Palestinian Christians practice neo-marcionism?

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Are the Arab Christians in Judea and Samaria opening themselves to the heresy of Marcion? Marcionism believes that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the actions of the God of the Old Testament.

According to Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, former Canon of St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem
“The Old Testament’s teachings are seen by most Palestinians as referring to the Jewish people, their first-born status as the chosen people, and their prophesied return to the land. Since most Palestinian Christians cannot accept these biblical facts and teachings, a radical new way of interpreting the Bible must be found
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. As Ateek says, “The fundamental question of many [Palestinian] Christians, whether uttered or not, is: How can the Old Testament be the Word of God in light of the Palestinian Christians’ experience with its use to support Zionism?” (pp. 77-78, JAOJ)

Read The Latest Weapon Against Israel: Palestinian Christianity

These statements from an Anglican reverent indicate a sense of national or ethnic belonging that supersedes Christian fellowship. Although they might sound at home in a nationalist Church, they do not fit comfortably in a faith that is deeply rooted into Judeo-Christian beliefs.

I’m really wondering, is Palestinian sovereignty really more important to these Christians to which they are willing to change God’s word in order for it to go well with their political agenda?
 
trdchubi said:
Are the Arab Christians in Judea and Samaria opening themselves to the heresy of Marcion? Marcionism believes that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the actions of the God of the Old Testament.

According to Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, former Canon of St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem

Read The Latest Weapon Against Israel: Palestinian Christianity

These statements from an Anglican reverent indicate a sense of national or ethnic belonging that supersedes Christian fellowship. Although they might sound at home in a nationalist Church, they do not fit comfortably in a faith that is deeply rooted into Judeo-Christian beliefs.

I’m really wondering, is Palestinian sovereignty really more important to these Christians to which they are willing to change God’s word in order for it to go well with their political agenda?
Click to expand...
That article is a bunch of baloney. The patristic understanding of God’s promises to Abraham and Israel was always that the Christians are the new Israel, and that God has no further plan for those who reject His Christ but are of the Law, because in Christ, the Law, prophets, and the Old Covenant have been fulfilled. The Palestinian Christians the author is so savagely attacking are Orthodox Christians who have had this understanding of the Scriptures long before the state of Israel every came to be.
 
Furthermore, these folks need just to pick up their bibles and read some Paul:

[BIBLEDRB]Galatians 3[/BIBLEDRB]
 
“Weapon against Israel”? Why can’t people who don’t know what they’re talking about just leave the Palestinian Christians alone. They’re already viewed with suspicion in their own homeland by the Muslim majority, and now they’re castigated for not supporting the forces on the other side of the conflict that have driven so many off the land and out of the region because of modern Christian Zionist (WRONG) readings of scripture? Sick. The writer of that article should be ashamed.
 
dzheremi said:
“Weapon against Israel”? Why can’t people who don’t know what they’re talking about just leave the Palestinian Christians alone. They’re already viewed with suspicion in their own homeland by the Muslim majority, and now they’re castigated for not supporting the forces on the other side of the conflict that have driven so many off the land and out of the region because of modern Christian Zionist (WRONG) readings of scripture? Sick. The writer of that article should be ashamed.
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One of the more memorable experiences that one of my priests had from a trip he took to Jerusalem was that he was asked by some native Arabic-speaking Palestinian Christians, “why do many American Christians support the Israelis who persecute us?” Honestly, outside of humanitarian concerns (that the dissolution of Israel would cause disastrous bloodshed in the region), I don’t think that Christians have any business supporting the state of Israel because of any religious convictions.
 
I agree, Cavaradossi. I have friends from Palestine, both Christian and non, and they do not understand the Evangelical support of Israel either. I don’t know what to tell them, because I don’t understand it, either.
 
Cavaradossi said:
That article is a bunch of baloney. The patristic understanding of God’s promises to Abraham and Israel was always that the Christians are the new Israel, and that God has no further plan for those who reject His Christ but are of the Law, because in Christ, the Law, prophets, and the Old Covenant have been fulfilled. The Palestinian Christians the author is so savagely attacking are Orthodox Christians who have had this understanding of the Scriptures long before the state of Israel every came to be.
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👍
 
Lmao this thread backfired so fast.

Also, true Christians don’t support the Jews nor their Zionist state.
Just ask John Chrysostom 😉
 
trdchubi said:
Are the Arab Christians in Judea and Samaria opening themselves to the heresy of Marcion? Marcionism believes that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the actions of the God of the Old Testament.

