Gods Supreme Interest in Man

Sin brought the breakdown of a relationship with God, resulting in shame and judgment. No human ritual, deed, or sacrifice can provide payment or absolution for our sins. Not a single human being by his own efforts is able to measure up to the glory of God. God desires that we share that splendor, yet our sin prohibits us from experiencing the richness of such a relationship. What God began in the past, He will accomplish and complete in the future.

God considers us children of a Heavenly Father 2 Corinthians 6: When redeemed, we are again sealed into a special relationship with God. While sin can enslave us to the point of fear, believers in Jesus are adopted, receiving the same privileges as natural-born. Christians can approach God through an intimate relationship, even calling Him Father Romans 8: God values us as precious treasures, capable of honoring Him with our bodies and spirits. Jesus was the only begotten Son of the Father. Is there not a great Languor prevailing a mong Christians in general, or where there appears a Fervour and Warmth, does it not too often run out into barren wrangling Con troversie, or irregular Heats and Transports of misguided Zeal, to the hurt and wounding of Religion: Have we not Cause to be Humbled and Mourn?

Days that require the LORD: May we not then here see the Rea son of the increasing Frowns and Rebukes we are and have been under? And have not his Dealings with us been agreeable to it? But as we have been gradually declining from GOD, have not his Frowns, and our Troubles been increasing in a variety of Judgments? But He bring full of Compassion, forgave their Iniquity, and Destroyed them not; yea, many a Time turned He away his Anger , and did not stir up all his Wrath. But have we not continued, to a sad Degree impenitent and unreformed, under Mercies and Judgments; yea, been waxing worse and worse under both?

And as our Sins, so his righteous Frowns seem to be increasing upon us: The aspects of Providence ap pear very frowning and threatening: We are deeply involved in the Troubles and Calami ties of War: Yet it has not pleased GOD to smile, but frown upon most of our Enterprizes. Our Enemies have been sufferred to gain great Advantages against us, which I need not, and delight not to relate; while our Expeditions against them in which great Numbers of Lives have been lost, and considerable Part of our moderate Treasure or Substance has been spent have Once and Again proved unsuccessful: It therefore becomes and concerns us to see, and suitably to take Notice of the Hand and Providence of GOD, in all the Troubles and Calamities we are under.

But does not GOD govern the World? Who gave Jacob to a Spoil, and Israel to the Robbers? And should not his Hand be taken Notice of? And 'till we get into this Way, to look at the Hand of GOD, and look into our selves, and to humble ourselves, for our Sins, and under his Frowns, and pray, and seek his Face, and turn from our evil Ways, we have little Reason to expect the Re moval of our Troubles. This shows us, and should excite us all to take the true and only Way of our Safety, Welfare, and Happiness.

God the Father

Let us all do to. But does there need yet more to be done by all Ranks and Orders of Men among us. You will give all due Countenance, Sup port and Encouragement, to a learned, able, faithful Ministry, who labour under some Discouragements at this Day: And to give all proper and needful Support and Encouragement to the College, which has been so great an Ho nour and Blessing to the Land, and has not only Supplied our Churches with a learned Ministry; but furnished many accomplished Persons for superiour Usefulness in civil Life.

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And next, the Dangers and Burdens of the War, will engage your Attention, to provide for our common Safety by Methods the most effectual , and at the same Time, the most easy to the People your best Wis dom can contrive. War unavoidably brings the Burden of heavy Taxes as well as many other Calamities with it. You will make these Burdens as light as our common Safety will allow. The most equal and impartial Admini stration of Justice, in Methods as easie, and as little expensive as may be.

Then will you not Repent of the many anxious Cares you employ for us, and the Weight and Difficulties of our public Affairs cost you. This will make them better Subjects to our civil Rulers, more useful Members of Society, and greater Blessings in every Relation, and it will be the best Method that can be taken, to open the Way to their and our Enjoy ment of Peace, Prosperity, Protection and all other needful Blessings here, and eternal Blessedness hereafter.

