originally posted by durian
Remember about there's only one God? To 'multiply' God must involve in creating another God(be it son or daughter or even wife). That's also true for the forms of God or God reincarnate.
You don't understand that God is eternal. His existence was already as it was before creation; therefore, there would be no multiplication or creation necessary. That is not even an issue from reading the Bible. It states rather clearly that this was so from the beginning. The only thing that changed is that the Son, from the beginning, took on flesh. That means that not only did the Son exist in divine essence, but is now accompanied by a form constituting flesh. This union does not take anything away from the eternal Son. You are trying to make the form become a part of the essence of the Son. The form has its own attributes and behaves according to those attributes and yet does not compromise the divine attributes of the eternal Son. How this all works out is a mystery, but is not an issue once you study scripture. We may not understand it completely, but we see it and can accept it as far as we can understand it.
It involves in re-creating God to be another form or whatsover even though they share the same essense. Had the son exist from the beginning(means uncreated), what makes that's not considered to be 2 Gods? Because they're both the same essense?<br />
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Because there is one God with three personas, yet one essence: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are seen as separate personas, but having the same essence: ONE God. That is the way that it was from the beginning. I can understand your problems of understanding if there was only the Father, and later on, the Son was formed; but, that is not the way it is. Instead of the Sone being formed later, He was incarnated, which means that He already existed before the incarnation. The difference not is that He can be seen from a bodily POV. God is Tri Unity/Triune/Trinity.
Maybe the forms of God will not change His nature (although it somewhat hard to grasp - e.g: God in human flesh has both human nature and God's nature even though originally He's only in His own Godly nature. I see the changing/addition of nature is still there), but for God to take any form or reincarnation of God negates the uncreated attribute of God as far as Islam is concerned.<br />
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I know that it is hard to grasp, but that is the nature of God. You think that Islam makes God's comprehension much easier, but you are not correct in saying that. I think that the greatest barrier for you is that when thinking that God is one, you still have the issue of defining that oneness. There are many ways to interpret oneness. Islam's approach is to say God is one and then try to prevent anyone from contemplating on that concept by threatening Muslims with condemnation or creating some kind of theological taboo. If you start pondering of what the Islamic oneness really means, I bet that you will start to see my point. God is not meant to be simple; for, He is much more complex than we can fathom.
Understand that we are not talking about reincarnation. That is a foreign concept to Christianity. In reincarnation, the original nature of the being is lost in it's continual transformation, whereas in incarnation, the nature of the being remains and the form is used to contain physical manifestation of that being. That is about as much as I can say without starting to distort the picture.
(I've not intention to offend Hinduism or any other religions here. Merely stating my belief)
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I don't understand why you would be offending anyone. This is a open discussion about definitions and ideologies. If we can't state them up front, then we do have a problem.
I understand your Islamic POV, but incarnation does not compromise anything since God is still God. The only difference is that He has extended Himself into his creation for some specific purpose. That does not make him a created being since He already existed and doesn't loose any of His attributes. The only change is that his presence into His creation is of a form of His creation. This is true because God is outside of His creation and always will be.
You are looking at the form as the essence of God instead of it being a medium or interface. The form does not define God, only God's attributes do. For example, the sinless nature of Jesus is an attribute of God whereas needing to eat, sleep, rest, etc. aren't; for they are attributes of the form. That is an example of what you are not understanding. That is why we say that Jesus, God incarnate, has a dual nature. The nature of God is not lost in the nature of humanity (the form of manifestation). They somehow remain separate but yet work together within the form. We don't understand how that is possible, but we do see and understand it from scripture.
We still expect that whatever form that He takes on will reflect the characteristics of that form. In the case of Jesus, God wanted to communicate with man in a human form. Why? Because it was probably the most direct way possible to communicate. He would then be able to relate directly to humans and teach them in a way that relays a human understanding and POV. Another reason, as has been pointed out, was to take on the sins of mankind by being an intermediary for us. Angels are indirect.
How do you deal with the situation in the Qu'ran where Moses was spoken to by Allah from a burning bush? Would you agree that the appearance via the bush is a form? If no, why not? Also, would you then discredit God in the Bible when He appeared to Moses in the bush and to Israel at Mt Sinai in a cloud.
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