According to Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, former Canon of St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem

Read The Latest Weapon Against Israel: Palestinian Christianity

These statements from an Anglican reverent indicate a sense of national or ethnic belonging that supersedes Christian fellowship. Although they might sound at home in a nationalist Church, they do not fit comfortably in a faith that is deeply rooted into Judeo-Christian beliefs.

I’m really wondering, is Palestinian sovereignty really more important to these Christians to which they are willing to change God’s word in order for it to go well with their political agenda?
Click to expand...
You’re turning things around completely. It’s the pro-Israel Christians who are arguing that God’s love for one particular nation supersedes universal values of peace and justice and also corrects the historic, orthodox Christian understanding of the Church. What pro-Israel folks call “Replacement theology” is, in one way or another, the historic stance of the Church. It’s dispensationalism that is a radical, unorthodox distortion of Biblical teaching.

Now there are certainly problems with replacement theology. God has never abandoned his care for Israel–that is clear. But the orthodox, historic Christian view is that God’s people now includes both Jews and Gentiles, and that God’s promises to Abraham are fulfilled through Jesus. The modern nation-state of Israel is not the same as the historic people of Israel and is certainly not the chosen people of God. Christians are not called upon to “bless Israel” if that means support the nationalist policies of this particular state.

There’s nothing Marcionite here and nothing that distorts or rejects any part of traditional Christian doctrine. Your citation is highly misleading, because the first two sentences in your quote are not from Ateek but from the pro-Israel website you cite. Of course Ateek never said that he was trying to find a radical new theology–the old, historic, orthodox Christian theology would be quite enough (and indeed a bit too much, insofar as that theology was often anti-Jewish!). The last two sentences then stand without any context, except the biased, misleading context given them by the pro-Israel website. I am pretty sure that Ateek was making a rhetorical point–that this was how Palestinians felt when they heard their fellow-Christians misusing the OT to dehumanize them. But without the full context for his words, we don’t know.

Edwin
 
That’s an incredibly outrageous assessment. Stupid, even. Because many Palestinian Christians want a state they’re heretics?
 
dzheremi said:
“Weapon against Israel”? Why can’t people who don’t know what they’re talking about just leave the Palestinian Christians alone. They’re already viewed with suspicion in their own homeland by the Muslim majority, and now they’re castigated for not supporting the forces on the other side of the conflict that have driven so many off the land and out of the region because of modern Christian Zionist (WRONG) readings of scripture? Sick. The writer of that article should be ashamed.
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Amen!

Support by Western Christians for the modern state of Israel is actually worsening the situation of Palestinian Christians. It must therefore cease.
 
I’m always annoyed by the pro-Israel argument that because there is more freedom in Israel than in other Arab states, the Palestinians must have it good.

This is quite a bit like saying it is preferable being torn up by a dolphin than by a shark because the dolphin has less teeth.

The idea that “replacement theology” is something new for the Christians in the area just goes to show that the author has no idea what they are talking about.
 
Did this term “replacement theology” arise out of some sort of Christian thinking? That’s always bothered me. We are not “replacing” the Jews as though we are now under their covenant. Rather, they themselves have ceased to follow God, yet still cling to their ethnoreligious sense of superiority as though being favored means that they may hamstring the Almighty (despite evidence to the contrary, such as when God warned that they would not see the land which He had previously promised to them if they did not stop complaining against Him in the course of the exodus from Egypt). So I find that offensive on the part of the Jews on many levels. We don’t call modern Jewish theology “rejection theology”, do we? Even though they rejected God and His Christ. That is the reality, and now as a result of their scheming with the Western powers the Palestinian Christians and indeed the whole region and world suffers.

I actually have several Israeli and pro-Israeli friends and acquaintances, but when it comes to the politics of the whole area, I really cannot see where they are coming from. Yes, the European holocaust was awful, but we were not given our own homeland after the massacres of the early 20th century that so decimated the Greek, Assyrian, and Armenian Christians of the Near East. It was on the basis of these massacres, by the way (not the European holocaust), that the term “genocide” was even coined. In the case of the native Christians of the area, this would not involve a return or “aliya”, as they had been living in the area of what is now Northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran in an area roughly corresponding to the heartland of ancient Assyria for century upon century. But the Jews had political plans dating back to the 1800s when they started immigrating into Palestine in large numbers in order to prepare for their eventual state, which they secured by the twin forces of terrorism and playing on the sympathies (completely deserved, lest anyone think I’m some anti-Semite) garnered as a result of the holocaust.

