Is my time up in the Roman Catholic Church?

[WesleyF]

But your whole point is contradicted with the fact that Paul sought to convert them to Christ. If he had no problem with their belief he would have let them go, but he was merely using the example of the statue to talk about who that “unknown God” is, and that they should worship Him now.

How is my point contradicted? I said that they worship one God but they don’t know so much about him. That is what Paul tried to do. To tell them more about that same unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this (same unknown God) I proclaim to you. Tell me what “this” is referring to? And Paul never gave them the example of any statue, he only saw an altar with that inscription.

Incidentally, there is an excellent part in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho where he meets a Jew who says the exact same thing you said: the Greeks believe in the same God as the Jews. Justin, himself a Greek convert, turns that argument on its head and shows, in fact, the Greeks have only a vague concept of God, and do not believe in the true God. It was never an argument of the Church Fathers that universalism or any other version of it was valid.

Please provide the exact quote.

Actually sounds fairly accurate to Islam if you study their rules for morality and their concept of Paradise

Romans 1:22-32 condemns people for what they are doing at present, not for what they think they will do in paradise. So your assertion is not valid.

I’ve already spoken on this many times before on this forum: yes, the Jews don’t worship the same God we worship because they deny Christ who is God.

The Jews worship the same God whom people of the Old Testament worshipped. Do you claim that the God of the Old Testament is a different God than the God of the New Testament?

The Trinity is not a buffet - you can’t say, “Well I’ll pick the Father but not the Son and Holy Spirit.” Each Person within the Trinity represents the fullness of God, and They are united in Three. To deny one is to deny all. This isn’t something you can just say “so what” to, when Christ says He is the only way to the Father (John 14:6) and, as I quoted before, He will reject those who reject Him (Matthew 10:33).

He will reject those who reject him, but to reject him you should first know him. The Jews, whom Jesus Christ spoke to, knew him and then rejected him. But what about their descendants who never heard him?

I don’t know what you refer to in the restoration of Israel, unless you mean Revelation. Just remember that the Jews who see Christ will believe in Him…in other words, they’ll convert to Trinitarian thinking.

What I wanted to convey was this: based upon your assertion, the Jews don’t worship the same God that we do. That means they are pagans. Now does God keep covenant with pagans? No. Does God make promises to pagans? No. But God has made promises to the Jews and he is going to fulfill them by bringing all the Jews back in Israel and then they shall convert to Christianity. So that means God doesn’t regard them as pagans. In other words they worship him.

 

[WesleyF]

They know Jesus. Islam believes in Jesus. Many have been addressed by Christians or have heard Christian belief, and reject it. They reject the divinity of Christ, whom they do know. The Koran has many references to Jesus, so I find it a tad bit confusing as to how they don’t know someone that’s in their religion, including their Koran.

The Islamic Jesus is not a true Jesus. He is a false version of Jesus. So they are not rejecting Jesus, they are rejecting a false version of him. Those who have been addressed by Christians and known the true Jesus are very few indeed. Majority of Islam does not know the true Jesus, and therefore it cannot reject him.

These are false ideas they staunchly believe in. Arius, Nestorius, and many other heretics believed in the Abrahamic God and had false ideas about them, nevertheless they were condemned. No one ever tried to shrug it off with, “Well, they believe in Abraham so there.”

Please don’t confuse heresy with the worship of a different God. Martin Luther was a heretic. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t worship the same God as we do.

No, **they worship the One God **of Abraham that Mohammad taught them falsely, in the same manner that Mormons believe in a false concept of God that Joseph Smith taught them. As GraceDK pointed out, this “God” of Muslims was the one who delivered the Koran to Mohammad through an “angel,” a gospel that contradicts what the apostles taught. Paul warned about such “angels of light.”

You are actually affirming my position here. You’re right, they worship the One God of Abraham, but have false ideas about him.

Also, to argue that Abraham didn’t worship the same God is, ironically, the same argument Muslims use to try to critique Christianity

I never argued that Abraham worshipped a different God. I believe that Abraham worshipped the same God that we worship whom we worshipped. Please read my statements carefully.

The Trinity was not revealed yet at the time, therefore it is irrelevant to Abraham’s time. **Nevertheless, the Trinitarian God is the same God who spoke to Abraham, who helped the prophets, and brought about the new covenant. **

Exactly the point that I am making. Whether a person knows about God’s trinitarian nature or not, he is still worshipping the same God.

