Introduction
God is the English name conferred to an extraordinary mortal in theism, and deistic faiths and in a number of other faith systems. This singular being is both the one and only divine being in monotheism, or a sole divinity in polytheism. Many people oftentimes regarded God as the ghostly maker, and as the superintendent of the universe.
Theology experts have attributed a multiplicity of characters to the numerous notions of God (Bhattacharya 1). The majorly popular among these consist of having immeasurable knowledge, having limitless power, ability to be everywhere at once, disposition to do good, divine simplicity, and everlasting and indispensable subsistence.
Many religions also envisage God as being immaterial, a special mortal, the starting place of all ethical commitment, and the supreme imaginable existent. Early Jewish, Christian and Islam theology thinkers also backed these qualities of God. The Jewish had Maimonides, Christians had Augustine of Hippo, and the Muslims had Al-Ghazali. A lot of distinguished philosophers of the Middle Ages and those of the modern times have come up with propositions, and oppositions for the subsistence of God.
The concept of God in Judaism
In Judaism, the idea of God is firmly monotheistic. God is a supreme being, inseparable, unmatched and he is the utmost source of all creation. Judaism practice is of the idea that the proper facet of God is beyond anyone’s understanding and thus it is inexplicable. Judaists consider the source of creation as the exposed side of God, and they believe that this aspect relates with human beings and the world.
In the practice of Judaism, the sole God of Israel is the God of renowned believers like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the leader of the world, set free Israel from bondage in Egypt, and bestowed them the 613 mitzvoth at Mount Sinai. They also regarded him as the one who bestowed the entire human race with the Seven Laws of Noah.
This God of Israel has an appropriate name, written YHWH according to the Judaism Bible. This name means the surviving one. It speaks about God, as He actually is, His exposed essence, which surpasses the entire creation, and it is as well a symbol of His kindness towards the world (“Beliefs and Ideas”1).
In Judaism practice, the other name of this Supreme Being is Elohim, a reference to the interface involving God and creation, as He is clear in the corporeal world. It chooses the fairness of God, and has the meaning of a being that is the entirety of abilities, strengths, and causes in creation.
In the viewpoint of Maimonides and a number of other Judaism intellectuals, there is actually not much that can be proclaimed about God save for His existence, and even this can just be affirmed ambiguously.
Judaism has a stern monotheism. This canon affirms the faith in a sole inseparable God. The adoration of numerous gods and the idea of a particular God having a number of individuals are as well unthinkable in Judaism. The proclamation to a degree of excellence based on classifying God is the Shema Yisrael, which initially came out in the Hebrew Bible.
God is everlasting according to Judaism. He is also the creator of all that exists and the starting place of integrity. He has the capacity to arbitrate in the world. Thus, the reference God matches up to a real ontological existence, and is not just a projection of the human-being mind.
Because the entire creation originates from God, whose life is not reliant on anything else, a number of Judaists distinguished God as penetrating the entire creation, which itself is a demonstration of His existence. In this manner, the practice of Judaism is comparable to being pantheistic, while forever and a day asserting real monotheism.
The thought of God as a dichotomy or threesome is dissident in Judaism. They actually believe that it is the same as polytheism, the worship of many Gods. God the creator of all is sole. He is not one in a pair or one in an element made up of several aspects.
The concept of God in Christianity
In the practice of Christianity, God is the everlasting being that brought about the existence of all creation and cares for it. A majority of those who practice this faith believe that He is among and in everything, whereas others are of the belief that the arrangement of liberation reveal that He will be of this quality afterward.
Many Trinitarian Christian believers are of the idea that God is outside space and time, and as a result everlasting and incapable of alteration by forces existent in the universe (Fowler 1). From the New Testament, only God the Son, Jesus, was in the world at the time of his Ministry and will come back in the Second Coming to accomplish his promises as the Christian deliverer.
God is normally perceived to have the qualities of saintliness, fairness, having unlimited power, having unlimited knowledge, disposition to do good, present everywhere at once and permanence.
The Christian Holy Scripture does not talk of God in an impersonal manner. In its place, it gives reference to him in personal terms. It says as one who is, who speaks, who sees, etc. It portrays God as one who holds a resolve and persona, and one who is all controlling, heavenly and caring mortal. The bible characterizes him as being mainly concerned with humankind and their deliverance.
Trinitarian Christian believers take God to be God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is a never-ending Godhead of three separate individuals who exists both inside and outside of nature. The majority of Christians take the canon of the trinity as a central part of their devotion. As from the 4th century, both Eastern and Western Christians have held this canon as true. The term trinity does not openly come out in either the Old or New Testament.
