for God to appear as a man to believe in his existence or to “help” me from sinning.

FInally if God was going to appear as a person WHy then did he send all the prophets and why did he not just do the work himself by appearing as a man.

It doesn’t matter what we answer because you are not here to learn, nor do you possess the proper humility to do so. I have seen many like you before: you ask a question believing it to be some sort of unanswerable question, and when people provide reasonable answers, you disqualify them by saying that they are too theological.

 

[KathleenGee]

There is another kind of logic.

And it regards what kind of beliefs you have.

If your beliefs, even religious ones, came from a man, they will have the limitations and semblances of that man.

If you believe in Christ, then not only do you believe in Him, but He also restores you to identify with all mankind. Christ died for all. And Likewise, we are to relate to all, because Christ said when we cloth the naked, feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, we are doing it to Him. And this will all come back to us on judgment day.

God does not need us. He can exist without us. But He created us out of love. And this became realized when He gave us His only Son out of love for us. Christ showed us how to be pleasing to the Father…only through Him as all our works are as nothing before God…and that we are to look at the source of evil…in our hearts…

The God Man coming to save mankind…so many times Christ speaks of himself more as the Son of Man than the Son of God, because first He was Spirit in God, but became Man at the Incarnation in human flesh for us. That is the closest God could come.

‘Redeeming’ is what it is all about when you consider the essence of Christianity.

We no longer look at a code of rules, but at this Divine and Human Person. We do not look only at His teachings but see Him as the Tree of Life…what God first referred to in the Garden with Adam and Eve…who fortook instead of the Tree of Knowledge to be as gods…

Adam and Eve decided to look to becoming gods instead of waiting for God to become Man for them. Logic and thoughts can become meaningless when one is living a hopeless, enslaved life. Only a Redeemer can draw someone out of the pit, only Christ can do that. Look at the slaves of Rome, and how many of them found new life in Jesus Christ, new freedom and purpose of being…no book or rules can do that.

 

[LUV4ALL]

Cathleen Please address my question rather than rambling on and alienating LOL.

I believe in the existence of Christ so everything you wrote was uneccesary.

The ‘Father-Son’ relationship between God and Jesus Christ is central to Christianity. Let us first try to understand what is the meaning of being a literal son. When we concentrate on the meaning of being a literal son to a literal father, things begin to appear which force us to revise our opinion of Jesus’ ‘sonship’. What is a son? During the period when science had not yet developed and discovered how a child is born, this question could only be vaguely answered. Ancient people thought it quite possible for God to have a son through human birth. It was a belief prevalent in almost all pagan societies in different parts of the world. Greek mythology abounds with such tales and Hindu mythology does not lag far behind either. For the so-called gods to have sons and daughters, as many as they pleased, was in fact never seriously challenged by human reason. But now science has developed to a stage where the process of human birth has been described in greater detail than ever before. This issue has become very complicated and those who still believe that literal sons and daughters can be born to God have very serious problems to resolve and some very difficult questions to answer.

 

[Heuchler]

I am not asking on a theological level the need for God to appear as human but at a logical level. Is there any logic in explaining why God would have a need to come as a Man.

can u answer this question without any scripture just with your common sense, i am appealing to logic not scripture, here.

God would need to become man for our forgiveness. That is the only logic behind it. As long as you believe we need to be forgiven (for we have sinned and done bad things and disobeyed God) and that God won’t just forget our sins, then we need someone of equal importance to God to truly get forgiveness and to redeem ourselves. There isn’t any other logic than that. You won’t find anything more than that. Maybe if you were to explain why the theological responses don’t work for you, we could better understand how to respond.

 

[FabiusMaximus]

My question is I am a Christian what do I say to Muslims who say God can’t become a man/human and or he would not because it would contradict His divine attributes they say God would not do things such as forgetting sleeping repenting growing or eating since a Spirit does not need to do these things God does not need to sleep eat or drink therefor they say what makes you Christians think God the Creator can become a man or become his own Creation I tell them that God can do all things therefor God can become man but is there a better answer I can give ?

Therefore, the term “all things” in the phrase “God is able to do all things” excludes the absurdities. It cannot include things that contradict His divine attributes; things that would make Him less than God, like, forgetting, sleeping, repenting, growing, eating, etc. Instead, it includes only “all things” that are consistent with Him being God. This is what the statement “God is able to do all things” means. It cannot be understood in the absolute sense; it must be qualified.

missionislam.com/comprel/godman.htm

I still don’t get it: If Muslims believe in an omnipotent God like we do, why would it be so absurd for him to be able to come in the form of a man?

Who are they to say that an all-powerful God, who created food, water, and humanity cannot work within his own creation?

 

[jakasaki]

I still don’t get it: If Muslims believe in an omnipotent God like we do, why would it be so absurd for him to be able to come in the form of a man?

Who are they to say that an all-powerful God, who created food, water, and humanity cannot work within his own creation?

Somehow they put limitations on what God can do - however - in the koran it states that Allah can do all things…

Here are some verses:

Sura 22:6
That is because Allah, He is the Truth, and it is He Who gives life to the dead, and it is He Who is Able to do all things.

Sura 46:33
Do they not see that Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth, and was not wearied by their creation, is Able to give life to the dead? Yes, He surely is Able to do all things.

Sura 67 - 1
Blessed is He in Whose hand is the Sovereignty, and, He is Able to do all things… snip…

There more ayah’s which state that allah can do all things…

 

[Bezant]

To the OP,

I worked with a Muslim for a time, he and brought up a similar argument, that it doesn’t make sense.

I said, “Of course it doesn’t. Neither does any idea of a being who sends angels down, impregnates virgins, causes natural disasters…etc.”

That’s to say, God’s outside of what usually makes sense anyway.

 

[Bezant]

God “CAN’T” ?

To be fair, though, the OP’s question deserves a much longer discussion in another forum. I don’t think that God can become anything.