Crazy Liz said:
Yes. However, the physical manifestations (primarily in Exodus) of God are far outweighed by the texts that emphasize that God is not to be depicted in any physical form. The OT seems to deny God's physicality, or at least to discourage humans from even trying to imagine it. Your mention of the distinction between Christianity and Islam or Judaism below partially acknowledges this. However, this must be held in tension with our understanding that God as revealed in the OT is our God, also.
Let's say those participating in this thread (with the possible exception of Cray, who hasn't participated much since posting the OP) agree with you that God is personal, but have different conceptions of whether personality requires physicality. This is the question I think we should be exploring.
No! They are not assumptions. The theory of an impersonal God results from assumptions. The theory of a personal God comes from revelation. Confusing assumptions and what God has chosen to reveal to us is going to lead us in all kinds of wrong directions. In this kind of discussion, we must carefully distinguish between assumptions and revelation.
Revelations is the correct term.Assumptions is the term used by the OP. sometimes when I jump into these conversations, I just go with what has been given, rather than continually arguing over semantics.
I must have missed where the term assumptions was refuted.
This is because they lack the revelation of God that is central to our faith.
If the argument being put forth is that Jesus cannot be God due to his physicality, then it is not only buddhists that are lacking a revelation that is central to our faith. With eastern religions though, there is no need to bring up the term heresy, as there is no way that these religions will ever be mistaken for Christian faith.
If eternal life transcends time and space, in what way can we say it is physical? The only way we understand physicality is in terms of time and space. Thus, I think, CaDan's question up-thread asking how you can say Christ still has a body if you can't locate it in time and space. This is a legitimate question. I actually have come to accept that this is one of those mysteries that we won't be able to understand until we also are granted eternal life in our resurrected bodies, which will also, at least to some degree, transcend time and space the same way Christ's resurrected body does.
Jesus in fact can be located in the time of the first century and the space of Jerusalem. His transfigured body, resurrected in all all their glory share the attributes of both God's immanence and God's transcendance.
However, this does not invalidate CaDan's question. In fact, I believe the greatest shortcoming of Friends tradition is the failure to adequately consider such questions. How can we admit we can't fully answer these questions, and yet persuade anyone it's wrong to completely disregard the physical, or its direct interaction with the spiritual?
The greater Christian tradition struggled greatly to maintian the idea that both the body and the spirit were of God. Our primary experience of ourselves is as a unity.
I agree with this statement, but I think it's necessary to acknowledge the possibility of conceiving of God as personal, but not physical. This is the predominant OT conception of God. The Incarnation didn't involve God taking on a personality for the first time, but it did involve God taking on physical human flesh. We also know that after the resurrection, there apparently were differences in the physical properties of Christ's body. We are promised that our bodies will also be similarly changed.
There is no compulsion in matters of belief. There are amyriad of ways of conceptualizing the spiritual. However, it is also important to acknowledge that there becomes a point in which the conceptualization is no longer of the Christian tradition.
1 John 3:2Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
(forgive me for resorting to a "proof text."
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Salvation would seem to be a process rahter than a one-shot deal.
This is what is revealed to us. Let us discuss what God has revealed to us, and not get all mixed up with assumptions.
Without the discipline of scripture and tradition, our personal revelations and assumptions can't help but become all mixed up and muddled.
Personally, I could never read some passages in the Bible, pray real intensely, and expect the understanding to come upon me as a dove. The historic truth of the cross I believe did not come from a personal revelation, but comes as much from a long tradition of teaching that a physical resurrection in fact occurred, and was believed in by eye-witnesses.
MOst Christians are no longer medieval. They don't believe that God the Father is a gent with a white-beard, or that the devil is a red guy with cloven hoofs and a tail. But a fundamental tenet of Christianity is the resurrection. If there is a God, then this is possible. Belief in God comes through faith that is derived from the innermost core of our beings.
Belief in Jesus as the Christ however, comes from a Sacred Tradition that maintians that this is so.