Qestion to EC re.: possible future UNION between EO & RC

[Apotheoun]

I’ve read the Hagioretic tome and St. Maximos’ dubia, I’ve not read De Synodis. Your point about experiential knowledge is not something I’m going to disagree with - I am an Eastern Catholic after all. But the prophets did not know that the Trinity whom they had experiential knowledge of was Trinitarian.

If they experienced the Trinity, it follows that they knew the Trinity. Experience is a form of knowledge, and in fact it is the most important form of knowledge when it comes to God. It is the experience of God, primarily in the divine liturgy, that is salvific.

 

[Apotheoun]

I was going too far with that remark. And I was confusing Esposito with someone else. As Forgiveness Sunday is a long way off, I ask forgiveness now.

No need to apologize. The texts that were required reading during my second BA degree were all more or less “pro-Muslim” for lack of a better word.

 

[Apotheoun]

And there is very good empirical evidence for the experiential knowledge of God by non-Christians, as evidenced by the writings of men like Abu Yazid and Al Hallaj, and also texts like the Bhagavad-Gita and the Tao Te Ching.

On this we shall have to agree to disagree. Christ is the sole savior of mankind, and no other religion provides access to the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

Can non-Christians be “saved”? God only knows.

Do other religions (e.g., Islam) bring man into contact with the living God? No. A man will not be saved by following the teachings of Mohammed, but he may - God alone can know such a thing - be saved in spite of his having followed the law of Mohammed.

 

[Apotheoun]

And even if someone is not in the state of grace, one still may have natural knowledge of God. Denial of this has been condemned as heresy by the Holy See many times, at Vatican I, in the condemnations against Modernism, and in the condemnations of other theologians - Anton Gunther, Blessed Antonio Rosmini, etc. - who denied the distinction between natural and supernatural. A sinner in mortal sin may still pray to God (otherwise, how would they come to repentance and salvation again?).

I do not believe that there is any knowledge of God without a relationship to the eternal Logos, and that is why I reject the socalled “natural theology” of the Western Church as a more or less Pelagian construct. After all, it has no parallel in the Eastern Church. Moreover, many people confuse knowledge of abstract concepts with faith, but I refuse to do that, and as I have told my students before, knowing that God exists - i.e., in some abstract or general sense - must never be confused with knowing who God is. God is not a thing to be conceptualized; instead, God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He must be experienced in worship.

 

[Apotheoun]

I have enjoyed the discussion on Islam, and wish to thank all those who have participated, because it has been some time since I had to think about the issues related to the present modernist viewpoint espoused by many in the Catholic Church.

But in answer to the original question posed in this thread, I think I will stick to my earlier response from post #19:

The option that I would have voted for is not present, so I have taken it upon myself to add it:

(3) The Eastern Orthodox Churches will be no different from what they are now when Rome finally enters into communion with them.

 

[Cecilianus]

If they experienced the Trinity, it follows that they knew the Trinity. Experience is a form of knowledge, and in fact it is the most important form of knowledge when it comes to God. It is the experience of God, primarily in the divine liturgy, that is salvific.

How do you know the Trinity? You may understand Palamism better than I, but now to me this is starting to sound dangerously like knowing the Essence of God, rather than participating in His energies.

I am a Catholic with a more or less regular prayer life under spiritual direction who is not knowingly in the state of mortal sin, but I can’t really say that I know the Trinity. I accept it in Faith and marvel at its mystery, but all I experience is the unity and love and beauty of God - a God whom I know is Trinitarian, but if the Trinity had not been explicitly taught to me in school and by the words of the Liturgy and prayers I would never have come to knowledge of It.

 

[Cecilianus]

On this we shall have to agree to disagree. Christ is the sole savior of mankind, and no other religion provides access to the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

No, there’s no disagreement there. Christ is the sole savior of mankind - this is the teaching of the Church, from Blessed John Paul II’s Dominus Iesus. Anyone who is saved is saved through Him. People of other religions are saved through Him and through the grace of the Church. As the hardly modernist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre put it, people of other religions may be saved because of the practice of their religions and their sincere effort to accept God, but not through their religions per se - the only religion is Christ.

