His divinity while on earth was willingly limited so that He would fully identify with us, including our sufferings and our own forsakenness. By means of this He comes as man to show man the way back to the Father, fulfilling the law completely as a man, as *we *must, and so with us following if we’re willing. But the Savior *must *be God: only God can save man.If that’s the case then why would God Pray to himself when jesus said God why has thou forsaken me? why would Jesus say my father is greater than all? If he is that God in heavens who came down to earth then either there has to be another God jesus was talking about or he’s confused about his own identity.
So Jesus is the Messiah because he performed many miracles and born from a virgin mother. And so Islam believes that Jesus is the Messiah because of this. I take it that you do not have any official reference from Islamic scripture and document about this. Well, that’s okay. I just want to know the Islamic perspective.In islam the status of jesus is very high. He is the messiah and performed many miracles with God’s permission. He was born from a virgin mother. But he does not redeem anyone. He is messenger chosen by God to show people the truth. Redemption comes from the atonement of one’s own sins. Not through the death of someone else.
Nope. Redemption comes from God’s forgiveness.Redemption comes from the atonement of one’s own sins. Not through the death of someone else.
If that’s the case, what is the need for blood?Nope. Redemption comes from God’s forgiveness.
One can atone for one’s sin but ultimately it is God who decides to redeem, what and how he does it, it is up to him.
We can atone for our sin but we never know whether it is enough or not. We also do not know whether our atonement meet the standard of God. How much and how sincere our atonement would be for it is to be accepted by God, we could not know. Ultimately we depend on God’s mercy and grace.If that’s the case, what is the need for blood?
So… why blood?We can atone for our sin but we never know whether it is enough or not. We also do not know whether our atonement meet the standard of God. How much and how sincere our atonement would be for it is to be accepted by God, we could not know. Ultimately we depend on God’s mercy and grace.
I did not say blood. I thought it is you who said it.So… why blood?
Not quite.So man who has the ability to know the difference between right and wrong is doomed.
Since we cannot match the standard of God in righteousness we totally depend on his mercy for his forgiveness. It is not something that we do that earns that forgiveness. Invariably we fall short in our effort in atonement and if God forgives us it is not due entirely to what we do that earns that forgiveness. What happens is that God himself tops up what we cannot pay in full.I did not say blood. I thought it is you who said it.
I was saying it is up to God - what and how he forgives. The mechanism in how it is done is his prerogative. Our redemption does not entirely depend on our atonement alone for we cannot meet the standard of God in righteousness.
But how can the father be greater than the son when you yourself said the son does not exist seperately from the father and they are both the same God? Unless you are implying that God is greater than his wisdom which does not make sense to poor simpleton like meThe thing is, Rand al Thor, Jesus is not God “by definition of Mathematics” any more than God the Father is God by definition of Mathematics or the Holy Spirit is God by definition of Mathematics. As a Muslim, do you say that Allah is God “by definition of Mathematics”? I should hope not! We don’t either. The uncreated and undivided Holy Trinity is not a math problem. I hope you’ll agree that God is absolutely above such human things.
**first i want to apologise if i have offended you or anyone on this board. my intention is not to offend whatsoever.
In islam There is only one God. There is no one other God. Hence it does not break any law of mathematics. The trinity is a mathematical problem because you cannot have three different distinct divine beings and yet term them as one.
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Yes. Jesus is the incarnate Word/Wisdom (“Logos”) of God the Father, who dwelt among us, did the work of the Father, preaching and performing miracles.
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I am really intrigued by this statement. The incarnate word or wisdom. Incarnation means taking of flesh. Earlier one of the posters agreed with me when he said that God has no begiinning or end. Well this incarnation breaks that law. When God decided to became an incarnate flesh and was born in the womb of mary he broke that law of no beginning.
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So what you are saying is that God’s wisdom is separate from Him? We have God somewhere up in the heavens and somewhere else, completely away from Him, His Wisdom? I cannot agree with that. We say that Jesus is the incarnate Word/Wisdom/Logos (“Logos” means both word AND wisdom) because it is through the incarnation that He came to dwell among us, but I ask you: Is God’s wisdom finite or infinite? After God creates one thing is He out of “creative juice” and He cannot create anymore until He replenishes Himself? That would be a strange way to think of God, and very much out of sync with the explanation of God’s creative powers in the Qur’an (from what I remember, God simple says “be!” and it is). So we would say the same of Jesus Christ, who is God at the same time as God the Father exists in the heavens above, because His wisdom, His Word, His Logos is NEVER separate from Him.
**God’s wisdom is his own. Your wisdom is yours and yours alone. It does not exists out of you. When you impart wisdom upon others it comes from you. It does not assume the form of something else. It does not become something that is distinctive from you.
