Samira Danbala

Philosophy 101
July 30, 2015
Concepts of the Divine
The concepts of God and the divine throughout different religions are both
shockingly similar and vastly different. There are so many people in this world and
each possess their own vision of who or what God is, as there were in the past.
Medieval philosophy has provided us with so much fodder for religious debates,
mostly revolving around God and the divine. The Hindus have been around for an
estimated 5000 years, the Christians for 2000 and the Muslims formed about 600
years after that. These three religions have both related and diverse views of God.
The Hindus are not completely monotheistic, they do however believe in Brahman,
the one supreme universal spirit, the creator and the sustainer of the universe. They
also believe in many sub-gods, they do not see this as being sacrilegious, they see
the sub-gods, not as competition, but more as complimentary. They are seen simply
as manifestations of Brahman. The core of this theory is what allows its worshippers
to freely worship all that surrounds them because, like the sub-gods, everything that
surrounds us are merely manifestations of the Supreme Being. There is room for
interpretation in how to view the Supreme Being, many westerners are slightly more
narrow minded than their eastern counterparts, therefore they are not able to see
how it is fathomable to worship the trees in nature; to the Hindu however, that tree
is a simply a manifestation of Brahman, the creator of this universe. Brahman is
indistinct, infinite and eternal, the Hindus worship Brahman out of love, not just

fear, they believe that the Supreme Being encompasses all that is seen and
concealed in this universe.
The Christians believe that God is a combination of three beings, this is solidified in
the concept of the holy trinity; god is the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Even
with this belief the Christians are monotheistic, they believe that even though God
is those three, he is one. God is the eternal being who created the heavens the hells
and everything in between, God resides in heaven with all the souls who have
passed and are currently enjoying eternal bliss. To them, the Christians, God is both
transcendent and immanent, meaning God is beyond or above the range of normal
physical human experience and permanently pervading and sustaining the
universe. The Christians do believe that God came down to earth in human form as
Jesus Christ. Jesus loved his people so much that he was willing to die for their sins.
The Christians have both a loving and a vengeful god. As long as one is willing to
worship God and live a good life, God will forgive you of your sins and allow you
access to an eternity if bliss and happiness in heaven. However, go against God and
his teachings and he will smite you; the bible is full of stories of sinners being
smote.
For Muslims, followers of Islam, there is but one god and that is Allah. Allah is the
one and only god, the all-knowing, all powerful creator of everything in existence.
Allah translates to the God so for Muslims, Allah is the same God found in both
Christianity and Judaism; however Muslims reject the holy trinity concept. They
believe that Allah is a transcendent God who exists without a place yet for them,
Allah is everywhere, as close to humans as the veins in their neck. They believe that
Allah speaks to humans through the use of messengers or prophets and the last
prophet sent from Allah was Muhammad in 610 AD. They also believe that the holy

book Quran is the will of Allah and is purely perfect, to alter the Quran in any way is
seen as sacrilegious. To enter into the religion, one must recite the basic creed of
Islam, which is that there are no other gods than Allah, which is the strict concept
that one must abide by their entire lives.
Saint Thomas Aquinas was a prominent Catholic priest and Scholastic theologian.
He was greatly influenced by Aristotle, though he may not have realized it, he had a
dislike of philosophers, he considered them to be pagans and would not want to be
considered a philosopher himself. Aquinas spent his life believing in God, he even
wrote about God on many occasions. Aquinas was able to put together five proofs of
Gods existence, one is able to see for themselves that God exists by: observing the
movements of the world, observing the cause and effects in the world and
identifying God as the cause of everything, existence of necessary and the
unnecessary, varying levels of human perfection and by seeing that God grants
intelligence and awareness to humans.
Martin Luther was an Augustinian friar. Luther was scared of God, he worshipped the
vengeful God of Christianity. He had an uneasy relationship with God. Luther was
not good enough for God in his own eyes, he was insecure in his own salvation. He
was not able to fully come to peace with God in his mind. He worked tirelessly to
appease this vengeful God of his, he fasted, repented and spent hours in prayer.
This went on until Luther finally came to the realization that God forgave all sinners
based on who they were and not what they had done. His God was the one who
granted salvation, and this is what made realize he had grown weary of what
Christianity had become. He was also upset at what had become of Christianity. He
was dissatisfied with the practice of one being able to literally buy their way into
heaven. He proclaimed that God was the only one who was able to grant salvation

and the priests who had exploited the commoners with the promise of eternal
salvation were not able to deliver the expected outcome. He nailed his ninety-five
theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg to bring about a change in the
world that he was living in. He believed that one could not live a life of sin, then be
able to repent on their deathbed and receive forgiveness. He believed that one
must live a life of obedience and adhere to a strict monotheistic lifestyle, because
salvation was never to be assured. He believed that one must have continued faith
in order to achieve salvation. It was not something to be bought or sold.