Yes, the new covenant. The one specifically said by God to not be the same one given to the Jews in the desert (Jer 31:31-34). Christ is the Mediator of this new covenant between God and mankind (1 Tim 2:5; Heb 12:24). Only through Him is salvation reached. Mere lip service does nothing. This is something attested both in scripture and by the Church Fathers.

But scripture itself allows for the possibility of salvation for those who through no fault of their own don’t know Christ (Romans 2:14-16).

The fact is that Mohammad taught a heresy, one in line with Nestorianism, Manichaeanism, and Ebionism, and their beliefs were condemned by those Church Fathers who knew it (such as Saint John Damascene). Therefore, we cannot sincerely believe they worship the same God and shrug it off at that.

I have already addressed this. Martin Luther also taught heresy. Doesn’t mean that he worshipped a different God.

And you haven’t responded to what I said in my first post about Cornelius. (Acts 10:1-2) He was certainly not believing in a trinitarian God, but still God answered his prayer, which implies that he did in fact worship the same God that we worship. This caused Peter to remark, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but **in every nation **any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34-35) Peter said, “in every nation”. How many of the hundreds of nations on the earth knew the God of the Jews? Hardly any. Yet God accepts those who fear him (one God). Now that’s scriptural proof for you.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Do you think that the priest was preaching from the Koran as one would from the bible, because he thinks that the God of the Koran is the same God?

If that’s what you think, there’s hope: it’s just a big misunderstanding on your part.

 

[losh14]

Dear sisters and brothers.
I’m sorry if I write this in a state of emotion but it has been a long time coming.

And you have every reason to be upset.

We can, legitimately, talk about similarities between us and other followers of the God of Abraham. We can say, with the proper caveat, that we worship the same God only in as much as:

1. There is only one God.
2. We have the proper view of God as Divine Trinity
3. Jews and Muslims have an incomplete view of God as being the Father only, or as Allah. Likewise, non-Trinitarian faiths who do not recognize the divinity of Christ or of the Holy Spirit have an incomplete view of God. They worship the image, the shadow, of the reality.
4. As such, worship of Allah to those who know the Trinity is sinful, errant and futile.

Let’s take it farther - consider Semitic worship of Baal or Moloch. These do not exist. They were conceived as deities distinct from the Divine Trinity, whom the Jews worshipped in the person of the Father, and so their worship is of a non-existent deity.

However, Muslims and Jews have been given some Divine Revelation - Jews through Abraham, the Law and the Prophets. Muslims, by poor example from Muhammed, who studied and admired Christianity and Judaism but still managed to contort the message. They have part of the truth, enough to recognize the Divinity of the Father. But they do not have sufficient truth to recognize the wholeness of God.

As such, we can call them (Jews and Muslims) fellow spiritual heirs of Abraham. We cannot hold against them what has not been revealed to them - and in the case of Islam, it is the shortcomings of Muhammed who came as a prophet but somehow came up with a deeply errant view of God.

We cannot and should not, and in fact, must not, allow ourselves to perceive of God in the same way that Jews and Muslims do. God has fulfilled His revelation through the His Son, through the Apostles, and through His Church. We have therefore been given the fullness of the deposit of faith and we must not say that only part of it is sufficient for us. We have been given the full meal of faith, while Muslims have been given a snack. If we go back to solely snacking, the Body will starve.

As such, you have every right to be upset with your priest whose liberalism is such that he will not take the Church’s perspective.

To be honest, many of us who are Catholic are even more worried about the state of the Church in Europe than in America. The mindset here is of individualism - “I can decide what the Bible says” and many are led into evangelical “me-oriented” Christianity. The mindset there seems to be one of relativism - “Who am I to defend my own faith?” which leads one to universalism or, worse, agnosticism.

While there is poor catechesis, I fear a momentum towards universalism that cheapens faith and denies truth.

Keep writing your letters and I ask you to remain in the Church as a steadfast exhorter to holiness. It is good to avoid sectarian strife, but never at the cost of diluting the truth. We should not be shamed because others do not embrace our faith - if they do it through ignorance and we cannot reach them, we commend them to the Lord’s mercy. If they do it through stubbornness, we know of the Lord’s judgement.