The teaching of the Fathers was that Christianity is sui generis, not a “religion” among other religions like Greek polytheism or, by extension, Hinduism and Buddhism. So we really shouldn’t even speak of “no other religion providing access to the Father through the Son in the Spirit”, because there is no other religion - only Christianity. I would like to see the truths of Hinduism, Buddhism etc. elevated and baptized by Christianity as the “spoliae Aegyptorum” (see Lubac, Medieval Exegesis volume 1) just as the ancient religion of Neo-Platonism (which had its own teachings, ethics, mysticism, and worship - theurgy) was in early Christianity. This does not mean that a Hindu or Buddhist can be saved by the practice of their religion - they are not even trying to achieve the same thing we are anyway - just that I would like people to stop putting them on the same level as Christianity as a religion. Islam is a bit different because it is a Christian heresy (see Belloc, The Great Heresies), though I would argue that its historical facticity means that it had some role in divine providence, and setting modern developments like radical and secular Islam aside, the simple faith of the Islamic peasant has probably led many of them to closeness with God, especially among the Sufis. According to Reza Shah Kameni (I claim no assumptions positive or negative regarding his scholarly authority), it was common for Sufis to go to Christian monks for spiritual direction, and vice versa.

Father Roch Kereszty, O. Cist., wrote an article for Communio in which he cautiously advanced a thesis that Islam’s role in divine providence may have had a shape similar to that of a private revelation, obscured by Mohammed’s sensualism and attachment to sin.

Can non-Christians be “saved”? God only knows.

Can they be saved? Yes, for the omnipotent God can save whomever He wills. We wouldn’t call them “non-Christians” then, though, even if they were unaware of their own Christianity (“anonymous Christians” is a bit cheesy sounding, but ever since Rahner that’s been the term). Are any saved? God only knows. I hope and pray so.

Do other religions (e.g., Islam) bring man into contact with the living God? No. A man will not be saved by following the teachings of Mohammed, but he may - God alone can know such a thing - be saved in spite of his having followed the law of Mohammed.

Cf. above comment about the problem in speaking of other religions. Only Christianity - that is to say, the grace of God conscious or unconscious - brings man into contact with the living God, and God willing a man may be saved in spite of his having followed the law of Mohammed.

 

[Cecilianus]

I do not believe that there is any knowledge of God without a relationship to the eternal Logos, and that is why I reject the socalled “natural theology” of the Western Church as a more or less Pelagian construct. After all, it has no parallel in the Eastern Church. Moreover, many people confuse knowledge of abstract concepts with faith, but I refuse to do that, and as I have told my students before, knowing that God exists - i.e., in some abstract or general sense - must never be confused with knowing who God is. God is not a thing to be conceptualized; instead, God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He must be experienced in worship.

Much of this “natural theology” assumse a relationship to the eternal Logos, though. I recommend to you the book Christ the Eternal Tao, by Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), for a beautiful example of this in the Eastern Church. Also, I recommend The Ways of Christ and of Confucius, by Dom Pierre-Celestin Lou Tseng-Tsiang, except that I bought one of the last copies on the market a couple years ago. His story is interesting regardless of his theological insights - he was the Chinese foreign minister for Sun Yat-Sen who ended up becoming a Benedictine monk. More accessible might be Beyond East and West, by John Ching-Hsiung Wu. I also recommend The Genius of Christianity, by Francois-Rene Vicomte de Chateaubriand for his treatment of the Logos in a variety of natural religious contexts.

Islamic philosophical theology is very emphatic about the Logos, mostly under the influence of Aristotle. In Al-Arabi it takes the form of the insan al-kamil or “universal Man”, whom some of the Sufis identified with Christ (see the work of Henri Corbin, my grandteacher in philosophy - I was taught Arabi by one of his scatter-brained students in a class that was supposed to be on Western medieval philosophy ), and Sufi writers will speak of the experience of God as “lover, beloved, love”.

My final recommendation for arguing my point of view is the Roman Catholic philosopher Edward Ingram Watkin’s Philosophy of Mysticism, which is much better documented than anything I could remember off the top of my head for an internet forum. Watkin flourished roughly 1900, I think.

 

[Cecilianus]

All of these recommendations are of pre-Vatican II writers (Chateaubriand lived during the French Revolution and Restoration) who were all in good standing with the Church.

 

[Apotheoun]

Much of this “natural theology” assumse a relationship to the eternal Logos, though. I recommend to you the book Christ the Eternal Tao, by Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), for a beautiful example of this in the Eastern Church. Also, I recommend The Ways of Christ and of Confucius, by Dom Pierre-Celestin Lou Tseng-Tsiang, except that I bought one of the last copies on the market a couple years ago. His story is interesting regardless of his theological insights - he was the Chinese foreign minister for Sun Yat-Sen who ended up becoming a Benedictine monk. More accessible might be Beyond East and West, by John Ching-Hsiung Wu. I also recommend The Genius of Christianity, by Francois-Rene Vicomte de Chateaubriand for his treatment of the Logos in a variety of natural religious contexts.

