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bridgeforsale
Guest
Hey, when you call someone infallible, we might fairly presume that you’ve acquiesced to this sort of critique
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Bill_Pick
Guest
All of us have a opinion we do know what they say,we ALL have oneHey, when you call someone infallible, we might fairly presume that you’ve acquiesced to this sort of critique
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dzheremi
Guest
That is a misunderstanding of the reach of Papal Infallibility, but alright. I certainly do think that this is one incident for which criticism is warranted, just not of the type that you’ve engaged in here.Hey, when you call someone infallible, we might fairly presume that you’ve acquiesced to this sort of critique
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ralphinal
Guest
Infallibility applies only to teaching on issues of faith and morals. We are more than welcome to point out when behavior is problematic.Hey, when you call someone infallible, we might fairly presume that you’ve acquiesced to this sort of critique
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Byzantine_Wolf
Guest
The Quran states that God (Allah) is “one of three.” This is completely not what Christian belief of the Trinity is. The Trinity is One Being of God revealed through three distinct yet united Persons. So God is not “one of three,” God is one.
This is why when some Muslims join this forum and ask, “Why do you Christians worship three gods?” they just get laughed at. They are coming to Christians with a completely distorted view of what Christianity is. It’s like people who come to me as an Orthodox and ask why I worship icons, or to Calvinists and ask why they worship John Calvin - it shows a lack of understanding in how the person you disagree with operates.
Is this why mid-2nd century saint Irenaeus, disciple to Polycarp who was a direct disciple to the original apostle John, confirms that the apostle John wrote it? If you read his Against Heresies, III, 11:7, 9, you will see all four gospels that Christians used today listed and affirmed as the true gospels.
Of course, if you are going to say “Biblical scholars,” please cite some. Although I have a feeling most of the ones you would cite are atheists whose denial of the Christian God would by extension also be a denial of the Muslim God, and therefore incompatible with your personal conclusion.
Also, I think I asked you this in another thread but did not get an answer: if the Bible is “as a whole…a corrupt work,” then how are Christians and Jews able to find Mohammad mentioned in their own scripture, the Torah and Gospel (S. 7:157)?
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Joseph651
Guest
Thank you ralphinal for pointing this out, maybe if we explain more often the misconception will become more apparent to what Catholics understand.
Praise God
Amen
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Kadaveri
Guest
Christians do believe that God (by which the Qur’an in 5:73 means ‘The Father’) is one of three. You can hardly accuse the Qur’an of not understanding that the three are believed to be ‘united’ when all the other verses I mentioned (including 5:72 just before it) clearly establish this (e.g. “God is Christ”).
I hope it doesn’t appear that I’m avoiding your response, but honestly I’m not interested in getting into an in-depth discussion about the authorship of the Gospel of John. I only mentioned it to answer someone asking why Muslims don’t believe in John 1.
Saying that the Bible is corrupt is far from saying that it contains no truth.
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bridgeforsale
Guest
Well, of course if “faith and morals” is subjectively defined, it’s really a meaningless term isn’t it? In my eyes kissing a holy book by the leader of a church (viewed as the vicar of Christ, successor of Peter, and all that) is an implicit endorsement of that holy book, which seems to be a very clear matter of faith. Not a point I want to argue over (I merely note the maxim “faith and morals” means whatever the church wants it to mean at the time; and it’s ultimately a meaningless designation, which is always applied post hoc and for the convenience of the church). Another one of those sort of, if you buy into that one, why not consider placing a bid on the bridge I have for sale
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Jay53
Guest
That’s the whole point. Christians DO NOT believe God is one of three. God is ONE!! We can accuse the Quran of not understanding because according to Muslims it is supposed to be the verbatim speech of God, but it clearly does not understand the Trinity nor Christian worship thereof. There is also the verse 5:116 which claims that people (presumably Christians) take Mary as a god beside God, which is also clearly in error. Of course I also find it interesting that the Quran mentions Mary, but makes no mention of Christians worshipping the Holy Spirit as God.
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Kantaram88
Guest
Kadaveri,
When you deny something you have to give the authentic answer not just run away from the discussion.
The very reason your assumption that Bible is corrupt is completely wrong is because most muslims who come for discussion quote the Holy Bible. The moment you quote it shows that you believe it.