- God's Supreme Law

Our Work is Great, as well as Good: We need each others Help and Assistance in it, as well as all of us continual Help and Assistance from GOD; it therefore be comes us to be Fellow Workers herein, and by our mutual Affection, Prayers, Coun sels and Assistance to encourage each others Hearts, and strengthen each others Hands, and further each others Usefulness and Comfort as much as we are able; striving together for the Faith of the Gospel, and to promote the Prac tice of that pure and holy Religion CHRIST has taught us in his Word, and recommended by his Practice. To this whole Assembly , or People in General.

Yielding Obedience to them, Tit. Chearfully paying the Tribute and Taxes due to the public Support, Rom. This the Difficul ties of our Affairs may prove a Tempta tion to; we should therefore guard the more carefully against it. Remember that Perfec tion is not to be expected in Man. That there may Difficulties arise which humane Wisdom can neither fore-see and obviate, nor humane Power prevent.

It becomes us rather to eye the Hand of GOD in the Difficulties we are under, to humble our selves before Him, to see and realize our Dependance on Him, and to seek to Him, and wait on Him for Help and Deliverance, and to strengthen the Hands of our Rulers when seeking our Good. These Things, the Frowns of GOD we are under — the threating Danger we are in — the dark Cloud that gathers over us and not over us only, but over the whole Re formed Interest loudly call us to.

And if we return to, and seek, and trust in Him, there is Hope he will. This has been tried, and not found in vain. The assignment of these attributes often differs according to the conceptions of God in the culture from which they arise. For example, attributes of God in Christianity , attributes of God in Islam , and the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy in Judaism share certain similarities arising from their common roots. The word God is "one of the most complex and difficult in the English language. That the Bible "includes many different images, concepts, and ways of thinking about" God has resulted in perpetual "disagreements about how God is to be conceived and understood".

Throughout the Hebrew and Christian Bibles there are many names for God.

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One of them is Elohim. Another one is El Shaddai , translated "God Almighty". Many traditions see God as incorporeal and eternal, and regard him as a point of living light like human souls, but without a physical body, as he does not enter the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. God is seen as the perfect and constant embodiment of all virtues, powers and values and that he is the unconditionally loving Father of all souls, irrespective of their religion, gender, or culture. Vaishnavism , a tradition in Hinduism, has list of titles and names of Krishna. The gender of God may be viewed as either a literal or an allegorical aspect of a deity who, in classical western philosophy, transcends bodily form.

In most monotheistic religions, God has no counterpart with which to relate sexually. Thus, in classical western philosophy the gender of this one-and-only deity is most likely to be an analogical statement of how humans and God address, and relate to, each other. Namely, God is seen as begetter of the world and revelation which corresponds to the active as opposed to the receptive role in sexual intercourse.

Biblical sources usually refer to God using male words, except Genesis 1: Prayer plays a significant role among many believers. Muslims believe that the purpose of existence is to worship God. Prayer often also includes supplication and asking forgiveness. God is often believed to be forgiving. For example, a hadith states God would replace a sinless people with one who sinned but still asked repentance. This does not imply that God is human, or located at a specific point in the universe.

Adherents of different religions generally disagree as to how to best worship God and what is God's plan for mankind, if there is one. There are different approaches to reconciling the contradictory claims of monotheistic religions. One view is taken by exclusivists, who believe they are the chosen people or have exclusive access to absolute truth , generally through revelation or encounter with the Divine, which adherents of other religions do not.

Another view is religious pluralism. A pluralist typically believes that his religion is the right one, but does not deny the partial truth of other religions. An example of a pluralist view in Christianity is supersessionism , i. A third approach is relativistic inclusivism , where everybody is seen as equally right; an example being universalism: A fourth approach is syncretism , mixing different elements from different religions. An example of syncretism is the New Age movement. Jews and Christians believe that humans are created in the likeness of God, and are the center, crown and key to God's creation, stewards for God, supreme over everything else God had made Gen 1: During the early Parthian Empire, Ahura Mazda was visually represented for worship.