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

How is my point contradicted? I said that they worship one God but they don’t know so much about him. That is what Paul tried to do. To tell them more about that same unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this (same unknown God) I proclaim to you. Tell me what “this” is referring to? And Paul never gave them the example of any statue, he only saw an altar with that inscription.

The point is contradicted because Paul sought to convert them, because he identified that though they believed in a vague concept known as “God,” they still did not worship the true God. As you said, he tried to tell them about it. Why? Because they were wrong. Likewise, Muslims are wrong because they do not worship the correct God.

Please provide the exact quote.

Not a problem.

Then he told me frankly both his name and his family. “Trypho,” says he, “I am called; and I am a Hebrew of the circumcision and having escaped from the war lately carried on there, I am spending my days in Greece, and chiefly at Corinth.”

“And in what,” said I, “would you be profited by philosophy so much as by your own lawgiver and the prophets?”

“Why not?” he replied. “Do not the philosophers turn every discourse on God? and do not questions continually arise to them about His unity and providence? Is not this truly the duty of philosophy, to investigate the Deity?”

“Assuredly,” said I, “so we too have believed. But the most have not taken thought of this whether there be one or more gods, and whether they have a regard for each one of us or no, as if this knowledge contributed nothing to our happiness; nay, they moreover attempt to persuade us that God takes care of the universe with its genera and species, but not of me and you, and each individually, since otherwise we would surely not need to pray to Him night and day. But it is not difficult to understand the upshot of this for fearlessness and license in speaking result to such as maintain these opinions, doing and saying whatever they choose, neither dreading punishment nor hoping for any benefit from God. For how could they? They affirm that the same things shall always happen; and, further, that I and you shall again live in like manner, having become neither better men nor worse. But there are some others, who, having supposed the soul to be immortal and immaterial, believe that though they have committed evil they will not suffer punishment (for that which is immaterial is insensible), and that the soul, in consequence, of its immortality, needs nothing from God."

Romans 1:22-32 condemns people for what they are doing at present, not for what they think they will do in paradise. So your assertion is not valid.

With all due respect, that’s a rather humorous exegesis. Are you suggesting Paul would’ve been OK with those actions if the people did it a year later? Or if they did it the next day? Or if they perhaps sincerely believed paradise would be like that? No, he identified them as evils for today, now and always. These were teachings coming from God. Because you ignore this, you also ignore a much larger problem: if the God of the Muslims promises the Muslims a Paradise that pleases the flesh rather than a paradise that pleases the soul, then it cannot be the same God as the God of the Christians. Jesus never promised voluptuous women to please men in heaven, nor did He ever promise wine.

Likewise, you avoid the one other point I made, which was that there are many conflicting moral beliefs in Islam that are found in the very teachings involving the here and now, not just in the predictions of paradise.

The Jews worship the same God whom people of the Old Testament worshipped. Do you claim that the God of the Old Testament is a different God than the God of the New Testament?

The God of the Old Testament revealed His Trinitarian Being in the New Testament. The Jews of today (not the Old Testament) deny the Trinity. Therefore, they deny God. As I said, the Trinity is not a buffet where you can pick and choose who to worship.

He will reject those who reject him, but to reject him you should first know him. The Jews, whom Jesus Christ spoke to, knew him and then rejected him. But what about their descendants who never heard him?

God is the final judge in this manner. But the discussion is not the Jews, but the Muslims, who do know Jesus, and who reject His divinity.

What I wanted to convey was this: based upon your assertion, the Jews don’t worship the same God that we do. That means they are pagans.

Logical fallacy: false dilemma. I never said they were pagans, and as heresies past have shown it is possible to be a heretic without believing in pagan beliefs. Arius and Nestorius were not pagans, nevertheless they were still wrong.

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

The Islamic Jesus is not a true Jesus. He is a false version of Jesus. So they are not rejecting Jesus, they are rejecting a false version of him.

That is incorrect. Christians reject a false version of Him - Muslims embrace a false version of Him. They believe what their religion teaches them about Christ not dying on the cross and not being Deity.

Please don’t confuse heresy with the worship of a different God. Martin Luther was a heretic. It doesn’t mean that he didn’t worship the same God as we do.

