God in Christianity

The Christian religion and Christian -influenced philosophy assumes that there is a God (Greek θεός, Latin deus ). The Christian ideas of God experienced several changes over time. Christianity emerged from the Hellenistic Judaism and was influenced by both the Jewish conceptions of God, even more so by the Greek philosophy. In early Christianity, still no widely accepted set had been established by Christian dogmas, so that several major Christian faiths and churches coexisted with very different conceptions of God. With the secular and ecclesiastical First Council of Nicaea and other confessions established proto- orthodox Christians a minimal concept of God, which has since been reflected in the doctrine of the Trinity of the major denominations. This creed describes the one God in the form of the sacred, the divine trinity of the three divine Persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. According to this creed Jesus Christ was born of the human Mother of God, was executed both as a person and as God and was under Roman justice as a criminal by crucifixion. Nichttrinitarische Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons or Christian Scientists reject the Trinity doctrine.

Early Christianity

Paul believed Jesus Christ in his New Testament theology as the Divine Redeemer of mankind and the Son of God. He developed no detailed theology of the special relationship between God and Jesus Christ and mentions no divine Trinity. The clients of his sect were mostly Roman and Hellenistic Greeks. Only in the baptize (Matthew 28) are collectively called Father, Son and Spirit.

In the early Christian, pagan Christian phase, between two major groups can be distinguished. On the one hand, there was influenced by Hellenistic thinkers who had a more Greek philosophical understanding of proclaimed in the New Testament, God and human reason were to the understanding than adequate. On the other hand there were those believers who at least partially, revelations were based on some reinterpreted Jewish, and later Christian.

Gnosis

The Gnostics were the first Christian theologians by Philo of Alexandria, who took up the ideas of Mittelplatonismus.

Gnostics believed that there was a perfect God in the beginning. In the Apocryphon of John describes how Sophia brought forth an imperfect and misshapen divine being called Yaldabaoth, the God of the Jews.

Gnosticism tended to ascribe God utter transcendence and inscrutability; in the Apocryphon of John, for example, to find clear statements to transcendence. God is more than just a "God ", but a monad, perfect, infinite, inscrutable, invisible, eternal, unnameable, and without definable attributes. Basilides went according to Hippolytus of Rome in the emphasis on the negative characteristics as far as to argue that the non-existent God created the non-existent universe out of nothing.

The valentines African scholar Ptolemy claimed in his letter to Flora, the Old Testament is completely wrong, because it describes an imperfect God. It should therefore not the true, perfect God, nor the devil, but by an intervening God, have been the Demiurge and creator of the world inspired.

Proto - orthodoxy

In her writings proto- orthodox church fathers such as Tatian, Athenagoras and Theophilus describe God as transcendent and eternal, free of temporal or spatial limits, and equipped with the highest supernatural power and glory.

The first significant Christian apologist, Justin Martyr, described in his writings a transcendent conception of God, which was partially influenced by Mittelplatonismus. God is the eternal, immovable, immutable reason and ruler of the universe, nameless and indescribable, uncreated, far away weilend in heaven and watching his creatures, but unable to make contact with them. Tatian and Athenagoras described similar ideas. Athenagoras summarized that God is " uncreated, eternal, invisible, unfathomable, incomprehensible and infinite " and solely by the mind accessible.

Theophilus stressed the transcendence of God and pointed out that all other terms to refer to its attributes and actions, but not in his nature itself similar was also claimed by Albinus and the Corpus Hermeticum.

An even higher doctrine of God was of Clement of Alexandria. For him God was incorporeal, formless and without attributes. He stands over space and time, virtue and goodness, and even over the monad. The human imagination can not comprehend God; the best way to get an idea of it was, aphairesin about the negative process kat '. All these statements show parallels to Philo on, knew whose work Clemens, as well as to the Gnostics and Mittelplatonikern. In contrast to Plotinus's " One" looked Clemens God but as beings with mental abilities, while Plotinus' One is the primary source of mental abilities.

Christian Thinkers soon discovered that resulting from the inscrutability of God consequences. Origen clearly pointed to the contradiction between the increasingly negative theology and the positive language of Scripture out and came to the conclusion that all bodies which God described with anthropomorphic features - about his suffering, his fear or his anger - would have to be interpreted allegorically. Origen begins his treatise De principiis with a critique of those who believe that God possesses a body. God is incomprehensible and it was impossible to make ideas about him. He was an invisible intelligence that requires no space, just as the human intelligence need no space. In his later comment Matthew Origen changed his assessment. He wrote therein from the divine Logos, who suffered and loved people. In this sense, God is able to feel human emotions, when he was dealing with human affairs. Although Origen in a late font rejected the inscrutability of God again, given his doctrine Christian theology until the 20th century.