However, Trinitarians are of the belief that the idea reflects itself in a number of biblical passages. The most broadly distinguished Biblical establishments for the canon’s expression are in the Gospel of John. Christians therefore strongly protest the idea that the concept of the trinity of God is equivalent to tri-theism. This is the conception of three different gods acting jointly as one. The trinity of conventional Christianity is therefore, a sole God noticeable as three different, but not detached, and equal beings.
Christians mainly refer to God as Father in a plainer manner, in addition to being the maker, and one who cares for all creation and the giver for his children. They also believe that The Father has an everlasting association to his only son, Jesus Christ, which has the implication of a special and cherished acquaintance.
In the conventional interpretation of the Bible, the second being of the trinity, due to his everlasting association to the first person, God as Father, is the Son of God. Christians regard him as the equivalent of the Father and the Holy Ghost. He is entirely God and entirely person.
The son of God comes from his heavenly personality whereas his human nature is from the family tree of David. The center of Jesus’ personal understanding was his filial or genetic awareness, his association to God as kid to parent in some distinctive manner. His task on earth came out to be that of making it possible for people to recognize God as their Father, which Christian believers take as the fundamental nature of everlasting life.
In conventional Christianity, the Holy Spirit is one of the three heavenly entities of the Holy Trinity who constitute the sole substance of God. Christians believe that the third part of the trinity, The Holy Spirit, acts in relation with, and has a common and vital nature with God the Father and God the Son.
The Christian divinity of the Holy Spirit was the final item of Trinitarian theology to get full investigation and expansion. Because of this, there exists larger theological diversity among Christian understandings of the Holy Spirit as opposed to understandings of the Father and the Son.
The concept of God in Islam
In Islam, Allah refers to the special or individual name of the one true God. Muslims believe that there is no other thing, or individual who is equivalent to Allah. This name has no plural or sexual category. This actually brings out its distinctiveness when compared with god.
The two have different names and thus many people consider them as different entities. The word god is at times made plural to read gods and as well womanly to read goddess. This is the foremost indication of the distinctive notion that Muslims bracket together with God (Naik1). To this faith, Allah is the gigantic maker and sustainer of all that is in existence. Muslims therefore liken him to nothing, and nothing is comparable to Him.
Muslims rebuff any act of classifying God in any human type or showing him as being of goodwill to some people or nations on the grounds of affluence, authority, or race. He made people as co-equals. Individuals may differentiate themselves and get his goodwill by way of being virtuous and faithful in him.
The ideas in Christianity mainly that God took a rest on the seventh day of creation, that he had a brawl with one of his soldiers, that he is envious against humanity and that he is in the flesh of any person are all taken to be wicked in the Islam faith.
The only one of its kind usage of Allah as a special reference to God is an indication of the faith’s highlighting on the cleanliness of the trust in God that is the fundamental nature of the communication of all God’s envoys. Because of this, the faith takes any association of any divinity or individual with God as a devilish offense that God will never let off. This is in spite of the teaching that God may forgive all other wrongs.
A Muslim believer is devoted to and is thankful to God for the blessings he has extended. However, being in the know of the reality that his good acts which may be psychological or corporeal, are not near being proportionate with heavenly goodwill, he or she is at all times concerned for the fear that God should chastise him.
The punishment can be here on earth or in future. Therefore, a believer has fear for God, submits to him, and serves him in grand humbleness. An individual cannot be in such a psychological condition minus being more or less all the time heedful of this Supreme Being.
In order to be a Muslim, that is to say, to submit oneself to God, it is essential to accept as true the oneness of God. This is in the idea of him being the only maker, and the belief that he has concern for all creation. However, this belief, referred to as Tawhid Ar-Rububiyyah, is not sufficient in itself. Many of the believers thought that the Supreme Being was solely able to accomplish all this. Nevertheless, this was not sufficient to make them Muslims.
To Tawhid ar-rububiyyah, one has to put in Tawhid al-‘uluhiyyah (Naik1). This is to say, a believer recognizes the truth that it is only God who is worthy of worship, and therefore one has to keep away from adoring other things or beings. Following this, the sentiment of thankfulness is so essential that Muslims refer to non-believers as kafirs, which translates to the unthankful.
Works Cited
Beliefs and Ideas. “God in Judaism.” About.com. 2011. Web.
Bhattacharya, Saurabh. “Concept of God, a Quest for Understanding God.” Lifepositive. 2011. Web.
Fowler, James. “Towards a Christian Understanding of God.” Christinyou. 2002. Web.
Naik, Zakir. “Islam 101.” 2011. Web.