Which god provides salvation for us?

Which god provides salvation for us?  Different people have different "gods" or deities.  Even those who claim to have no "god" have one - maybe they view themselves as "the deity" of their own world.  From there, we should recognize that outside of people who believe this life is "all there is" - we want something from our deity.  One of those things most of us want from our "god" is "salvation" - we want that "god" to save us from something. 

Which god provides salvation for us?

Maybe we want to be saved from trouble in this life, or from trouble in the next of a series of lives.  Many want to be saved from "Hell" (or whatever term their religion uses) and end up in "Heaven" / "Paradise" (or whatever term their religion uses).  Given the title of this site - Which God Saves - that's what we're going to look at here.

We should probably start with some definitions since words like God and salvation can come with some misunderstandings / preconceptions / heavy baggage.  You hopefully noticed that I've tended to put those words in quotes - as in "god" or "salvation".  That's to try to make them generic in nature.  As we move along, we'll start to use specific names to relate to specific religions - thereby removing ambiguity.

Who or what is "God"?

Let's start off with something from a secular dictionary -

God - noun

(in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe; the supreme being.

(god) a superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.
an image of a god; an idol.

(god) a greatly admired or influential person.  ¹Soanes, C., & Stevenson, A. (Eds.). (2004). Concise Oxford English dictionary (11th ed.)..

I'd like to point out that it's the dictionary that capitalizes the entry "God", and also shows anything other than a monotheistic God as being lower case.  That means this is a cultural norm, not something I've done.

BTW, they give this definition of the word monotheistic Relating to or characterized by the belief that there is only one God.  We see the importance of that definition shortly.  There are different beliefs about whether Christians (and Jews) believe in one God or multiple gods.  We'll also see that this belief comes out of a basic misunderstanding on the part of Islam.

Monotheism - One God

Before we proceed, I need to put something in here about monotheism, so we're all on the same page.

Monotheism. Belief that there is only one God. It is distinguished from polytheism, which posits the existence of more than one god; from henotheism, which worships one god without denying the existence of other gods; from atheism, which denies the existence of any god. The three great monotheistic religions of the world are, in their historic order, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  ²Elwell, W. A., & Beitzel, B. J. (1988). Monotheism. In Baker encyclopedia of the Bible (Vol. 2, p. 1484).

Note 1: If you happen to look this up, you may see an alternate term for Islam.  That term is no longer in general use and is offensive to many (all?) Muslims.  Since it's not a word that exists within the Qur'an, I have chosen to leave it out.

Note 2:  The statement of Christianity as monotheistic, because they believe in one God, is specifically mentioned in the Qur'an as being untrue.  One such instance is from Surah #4, titled An-Nisā’ (Women) -

(171) O FOLLOWERS of the Gospel! Do not overstep the bounds [of truth] in your religious beliefs, and do not say of God anything but the truth. The Christ Jesus, son of Mary, was but God’s Apostle – [the fulfillment of] His promise which He had conveyed unto Mary – and a soul created by Him. Believe, then, in God and His apostles, and do not say, “[God is] a trinity.” Desist [from this assertion] for your own good. God is but One God; utterly remote is He, in His glory, from having a son: unto Him belongs all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth; and none is as worthy of trust as God.  ³Asad, Muhammad. The Message of the Qur'an (Kindle Locations 2673-2679). The Book Foundation. Kindle Edition.

This is way beyond the scope of this article, and therefore will be addressed in other articles.  Having said that, I need to point out that both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures make it very clear that the God of the Bible is one God.

However, even American Christians don't know / believe / understand that.  A recent survey showed: