How is this not heresy?

[LilyM]

Because metaphysically they’re not the same thing just like metaphysically the supreme god of the Hindus made up of seven avatars is not the same thing.

The god of the agnostic Buddhist is not the same thing as the Triune God.

But basically because Islam is an invented religion it denies scripture, it denies Judaism, it denies the fulfillment of Judaism which is Christianity, which is the Holy Catholic Church.

Muhammad invented the religion altogether or there was a diabolical influence over him guiding him to deceive others through a false religion.

The Scriptures warns about such people and Islam came about 500 years after Christianity.

Matthew 7:15 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

2 John 7 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA)

7 For many seducers are gone out into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: this is a seducer and an antichrist.

Before that the knowledge of the true God was fractured and scattered through the fall of Babylon when men began to worship demons.

Before Babylon there was the flood and before the flood there was the fall from the Garden of Eden when men began to worship demons.

Any other religion or god is a counterfeit it does not lead to the Father through Christ and the Holy Ghost.
[/quote]

But by that logic metaphysically the God of the ancient Greeks that St Paul spoke to the Areopagus about wasn’t the same thing either. The Greeks had no concept of monotheism, Trinity or Abrahamic faith.

That didn’t prevent St Paul from including them in his community of believers, although pointing out that they were deficient in understanding of Who they were worshipping.

So was St Paul wrong or lying when he said so?

 

[Dovekin]

Marcion rejected the Trinity and was condemned and anathematized. He also wrote the “Gospel of Marcion”. There are many problems with your argument.

Marcion was condemned and anathematized because of his rejection of the God of Israel. The Trinity was not an explicit issue in his day (~160 ad). His Gospel was not as much of an issue as his attempts to define a canon without the Hebrew scriptures; substituting his Gospel for the 4 gospels seemed like a shadow of that rejection of the God of the Jews.

While you may have difficulties with this analogy, there are far more difficulties with your accusations of heresies. You rely on private interpretations of scripture that the Church has long rejected. You do not seem to know Islam well enough to characterize it correctly.

 

[catholic03]

The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, the 21st such Ecumenical Council developed our understanding of other monotheistic faiths. The declaration nostra aetate has all the theological information you need.

But essentially, let me ask you a question. Do you honestly believe that the Israelites in the Old Covenant worshipped a different God? Because by your reasoning that must be what you think.

The 21st Ecumenical Council was quite radical and reformed the Church so that it could relate to the modern world. It was the opposite of heresy.

May the Lord Jesus Christ open your heart, mind and soul to the truth of His Church and the documents of the 21st Ecumenical Council.

 

[Michael_Anthony]

I think Vatican II is saying that they believe in the God of Abraham, who we know to be Trinitarian, but in their ignorance, they do not, and so can be said to be worsiping the One True God according to their (false) understanding of him.

 

[Gab123]

It shocks me that you guys believe people can even deny Jesus and still be claiming to worship the same God as us.
How can people deny God the Son and still be worshipping the same God as us?

You have to differentiate between being aware, as opposed to not being aware. Furthermore, Scripture speaks about denying God through committing wicked deeds. Thus realize once and for all that if you were born into a Muslim family, and your mom and dad, and little sister and brothers were all raised Muslim, you would still have the same heart and mind drawn toward goodness and truth by the mere fact that all are made in the image and likeness of God, drawn to acknowledge and worship the Creator.
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Muslims worship God whom they believe is the all-powerful creator of the universe. This is certainly true. A Muslim’s sincerity cannot be faulted if they do not know the good news of the gospel and that Jesus is the savior of the world…

Thus a righteous person, be he Muslim or Christian, who raises his mind and heart to God and follows the Laws that God has written in the heart being drawing to worship God, that worship is just as sincere regardless of religion. Scripture states that God indeed hears the prayer of the righteous.

Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, not just of Christians. Thus God’s going to expect much, much more from those who were born into the faith and given all of the gifts of grace and know lofty theological definitions, than those who were simply born into the world with a heart Thus the Apostle James wrote:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”- James 1:27

A sincere righteous heart is what pleases God. Did you never understand the parable of the Good Samaritan or the story of the proud Pharisee?
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Furthermore, Scripture itself says that the way we deny God is through wicked deeds. Read carefully what Paul wrote:

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of humanity who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that humans are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened —Romans 1:18-21

 

[Gab123]

Any ecumenical overture that would even slightly compromise our sacred and non-negotiable beliefs about the Holy Trinity has gone way too far and must be condemned.

Now you’re slandering the Catholic Church. Nowhere does the Church document compromise the belief about the Holy Trinity. Furthermore, Paul explains in Scripture:

for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. But not everyone possesses this knowledge.

Paul wrote:

“We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God. -1 Cor. 8:1-3

 

[Vico]

…
Vico - I’m saying that the statement from Vatican 2 is heretical.

…

But is it not. The Creator is the Holy Trinity even though all do not know that the Creator is the Holy Trinity.

Lumen Gentium as LG shows all are called to be Catholic:

13 … “All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God. . . . And in different ways to it belong, or are related: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.”

16 … “But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims.”