I am sure that they are all fine books (even by the Orthodox authors), but they do not represent holy tradition, and often times involve a misreading of St. Maximos and other ancient Fathers. Natural reason cannot transcend the gap between the created and the uncreated, which is why the philosophical theology of the West has never been able to find a place in the Eastern Churches (with the exception of a few more or less Latinized Eastern Catholic Churches). Thankfully the ongoing process of de-Latinization should get rid of that problem.

Islamic philosophical theology is very emphatic about the Logos, mostly under the influence of Aristotle. In Al-Arabi it takes the form of the insan al-kamil or “universal Man”, whom some of the Sufis identified with Christ (see the work of Henri Corbin, my grandteacher in philosophy - I was taught Arabi by one of his scatter-brained students in a class that was supposed to be on Western medieval philosophy ), and Sufi writers will speak of the experience of God as “lover, beloved, love”.

I do not subscribe to Aristotelian or Platonic metaphysics, because both those forms of Greek philosophical reasoning were condemned as heretical in the Synodikon.

My final recommendation for arguing my point of view is the Roman Catholic philosopher Edward Ingram Watkin’s Philosophy of Mysticism, which is much better documented than anything I could remember off the top of my head for an internet forum. Watkin flourished roughly 1900, I think.

I am sure his book is interesting, but even the title betrays a Western outlook on the nature of philosophy (i.e., natural attempts to know God) and theology. I think I will stick with the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, to mention just one of the Holy Fathers, who in his treatise the “Life of Moses” speaks of Greek philosophical reasoning as always in labor but never giving birth, and his beautiful “Commentaries on Ecclesiastes” where he emphasizes the diastema between created and uncreated, and how it is impossible for created reason to transcend its own createdness. There is no place for natural theology in the Eastern Church, and I am quite happy about that.

God grant you many years,
Todd

 

[Apotheoun]

All of these recommendations are of pre-Vatican II writers (Chateaubriand lived during the French Revolution and Restoration) who were all in good standing with the Church.

That is usually a sign that there will be better scholarship even if I do not accept the conclusions drawn by the authors.

 

[Cecilianus]

That is usually a sign that there will be better scholarship even if I do not accept the conclusions drawn by the authors.

Yeah. I miss the old heretics, who at least had some intellectual background to their arguments.

 

[Cecilianus]

I do not subscribe to Aristotelian or Platonic metaphysics, because both those forms of Greek philosophical reasoning were condemned as heretical in the Synodikon.

I am skeptical of both as well - though I hope to see both corrected, purified of errors, and restored to their proper place in the chain of knowledge - but you might want to look more closely at the Synodikon again. Specific Greek errors were repudiated, such as the eternity of matter, the pre-existence of souls and the idea that God cannot know the natural world but only His ideas, but these ideas were repudiated by the Western Scholastics too.

If I forgot about any canons, please point them out. The Ruthenians OF COURSE skip the entire Synodikon, including only the ending prayers with the word “Orthodox” consistently changed to “Catholic”.

To those who profess piety yet shamelessly, or rather impiously, introduce into the Orthodox and Catholic Church the ungodly doctrines of the Greeks concerning the souls of men, heaven and earth, and the rest of creation,

Anathema (3)

To those who prefer the foolish so-called wisdom of the secular philosophers and follow its proponents, and who accept the metempsychosis of human souls or that, like the brute animals, the soul is utterly destroyed and departs into nothingness, and who thus deny the resurrection, judgment, and the final recompense for the deeds committed during life,

Anathema (3)

To those who dogmatize that matter and the Ideas are without beginning or are co-eternal with God, the Creator of all, and that heaven and earth and the other created things are everlasting, unoriginate and immutable, thus legislating contrary to Him Who said: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words will not pass away’; to those who thus speak vain and earthly things drawing down the Divine curse upon their own heads,

Anathema (3)

To those who maintain that although the wise men of the Greeks and the foremost of the heresiarchs were put under anathema by the Seven Holy and Catholic Councils and by all the fathers that shone forth in Orthodoxy as ones alien to the Catholic Church because of the adulterations and loathsome superabundance of error in their teachings, yet they are exceedingly more excellent, both here and in the future judgment, than those pious and orthodox men who, by human passion or by ignorance, have committed some offense,

Anathema (3)