Martin Luther believed in the Trinity. His disagreements with the Roman Catholic Church aside, he understood his Christology. Therefore bringing him up is irrelevant to the case.

Islam, on the other hand, is very close to the Nestorian belief on Christ. Many parts of the Koran come straight from Gnostic and Infancy texts considered heretical writings from Church Fathers on to today. I am not confusing heresy with worship of a different God - Islam confuses heresy as worship of God.

Nevertheless, the God that Arius and many others believed in was not the God of Christianity, but a god in their own mind. So the same can be said for Islam, which rejects the Christian concept of a Trinitarian God and believes what one man told them.

You are actually affirming my position here. You’re right, they worship the One God of Abraham, but have false ideas about him.

No, they worship Him as Mohammad told them. Mohammad taught them a heresy. This means they believe in a heresy. This means they do not believe in the same God as the Christians.

I reiterate: God is a Trinity. If you deny the Trinity, you deny God.

I never argued that Abraham worshipped a different God. I believe that Abraham worshipped the same God that we worship whom we worshipped. Please read my statements carefully.

Read my statements carefully as well. I was arguing that to argue the Jews worship the same God because they didn’t believe in the Trinity is similar to what Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other heretics argue by asking if any of the ancient Jews were Trinitarians (some even demand to see the word “Trinity” in the Bible).

Exactly the point that I am making. Whether a person knows about God’s trinitarian nature or not, he is still worshipping the same God.

That is contradictory to what both scripture and Church Tradition teaches. As I said before, Christ is the fullness of God. This has been sound orthodox doctrine for 2000 years. Only recently has universalism and what I call semi-Marcionism crept into some Christian beliefs, and I’m saddened to see it so prevalent here.

To deny Christ is to deny the fullness of God. Ergo, you reject God, and do not believe in the Christian God.

But scripture itself allows for the possibility of salvation for those who through no fault of their own don’t know Christ (Romans 2:14-16).

Paul is speaking of Jews and Gentiles, and attacking Jews who believe they have the Law, when in fact Gentiles have the Law in their hearts.

I have already addressed this. Martin Luther also taught heresy. Doesn’t mean that he worshipped a different God.

And I already answered that Luther was a Trinitarian and therefore irrelevant to this discussion

And you haven’t responded to what I said in my first post about Cornelius. (Acts 10:1-2) He was certainly not believing in a trinitarian God, but still God answered his prayer, which implies that he did in fact worship the same God that we worship. This caused Peter to remark, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but **in every nation **any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” (Acts 10:34-35) Peter said, “in every nation”. How many of the hundreds of nations on the earth knew the God of the Jews? Hardly any. Yet God accepts those who fear him (one God). Now that’s scriptural proof for you.

You are distorting the text. What happens to Cornelius at the end of that story? He converts to Christianity. He had a longing for the true God, yes, and God answered it, and was embraced into the Church. The role of “partiality” is in fact referring to the fact that God is no longer discerning between Jews and Gentiles - that is the full context of that story. Remember that before Peter was granted a vision of animals and told that what God has made holy should no longer be considered unclean. That’s not scriptural proof. In fact, with all due respect, it sounds more like an Emergent Church leader than a Roman Catholic.

They do not worship the one God, because our one God is not just One Being and One Person, but One Being through Three Persons. To deny any Person is to deny the whole Being. That, as I said, is consistent with scriptural, patristic and traditional church thought. Learned saints such as Saint John Damascene did not consider Islams to be worshiping the same God, why then should we consider them so? Likewise, why should we reject the fruit of Christ’s work on the cross? To suggest that one can believe in Jesus and deny He died on the cross (as Muslims do) still leads to salvation is heresy, for as Paul said if Christ did not die on the cross he preaches in vain.

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

We cannot and should not, and in fact, must not, allow ourselves to perceive of God in the same way that Jews and Muslims do. God has fulfilled His revelation through the His Son, through the Apostles, and through His Church. We have therefore been given the fullness of the deposit of faith and we must not say that only part of it is sufficient for us. We have been given the full meal of faith, while Muslims have been given a snack. If we go back to solely snacking, the Body will starve.

As such, you have every right to be upset with your priest whose liberalism is such that he will not take the Church’s perspective.