Trinity doctrine

Athenagoras was the first Christian writer who grappled separately with the problem of the Trinity doctrine. He defended the doctrine of the unity of God. The Son of God is " the Father's logos in an ideal form (idea ) and power ( energeia ) ", and the Holy Spirit is an emanation of God. The first book received the Trinity was written by Novatian.

Determined in the First Council of Nicaea in 325 Creed was binding by imperial decree. The Greek term used in the confession of Nicaea homoousios ( " of the same substance" ) characterized the relationship of Christ and God the Father in a way that on the one hand, the divinity of Jesus Christ out, but on the other hand should keep the unity of God. The Holy Spirit was also mentioned fleetingly, to account for the writings mentioned in the belief that he is separate from the Father and the Son divine entity.

In the First Council of Constantinople Opel (381) faith was officially confirmed in the Trinity. The Trinity doctrine was reiterated in the written 381-428 Athanasian Creed again. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 established that Jesus was God and man at the same time. Between the idea that there are three different gods ( tritheism ) and that there are three different aspects of a single God ( modalism ), a middle -established as a compromise.

More patristic views

Basil the Great on the one hand differed between the essence and the substance of God, which are completely inaccessible, and on the other hand, the divine forces. These forces were the ones with which God intervenes in the world, and especially if they were with the Holy Spirit in connection.

The writings of Pseudo- Dionysius had a lot in common with the Neo-Platonism of Plotinus. In the Eastern Churches, their influence was significant and their orthodoxy undisputed. The writings of Pseudo- Dionysius emphasize the utter incomprehensibility of the divine nature and emphasized the divine powers. Both positive and negative theology is necessary: the positive, to see the world symbols for God, and the negative to show that there was no name for God's nature.

Augustine of Hippo regarded God as omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, morally sublime, and as a creator ex nihilo of the universe. Despite all of these properties goodness easy. The Christian doctrine of God's immutability tried to bring Augustine by an interpretation of the concept of time with the creation of the world in line.

Medieval and Renaissance

In the eighth century John of Damascus fell back in his Exact exposition of the true faith to pseudo - Dionysus. The Eastern spirituality was expressed most clearly in the 14th century by Gregory Palamas, for the essence and energy were two aspects of the same divine existence.

Thomas Aquinas tried to explain in the context of natural theology, that faith is not irrational. He described the increasingly higher forms of matter bulk form, God at its head as a pure form without matter, perfect and therefore immutable. For Thomas the divine will of the divine wisdom was inferior. This idea of ​​a God whose almighty will correct and good purpose, goes back to the Church Fathers.

Nicholas of Cusa described his ideas of God partly by mathematical analogies, and listed five names for God. On the one God is the absolute maximum. The term Coincidentia oppositorum ( unity of opposites ), he expressed the view that the relationship of God to the things of the world can be compared with the infinite line containing all finite geometric objects such as lines, triangles and circles and brings forth. In a similar manner, as Cusanus, God is beyond all that is finite and opposites. At the same time God is the incomprehensible. This concept should make it clear that despite all the mathematical analogies was not possible to fathom the nature of God through reason. In addition, he called God the not- being- and Other Can of everything. Although God essence of reason is inaccessible, nevertheless, may be described by comparisons.

Modern Times

Despite Hume's skepticism in the English-speaking world William Paley's argument of the cosmic watchmaker for many believers was convincing, so Darwin's theory of evolution turned the churches problems. To arrange the evolution with theism theologians developed the Theistic Evolution, in which God controls the development of life.

Albrecht Ritschl, who was influenced by Kant's statements on ethics, regarded the belief in God as an ethical rather than ontological question. The theology meet statements on ethics and not to facts. God, therefore, the morally highest, and no being whose existence or non-existence one must prove.

Only in the 20th century there was a return to anthropomorphic images of God in part. Karl Barth denied that God is recognizable by human reason, and appealed to the Scriptures. Mankind is totally dependent on God's revelation in Jesus Christ. Theologians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Jürgen Moltmann, however, emphasized God's suffering. For Bonhoeffer, only a sentient, powerless God could help. For Whitehead, God was completely coherent with the world; each event is co-determined by God. Charles Hartshorne developed Whitehead's ideas to a panentheistic idea further. He played a prominent role in the development of process theology.

Although theologians had always hinted that God asexually reported feminist theologians point out that the Christian image of God has always been influenced male. Feminists split into those who believe that the Christian God is necessarily patriarchal ( as Mary Daly ), and those who thought that the Christian God is a liberator who can free humanity from Patriarchialismus ( as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Letty Russell).

Some Christian thinkers such as Karl Heim worked to bring Christian theology with new scientific discoveries into line, for example, by putting them in relation with quantum mechanics.