To those who undertake Greek studies not only for purposes of education but also follow after their vain opinions, and are so thoroughly convinced of their truth and validity that they shamelessly introduce them and teach them to others, sometimes secretly and sometimes openly,

Anathema (3)

To those who of themselves refashion creation by means of mythical fabrications and accept the Platonic ideas as veritable, saying that matter, being self-subsistent, is given form by these ideas, and who thereby clearly calumniate the free will of the Creator Who brought all things into being out of non-being and Who, as Maker, established the beginning and end of all things by His authority and sovereignty,

Anathema (3)

To those who accept and transmit the vain Greek teachings that there is a pre-existence of souls and teach that all things were not produced and did not come into existence out of non-being, that there is an end to the torment or a restoration again of creation and of human affairs, meaning by such teachings that the Kingdom of the Heavens is entirely perishable and fleeting, whereas the Kingdom is eternal and indissoluble as Christ our God Himself taught and delivered to us, and as we have ascertained from the entire Old and New Scripture, that the torment is unending and the Kingdom everlasting to those who by such teachings both destroy themselves and become agents of eternal condemnation to others,

Anathema (3)

To those pagan and heterodox doctrines and teachings introduced in contempt of the Christian and Orthodox faith or in opposition to the Catholic and blameless faith of the Orthodox, by John Italus and by his disciples who shared in his ruin,

Anathema (1)

The Thomist version of Greek philosophy is free of these errors. All of these anathemas were directed against John Italus.

 

[Formosus]

The prophets had a fairly direct encounter with God’s energy. So yes they would have had experience of the Trinity. I do not really see how Apo’s point comes anywhere near saying that the prophet’s experienced God’s Essence.

 

[dzheremi]

First, it is very highly objectionable for you to suggest that the Vatican embraces false beliefs.

Well if you can think of a nicer way to say “I think that the Vatican is wrong on this”, then feel free to substitute that in your reading of my posts.

Surely there are better places for you to vent bigotry.

Come now…I think that’s a little insulting to the Jack Chicks of the world who must think that they have that market cornered. I’m just disagreeing with a particular position.

Second, when you harbor ideas of black and white, you get fallacious thinking; you get error. Fallacy and error are bad - even in they are undertaken in support of some conception of the greater good. That is not Christian ethos. You certainly don’t want to be treated that way - as though a single degree of dissimilarity or a single deviation from the truth means that you are beyond the pale.

As I have written here and elsewhere, I do not believe that worshiping God is a matter of degree to begin with. I do not see why I should change this basic principle because of what you have written here, particularly in light of the various commandments of our Lord Christ that are certainly quite black and white with regard to what one must do in order to come to the Father and receive eternal life (none of which involve denying Him as Islam does).

Please elaborate on the difference?

Sure. There are no doubt various aspects of Islam that seem, at a surface level, not to conflict with Christianity. These are those things that I would call “similar” or “inoffensive”, in that this how they seem if we never move beyond this level. A perfect example of this Islam’s supposed monotheism. Well, we’re monotheists, too, so at least Islam has that right, don’t they? We agree on a number, if not on all the characteristics of God (their god, after all, does not beget, and we know that that’s wrong). However, as I think I have put it before, Islam may seem to get a particular aspect correct (i.e., number), but with the wrong referent in mind (the “god” of the Qur’an, not the true triune God), so the particular aspect is sort of useless but to provide a platform from which to introduce Muslims to the TRUE God (which requires rejecting the god that they currently worship).

Do you think that the things that OO and EOs are not in conflict on, cannot be seen by each other as elements of truth in each others belief? Or should they hold the line - from Chalcedon and simply say: anathema, heretics, outside of the church. And should they go on to say that we not the same God, no existence of worship, …

This is not at all related to what we are talking about. How Christians deal with other Christians is fundamentally different than how Christians ought to deal with non-Christians. I am not going to entertain diversions for the sake of indulging ideas of degrees of truth. Jesus Christ is the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Anything else is not coming into my house if I can help it.

 

[dvdjs]

Well if you can think of a nicer way to say “I think that the Vatican is wrong on this”, then feel free to substitute that in your reading of my posts.

 

[dzheremi]

No, I am suggesting that you do it. It is expected that posters at CAF show respect for the Catholic Church. I think that means that your are expected to find a “nice” way of expressing disagreement. Rhetoric like "squishy indifference to the truth ",

That is how I see it. I don’t think it is particularly rude, but my sensibilities are different than yours. If you are so offended, you are free to report me to the nearest moderator. I will trust their judgment.

is not nice, and worse it just isn’t true.