 

[Qoheleth]

I am deeply sad and confused… do I have a future as a Catholic or do I seek to reconcile with the apparent fact that no one church has the full truth?

:´-( Grace

Hello Grace I know how you feel, I felt that way at one time about the Church . I heard a story that helped me put it in perspective. Maybe it will do the same for you. It went something like this.

Napolian once confronted a Catholic Priest and said that he would destroy the Catholic Church. The Priest just laughed at him and said we have been trying to do that for a thousand years.

Made me realize the truth when he said that. It seems our Lord Jesus made a promise a few years back and said that “The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church”.

At another time he had a parable for us. It is Matt. 13: vs 24-30
Check it out:thumbsup:

 

[WesleyF]

The point is contradicted because Paul sought to convert them, because he identified that though they believed in a vague concept known as “God,” they still did not worship the true God.

Paul never said they didn’t worship the true God. I quote again, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you”. You are yet to respond as to what Paul means by “this” in the above statement. To me the verse makes very clear that Paul affrimed that they were indeed worshipping the one God. Paul sought to convert them in order to bring them to the fullness of the truth about this God. Although they worshipped the one true God, they hardly knew anything about him. That does not mean that they were worshipping another God.

As you said, he tried to tell them about it. Why? Because they were wrong. Likewise, Muslims are wrong because they do not worship the correct God.

Refer to my above comment.

Then he told me frankly both his name and his family. “Trypho,” says he, “I am called; and I am a Hebrew of the circumcision and having escaped from the war lately carried on there, I am spending my days in Greece, and chiefly at Corinth.”

“And in what,” said I, “would you be profited by philosophy so much as by your own lawgiver and the prophets?”

“Why not?” he replied. “Do not the philosophers turn every discourse on God? and do not questions continually arise to them about His unity and providence? Is not this truly the duty of philosophy, to investigate the Deity?”

“Assuredly,” said I, “so we too have believed. But the most have not taken thought of this whether there be one or more gods, and whether they have a regard for each one of us or no, as if this knowledge contributed nothing to our happiness; nay, they moreover attempt to persuade us that God takes care of the universe with its genera and species, but not of me and you, and each individually, since otherwise we would surely not need to pray to Him night and day. But it is not difficult to understand the upshot of this for fearlessness and license in speaking result to such as maintain these opinions, doing and saying whatever they choose, neither dreading punishment nor hoping for any benefit from God. For how could they? They affirm that the same things shall always happen; and, further, that I and you shall again live in like manner, having become neither better men nor worse. But there are some others, who, having supposed the soul to be immortal and immaterial, believe that though they have committed evil they will not suffer punishment (for that which is immaterial is insensible), and that the soul, in consequence, of its immortality, needs nothing from God."

Now tell me what in this conversation supports your earlier statement- “Justin, himself a Greek convert, turns that argument on its head and shows, in fact, the Greeks have only a vague concept of God, and do not believe in the true God.”

 

[WesleyF]

With all due respect, that’s a rather humorous exegesis. Are you suggesting Paul would’ve been OK with those actions if the people did it a year later? Or if they did it the next day? Or if they perhaps sincerely believed paradise would be like that? No, he identified them as evils for today, now and always.

But again, that is not something that they are doing (and neither will they do it, because Paradise is not like that). Paul condemned those people for what they were doing, or will do, as you said. In fact, I need not even talk about what they think they will do in Paradise. Take a look at some of the points which Paul mentions:

1. exchanged the glory of God for images (23)
2. served the creature rather than the creator (25)
3. homosexual relationships (27)
4. did not acknowledge God (28)
5. filled with every kind of wickedness (29)

Can you tell me which of the above points refer to Muslims either here or in their version of Paradise? You accuse me of picking and choosing Paul’s teachings, and what are you yourself doing?

These were teachings coming from God. Because you ignore this, you also ignore a much larger problem: if the God of the Muslims promises the Muslims a Paradise that pleases the flesh rather than a paradise that pleases the soul, then it cannot be the same God as the God of the Christians. Jesus never promised voluptuous women to please men in heaven, nor did He ever promise wine.

Were the teachings coming from God, or were they coming from a deceitful man who claimed they came from God. It is not the God of Muslims who promised such a paradise, rather it was Mohammad who claimed that the one God made such a promise. Makes a whole lot of difference.

