From time immemorial people have noticed that every society seems to create God in its own image. The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes remarked that Ethiopians say their Gods are snub-nosed and black while Thracians say their Gods are pale and red-haired, which caused him to remark that if horses and cattle could draw, they would depict their Gods with the bodies of horses and cattle. Xenophanes was correct in not inferring that Gods are purely the creation of their human subjects, but rather that humans are anthropomorphic in the way we think about God. To be clear, the conclusion that there is but one God is not contradicted by the plethora of Gods that we create or the way we conceive of them. If we look only at the Semitic religions, i.e., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we see that the adherents of these three religions were struggling with a related issue. Christians accept the Torah and the Hebrew Bible but believe that the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament have fulfilled the promises of the Old Testament. Muslims generally also accept the teachings of both the Old and New Testament but believe that the Quran adds to our understanding of God. “Your God is one God, there is no god but He, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” Quran 2:163 – Christopher Simon