Oh to have the PR of the Jews! :mad::rolleyes: They and certain other peoples of the region (cough) will destroy us all in their selfish and stupid fight, and we’ll go down apologizing and justifying their stupidity because we’re dumb, gullible, and too politically correct to tell some Jews and Muslims (oops) to shove it sideways like we should already be doing.
 
Cavaradossi said:
That article is a bunch of baloney. The patristic understanding of God’s promises to Abraham and Israel was always that the Christians are the new Israel, and that God has no further plan for those who reject His Christ but are of the Law, because in Christ, the Law, prophets, and the Old Covenant have been fulfilled. The Palestinian Christians the author is so savagely attacking are Orthodox Christians who have had this understanding of the Scriptures long before the state of Israel every came to be.
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Although I like baloney, I favor turkey and chicken baloney. May I add an amen to this post.🙂
 
dzheremi said:
“Weapon against Israel”? Why can’t people who don’t know what they’re talking about just leave the Palestinian Christians alone. They’re already viewed with suspicion in their own homeland by the Muslim majority, and now they’re castigated for not supporting the forces on the other side of the conflict that have driven so many off the land and out of the region because of modern Christian Zionist (WRONG) readings of scripture? Sick. The writer of that article should be ashamed.
Click to expand...
Amen.🙂
 
Cavaradossi said:
One of the more memorable experiences that one of my priests had from a trip he took to Jerusalem was that he was asked by some native Arabic-speaking Palestinian Christians, “why do many American Christians support the Israelis who persecute us?” Honestly, outside of humanitarian concerns (that the dissolution of Israel would cause disastrous bloodshed in the region**), I don’t think that Christians have any business supporting the state of Israel because of any religious convictions**.
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These convictions are based on Protestant Dispensational theology that emanate from the Irish Protestant church a la Nelso Darby…

I agree. Amen
 
dzheremi said:
I agree, Cavaradossi. I have friends from Palestine, both Christian and non, and they do not understand the Evangelical support of Israel either. I don’t know what to tell them, because I don’t understand it, either.
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Dispensationalists are trying to help Jesus return by converting the Jews believing that dirt is Israel. Israel does not coincide with Exodus 19…
5‘Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; 6and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.”
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Ain’t not, no way, uh uh the Israel created by the United Nations and British Evangelicals.
 
dzheremi said:
Did this term “replacement theology” arise out of some sort of Christian thinking? That’s always bothered me. We are not “replacing” the Jews as though we are now under their covenant. Rather, they themselves have ceased to follow God, yet still cling to their ethnoreligious sense of superiority as though being favored means that they may hamstring the Almighty (despite evidence to the contrary, such as when God warned that they would not see the land which He had previously promised to them if they did not stop complaining against Him in the course of the exodus from Egypt). So I find that offensive on the part of the Jews on many levels. We don’t call modern Jewish theology “rejection theology”, do we? Even though they rejected God and His Christ. That is the reality, and now as a result of their scheming with the Western powers the Palestinian Christians and indeed the whole region and world suffers.

I actually have several Israeli and pro-Israeli friends and acquaintances, but when it comes to the politics of the whole area, I really cannot see where they are coming from. Yes, the European holocaust was awful, but we were not given our own homeland after the massacres of the early 20th century that so decimated the Greek, Assyrian, and Armenian Christians of the Near East. It was on the basis of these massacres, by the way (not the European holocaust), that the term “genocide” was even coined. In the case of the native Christians of the area, this would not involve a return or “aliya”, as they had been living in the area of what is now Northern Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran in an area roughly corresponding to the heartland of ancient Assyria for century upon century. But the Jews had political plans dating back to the 1800s when they started immigrating into Palestine in large numbers in order to prepare for their eventual state, which they secured by the twin forces of terrorism and playing on the sympathies (completely deserved, lest anyone think I’m some anti-Semite) garnered as a result of the holocaust.

Oh to have the PR of the Jews! :mad::rolleyes: They and certain other peoples of the region (cough) will destroy us all in their selfish and stupid fight, and we’ll go down apologizing and justifying their stupidity because we’re dumb, gullible, and too politically correct to tell some Jews and Muslims (oops) to shove it sideways like we should already be doing.
Click to expand...
Replacement theology is a Protestant thing…🙂
 
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