A great deal of things that I don’t feel are true are being discussed approvingly in this particular discussion. I don’t pretend my opinion is anything other than that. It would be nice if everyone else involved in this discussion would maintain the same level of intellectual honesty.

Good so we agree that they are not all wrong.

Eh…I’m not entirely sure I explained myself correctly, then. Let me try again: Since Islam gets certain aspects right at a surface level (i.e., number), but with the wrong referent in mind (their god who does not beget, is not the Holy Trinity, etc.), then they’re actually NOT right. They just appear to be if you don’t bother to look at things beyond a certain level. I remember getting into a conversation here on CAF with a certain Muslim poster who insisted that the Qur’an does not misunderstand and misrepresent the Holy Trinity as three separate gods (as it really seems to do, from a surface reading). Accepting him at his word, I then asked him if it would be appropriate in that case, if I were to decide to become a Muslim, for me to continue my Trinitarian prayers and the actions associated with them (crossing myself, prostrating before icons, kissing the cross, etc.), and he made it very clear that no form of Trinitarian anything is allowed in Islam. Keep in mind that this was after arguing that Islam somehow acknowledges Christians as monotheists. So it would seem that for Muslims merely getting God right in terms of number is not good enough. I agree, and likewise apply that to those who would say that the members of other religions somehow worship the true God by virtue of being able to count to one.

We also agree that it is good to build in these “similarities” to advance their acceptance of the true God. I have heard from people who are very effective in doing just that. Their approach is to build on “similarities”, then lead to differentiation. Not to draw the line ath the outset. That way bears fruit.

Hmm. Well, I would probably prefer something more akin to our God and Savior’s sermon on the mount from the book of Matthew: “You have heard it said that (Islamic claim), but I say (Christianity), because ______.” I think it is vitally important not to emphasize the supposed correctness of an Islamic stance due to its surface similarity, but to oppose that which needs to be always strenuously opposed. We cannot really advance a Muslim’s acceptance of the true God from within the Islamic parameters, because by accepting Islam they are rejecting the true God, so we must get them first to think outside of their paradigm or else it will merely produce more useless platitudes. I am not interested in that. In the famous apologetic writing of the monk of Bet Hale and the Muslim Emir (known as the first Syriac-language disputation on Islam from a Christian perspective), the monk has a little back and forth with the Arab, and seizing upon a quote from the Qur’an by the Arab in which Christ is called “the Word of God and His Spirit”, the monk responds: “Either you estrange the Word of God and His Spirit from Him, or you proclaim him to be the Son of God straightforwardly.”

This, I believe, is exactly the right approach in dealing with the supposed similarities of Islam and Christianity. Not to confirm them in their errors by pretending that they can get there (God) from here (Islam), but to show them that there really is only one way, and it is not Islam. Notice that this does not involve closing off dialogue at the outset (the monk talked with the Arab for quite a while, after all, before getting down to brass tacks), but likewise does not involve making the kinds of objectionable statements about Islam worshiping our God, either (the sorts of statements referenced by Apotheoun). We don’t need to go out of our way to be jerks, but even more so we don’t need to lie and provide false hope when there isn’t any. As I have written here before, should a Muslim be granted eternal rest with the Lord (and I must believe that such is possible), it is not because of Islam but in spite of it and their adherence to it. Islam and hence Muslims quite simply do not worship God.

It just shows that you are not holding to a principle, but are engaing in special pleading.

Hogwash. Your own CCC advances the same view by treating adherents of different religions differently (or else why would Muslims be called “first among” anything?). I have done nothing else by saying that Christians ought to treat Christians differently than others, and hence this is not the thread for the discussion you want to have about the OO.

 

[dvdjs]

That is how I see it. I don’t think it is particularly rude, but my sensibilities are different than yours. If you are so offended, you are free to report me to the nearest moderator. I will trust their judgment.

Of course, me too.

A great deal of things that I don’t feel are true are being discussed approvingly in this particular discussion. I don’t pretend my opinion is anything other than that. It would be nice if everyone else involved in this discussion would maintain the same level of intellectual honesty.

