Yes I am ignoring the question ‘How do you get from a deistic god to Jesus Christ?’. The reason I ignore it is because it is a dumb question for two reasons: 1) The God revealed by natural reason is not deistic and 2) it fails to distinguish the relationship between general and special revelation.
The deist concept of God is that of a Creator that ceases to influence the world He created. The God of Classical Theism, as best presented by Aquinas, remains involved at every level of His Creation by guiding and sustaining it.
General revelation makes the presence and nature of the Divine knowable to all by means of reason applied to experience. Natural reason supports a specifically Christian god that is both One and intelligible. Polytheistic religions, like Hinduism and the Greek Pantheon, do not satisfy the former. Allah does not satisfy the second. An unintelligible god cannot be known by reason. This does not necessarily mean that the Allah is not the one true god, but only that the special revelation of Islam is not supported by rational inquiry. In other words, the existence of Allah is purely subjective whereas the Christian god is objective. Buddhism also explicitly teaches that everything is subjective, to the point that everything is an illusion. In Buddhism people gain knowledge of transcendent reality by practicing austerities and rigorous training that still only provide subjective personal experiences.
Special revelation operates by God coming to us giving us knowledge of His nature that would not otherwise be available to us. That revealed knowledge includes the advent of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, and the Apocalypse, among other things (like the writings of Swedenborg). General revelation allows people to sort through the various visions, traditions, practices, and scriptures to determine, like I do above, which of those are reasonable. The Judeo-Christian concept of God is entirely reasonable and currently the only one of which I am aware that is.
The deist concept of God is that of a Creator that ceases to influence the world He created. The God of Classical Theism, as best presented by Aquinas, remains involved at every level of His Creation by guiding and sustaining it.
General revelation makes the presence and nature of the Divine knowable to all by means of reason applied to experience. Natural reason supports a specifically Christian god that is both One and intelligible. Polytheistic religions, like Hinduism and the Greek Pantheon, do not satisfy the former. Allah does not satisfy the second. An unintelligible god cannot be known by reason. This does not necessarily mean that the Allah is not the one true god, but only that the special revelation of Islam is not supported by rational inquiry. In other words, the existence of Allah is purely subjective whereas the Christian god is objective. Buddhism also explicitly teaches that everything is subjective, to the point that everything is an illusion. In Buddhism people gain knowledge of transcendent reality by practicing austerities and rigorous training that still only provide subjective personal experiences.
Special revelation operates by God coming to us giving us knowledge of His nature that would not otherwise be available to us. That revealed knowledge includes the advent of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, and the Apocalypse, among other things (like the writings of Swedenborg). General revelation allows people to sort through the various visions, traditions, practices, and scriptures to determine, like I do above, which of those are reasonable. The Judeo-Christian concept of God is entirely reasonable and currently the only one of which I am aware that is.
