The Bible

According t the Old Testament, human beings have a special place in God's creation, but still are made of dust.  "You are dust," God tells Adam, "and to dust you shall return."  There is not much promise of life after death here.  The New Testament, though, contrasts "the spirit" with "the flesh" and this has traditionally been interpreted as referring to something like Plato's dualism about mind/soul and body.

The basic belief of all Jews, Christians, and Muslims is that there is only one God.  God is our ruler and punisher, but also our only hope.  He is thought to be both immanent (present everywhere at all times) and transcendent (beyond space and time).  The existence of a transcendent being can be neither proved nor disproved by science.

God is the creator and sustainer of the world.  Nothing happens without being caused or at least allowed to happen by Him.  He is personal, loving, judging, and redeeming.  Belief in God is thus not merely a matter of accepting a certain hypothesis about the origin of the world.  Belief in God involves viewing the world as fundamentally just.  This raises the problem of evil: why do evil or bad things happen at all if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good?

One answer, suggested by the story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis, is that we are all subject to temptation and free to sin.  Sin, and God's punishment of human sinfulness, is then the source of all suffering in the world.  The solution would be for all sin to stop, but this is unlikely to happen without divine intervention.  Ultimate salvation requires the coming of a Messiah.  Jews believe the Messiah has yet to come.  Christians believe that that is who Jesus was.

The central Christian belief is that God became a man--Jesus--and that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus restored humanity to a right relationship with God.  This belief has raised several questions:  How can God be three persons at the same time (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?); What are the 'mechanics' of salvation? (why and how does God becoming a man, etc. save our souls?); What form does our eventual resurrection take (bodily, disembodied, perfected, other?)?; Is God's grace given unearned or do good works play some role in our salvation?

The Jewish ethics of the Old Testament are based primarily on the Ten Commandments but also include practical laws for living in a society and emphasize compassion for minorities and the oppressed.  Christian ethics are basically the same, but are often taken to be less rigidly rule-oriented.  They are based on Old Testament teachings, the sayings of Jesus, and the writings of other early leaders of the Church, such as St Paul.