Nostra Aetate

3. The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5)

(5) Cf St. Gregory VII, letter XXI to Anzir (Nacir), King of Mauritania (Pl. 148, col. 450f.)

http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_...ts/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

 

[CarmeliteKnight]

I think your concern is the same concern I had when I read that document. It is ambiguous. It can be interpreted as saying that Muslims and Jews don’t need Jesus because they also worship the same god as us, just differently.
(Which is obviously wrong and heretical).

Unfortunately many people adopt that view of Jews and Muslims.

 

[AlNg]

Vatican II wrote a heretical document and is therefore guilty of heresy.

I’m saying that the statement from Vatican 2 is heretical.

Does that mean that the Catholic church has fallen into heresy? I am sorry to hear that. I have read that there are Catholic theologians, but perhaps they are somewhat dissenting, anyway they have questioned whether or not the Church is infallible. There was a Jesuit priest at the Newman Club in Berkeley who said that the Church was composed of men who do the best they can considering the time and culture in which they find themselves. But it is not inconceivable that what they said at that time could not be changed in the light of newer knowledge. He thought that infallible was too strong a term to use.

 

[AlNg]

if they don’t have Jesus, then they don’t have the same God as us.

i have read that some Eastern Orthodox Christians say similar about Roman Catholics. If they (Roman Catholics) have the filioque, then they (Roman Catholics) don’t have the same true God as us (Eastern Orthodox). The Bible and the Eastern Orthodox Church says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.
John 15:26 Jesus says of the Holy Spirit : “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father , the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father , He will bear witness about me.”

 

[Dovekin]

I think your concern is the same concern I had when I read that document.

Why arr you approaching the teaching from an Ecumenical Council with such suspicion? I am assuming a Carmelite Knight thinks of himself as Catholic, but that does not sound like Catholic behavior.

 

[Vico]

ReaderT:

if they don’t have Jesus, then they don’t have the same God as us.

i have read that some Eastern Orthodox Christians say similar about Roman Catholics. If they (Roman Catholics) have the filioque, then they (Roman Catholics) don’t have the same true God as us (Eastern Orthodox). The Bible and the Eastern Orthodox Church says that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.
John 15:26 Jesus says of the Holy Spirit : “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father , the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father , He will bear witness about me.”

Catholic says the same. There are two ways in which the Holy Spirit is sent, one is ontological and the other is mission. As the Catechism states:

247 The affirmation of the filioque does not appear in the Creed confessed in 381 at Constantinople. But Pope St. Leo I, following an ancient Latin and Alexandrian tradition, had already confessed it dogmatically in 447,76 even before Rome, in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon, came to recognize and receive the Symbol of 381. The use of this formula in the Creed was gradually admitted into the Latin liturgy (between the eighth and eleventh centuries). The introduction of the filioque into the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed by the Latin liturgy constitutes moreover, even today, a point of disagreement with the Orthodox Churches.

248 At the outset the Eastern tradition expresses the Father’s character as first origin of the Spirit. By confessing the Spirit as he “who proceeds from the Father”, it affirms that he comes from the Father through the Son.77 The Western tradition expresses first the consubstantial communion between Father and Son, by saying that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son ( filioque ). It says this, “legitimately and with good reason”,78 for the eternal order of the divine persons in their consubstantial communion implies that the Father, as “the principle without principle”,79 is the first origin of the Spirit, but also that as Father of the only Son, he is, with the Son, the single principle from which the Holy Spirit proceeds.80 This legitimate complementarity, provided it does not become rigid, does not affect the identity of faith in the reality of the same mystery confessed.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

John 20:22 " And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit."
John 16:7 “But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
Acts 2:32-33 “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.”
John 16:13-15" But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you."
Luke 24:49 " I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Romans 8:9 “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ”
Galatians 4:6 " Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father.""

Also, pre-schism Alexandrian Father, St. Cyril:
“For, in that the Son is God, and from God according to nature (for He has had His birth from God the Father), the Spirit is both proper to Him and in Him and from Him, just as, to be sure, the same thing is understood to hold true in the case of God the Father Himself.” (Commentary on the Prophet Joel 35)

“The Spirit is assuredly in no way changeable; or even if some think Him to be so infirm as to change, the disgrace will be traced back to the divine nature itself, if in fact the Spirit is from God the Father and, for that matter, from the Son, being poured forth substantially from both, that is to say, from the Father through the Son.” [On Worship and Adoration in Spirit and Truth 1]

This all speaks in favor of Filioque, and is not only biblical but also has Church Father and a Saint, who is an expert on Christology, on it’s side. Nothing you have posted violates Filioque because Catholic Church truly does teach Holy Spirit comes from the Father. Just not father alone.

 

[OrbisNonSufficit]

Did not Church regard Arians as Christians (although heretics) and understand they adored same God we do, although in wrong way? What about Adoptionists, Sabellianists, Noetianists and Patripassianists? What about Macedonianists? I could name so many Trinitarian heresies, and yet they were perceived as teaching error about One True God. They did not have their own gods- there was no Zeus or Thor, but there was erroneous understanding of Triune God. What are Muslims different in? Especially from Arianism? Why would it be wrong to say that statement about Muslims but not about Arians?