When you say that God almighty decided to come down to earth and incarnate himself into a body of man and this man is the wisdom of God, then that wisdom is on a totally different wavelength to the father in Heavens. In other words that wisdom has assumed a different personality to the one in heavens which in turn is different from the holy spirit. It does not make any sense. Your wisdom is a part of your personality. It’s not a wholly different persona. You understand what i am trying to say. Yes God’s wisdom is his own but jesus is different person to the father. In your mind right now when you think of jesus you have a distinct mental image which is different if you think about the father in heavens.
And yes God in islam is all powerful. He only says be and it is. But God does not do ungodly things. he does not create another God because God by nature has no beginning nor end.
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The Father is indeed not the Son, and the Son is indeed not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is indeed not either. This is not a problem; this is the proper relationship of the persons within the Trinity. Once you understand this relationship, it is right and true that the Son should say that the Father is greater than Him, because the Father is the origin of all. Remember, the Son is the Father’s “Logos”, which does not exist separately from Him. They are of one nature/essence, never acting in disconcert, but completely and totally united.
Why would God in his infinite wisdom and mercy decide to became a man just to identify with us humans? he created us! He knows how man thinks. If i manufacture an cassette player i don’t have to became a cassette player to know how it works.His divinity while on earth was willingly limited so that He would fully identify with us, including our sufferings and our own forsakenness. By means of this He comes as man to show man the way back to the Father, fulfilling the law completely as a man, as *we *must, and so with us following if we’re willing. But the Savior *must *be God: only God can save man.
Firstly the idea of man created by God was perfect and then subsequently corrupted by an apple indicates that God’s creation is flawed. man was never perfect because if he was he wouldnt have sufferred the consequences according to you of eating that apple. Nor would he have disobeyed God in the first place. At least that’s my understanding of something that is perfect.With regard to the Fall. I think a better way to think about the story is this. Adam and Eve were very close to God, the source of all being and life. Like all of creation, they were perfect - in fact they were the pinnical of creation, and were intended to act as a kind of link between God and lower creation like the animals.
But they had free will, and chose to sin - that is, move away from God who is truth, and towards nothingness. Having done this, they immediatly felt the consequences. They were cut off from full relationship with God, and from being and life. They became subject to death. But they also could no longer see and hear God properly, because of the distance, and so they made errors and bad choices. There body no longer worked properly, or their will, or heart, and they could not always control their actions. They were afraid of death, and so did crazy things. They also were no longer able to properly stand between God and the rest of creation, and so creation fell as well, and we see suffering in the animal world, earthquakes, etc. These things further contributed to mankind’s problems.
And the same happened to their children, because the children were also living in a fallen world, with fallen parents, with the threat of death hanging over them.
All humans, although having individual souls, share in our common human nature. After this fall, our nature was changed, or deformed, or no longer quite right, because it was affected by being separated from its source, God. So it affected the children as well. (This inheritance is what some call original sin. Although some say that the children are guilty of the sin, that isn’t always how it is described. It can be thought of more as feeling the effects of the sin. Just like a baby whose mother drinks a lot of alcohol - the baby bears no guilt, but may feel the physical effects of alcohol poisoning in the womb, or the effects of being raise by an alcoholic mother.)
So what does Christ have to do with this. In the Incarnation, God unites human nature to his own nature. In a way this tells us something that has been true since the beginning - the nature of creation comes from God, and is so close to it that it actually subsists in a way within God. When God becomes a man, he is reuniting the human nature which we have abused with his own nature, and making it again perfect. Only he can do that - we have no power of our own to reach to God - he must reach to us, just as we could not create ourselves.
Christ goes through all the things a human does. He is a baby, he is a boy, he is even able to contemplate doing something that he should not. And he dies, and goes to the dead. But he is no mere creature who can remain a immortal souls eternally separated from God. He is God, and in his death he has brought God even to that cold place - God is indeed everywhere. Death is destroyed, and we can again choose God if we wish to, despite our limitations. God will always come to us if we want him, even to the darkest places.
Anyway, perhaps this may be a more fruitful way of thinking about the Incarnation for you.
yes it’s up to God to forgive one’s sins. He chooses who to forgive and who to punish. Which is why there is no need for God to kill himself to redeem us of a sin someone else comitted.Nope. Redemption comes from God’s forgiveness.
One can atone for one’s sin but ultimately it is God who decides to redeem, what and how he does it, it is up to him.
doesn’t ezekiel 18:20 give the standard of God?We can atone for our sin but we never know whether it is enough or not. We also do not know whether our atonement meet the standard of God. How much and how sincere our atonement would be for it is to be accepted by God, we could not know. Ultimately we depend on God’s mercy and grace.
that’s like saying a student cannot meet the standards required by his teachers to pass his course. Sounds like an unfair God to meI did not say blood. I thought it is you who said it.
