does the Baha'i religion believe in the Christian god??
their website says
"The Bah?'? belief in one God means that the universe and all creatures and forces within it have been created by a single supernatural Being. This Being, Whom we call God, has absolute control over His creation"
but is it the same god that the Christians believe in??
Baha'is believe in God, called by different names by different people and understood differently, but still God. One God. God is the God of the OT, NT, and the Quran. God is God. There is no God but God.
I'm a Baha'i. Thanks for asking! Go to Baha'i sources for researching Baha'u'llah's teachings just like you'd go to the Bible for Christ's teachings. Second-hand sources aren't the same as the primary source. You can download a great piece of software with almost the entire library of Baha'i Writings. You can independently investigate and research Baha'u'llah's writings to your heart's content along with many religions holy writings. It has a search able database great for comparing and expanding your knowledge. Enjoy! Learn!
The Baha'i faith teaches that God is unknowable in His essence. Bahai's have the difficulty of explaining how they can have an elaborate theology about God yet assert that God is "unknowable." And it does not help to say that prophets and manifestations inform mankind about God because if God is "unknowable" then humanity has no reference point whereby to tell which teacher is telling the truth. Christianity instead teaches that God can be known, as is naturally known even by non-believers, though they may not have a relational knowledge of God. Romans 1:20 says, "For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead?" God is knowable, not only through the creation, but through His Word and the presence of the Holy Spirit, who leads and guides us and bears witness that we are His children (Romans 8:14-16). Not only can we know Him, but we can know Him intimately as our "Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:6). True, God may not fit His infinity into our finite minds, but man can still have partial knowledge of God which is entirely true and relationally meaningful.
About Jesus the Baha'i Faith teaches that He was a manifestation of God but not an incarnation. The difference sounds slight but is actually enormous. Bahai's believe God is unknowable, therefore God cannot incarnate Himself to be present among men. If Jesus is God in the most literal sense, and Jesus is knowable then God is knowable and that Baha'i doctrine is exploded. So Bahai's teach that Jesus was a reflection of God. Just as a person can look at a reflection of the sun in a mirror and say, "There is the sun," so one can look at Jesus and say, "There is God" meaning "There is a reflection of God." Here again the problem of teaching that God is "unknowable" surfaces since there would be no way to distinguish between true and false manifestations or prophets. The Christian however can argue that Christ has set himself apart from all other manifestations and has confirmed his self-attested divinity by physically rising from the dead, a point which Bahai's also deny (1 Cor. 15). While the resurrection would be a miracle, it is nonetheless a historically defensible fact given the body of evidence. Dr. Gary Habermas, Dr. William Lane Craig, and N.T. Wright have done well in defending the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Baha'i Faith also denies the sole sufficiency of Christ and of Scripture. Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab, and Baha'u'llah were all manifestations of God and the latest of these would have the highest authority since he'd have the most complete revelation of God according to the idea of progressive revelation. Here Christian apologetics can be employed to demonstrate the uniqueness of Christianity's claims and its doctrinal and practical truthfulness exclusive of contrary religious systems. The Baha'i however is concerned for showing that all the world's major religions are ultimately reconcilable. Any differences would be explained away as:
1) Social Laws?Instead of supra-cultural Spiritual Laws
2) Early revelation?As opposed to the more complete later revelation
3) Corrupted Teaching or Misinterpretation
But even granting these qualifications, the world's religions are too varied and too fundamentally different to be reconciled. Given that the world's religions obviously teach and practice contrary things, the burden is on the Baha'i to salvage the world's major religions while dismantling almost everything foundational to those religions. Ironically, the religions which are most inclusive?Buddhism and Hinduism?are classically atheistic and pantheistic (respectively) neither of which is allowed within the strictly monotheistic Baha'i faith. Meanwhile. The religions that are least theologically inclusive of the Baha'i faith?Islam, Christianity, Orthodox Judaism?are monotheistic as the Baha'i are.
Also, the Baha'i faith teaches a sort of works-based salvation. The Baha'i Faith is not much different from Islam in its core teachings about how to be saved except that, for the Baha'i, little is said about the afterlife. This earthly life is to be filled with good works counterbalancing ones evil deeds and showing ones self deserving of ultimate deliverance. Sin is not paid for or dissolved, rather it is excused by a presumably benevolent God. Man does not have a significant relationship with God. In fact Bahai's teach that there is no personality in God's essence, but only in His manifestations. Thus God does not submit easily to a relationship with man. Accordingly, the Christian doctrine of grace is reinterpreted so that "grace" means "God's kind allowance for man to have the opportunity to earn deliverance." Built into this doctrine is a denial of Christ's sacrificial atonement and a minimization of sin. Needless to say, the Christian view of salvation is very different. Sin is understood as being of eternal and infinite consequence since it is a universal crime against an infinitely perfect God (Rom. 3:10, 23). Likewise, sin is so great that it deserves a life (blood) sacrifice and incurs eternal punishment in the afterlife. But Christ pays the price that all deserve, dying as an innocent sacrifice for a guilty humanity. Because man cannot do anything to unblemished himself or to deserve eternal reward, he either must die for His own sins or let Christ graciously die in his place (Isa. 53; Rom. 5:8). Thus salvation is either by God's grace through man's faith or there is no eternal salvation.
It is no surprise then that Baha'i faith proclaims Baha'u'llah to be the second coming of Christ. Jesus Himself warned us in the gospel of Matthew concerning the end times: "Then if any one says to you, 'Lo, here is the Christ!' or 'There he is!' do not believe it. For false Christ's and false prophets will arise and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect" (Matthew 24:23-24). Interestingly, Bahai's typically deny or minimize any miracles of Baha'u'llah. His unique spiritual claims are based on self-attested authority, uncanny and uneducated wisdom, prolific writing, pure living, majority consensus, and other subjective tests. The more objective tests such as prophetic fulfillment employ heavily allegorical interpretations of Scripture (see Thief in the Night by William Sears). The belief in Baha'u'llah largely reduce to a point of faith?is one willing to accept him as the manifestation of God, in the absence of objective evidence. Of course, Christianity also calls for faith, but the Christian has strong and demonstrable evidence along with that faith.
The Baha'i Faith therefore does not accord with classical Christianity, and it has much to answer for in its own right. How an unknowable God could elicit such an elaborate theology and justify a new world religion is a mystery. The Bahai faith is weak in addressing sin, treating it as if it were not a big problem and is surmountable by human effort. Christ's divinity is denied, as is the evidential value and literal nature of Christ's resurrection. And for the Baha'i faith, one of its biggest problems is its pluralism. That is, how can one reconcile such divergent religious without leaving them theologically gutted. It is easy to argue that the world's religions have commonalities in their ethical teachings and have some concept of ultimate reality. But it is another beast entirely to try to argue unity in their fundamental teachings about what the ultimate reality is and about how those ethics are grounded.
Recommended Resource: Jesus Among Other gods by Ravi Zacharias.
does the Baha'i religion believe in the Christian god??