 

[WesleyF]

Likewise, you avoid the one other point I made, which was that there are many conflicting moral beliefs in Islam that are found in the very teachings involving the here and now, not just in the predictions of paradise.

There may be conflicting moral beliefs in Islam. But they didn’t come from their God, they came from a man who claimed that they came from God.

The God of the Old Testament revealed His Trinitarian Being in the New Testament. The Jews of today (not the Old Testament) deny the Trinity. Therefore, they deny God. As I said, the Trinity is not a buffet where you can pick and choose who to worship.

Logical fallacy: false dilemma. I never said they were pagans, and as heresies past have shown it is possible to be a heretic without believing in pagan beliefs. Arius and Nestorius were not pagans, nevertheless they were still wrong.

You never said they were pagans, and I never said that you said they were pagans. But that is the** implication **of your statement. You state that the Jews deny the Trinity and since they deny the Trinity, they don’t worship the same God. So that means they are worshipping a different God. So they are worshippers of another God, the other name for such people is pagans.

You have also not responded to the point I made in regard to the promises made by God to the Jews. Do you not know that God is going to bring all the Jews back to Israel and restore them and then pour out his spirit upon them? If the Jews deny God and worship another God, then our God will certainly not keep this promise with them, will he?

God is the final judge in this manner. But the discussion is not the Jews, but the Muslims, who do know Jesus, and who reject His divinity.

The Jews are a very important part in this discussion. Because the Jews also reject the divinity of Christ. The truth is that todays Muslims and Jews do not know the real Jesus. If you claim Muslims don’t worship the one true God, then logically, the Jews also don’t worship the one true God, and therefore, God cannot restore them back to Israel.

 

[WesleyF]

Muslims embrace a false version of Him. They believe **what their **religion teaches them about Christ not dying on the cross and not being Deity.

And their religion teaches a different Christ. Does it not? In order to reject the real Christ, you must first know the true Christ. Embracing that false version of Christ, doesn’t mean rejection of the true version of Christ, because they have never known the true version of Christ.

Islam, on the other hand, is very close to the Nestorian belief on Christ. Many parts of the Koran come straight from Gnostic and Infancy texts considered heretical writings from Church Fathers on to today. I am not confusing heresy with worship of a different God - Islam confuses heresy as worship of God.
Nevertheless, the God that Arius and many others believed in was not the God of Christianity, but a god in their own mind. So the same can be said for Islam, which rejects the Christian concept of a Trinitarian God and believes what one man told them.
No, they worship Him as Mohammad told them. Mohammad taught them a heresy. This means they believe in a heresy. This means they do not believe in the same God as the Christians.

And I reply back again in the same way I replied before, they had a false idea about God.

I reiterate: God is a Trinity. If you deny the Trinity, you deny God.

To deny Christ is to deny the fullness of God. Ergo, you reject God, and do not believe in the Christian God.

To which, I once again direct you my earlier point about the promises of God to the Jews.

 

[WesleyF]

That is contradictory to what both scripture and Church Tradition teaches. As I said before, Christ is the fullness of God.

Not contradictory at all, I showed you a direct, scriptural quote from St. Paul and also from St. Peter.

You are distorting the text. What happens to Cornelius at the end of that story? He converts to Christianity. He had a longing for the true God, yes, and God answered it, and was embraced into the Church.

Oh, I am distorting the text huh? Can you tell me which text I have distorted? My specific point is that Cornelius was worshipping the same God whom we worship (Acts 10:2). If he was worshipping a different God, then you have to conclude that the angel that was sent to him was from a false God and therefore a demon. The reason he converted is not because he was worshipping a different God, but rather because he came to know the fullness of the truth about that God.

The role of “partiality” is in fact referring to the fact that God is no longer discerning between Jews and Gentiles - that is the full context of that story.

But you cannot ignore what Peter said in the next verse “in **every nation **any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him”. How can people of other nations fear him if they don’t know him? Can you answer this question. If they are worshipping a different God, then they fear a different God, not our God. If you can answer this question, please do.

