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I saw the question here, but that's not exactly what I want to know about christianity, I just want frank explicit answers, not on the nature of God (that I accept that The full nature of the infinite God cannot be fully understood by the finite human intellect, mentioned by Patrick Szalapski here) but on how to be able to distinguish between God and his creatures in practice (not theory, by counting the God's attributes and explaining the lack of such attributes in his creatures)?

Let clarify my question better for your answers to be able to be more explicit. Those who believe in divinity of Jesus:

  1. If God can be incarnated in a human appearance, then why God has sent many prophets before the Christ, instead of himself coming to the earth guiding his creatures? So the first question is "What's the reason for sending prophets?"

  2. If God can be incarnated in a human appearance, why can't he be incarnated in animals' appearances, the plants' appearances, the stones' appearances? Is there any constraint to answer why he has come to his created earth only once before and in the appearance of one person, Jesus? If not, i.e. there is no such constraint, can you assure he is not right now somewhere in the form of a human being, an animal, an insect, a fish, a plant, a piece of rock or a star or else in his created universe? If there is a constraint please note it explicitly and if not please mention how you can get sure who/what is creature and who/what is God? (Certainly you should have a criterion for that which turns to be an implicit definition of God, without requiring to touch the quality of his infinite existence!) Then conclude what's the difference between an idolator and a Christian, both may pray a God in the shape of stones and stars and etc.? And last, is it possible that Pharaohs of the times of Moses and Abraham, who also used to claim to be God, actually have been God? If not they're guilty merely because they introduce themselves as another guy, being simple liers?

  3. How God --creator of the senses-- may himself experience the feeling of e.g. pain, being teased on a cross and eventually die due to pain excess or lack of blood in his body? Is he able to live a life in a world made by himself? Requiring oxygen to breath, food to eat, sleeping, taking bath to get cleaned, going to WC and etc isn't considered as any weakness for a God who is to be perfect? I guess you probably say that wouldn't be a weakness for God the father anyway, but then if two existences are such different that one is perfect and the other is full of need how would you then express them one thing? Maybe you consider them as two aspects of one thing, then the question changes to asserts that the whole concept in general will then no longer be perfect, don't you think so? (A concept being perfect in one aspect and needfull in another aspect is not perfect as a whole, a total perfect should be perfect in all respects, shouldn't it?) If no, why?

  4. Was Jesus PBUH worshipping and fasting any? If yes who was he praying if he was God?

Through the few past days that I was studying Christian beliefs these are the most questionable parts to me. I asked a similar question alongside my answer to this question, however decided to ask this one to get a clear explicit answer to my misgivings, anyway the Christians can defend themselves better than others defending them not knowing their beliefs as good as themselves.

Thanks in advance

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    I'm voting to close. Not because that this question shows lack of effort, on the contrary, it shows a LOT of effort. However you could write books on the subject. I suggest breaking these questions down into simple achievable / answerable questions. I think this is a very important topic, however it's too broad of a scope.
    – user1054
    Sep 14, 2012 at 1:57
  • Oh an you may want to narrow it down by denomination. Such as Orthodox Christianity may describe God one way but non-Orthodox would be completely different. I'll try not to muddy the waters by explaining this further.
    – user1054
    Sep 14, 2012 at 2:00
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    Voting to close with Dan because I agree on his first comment. This really needs to be broken down into something manageable.
    – David Stratton
    Sep 14, 2012 at 3:24

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One classical definition widely accepted among Christians : God is a pure spirit, infinitely perfect, creator and ruler of all things and beeings.

1)There are a lot of explanations, please focus on one or some theologies. One would have to start from the original sin. One explanation is that the world had to be somehow prepared. And God doesn't send prophets the same way he sends the Messiah.

2) In the Book of Exodus, God appears in a cloud or in a fire, so why couldn't he take another form ? One could say that God is everywhere, but more particularly in some places of objects (example : a tabernacle). This is not a consensus among christians. If you believe that God is perfect and infinite, you assume taking an imperfect human form doesn't limit his perfection (see my answer to your third point).

In other words, God doesn't stop beeing God by "sending his incarnation on earth".

