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What Is The Theological Statement For God's Existence Of God?

620 Words3 Pages

The Old Testament narrative has a complex and rich, almost elusive, understanding of God, yet it does not contain the explicit doctrine of the Trinity, it only contains the doctrine after reflection upon God’s continual revelation. In light of this, Moses’ theophany of the burning bush gives the first claim of God’s identity as Yahweh, or better understood in the Exodus narrative, as “I am what I am” (Exodus 3:14, NRSV). This rich statement of God supposedly gives God some mysterious ontological claim about the God Israel understood through their forefathers’ own encounters with this God. Yet, Israel’s own theological statement about God comes through the Shema found in Deuteronomy 6:4. In this statement, Israel proclaims with one voice, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” A condensed theological statement up till now condenses the story of Israel’s past, present, and future through the unified statement of God’s singularity. Within the time and place of Israel’s setting, the Shema counters the claims of the polytheistic societies surrounding Israel. Instead of being a multiplicity of divine essences capable of vying for divinely hierarchy, Israel combats this narrative producing this succinct communal theological statement of …show more content…

Yet there comes a problem when digging deeper into the narrative of the Old Testament: there is no explication of what kind of being is Yahweh. There are multiple metaphorical depictions of Yahweh throughout the prophetic and poetic literature of the Old Testament, yet substantive descriptions of Yahweh, like people might have of Dagon, Marduk, or Enlil. The Shema and Exodus passage capture the elusive, but grounded ontological claim of God’s existence and singular nature but fail to understand what kind of being is God. Yet, as a person studies the Old Testament there are peculiar instances of God and the possibility of gods within

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This powerful text, “When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” is the centerpiece for understanding the truth behind centuries of spiritual history and politics between three different denominations. Dr. Charles Kimball focuses solely on identifying the negatives within politics and religion as a whole, and how unconstructive the two can actually be. Kimball gave a huge amount of historical insight on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and how each of the religions came about. He also discusses their different relationships and different viewpoints that they have for one another. Lastly, Kimball uses his years of experience to offer a new and much broader way to think about

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To reveal the Jewish doubt and ambivalence towards their faith, Elie uses rhetorical, ambiguous language when referencing God. The open-ended approach to the idea of a detached God leaves the reader in a mindset similar to the jostled Jews. When Elie first wonders “where is [his] merciful God,” he begins his journey to the termination of his piety (65). Elie continues to question God, but “[he] cannot understand [His replies]” (5). Elie struggles with this notion from times of peace and gaiety to times of disarray.

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According to Yehezkel Kaufmann the basic understanding of biblical religion was centered upon the relationship between God and the world, instead of previous debates about one God versus many. Kaufmann’s understanding of biblical religion was based on his belief that the biblical God was a supernatural entity, which was above and unrestrained by the physical world. Unlike pagan religions that were myth based, biblical religion and subsequently the biblical God began with the story of creation (Genisis1). This lack of myth illustrates Kaufmann’s understanding that the biblical God was free from the bounds of nature and the typical biological cycle that pagan gods existed in. The different aspects of biblical religion, such as time, prophecy

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Group 2 (Problem 3) Anselm’s, and Aquinas’s arguments concerning God’s existence Comparing the two medieval thinkers, Anselm and Aquinas will examine their stances on the argument concerning the existence of god. Both of Saint Anselm in his Ontological argument and Saint Thomas Aquinas in his argument “The Existence of God” confirmed that god does exist. Saint Anselm (1033-1109), was one of the most important Christian thinkers of the eleventh century, present one of the most famous arguments for God 's Existence. Saint Anselm started his argument with defining the God as " that, the greater than which cannot be conceived.

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