They do not worship the one God, because our one God is not just One Being and One Person, but One Being through Three Persons. To deny any Person is to deny the whole Being. That, as I said, is consistent with scriptural, patristic and traditional church thought. Learned saints such as Saint John Damascene did not consider Islams to be worshiping the same God, why then should we consider them so? Likewise, why should we reject the fruit of Christ’s work on the cross? To suggest that one can believe in Jesus and deny He died on the cross (as Muslims do) still leads to salvation is heresy, for as Paul said if Christ did not die on the cross he preaches in vain.

Please show me what St. John Damascene had to say. We should also not forget what our learned saints Paul and Peter had to say! His words should be consistent with the words of Peter and Paul.

 

[WesleyF]

The Muslims deliberately and consciously worship the god that authored the Koran, the spirit that came to Muhammad. This spirit - unless you believe it was a manifestation of mental instability only - is someone else than who authored Christian revelation.

Your second statement contains the answer to implied question in the first one. Can it be proved that a spirit came to Mohammad? It cannot. It seems to me that the Quran is the work of Mohammad himself. Mohammad was a clever fellow. He twisted laws to suit him and his cravings. It could well be that he made up this story that a spirit came to him.

How do we know? - because he identifies himself differently. He says he has no son, that Christians are cursed, that Muhammad is the true prophet.

I could say that Mohammad says that his God identifies himself differently. What Mohammad did in fact claim is that there is one God, but he cleverly borrowed from Christian heresies, and projected distorted ideas about this one God.

Now if the devil was the author of the Quran, then you could expect him to be a bit more accurate! If I am not mistaken, the Quran confuses Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, with Miriam the sister of Moses. The Quran identifies Mary as the sister of Aaron, the daughter of Imran, whose mother was the wife of Imran! Now I don’t think the devil is as stupid as that, do you?

So the logical conclusion is that the Quran is the product of Mohammad’s own mind and no spirit came and spoke to him.

 

[WesleyF]

What I wrote, I wrote for the sake of my brothers ans sisters here.
The word Christian is much more dear to me that the word Catholic, or for that matter: Orthodox, Evangelical, Messianic. Protestant, although all these are wonderful to me provided there is a heart inside of the person that beats for Jesus.
If I write Christian here, it would be difficult immediately to know in what tradition I live. Not all Christians are Catholics, as you know.
Futhermore I wished to protest the misconception of some people who don’t realise that Catholicism is Christianity. By writing I am a Christian Catholic I make it clear that this is not a contradiction.

Due to our divisions in the Body of Christ, we have brought all these troubles on our selves. There is always some one ready to accuse us.

Grace, Christian Catholic doesn’t make sense. It implies that somebody could be an “unChristian” Catholic! You should use Catholic Christian or Christian (Catholic).

And I don’t think your time is up in the Roman Catholic Church! Have faith!

 

[GraceDK]

Your second statement contains the answer to implied question in the first one. Can it be proved that a spirit came to Mohammad? It cannot. It seems to me that the Quran is the work of Mohammad himself. Mohammad was a clever fellow. He twisted laws to suit him and his cravings. It could well be that he made up this story that a spirit came to him.

I could say that Mohammad says that his God identifies himself differently. What Mohammad did in fact claim is that there is one God, but he cleverly borrowed from Christian heresies, and projected distorted ideas about this one God.

Now if the devil was the author of the Quran, then you could expect him to be a bit more accurate! If I am not mistaken, the Quran confuses Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, with Miriam the sister of Moses. The Quran identifies Mary as the sister of Aaron, the daughter of Imran, whose mother was the wife of Imran! Now I don’t think the devil is as stupid as that, do you?

So the logical conclusion is that the Quran is the product of Mohammad’s own mind and no spirit came and spoke to him.

Whether you believe it was a spirit from inside of Muhammad or a spirit from the outside, it does not change my conclusion.
We cannot call it “the unknown god” of the athens like some have attempted.

In Islam there is a deity that is defined and worshipped. There is no difference between this and other kinds of idolatry. Monotheism is not the only trait of Gods character, so monotheism and the true spirit dont always go together.

To me it seems that you and everyone else is either not understanding my reasoning (maybe its only my own friends and family that it makes sense to, especially those who are free to use their reason to reach another conclusion than that of Nostra Aetate.) or that you avoid it.

Do I think satan is smart? Sure I do, but he does not need to make a perfect revelation… I am not sure he could actually. As you see he outsmarts millions of people on our planet, taking them away from Christ, through the religion of Islam… so your joke is no joke. And here you have then the Catholic Church saying we worship the same god as the one who is represented to us by Muhammad… how ever can anyone reach that conclusion.

