"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word was with God in the beginning.  All things were created by Him and apart from Him nothing was created.  Life was in Him and that life was the light of man.  That light shown in darkness and the darkness did not overcome it."  Gospel of John 1:1-5

"The Lord our God is One."  Deuteronomy 6:4

The Old Testament put the Living God of Israel as the central creative and redemptive force in the universe.  The Jews who followed Jesus believed in God.  Then and now, Christians are accused of believing in "another god" in our relationship with Jesus Christ.  Yet, Jesus Himself declared Himself to be God on any number of occassions.  When reading the Gospels, you can usually tell when He has done this because the Jewish leaders try to stone Him (John 8:28, for example). They understood clearly that Jesus was claiming to be the Living God of Israel. To them, that was blasphemy and worthy of death. His disciples understood that Jesus "is Messiah, Son of the Living God" (Matthew 16:16, Mark 8:29, John 11:27).

God is Spirit.  This is why Judaism has never allowed idols to be made depicting God because God is not a physical entity like some Greek god with human passions.  From the beginning, though, the Old Testament depicted God has able to commune with mankind, for instance, walking with Adam in the garden.  There are times in the Old Testament when one of the patriarchs would receive a visitation from heaven.  Sometimes these visitors were clearly labeled as angels, but other times the visitor was addressed as "Lord."  Most Christian scholars believe these were visitations from the pre-Incarnate Christ.  The difference between the spiritual Creator of the universe and flesh-bound Man is too great to bridge without God presenting a more human face. That human face was Jesus, always, even if the name was not applied.

When God needed a ransom so that Man might be forgiven, He was faced with the knowledge that only He could meet His own qualifications. God had declared us guilty of disobeying Him (sin) and then offered to pay our debt. His qualifications had always been perfect sacrifices, but the blood of rams and goats were not sufficient to cleanse the sins of humans. A human must die in order to wipe away our sins.  Yet, no human could be found who qualified. We're all tainted by our disobedience to God.

Thus, Jesus -- the pre-Incarnate human face of God -- was born into flesh through the womb of Mary.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us because any savior less than God Himself would be disqualified. God must redeem us Himself.

Was Jesus, the Incarnate God, truly human?  The gnostics believed He couldn't be because to them all flesh was evil.  Yet God created Man and said we were "good", so the gnostics didn't understand Scripture very well.  Flesh is only evil because our disobedience to God has made it so.  Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us, but He did so by resisting the pull of disobedience that afflicts all humans.  I consider discussions of whether Jesus could have sinned to be akin to those ridiculous theological arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin -- not really worth the time.  Jesus certainly would have felt the temptations that we feel.  Clearly, He was tempted in the desert.  However, He did not give into the temptations.  Whether this was because He was God and, while feeling the temptation, could not disobey Himself or if it was that He as a human was able to resist temptation to a degree that none of us can is, to me, immaterial. He did resist! Why argue about how He was able to do so?

Jesus felt hunger, He required sleep, He showed anger and frustration at times, He mourned for a friend's death, and He celebrated the happiness of a marriage and showed annoyance at His mother.  These are human attributes, so yes, Jesus was human and He was also the Living God of Israel.  The Lord our God is One!

What about the Holy Spirit?  Is that a third god?  No!  Genesis 1:2 talks of the Spirit of God participating in creation, yet John 1 clearly states that the Word created everything.  The Spirit of God is nothing but the Spirit of Jesus.  The Living God, Jesus the Messiah and the Holy Spirit are One, the conjoined God of the universe.  The seeming division comes not from seperation but from aspects and duties.  I can put this in more human terms.  My parents have one view of me because of the relationship we share.  My husband's view of me is quite different from theirs.  In fact, had they ever met, I'm pretty sure my father would not have recognized his daughter in my husband's view of me.  My children have a third view of me, also based upon our relationship.  Although my children never met my parents, my brother will tell you that his niece and nephew have a totally different view of me than our parents would have because he sometimes finds himself wondering if he and they are talking about the same person. Apparently, my brother has a fourth view of me!

I am still the one person, despite the differing views of me.  Yet, I have various roles to play with the folks in my life and who I might be to each of these people might be quite different depending on my role.

Although the word trinity does not appear in the Bible, it is a theological term (one of those church words I avoid) to describe God's complex relationship with the complex race known as Man.  He is One God with creative, redemptive and ongoing relational roles that are significant enough aspects of His personality to warrant acknowledgement.

The Lord, our God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are One God.

Christianity has been defined variously by groups and individuals who believe that the concept of God and Christ are malleable, as open to interpretation as some political liberals believe the American Constitution is.  In writing, I hope to defend the concept of a Biblical Christ and a Biblical Christianity.  With the Bible as the measuring stick for truth and authority, I hope to educate people as to why Christians believe what they believe and to show that not all those who call themselves Christians would be recognizable by the early church, which is why modern-day Christians call them cults.  In doing this, I will delve into the definitions of "church words", the Biblical understanding of salvation and faith, and how an ancient theology can be worked out within the context of our modern world.

I do not claim to have all the answers or to be a Biblical scholar, but I have a Bible that I do read and I have histories, Bible dictionaries, commentaries and friends who are bona fide Bible scholars to draw from.  I also have my own relationship with Christ, Who teaches me daily through the Holy Spirit.  I will take questions, though I don't promise to answer them right away. Some questions are bigger than others, requiring prayer, thought and study, and some questions we'll have to ask God when (and if) we get to heaven.  Don't expect to always like my answers, but I will always try to be respectful of my readers and ask my readers to be respectful of me.

I am a Christian who believes that God is not silent and that our difficulties with understanding Him come from our own limitations and not His.  If we will but listen, we can know the mind of God for the Bible presents a fairly straight-forward message.  For the most part, it is human beings who complicate the message because they want it to say something other than what it says.  I understand this desire to twist God to our image rather than to be conformed to His, yet I will resist it and cling as often as possible to the Bible as my guide.