I wrote the post "The Mormon and Christian God" while I was at work and by mishap left the window open on the computer I was using. It was happened upon by my co-worker, a Calvinist, who thought it was an interesting article but repudiated, in a rather matter-of-fact tone, my concluding paragraph. His comment was essentially that my "conclusion just isn't quite right." He also reported to me that his father (my co-worker shared the article with him) commented that he didn't think I understand the God he believes in, which was based off of my description of the Christian God as "a hybrid of the transcendent God of the philosophers and the covenant God of Abraham."

Naturally, one who has an understanding of Christianity solely from an experiential, emic perspective would not see that description as accurate. It does not include any of the descriptions of God's character and attributes that is gathered in various conglomerations from the New Testament. From a historic and etic perspective, I hold that my description is accurate. That Christianity came out of the Hebrew tradition I believe is obvious. Jesus is a Jew. His Father is Yaweh, the God of the Jews. That Christianity is influenced by philosophic traditions might be less obvious. It is most evident in the opening verse of John's gospel in which Jesus is equated with the Word (the Logos). The importance of this statement for Christianity is evidenced by a recent Pope's (I can't remember which one right now) description of Catholicism as "the religion of the Word." The Word in the Gospel has two contexts. The first is the Hebrew context of the written Word and Law of God. The second is the philosophical context that came from the Greek traditions which is closely related to the hidden order and physical law of the universe and the God of Nature (which I think is an anachronistic use of this term). Furthermore, as Christianity came to dominate The Empire, it took on much more of the ideas that existed there, much of which came from various philosophical traditions.

As for my conclusion in that essay, it was meant to comment solely on the Mormon faith and not of the Christian. I think it was understood by my co-worker to mean that I thought the Mormon faith had more potential than the Christian. That was not my intended implication.