I have a feeling that almost everyone would change their mind immediately if they felt they were allowed to. Some
have asked me to simply obey. Obey the Church even if its teachings in some document are nonsense. No, I certainly have to stand face to face with God one day. I cannot hide and say: "but but but… the church said… "

I have been told I am tempted. Was I also tempted when I left my original church? should I have also obeyed back then and stayed put in Lutheranism. I will never ever stop using my brain whether I think I found the most perfect faith-institution or teacher in the world.

You may worship the Koranic god but I do not.

 

[GraceDK]

Grace, Christian Catholic doesn’t make sense. It implies that somebody could be an “unChristian” Catholic! You should use Catholic Christian or Christian (Catholic).

And I don’t think your time is up in the Roman Catholic Church! Have faith!

actually you can be an unchristian catholic… hehe… as far as I am told, you become Catholic the day you are baptised. Hitler was baptised… so some catholics say he was a catholic. i’d still maintain he was no christian… I’d also say he was no catholic, but I am not allowed. I have been disciplined in that matter and i dont make the rules for the catholic church or for fellow catholics. Only for my self. I dont take words lightly.

Someone here called herself “Bible believing catholic”. I think thats nonsense, but taken the fact that some socalled Catholics dont know the Bible from the Koran I think its okay. Also it was clearly a polemical tool to make fun of those who say Catholics dont believe in the Bible. Also some say a Catholic is not a real Christian.

If people meant what they said when they said something we would not need clarifying discussions. Neither would we need to have this absurd conversation about the Koranic god.

If I came and told you: “I am the only god and creator”, will you say to the people that choose to worship me: “hey we all worship the same god because you are monotheists too”.
I hope not.

 

[myfavoritmartin]

How can they know the Father if they know not the Son?

Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.

 

[mikeledes]

Whether you believe it was a spirit from inside of Muhammad or a spirit from the outside, it does not change my conclusion.
We cannot call it “the unknown god” of the athens like some have attempted.

In Islam there is a deity that is defined and worshipped. There is no difference between this and other kinds of idolatry. Monotheism is not the only trait of Gods character, so monotheism and the true spirit dont always go together.

To me it seems that you and everyone else is either not understanding my reasoning (maybe its only my own friends and family that it makes sense to, especially those who are free to use their reason to reach another conclusion than that of Nostra Aetate.) or that you avoid it.

Do I think satan is smart? Sure I do, but he does not need to make a perfect revelation… I am not sure he could actually. As you see he outsmarts millions of people on our planet, taking them away from Christ, through the religion of Islam… so your joke is no joke. And here you have then the Catholic Church saying we worship the same god as the one who is represented to us by Muhammad… how ever can anyone reach that conclusion.

I have a feeling that almost everyone would change their mind immediately if they felt they were allowed to. Some
have asked me to simply obey. Obey the Church even if its teachings in some document are nonsense. No, I certainly have to stand face to face with God one day. I cannot hide and say: "but but but… the church said… "

I have been told I am tempted. Was I also tempted when I left my original church? should I have also obeyed back then and stayed put in Lutheranism. I will never ever stop using my brain whether I think I found the most perfect faith-institution or teacher in the world.

You may worship the Koranic god but I do not.

Do you believe the Jews worship the same God as Christians?

God Bless,
Michael

 

[GraceDK]

Do you believe the Jews worship the same God as Christians?

God Bless,
Michael

No doubt about it.
If you have studied my reasoning you know how it goes.
God is Spirit and Author of Revelation.
We are called to discern the spirits.
Jews worship the God who revealed himself in the pillar of fire and the cloud, He is the God that walked with the chosen people in Sinai, anointed OT-kings, dwelt in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem and who inspired the Old Testament. This is the Spirit that Jews call upon and worship. They are not rejected as the first covenant people. if they were and remained idolaters God would not have had a everlasting covenant with them in the first place.
Here we can say they don’t have the full picture. But they have not distorted the picture of God and made it into someone else like Muhammad did.
If we say the Jews dont worship the same God as we do, then we have to say that Jesus of Nazareth did not worship the True God either, and that would be nonsense. He was among brothers and part of the house of Israel.