Eh…I’m not entirely sure I explained myself correctly, then. Let me try again: Since Islam gets certain aspects right at a surface level (i.e., number), but with the wrong referent in mind (their god who does not beget, is not the Holy Trinity, etc.), then they’re actually NOT right. They just appear to be if you don’t bother to look at things beyond a certain level. I remember getting into a conversation here on CAF with a certain Muslim poster who insisted that the Qur’an does not misunderstand and misrepresent the Holy Trinity as three separate gods (as it really seems to do, from a surface reading). Accepting him at his word, I then asked him if it would be appropriate in that case, if I were to decide to become a Muslim, for me to continue my Trinitarian prayers and the actions associated with them (crossing myself, prostrating before icons, kissing the cross, etc.), and he made it very clear that no form of Trinitarian anything is allowed in Islam. Keep in mind that this was after arguing that Islam somehow acknowledges Christians as monotheists. So it would seem that for Muslims merely getting God right in terms of number is not good enough. I agree, and likewise apply that to those who would say that the members of other religions somehow worship the true God by virtue of being able to count to one.

Some things right. I agree. Some things wrong. I agree. Thus not all right. I agree. Thus wrong. I agree. The question is what fraction of this dialogue is important in what context. with the objective of bringing people to Christ. Starting with the end: wrong! is ineffective, however, it “feels”. People who have proven themselves to be effective start at the other end.;

Hmm. Well, I would probably prefer something more akin to our God and Savior’s sermon on the mount from the book of Matthew: “You have heard it said that (Islamic claim), but I say (Christianity), because ______.” I think it is vitally important not to emphasize the supposed correctness of an Islamic stance due to its surface similarity, but to oppose that which needs to be always strenuously opposed. We cannot really advance a Muslim’s acceptance of the true God from within the Islamic parameters, because by accepting Islam they are rejecting the true God, so we must get them first to think outside of their paradigm or else it will merely produce more useless platitudes. I am not interested in that. In the famous apologetic writing of the monk of Bet Hale and the Muslim Emir (known as the first Syriac-language disputation on Islam from a Christian perspective), the monk has a little back and forth with the Arab, and seizing upon a quote from the Qur’an by the Arab in which Christ is called “the Word of God and His Spirit”, the monk responds: “Either you estrange the Word of God and His Spirit from Him, or you proclaim him to be the Son of God straightforwardly.”

This, I believe, is exactly the right approach in dealing with the supposed similarities of Islam and Christianity. Not to confirm them in their errors by pretending that they can get there (God) from here (Islam), but to show them that there really is only one way, and it is not Islam. Notice that this does not involve closing off dialogue at the outset (the monk talked with the Arab for quite a while, after all, before getting down to brass tacks), but likewise does not involve making the kinds of objectionable statements about Islam worshiping our God, either (the sorts of statements referenced by Apotheoun). We don’t need to go out of our way to be jerks, but even more so we don’t need to lie and provide false hope when there isn’t any. As I have written here before, should a Muslim be granted eternal rest with the Lord (and I must believe that such is possible), it is not because of Islam but in spite of it and their adherence to it. Islam and hence Muslims quite simply do not worship God.

Show me the fruit.

Hogwash. Your own CCC advances the same view by treating adherents of different religions differently (or else why would Muslims be called “first among” anything?). I have done nothing else by saying that Christians ought to treat Christians differently than others, and hence this is not the thread for the discussion you want to have about the OO.

On the contrary, the CCC lays out a comprehensive view of the relations with all others. It does say: for these folks we say something wrong = wrong; for these we say something wrong is OK.

 

[Apotheoun]

This, I believe, is exactly the right approach in dealing with the supposed similarities of Islam and Christianity. Not to confirm them in their errors by pretending that they can get there (God) from here (Islam), but to show them that there really is only one way, and it is not Islam.

Well said. And that is the approach I took with the Muslims I studied with at SF State, albeit after initialing using - to no avail - the modern Catholic approach. In fact, the modern Catholic approach, which I would call a form of theological indifferentism, was actually very harmful in my discussions with Muslims, because many of them began to believe that I was slowly coming to see the Islamic religion as the true faith.

That said, it was only when I firmly, but charitably, told my Muslim schoolmates that Islamic monotheism is false, because it is predicated upon an explicit denial of the Tri-hypostatic existence of God, that I began to make any progress with them. And I do not believe that this should be all that surprising to anyone here, because true love for God and for your fellow man can never be separated from, or mixed with, falsehood.

 

[dzheremi]

Exactly, my friend. It seems counter intuitive, but I have found in my own discussions with Muslims in real life (and for the most part online, too), as well as Jews and other non-Christians, that they don’t generally respond all that well to this “your God is our God” business. If you tell someone they’re not in the right religion, they want to know why, not that they’re somehow right (but still need to accept Christ, for some reason). That’s a confusing, muddled message. Christianity is neither.