Arians were, after all, received into First Ecumenical Council and even had valid vote as Bishops! Every Arian Bishop (present) had one valid vote in the Council, implying they were viewed as part of the Church, before Arianism was condemned heresy. How would that be possible, if they did indeed adore different God than our own? They would be nothing but pagans, and therefore would not even have Holy Orders bestowed upon them! Yet their ordinations were deemed valid, yet their sacraments were deemed valid and needed no re-baptizing if they returned to the Church.

(okay, part about sacraments being valid might be a bit confusing because Orthodox Church regards sacraments differently, yet I would say that if no re-baptizing of Arians was done, if no re-consecration of their Bishops was done, they did indeed posses “valid” sacraments even in Orthodox sense where sacraments only convey grace if one returns to True Church- which was, at the time, one we both regard as ours.)

 

[CarmeliteKnight]

“Had” being the key term in my post.

Post script: you also have to remember that the hierarchy is not immune from error. Historical cases in point , Arius and Nestorius. More recent cases in point, the German Bishops and the Pan Amazon Synod. They are humans just like you and me. It is healthy to have some skepticism.

 

[Niblo]

I believe in one God
the Father almighty
Maker of Heaven and Earth
And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord
Who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
Born of the Virgin Mary

We would affirm all that you have written in italics (although Muslims would probably avoid using the word ‘Father’ because of is trinitarian connection).

 

[Elf01]

We would affirm all that you have written in italics (although Muslims would probably avoid using the word ‘Father’ because of is trinitarian connection).

I didn’t think Muslims accepted that God could have a son.

 

[Niblo]

We don’t. I misread the word ‘Father’ in Ana-v’s post. Took it to be in italics. My bad…sorry.

We would agree with all words in italics.

 

[Genesis315]

I disagree with your interpretation. The Bible says that those who deny God the Son cannot:

• know God the Father (Matthew 11:27)
• come to God the Father (John 14:6,9)
• have God the Father (I John 2:23)

Yet somehow people here think you could not know or have (at least) 2/3rds of our God and still worship our God (!)

God is not divisible. He cannot be divided into thirds. He is perfectly simple. What can be known from reason, without believing revelation, is what belongs to this unity of essence, as St. Thomas says. Again, see the passage from St. Thomas in my first post and the distinction he makes in my most recent post for the different ways Scripture speaks of knowing God. Again, the “knowing” in the quotes you provide is analogous to the distinction in modern English between knowing someone and knowing of someone. The other quotes, again, have to do with salvation and communion with God, which is only possible through supernatural means, not natural means.

The universal Church herself, at the First Vatican Council, teaches in the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius the difference between what can be known by reason versus by faith:

First Vatican Council:

1.The perpetual agreement of the Catholic Church has maintained and maintains this too: that there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards its source, but also as regards its object.

2.With regard to the source, we know at the one level by natural reason, at the other level by divine faith.

3.With regard to the object, besides those things to which natural reason can attain, there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless they are divinely revealed, are incapable of being known.

Wherefore, when the Apostle, who witnesses that God was known to the gentiles from created things [29], comes to treat of the grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ [30], he declares: We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this. God has revealed it to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God [31]. And the Only-begotten himself, in his confession to the Father, acknowledges that the Father has hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to the little ones [32].
…
1.If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.
…
1.If anyone says that in divine revelation there are contained no true mysteries properly so-called, but that all the dogmas of the faith can be understood and demonstrated by properly trained reason from natural principles: let him be anathema.

To maintain your position, you must either fall under the first anathema above or the second anathema (by denying that the Trinity of Persons cannot be known by those without faith).

First Vatican Council | EWTN

 

[Gab123]

We don’t. I misread the word ‘Father’

As Archbishop Fulton J Sheen explained, God is Eternal; God is called “Father” because fatherhood is the principle of generation. Thus to understand the concept of the Holy Trinity the analogy put forth is one of human the intellect. Jus as your mind begets a word so too Jesus is begotten by His Father, as God the Eternal Thought Begets the Eternal Word. Instead of referring to God as the Eternal Thought, He is the Father who Eternally Begot His Son-or the Second Person of the Trinity.

In Genesis we see How God always refers to Himself as “Us” i.e., “Let us make man in our image” -Ge. 1:26, … and The Lord appearing as three angels to Abraham, etc.
The human family is a reflection of the Holy Trinity.

The proof for Christ is that He was pre-announced in the hundreds of prophecies He fulfilled, and confirmed in the countless miracles witnessed by thousands, and His glorious Resurrection from the dead, appearing and witnessed by the apostles and disciples before His ascension into heaven.

Islam is rooted in a 7th century claim of a man who said he an angel appeared to him in a cave and declared him to be a prophet. When he was rejected by both Jews and Christians, Muhammad spread his message by the sword.

Scripture itself warns to beware of Satan who can appear as an angel of light. Long before Muhamad entered that cave, Paul warned:

“even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!” - Gal. 1:8 . . .

“And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness”. 2Cor. 11:14-15