This practice ended during the beginning of the Sassanid empire. Zoroastrian iconoclasm , which can be traced to the end of the Parthian period and the beginning of the Sassanid, eventually put an end to the use of all images of Ahura Mazda in worship. However, Ahura Mazda continued to be symbolized by a dignified male figure, standing or on horseback which is found in Sassanian investiture. At least some Jews do not use any image for God, since God is the unimaginable Being who cannot be represented in material forms.

The burning bush that was not consumed by the flames is described in Book of Exodus as a symbolic representation of God when he appeared to Moses. Early Christians believed that the words of the Gospel of John 1: However, later depictions of God are found. Some, like the Hand of God , are depiction borrowed from Jewish art.

The beginning of the 8th century witnessed the suppression and destruction of religious icons as the period of Byzantine iconoclasm literally image-breaking started. The Second Council of Nicaea in effectively ended the first period of Byzantine iconoclasm and restored the honouring of icons and holy images in general. Even supporters of the use of icons in the 8th century, such as Saint John of Damascus , drew a distinction between images of God the Father and those of Christ.

Prior to the 10th century no attempt was made to use a human to symbolize God the Father in Western art. A rationale for the use of a human is the belief that God created the soul of Man in the image of his own thus allowing Human to transcend the other animals. It appears that when early artists designed to represent God the Father, fear and awe restrained them from a usage of the whole human figure. Typically only a small part would be used as the image, usually the hand, or sometimes the face, but rarely a whole human. In many images, the figure of the Son supplants the Father, so a smaller portion of the person of the Father is depicted.

By the 12th century depictions of God the Father had started to appear in French illuminated manuscripts , which as a less public form could often be more adventurous in their iconography, and in stained glass church windows in England. Gradually the amount of the human symbol shown can increase to a half-length figure, then a full-length, usually enthroned, as in Giotto 's fresco of c.

The "Gates of Paradise" of the Florence Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti , begun in use a similar tall full-length symbol for the Father. The Rohan Book of Hours of about also included depictions of God the Father in half-length human form, which were now becoming standard, and the Hand of God becoming rarer. At the same period other works, like the large Genesis altarpiece by the Hamburg painter Meister Bertram , continued to use the old depiction of Christ as Logos in Genesis scenes.

In the 15th century there was a brief fashion for depicting all three persons of the Trinity as similar or identical figures with the usual appearance of Christ. In the Annunciation by Benvenuto di Giovanni in , God the Father is portrayed in the red robe and a hat that resembles that of a Cardinal. However, even in the later part of the 15th century, the symbolic representation of the Father and the Holy Spirit as "hands and dove" continued, e.

In Renaissance paintings of the adoration of the Trinity, God may be depicted in two ways, either with emphasis on The Father, or the three elements of the Trinity. The most usual depiction of the Trinity in Renaissance art depicts God the Father using an old man, usually with a long beard and patriarchal in appearance, sometimes with a triangular halo as a reference to the Trinity , or with a papal crown, specially in Northern Renaissance painting.

In these depictions The Father may hold a globe or book to symbolize God's knowledge and as a reference to how knowledge is deemed divine. He is behind and above Christ on the Cross in the Throne of Mercy iconography. A dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit may hover above. Various people from different classes of society, e. They are depicted as floating in heaven with angels who carry the instruments of the Passion. Representations of God the Father and the Trinity were attacked both by Protestants and within Catholicism, by the Jansenist and Baianist movements as well as more orthodox theologians.

As with other attacks on Catholic imagery, this had the effect both of reducing Church support for the less central depictions, and strengthening it for the core ones. In the Western Church , the pressure to restrain religious imagery resulted in the highly influential decrees of the final session of the Council of Trent in The Council of Trent decrees confirmed the traditional Catholic doctrine that images only represented the person depicted, and that veneration to them was paid to the person, not the image.