The Pharaohs didn't claim to be God, but rather one particular deity among other, which God wouldn't say (For a variety of reasons, it is assumed that God doesn't lie). Before calling them liers, we should focus on what they exactly meant by "gods", because it was very clear that they were dying just like other humans.

The question of idols is another complicated point. What is "worshipping" ? Christians worship God as a spirit (or at least spirit-like) beeing, so even if God was in a stone they wouldn't worship the stone, but God, the same way worshipping Jesus doesn't mean worshipping his little finger.

3) First I want to point out the difficulty of defining perfection. I can't because I'm imperfect. If you consider the bodily needs of Jesus, they are no needs for God. Jesus beeing hungry doesn't make God want to eat something. On the other hand, not beeing able to fully feel hunger or experience death can be considered an imperfection.

There is a variety of more or less complicated answers to your point focusing on Jesus: For example, the human and God in Jesus are separated in essence in Jesus, or Jesus is 50% divine, 50% human. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian point of view is the hypostatic union: Jesus is fully God and fully Human, and (Ratzinger recently wrote about it, I'm trying to express it in English) Jesus is divinely perfect in his following of the will of God (if it wasn't the case there would be no point in a christian religion or worship), and the rest is bit more complicated to analyse.

4) There are occurences of Jesus praying, fasting, and beeing tempted by the devil in the Gospels. The rest of your question is rather sensitive and I can't objectively answer it here because it would be very long. I recommend you read the New Testament and be careful about the Transfiguration, and expressions like "Son of Man" and "Son of God" and their meanings or interpretations. Jesus taught his disciples to pray as himself did, addressing to God as Abba, "Father".

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  • Thanks for your answer, I appreciate it as I did mean such answers not as broad discussions as was considered by some friends. However, there are some points that we should get more clear about. Perfectness if be considered the main difference between God and his creatures (acceptable to me), then practically I should have an understanding of it, otherwise how to know if something/one can be God or not? To me, the best definition of perfectness (when there is no direct way to know it as you mentioned) is by removing the possibility of any imperfection there. One way of getting closer to the
    – owari
    Sep 14, 2012 at 22:02
  • correct answer is by removing the wrong answers from the list of choices. See this text for example: "The foremost in religion is the ackowledgement of Him, the perfection of acknowledging Him is to testify Him, the perfection of testifying Him is to believe in His One-ness, the perfection of believing in His One-ness is to regard Him Pure, and the perfection of His purity is to deny Him attributes, because every attribute is a proof that it is different from that to which it is attributed and everything to which something is attributed is different from the attribute.
    – owari
    Sep 14, 2012 at 22:07
  • Thus whoever attaches attributes to Allah recognises His like, and who recognises His like regards Him two; and who regards Him two recognises parts for Him; and who recognises parts for Him mistook Him; and who mistook Him pointed at Him; and who pointed at Him admitted limitations for Him; and who admitted limitations for Him numbered Him. Whoever said in what is He, held that He is contained; and whoever said on what is He held He is not on something else. He is a Being but not through phenomenon of coming into being. He exists but not from non-existence.
    – owari
    Sep 14, 2012 at 22:07
  • He is with everything but not in physical nearness. He is different from everything but not in physical separation. He acts but without connotation of movements and instruments. He sees even when there is none to be looked at from among His creation. He is only One, such that there is none with whom He may keep company or whom He may miss in his absence.", and also other things like he created the world without even thinking for a moment on how to create or what to create, he knows without having eyes or ears and etc. and how doesn't know while he himself has created what to see or hear, etc
    – owari
    Sep 14, 2012 at 22:17
  • with no doubt being needful is an imperfection, even having a single need would be an imperfection. For example everything that need God for it to become existence from nothingness would be imperfect and so is not God, the complete perfect. Now if God himself has parts, he would need all his parts to remain God, and this way God himself would become imperfect, the perfect being imperfect is a clear contradiction. So would be him having position, size, shape, bounded to time, and all such boundedness would be imperfections, so God the perfect MUST be free of them to be God.
    – owari
    Sep 14, 2012 at 22:36

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