I think God is in everyone and everything, but Jesus expressed this divine at-one-ment more succinctly than most other people of his time, and lived and taught it.

Works for me.

Allah is all of God that Muslims can understand.

Saknam is all of God that Sikhs can understand.

Bahá is all of God that Baha'i can understand.

Yahweh is all of God that Jews can understand.

Hmmmmm...... I should probably avoid the obvioius smug comment about how much broader is the understanding of polytheists.......

Whoops, did I type that outloud?

Serioulsy though, it only makes sense to me that God would show us the face we are capable of seeing in our particular culture.

Fully God & Fully man, the Holy Spirit with in his fully Human Spirit

I believe that Jesus is fully God but not all of God. When I try to explain this concept to people, I often use a glass of water as an example. The glass of water is fully water - but there's more water than what's in the glass.

Hi crazyheart---Is God Jesus? That is a question,I Live in Ont if I go down to lake ont an take a glass of water home an put it on my kitchen sink , could I not say I have lake ont in my kitchen? At least a part of it,If I looked at it, would I be looking at lake ont?If I said to somone this is lake ont , would I be lieing?If you say yes , I would take it back an put it in the lake .I say to you show me the water that you think is not lake ont.Jesus said He and God were one.He also said He wanted us to be one with God, I believe when we are back with God ,We will be one with God ,then we could say show us where we are not.Jesus was a part of God the father  we called the Son, He is back with the father so yes he is God. John 1-1 The Word was with God , The word was God.-----------airclean33

When the New Testament is examined in chronological sequence we can detect an evolution in the thought of the early church about the nature of Jesus. Although Luke wrote Acts as a sequel to his gospel, in Acts he preserves an early tradition that Jesus became the Christ or Messiah through being raised by God's power acting on him. This is quite obvious in Peter's speech (Acts 2:22-36). In Mark, the birth narrative is absent for the very simple reason that in Mark's view, Jesus became the Christ at his baptism by John. In Matthew and Luke, both written after Mark, we find in their birth narratives that Jesus was the Christ from birth. Note that in all of this the claim that Jesus is the Christ or the Messiah is not to be confused with the claim that he is of divine nature. That step in the evolutionary process occurs in John, the final gospel. He omits the birth narrative for the very simple reason that it is not important, because in his view Jesus was the Christ from the beginning of time. From that point it is a small step to consider Jesus as co-equal with God (the Father) and this evolution ends with the doctrine of the Trinity several centuries later. When viewed in chronological order the New Testament scriptures begin with trying to explain how and when Jesus became God and ends with explaining how and when God became Jesus.

That's what it comes down to for so many Christians, isn't it?  The idea that their belief will allow them to cheat death.  Christianity is a death cult.  It's obsessed with death.  Well, death and sex.

The Immaculate Conception of Mary, then the Virgin Birth, through to the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Resurection of Jesus...it's all just about sex and death.

People die.  So will you one day.  Big bloody deal.  What a stupid belief that some sky daddy is going to let you live forever if you only visit some building every bloody Sunday and profess a belief in something for which you've never been given any good reason to believe.

We know where "Man" came from.  We're the result of millions of years of evolution.

You can read a quick overview at Wikipedia or go more in-depth at Becoming Human:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

http://www.becominghuman.org/

There are other places to learn about evolution on the web, including www.pandasthumb.org and www.talkorigins.org

"Evolution to me has to many holes in it for me to believe"

You don't know anything about evolution.  You admit as much in your post above.  You have no idea what you are dismissing, so your rejection carries absolutely no weight.  If you could point out one supposed flaw in evolutionary theory, that might indicate that you've at least read something by Casey Luskin or the Discovery Institute, but to simply dismiss evolution in a post that makes you look only partially literate, is the weakest argument you could possibly make.

Really? Wow, it's amazing that after all these years of studying world religions I just didn't notice the dead part. I guess I'll have to get you to educate me, Buford.

I'm particularly interested in your idea that Yahweh is dead and buried.

Or Allah, since that's nothing more than the Arabic word for Yahweh.

Or the others too, since all of those religions worship the God of Abraham.... but the God of Abraham is dead, according to you, and Jesus obviously was the Son of some other God....

I'd also like to see your objective evidence for your rather extraordinary claim that "Jesus conquered death" Afgter all, I know you wouldn't just dismiss the claims of those other religions so blithly, in favor of the claim of yours, without at least some objective evidence to back it up, right? After all that would be patently dishonest, and Christians like you are never dishonest when speaking about other people of different faith, right?

Unless, of course, your statement is notheing more than empty religious rhetoric, in which case we'll just dismiss it as the inane mutterings of a deluded religious zealot who cannot see the ridiculous position he's put himself in by making claims He cannot possibly back up, about people and things he knows nothing about.

But soimehow you think you have the wherewithall to contradict the entire scientific community on matters of science?

No.

of course its a limited view, when you find a picture of the Eternal , please let me know, as far as I know , man has;nt been able yet

Yes. This is as clear an explanation as one could hope for.

To all who are posting this trinity diagram I ask how you fit this diagram with John 1:1?