I was saying it is up to God - what and how he forgives. The mechanism in how it is done is his prerogative. Our redemption does not entirely depends on our atonement alone for we cannot meet the standard of God in righteousness.
the jews and the muslim believe in the role of the messiah. namely the man who heralds the end of days. The jew believes he’s going to come during the end of the days and the muslim also believes that.So Jesus is the Messiah because he performed many miracles and born from a virgin mother. And so Islam believes that Jesus is the Messiah because of this. I take it that you do not have any official reference from Islamic scripture and document about this. Well, that’s okay. I just want to know the Islamic perspective.
You made a statement in your OP (original post) that Muslims like Christians but unlike Jews, believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
I hope you understand by now that without you clarifying what you mean by the term Messiah, we would think that you are talking about the same thing as us.
You are right insomuch that the Jews didn’t not believe in the Messiah in the understanding as you termed it. The Jew would not believe that the Messiah’s mission is to perform miracles or born of a virgin mother because that is not what they believe the purpose of the Messiah to be.
Similarly that is not what Christians believe the Messiah’s mission either.
The problem lies there when you said that Muslims believe that Jesus in a Messiah in a Christian forum. You made wrong definition on what a Messiah is and started your argument on this wrong premise.
So, as a Muslim, do you believe that God created us imperfect? How do you account for sin? Maybe your difficulty here is not with Christianity per se? You sound like an atheist, not a Muslim.Firstly the idea of man created by God was perfect and then subsequently corrupted by an apple indicates that God’s creation is flawed. man was never perfect because if he was he wouldnt have sufferred the consequences according to you of eating that apple. Nor would he have disobeyed God in the first place. At least that’s my understanding of something that is perfect.
I am not sure what you mean by laying the blame on the apple - it is an inanimate object? The blame, or the cause, of the difficulty felt by Adam and Eve is as a result of them rejecting truth, and being subject to lies and nothingness. This isn’t meant to excuse us when we do wrong, or to say we cannot discern right and wrong. Our wrong-doings are almost always our own responsibility. But very often people have the experience of not being able to easily discern right and wrong, or not being able to do it, or not being able to keep relative goods in the proper perspective. If you do not feel this applies to you, have you considered that you are unusual? It sounds like the comment of a rather young person to me.Also you cannot lay the blame of man’s ills on him being corrupted by the apple. God has given us the ability to think between what is right and what is wrong. You tell God i am unable to control myself and that was because my father adam ate from that tree and keep a staright face. You are responsible for your actions.
Who told you that if today you do not believe in Christ as your Savior you will be in Hell? That is a view found within Christianity, but it is by no means the Christian view. I don’t believe that, and many Christian groups don’t teach it. Many Catholics don’t, and the Anglicans don’t, and the East doesn’t teach that either.The problem here is that man is somehow paying the price for what adam and eve have done. not the consequences of sinning but the price. because if i today do not believe in jesus as my personal saviour i am going to end up in hell. Does not matter if i have done good deeds and never commit a sin in my life. Does not matter if i pray to God on a daily basis. I am going to end up in the abyss unless i accept that jesus died for my sins.
I do not expect us to be held accountable for the guilt of someone else’s sin. But if you carefully read what I wrote, you will see that idea is not there. You seem to be importing it because someone told you that Christianity teaches that all non-Christians go to Hell. And yet even in a law court with a judge rendering only perfect judgments, we know the evil effects of the law-breaker have impacted the other people in the community.Sins which i personally did not commit. You see the problem here. We humans would not hold someone guilty of something he did not commit so why do you expect God to be any different?
There is one who was promised to be sent and was to be a prophet like unto Moses (Moshe or Musa) Now, we understand that Muhammad is that prophet according to Islam. However, there is the account of the transfiguration in the gospels. In this account, God speaks out loud to Isa (Jesus) and to three of the disciples of Jesus (Peter, James and John) and says, “Thou art my beloved Son, listen to him”. In the Torah of the Jewish people, these are the words spoken by God regarding this future prophet 1,500 years before the transfiguration of Jesus on the Mt.Tabor:As a muslim i find the christian concept of God a bit strange with all due respect. Now the jew and the muslim viewpoint of God is strict monotheism. The only difference between the jew and the muslim is that the jew rejects christ as the messiah whereas the muslim does not.
so this is what bothers me. we are told that christians worship one God. I say i have no problem with that. So i then proceed to dig a bit deeper Now he creates adam and eve. Adam and eve sin by eating the apple. Result sin entered into the world. All of adam’s descendants have this mysterious illness whether they are child or a 80 year old.
So then God then decides the only way to remove this sin is basically go down to earth in a human form, in womb of a woman for 9 months, and undergo the trials and tribulations of normal human being. whether it be eating, drinking or getting circumscied. And then get crucified to remove the sin of adam.
This is really something i can’t get my head around.