bornagainskeptic

Christians insist that their religion is monotheistic, but is this defendable? I suppose a lot depends on how you define 'god'. If you define god as 'God', the perfect, omniscient, omnipotent etc supernatural being, then Christianity would have only one god. But if by 'god' you mean 'deity', i.e. any supernatural being thought to control us or some aspect of the world, then you could easily add two more gods in Christianity: Jesus and Satan. You could also possibly throw in the 'Holy Spirit'. If you went further and said that a 'god' is any supernatural being people pray to, then at least with Catholicism, with all those saints you could have hundreds of gods in Christianity. My best guess is Christianity has four gods: 'God', Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Satan.

clearscreen

I would say there are two gods in christianity - the old testament one and the new testament one. How devout believers reconcile the obvious contradictions in the two is beyond me. In discussing this issue with practicing protestants, some have said the old testament is a book of jewish myth and that the new testament god is the real one as revealed by jesus. I don't know anyone who would consider Satan to be a god but rather a being created by god who somehow is able to oppose him (why god would create such a being, I have no idea). Regarding the trinity, there's one god... no, there's three...no there's one... The hell with it - I give up. It's all absurd.

Infinite_Rules

My view is that there are probably as many Christian Gods as the number of Christians. "God" just like any other word and consists of three letters G, O and D which we use to represent and communicate our notion of a concept. Just like anger, happiness, car, house etc, everyone pictures something different when they say "God".

Unlike a physical entity like say, Tom, Dick or Harry, God is no physical entity and thus the number of God is equivilant to the number of concepts of God Christians have. In fact, one may argue that God is more of an adjective than a noun.

True_Orb

Jesus was human, he is not a God.

JusticeMachine

There is one.......no wait.... the trinity...okay there are three........no wait.......there are thr-one GOD......(s).....I am confused.

Magus55

Who said the 2 are mutually exclusive?

Astrid

This is a difficult thing, especially when adding things like Satan, the saints, etc. But even without there's still the debate about the trinity vs. unity. Most christians say that there is one god, but he has three "faces" - the father, the son and the holy spirit. That's not quite as it was originally written in the Bible, where Jesus was God's son and the holy spirit was just Jesus' spirit. The duality between the father and the son was introduced in 325 A.D. by a Roman emperor named Constantine (I think he was the one who did that, at least), and the trinity wasn't introduced till 381 A.D., by some pope I think. Satan would definitely be a god if you looked from the old polytheistic viewpoints - in ancient cultures, there were evil gods too (like Eris, the Greek goddess of disputes).

Wiploc

But, of course, if you define "god" that way, then the "polytheistic" religions don't have even one god.

If we are comparing apples to apples, then if we count Thor as a god, we have to count the Cherubim and Seraphim as gods too.

Also there were the gods that walked in the early days.

The only thing "monotheistic" about Christianity is that Christians only call one member of their pantheon a god.

crc

Crucifiction

A man has no powers like a God does; he cannot freeze time, create life out of nothingness, be everywhere at all times, etc. A God can do that. Therefore, the terms are both mutually exclusive. A "human" with those powers would not be a "man".

Wiploc

Well, at least he wouldn't be a true Scottsman.

crc