Artistic depictions of God the Father were uncontroversial in Catholic art thereafter, but less common depictions of the Trinity were condemned. In Pope Benedict XIV explicitly supported the Throne of Mercy depiction, referring to the "Ancient of Days", but in it was still necessary for Pope Pius VI to issue a papal bull condemning the decision of an Italian church council to remove all images of the Trinity from churches. God the Father is symbolized in several Genesis scenes in Michelangelo 's Sistine Chapel ceiling , most famously The Creation of Adam whose image of near touching hands of God and Adam is iconic of humanity, being a reminder that Man is created in the Image and Likeness of God Gen 1: God the Father is depicted as a powerful figure, floating in the clouds in Titian's Assumption of the Virgin in the Frari of Venice , long admired as a masterpiece of High Renaissance art.

In some of these paintings the Trinity is still alluded to in terms of three angels, but Giovanni Battista Fiammeri also depicted God the Father as a man riding on a cloud, above the scenes. In both the Last Judgment and the Coronation of the Virgin paintings by Rubens he depicted God the Father using the image that by then had become widely accepted, a bearded patriarchal figure above the fray. While representations of God the Father were growing in Italy, Spain, Germany and the Low Countries, there was resistance elsewhere in Europe, even during the 17th century.

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In most members of the Star Chamber court in England except the Archbishop of York condemned the use of the images of the Trinity in church windows, and some considered them illegal. In the 43rd chapter of the Great Moscow Council specifically included a ban on a number of symbolic depictions of God the Father and the Holy Spirit, which then also resulted in a whole range of other icons being placed on the forbidden list, [] [] mostly affecting Western-style depictions which had been gaining ground in Orthodox icons.

However some icons continued to be produced in Russia, as well as Greece , Romania , and other Orthodox countries. Muslims believe that God Allah is beyond all comprehension and equal, and does not resemble any of his creations in any way. Thus, Muslims are not iconodules , are not expected to visualize God, and instead of having pictures of Allah in their mosques , have religious scripts written on the wall.

These Manifestations are the great prophets and teachers of many of the major religious traditions. Although the faith is strictly monotheistic, it also preaches the unity of all religions and focuses on these multiple epiphanies as necessary for meeting the needs of humanity at different points in history and for different cultures, and as part of a scheme of progressive revelation and education of humanity. The attributes of the God of classical theism were all claimed to varying degrees by the early Jewish , Christian and Muslim scholars, including Maimonides , [48] St Augustine , [48] and Al-Ghazali.

Many philosophers developed arguments for the existence of God, [8] while attempting to comprehend the precise implications of God's attributes. Reconciling some of those attributes-particularly the attributes of the God of theistic personalism- generated important philosophical problems and debates.

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For example, God's omniscience may seem to imply that God knows how free agents will choose to act. If God does know this, their ostensible free will might be illusory, or foreknowledge does not imply predestination, and if God does not know it, God may not be omniscient. The last centuries of philosophy have seen vigorous questions regarding the arguments for God's existence raised by such philosophers as Immanuel Kant , David Hume and Antony Flew , although Kant held that the argument from morality was valid.

The theist response has been either to contend, as does Alvin Plantinga , that faith is " properly basic ", or to take, as does Richard Swinburne , the evidentialist position. There would be no risk, they say, if the arguments for God's existence were as solid as the laws of logic, a position summed up by Pascal as "the heart has reasons of which reason does not know.

Many religious believers allow for the existence of other, less powerful spiritual beings such as angels , saints , jinn , demons , and devas. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the concept of a supreme "God" in the context of monotheism. For the general concept of a being superior to humans that is worshiped as "a god", see Deity and God male deity.

For God in specific religions, see Conceptions of God. For other uses of the term, see God disambiguation. Many religions use images to "represent" God in icons for art or for worship. Here are examples of representations of God in different monotheistic religions. Clockwise from upper left: Christianity , Kaumaram , Vaishnavism , Shaktism. Theism , Deism , and Pantheism.

Evolutionary origin of religions and Evolutionary psychology of religion.