Also most often muslims run away from most discussions is because moslty thats where most discussions by Zakir Naik, Deedat, Billal Phillps stop as they too dont go any further.
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dzheremi
Guest
Kadaveri, what you have posted is still a misunderstanding of the Trinity. For one thing, I don’t know of any place where the Qur’an refers to Allah as “the Father”. I’m sorry, but if you reject the Trinity by which the Father is invoked, then you cannot turn around and claim the Father whenever it suits you. Your own Qur’an rejects this idea of God as Father when it claims that He cannot have a son because He has had no consort! (6:101)
So which is it? Is Allah “the Father”, or is your own Qur’an lying?
And the nature of the Holy Trinity is such that it is not enough to just say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are “united”. While this is true, they are also eternally uncreated and indivisible from one another. You cannot isolate one and say “aha! There is one god, and over there is the Son who is another god, and over there is the Holy Spirit who is another god”. It does not work that way. In the Nicene Creed, we affirm the Trinity in the following fashion:
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
Nowhere in this bedrock of our faith is it said that the Son is a different God than the Father. Indeed, He is eternally begotten of the Father! There was never a time when He was not, as He and the Father are “of one being”. The problem that Muslims have is with the incarnation, because there was a time when he had not yet been incarnated - he had not yet been born of the Blessed Virgin. That does not mean that did not exist anymore than a Muslim should claim that Allah did not exist until Muhammad began receiving the Qur’anic revelations. Things most certainly can and do exist even when we cannot see them or perceive them, and this is true of nothing more than it is true of God.
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (procession issues notwithstanding!). It only makes sense to say that the Holy Spirit is a “different” God if you want to argue that the Father is without holiness or without spirit. This is not wise. If we reduce God to the level of abstraction that Islam does, we lose what makes the Christian relationship with God different than that of other religions. Our God is not without Holiness, for He is Holiness itself and the source of all holiness (just as He is the source of the Holy Spirit, no matter what church you belong to!). Our God is not spiritless, because His Holy Spirit is what has spoken through the prophets. Again, Islam cannot deny this idea unless you want to open up the issue of exactly who or what was speaking through the angel Gabriel as he supposedly gave revelations of the Qur’an to Muhammad, or for that matter on what authority Muhammad pronounced anything. Not to mention that since Islam technically takes past (pre-Islamic) prophets for its own, it is extremely unwise to then rob God of His faculty to have spoken through other prophets, too, by denying the Holy Spirit.
So which is it? Is Allah “the Father”, or is your own Qur’an lying?
And the nature of the Holy Trinity is such that it is not enough to just say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are “united”. While this is true, they are also eternally uncreated and indivisible from one another. You cannot isolate one and say “aha! There is one god, and over there is the Son who is another god, and over there is the Holy Spirit who is another god”. It does not work that way. In the Nicene Creed, we affirm the Trinity in the following fashion:
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father,
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
Nowhere in this bedrock of our faith is it said that the Son is a different God than the Father. Indeed, He is eternally begotten of the Father! There was never a time when He was not, as He and the Father are “of one being”. The problem that Muslims have is with the incarnation, because there was a time when he had not yet been incarnated - he had not yet been born of the Blessed Virgin. That does not mean that did not exist anymore than a Muslim should claim that Allah did not exist until Muhammad began receiving the Qur’anic revelations. Things most certainly can and do exist even when we cannot see them or perceive them, and this is true of nothing more than it is true of God.The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (procession issues notwithstanding!). It only makes sense to say that the Holy Spirit is a “different” God if you want to argue that the Father is without holiness or without spirit. This is not wise. If we reduce God to the level of abstraction that Islam does, we lose what makes the Christian relationship with God different than that of other religions. Our God is not without Holiness, for He is Holiness itself and the source of all holiness (just as He is the source of the Holy Spirit, no matter what church you belong to!). Our God is not spiritless, because His Holy Spirit is what has spoken through the prophets. Again, Islam cannot deny this idea unless you want to open up the issue of exactly who or what was speaking through the angel Gabriel as he supposedly gave revelations of the Qur’an to Muhammad, or for that matter on what authority Muhammad pronounced anything. Not to mention that since Islam technically takes past (pre-Islamic) prophets for its own, it is extremely unwise to then rob God of His faculty to have spoken through other prophets, too, by denying the Holy Spirit.
