Talk:God in Christianity

Rationale for this article

If someone wants to learn about "God in Christianity", we shouldn't send them on an unguided tour of six or seven articles about different aspects of the concept of God in Christianity. That's what Christian God does right now. What we should do is provide a guided overview of all the major aspects of God in Christianity with links to the main articles on each aspect. That's what this article tries to do.

--Richard 18:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

ok, glad you did this, but the ToC needs work. It needs to discuss Trinity vs. Unitarianism, and various topics of Christology, without being a WP:CFORK of either Trinity or Christology. Trinity and Christology are the two heavyweight main articles for this, and this article here needs to act as a hinge between the two. On top of that, it can discuss Christian mysticism and stuff. --dab (𒁳) 18:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

right, the discussion of Trinity is altogether too long right now. It should be a very brief summary of Trinity focussing conflicts with Nontrinitarian schools of thought. dab (𒁳) 19:06, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

This merger should have been preceded by some notice on the talk pages of all articles moved here. I can appreciate that the articles were related, but the elements may not have been properly harmonized here. (There are also some easily fixed issues: double redirects, etc.) We now have an infinitely large topic, and it will take some work to preserve the value and meaning (not that I'm overrating these) of its constituent parts. As the author of once sentence in Godhead (Christianity) - "In the later Neoplatonic mystical tradition (in Pseudo-Dionysius, for example), the term θεαρχία thearchia is used.[1]" - it was a little jolting to see material like this in the context of the lead of this new mega-article. I'm of the opinion that status quo ante would be better, at least until someone has created a better framework into which to do the merges (especially since proper discussion was not initiated prior to the merges). A better solution would have been improved cross-references. Wareh 21:12, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand the goal of this article. It is NOT intended to be a super-mega-merger of all the constituent articles. It is meant to be a SUMMARY article that provides a grand overview of the key points of those articles with {{main}} article links to the other articles. Dbachmann was right in putting the {{toolong}} tag on this article. I have made an effort to cut out non-essential text that the reader can access by reading the subsidiary articles.

Personally, I think the current outline is a pretty good framework (if I do say so myself). I'm sure can be improved but I think it covers the bases pretty well. If you have suggestions for improvement, please present them for discussion.

--Richard 21:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry if my surprise was expressed too harshly (the merging of pages without discussion still seems to me a departure from good practice). Perhaps I can put my real concern more constructively. Now that this article is on so general a topic, as it gets edited back down to a manageable size for its new function, I think everything edited out needs to be looked at conservatively and carefully: is it really treated somewhere else? It would be a bit perverse to combine content into a new article, only to use the new article as the criterion for exclusion of material that was reasonably included in the previous disposition. I say all this fully recognizing that some of the content here is poor, and that we still have an irrational structure of related articles. My hope is that, whatever gets edited out here, gets a clear link to the article that really does treat it and an explanation of how it relates. In some cases this may require the creation of new stubs or else creative searching for existing articles that are appropriate. Wareh 14:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I generally agree with Wareh. I do think we need this article. I do think it is a good idea to merge Godhead (Christianity) into this. But I must also agree that the present version should probably be rewritten from scratch. The point of this article cannot be to rehash random points of Trinity. What we need is a coherent summary of the question as a whole, that is, briefly and cleanly lay out the key topics ot Trinity, Christology, Christian theology and Christian mysticism. Perhaps we should start from a mere list of key topis and expand it from there. dab (𒁳) 14:33, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

SECisek removed the Christianity navbox, appropriately enough, because the article is not listed on the template. See Template talk:Christianity. If this article is really going to do the job suggested by others in this discussion, it ought to have the importance to be added to that template. Perhaps this can be a useful lens through which to evaluate the place of this article: is it doing a new an important job not already parceled out in the articles listed in Template:Christianity? Wareh (talk) 02:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree with the above. If consensus says it merits inclusion, by all means, let's add it. I did not because I have noticed that being bold with the Chritianity nav box seems to provoke Massive retaliation from some editors. It is best to see if we have a consensus first. -- SECisek (talk) 03:22, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Work needed

Just a cursory look at the article and it needs some work. The header has God as transcendant without mention of immanence. Also, I reverted an edit that is theologically correct but may need some better wording or placement than what was put in. How many people are active here? Don't want to step on any toes. SkyWriter (Tim) (talk) 20:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I've been looking through the article a little and trying to ammend some theological errances, and I'm more concerned with it being right than wording, so feel free to brush up the mechanics or placement of my edits if you see the need, because I just want to make sure this article correctly portrays the God of the Bible. Thebestlaidplans (talk) 22:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Lead sentence

The lead sentence currently says:

Most Christian groups see God as the eternal being who created the universe and all there is.

Why is the word "most" included there? Almost all Christians are monotheistic, so to them, the creator is necessarily God. It's true that some small percentage of Christians have pagan influences, but polytheistic Christianity seems like such a small segment that it's not worth mentioning in the lead, let alone on the first word. WP:LEAD says "avoid ... over-specific descriptions, especially if they are not central to the article as a whole."

The remainder of this first sentence seems like it's duplicating what's already at the article God, and is widely understood when one says "God", especially in the context of a monotheistic religion. It may be better to just link to that article and instead focus on the issues specific to this article. (for better examples, see the leads at God in Judaism and God in Islam) --Underpants (talk) 20:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The lead can definitely be improved, but I always assumed the "most" was there not to exclude any polytheistic Christians, but rather to exclude atheistic (or at least non-theistic) groups that consider themselves Christians (like Unitarians, who don't really seem to believe in anything). —Angr 21:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I Second the lead Sentence Change... In Fact the lead sentence falls into the category of Weasel Words So I am Going to flag it as such. Please correct it asap so the quality of the Article does not suffer. Perhaps the entire article can become a fork to the various christian Religions Wiki Pages... IE: God of Catholics, God of Mormons, God of evangelicals, God of Protestants, ECT....... So a Rewrite is probably (B)Best(\B) because the Cristian god is different for every Cristian religious Denomination. 216.180.189.229 (talk) 18:20, 11 April 2009 (UTC)