"In the Beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

If you interpret the Word as being the Son, then how can you understand this verse as saying in the first phrase, "The Son was with God", and then in the next phrase to say, "The Son was God"? If you change the definition of God halfway through the verse and say, "the first mention of God is referring to the Father, the second is referring to the triune God", then you are guilty of equivocation, which is a basic logical fallacy. You can't change the rules in the middle of the game.

Please no, "Some things we just have to accept as a mystery", cop outs. I would really like to know if you have considered this problem.

Thanks

Airclean, do you think that the geologists who find oil in Alberta sandstone layers are working from faulty information about the Earth's age?  I ask because you likely use gasoline that comes, in part, from oil derived from the Alberta oil sands, and doing so makes you a hypocrite if you believe the Earth to be only 6000 years old.

Hi Azdgari- would you aswer a question ? why is it that those that don't believe always want to call those that do names . NOW i'M A HYPOCITE  You could have put something like your not informed.If I want to know about a car would I not go to those who made it ?Now if you could name a man, other than Jesus who  was there when the earth was made.Then poss I would not say YOU are misinformed.airclean33

I didn't say you were a hypocrite.  It was conditional - a "maybe".  Engaging in hypocritical activities makes one a hypocrite.  Do you, or don't you?  I asked first.

No, we haven't been able to and will not likely ever be able to come up with any accurate depiction of GOD. I do understand, however, that your image is attempting to draw a triangular relationship between the trinity of forces, in Christian terms, that make up our Universe.

To me, any image of an omnipresent GOD cannot contain any exclusion to it, otherwise it couldn't be GOD. This is why the Buddhists have been accused of being athiests because they refused to say that GOD is this or GOD is that. Once you say something like this then you limit GOD to this or that. 

If I were to attempt to limit GOD to an image then I would probably use some open ended fractal that started with a point and repeated Itself outwardly.

i.e. 

But even this would only describe half the picture, i.e. the form side of things, also known as creation. To me, the other side, the formless and eternal side of GOD could never be imaged, for obvious reasons.

even though we cannot Imagen the eternal , i do believe that God has reviled himself to his creation , through scripture and Jesus Christ

The best way I have found to explain the GodHead is,,,,,,

God is

then i cease to speak

I do not say Jesus is God or that God is Jesus.

For me, the Trinity is the way Tertullian first and then others accounted for language in the Newer Testament that identified with or as God the Father, Son and Spirit. The concept eventually developed into official doctrine that God is coeternal and coequal Persons all joined in a single Godhead.

For me, Jesus embodied God in such a way there were two complete and united natures, human and divine.

God in the flesh? No. Did he enflesh God or the Holy? Yes.

Splitting hairs? No, language is vital for me.  

I think that, 300+  and 40 + years later, diverse peoples argued in Greek philospher terms and decided things Jesus would not have claimed,accepted or perhaps even understand.

We tend to forget there was a spectrum of beliefs and a developing orthodoxy to deal with that. Ebionites saw a human Jesus and at most may have said "inspired by" or "appointed by" God. Gnostics and docetists were at the other end. Gnostics saw a divine redeemer who if human, his humanity was incidental and/or just an illusion. Docetists said there was no human, it was illusion/disguise. You have one school of thought, tradition, theology... in Antioch and another in Alexandria. What emerged was fusing two not only very different views but two completely opposing views, after generations.

For me, the Chalcedon compromise created union in orthodoxy, but also created what would cause division, because the fine line becomes a tight rope...people fall one way or another. There was/is still confusion and people falling away, one way or the other, from what remains Christian doctrine. Some agree with the doctrine, some do not and some can say they essentially agree and some just avoid it.

Yes, exactly, although I'm assuming you meant to say that God has revealed himself through his creation.

God reviling himself in creation would be a perverse pun of "the Word".

God Is. 

I see God in Jesus - in Jesus life, in Jesus teachings.  In Jesus I see a human face on God - God as one of us.  The fact that God knew what it was like to be human - that God knew what it was like to be hungry, tired, discouraged, alone, and afraid was very important to me at one time in my life.   But I do not believe that the whole of God was restricted to a carpenter in Galilee.  While Jesus walked the earth as a fully human person, God still existed as a separate identity.  And it was to this identity that Jesus prayed. 

You are equivocating, you are changing the meaning of the word "God" halfway through the sentence. In the first mention of the word, which is "and the Word was God" you claim that the word "God" is referring to "The Father. In the second instance(which is still part of the same sentence), you claim that the word "God" suddenly changes it's meaning to "The Holy Trinity". Do you really think that the writer of John's Gospel intended to switch the meaning of the word in the middle of a sentence like this? That sure would be a good way to confuse people. Let me give you a different example of equivocation:

Nothing is better than steak,

hotdogs are better than nothing,

therefore hotdogs are better than steak. 

The reasoning here is faulty because we take the word nothing and give it two different meaning, and thus we prove hotdogs supreme through equivocation(giving one word two meanings in a close context).

So as I said, can you make sense of the passage without using equivocation? Equivocation equal's a falsehood. Can you make sense of the passage without a falsehood? I mean you no offense but I can see by your response that you did not understand what I wrote previously.