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Kadaveri
Guest
That’s not what I said. Your problem is that you’re reading the Qur’an through a Trinitarian lens and this is distorting your understanding. In Islam God is absolutely One, and thus the only legitimate deity in Islam is the same being as who Christians call ‘The Father’. When the Qur’an mentions God in 5:73, it does not mean ‘God’ in the Trinitarian sense (and I see no reason at all to think that it is), it means God in the Islamic sense, the one Christians call ‘The Father’. So it’s perfectly accurate for the Qur’an to say that Christians say God is one of three, even if you deny that this is what you do because you disagree with the Qur’an’s understanding of ‘God’, that does not make the Qur’an’s statement at all inaccurate in its understanding of Christian doctrine, which is flawless.
6:101 is totally irrelevent.
I’m familiar with the Nicene Creed.
Again, the Qur’an does not do this. You can’t argue on the basis of 5:73 that the Qur’an has a false understanding of the Trinity by separating the three hypostases into three differents gods when the very preceding verse states that Christians believe God (i.e. The Father) and Jesus to be one and the same god. The Qur’an is not saying that Christians believe the three to be three separate gods, such an interpretation is impossible with 5:72 (and indeed 4:171 as well).
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dzheremi
Guest
Which is exactly your problem in your understanding of Christianity: You are reading it through a “Qur’anic” lens, which is distorting your understanding! Isn’t it nice that we can both admit having this fault? Oh, wait…you don’t. Instead you say:
So I guess it’s a case of “do as I say, not as I do” with you, isn’t it? Or, to fit this context, “believe as I say you do, not as you say you do”. How sadly typical from someone who likes to put on airs of rationality.
Care to explain to me why?
Yeah, maybe in the sense of having READ it, but you clearly have a very warped understanding of it if you refer to the Qur’an as “flawless” in its understanding of Christian doctrine.
Excuse me, but if the Qur’an does not accuse Christians of worshiping three gods via the Holy Trinity, then why are there verses like 5:73, which says: “They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah”? I think you are lying, or at least lying to yourself. The Qur’an is explicitly anti-Trinitarian, because it does not understand the Trinity. You will not find any Christian who supports your view that there is apparently no conflict between the Qur’anic anti-Trinitarian verses (all those you’ve numbered above) and what Christians really believe, which, by the way, is something that WE have determined amongst ourselves hundreds of years before Muhammad or the Qur’an ever existed. Neither you, nor Muhammad, nor the Qur’an, nor anything or anyone connected to Islam has anything to contribute to the understanding of the Trinity that is in the least bit orthodox. WE determine our doctrine, not you and your false book and false prophet.
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aspirant
Guest
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aspirant
Guest
Exactly. The Qur’an is wrong about what Christians believe, so anyone who believes the Qur’an inevitably misunderstands what Christians believe.
LOL.
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aspirant
Guest
In Christianity God is absolutely one and indivisible. Christians do not believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are different beings. So if Muslims worship the being we call “Father,” then Muslims also worship the Son and Holy Spirit, because God is one and only one Being.
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Kadaveri
Guest
Unless your last paragraph was your response, you’re not showing how I am wrong in pointing out that Christians believe who they call ‘The Father’ to be ‘one of three’.
Because 6:101 has nothing to do with the Incarnation.
5:73 does not accuse Christians of worshipping three gods, it tells them not to say ‘three’. Three what? Well it leaves that open-ended, deliberately, since if the Qur’an used any specific word Christians with their strange (I don’t mean that in a derogatory but strictly descriptive sense) doctrine would just find a way to get around it. Better for the Qur’an to command ‘say not three’ and leave it at that, because God is not ‘three’ anything. The Qur’an wouldn’t be that precise in its wording if it thought Christians simply worship three gods, it would just say the same as what 16:51 does (which specifically denounces the worship of two gods, and according to Ahadith refers to Zoroastrians, who really did believe in two gods).
But anyway, all of that is unnecessary because it can be much easier seen that 5:73 cannot be denouncing Christians for the worship of three gods when the previous verse denounces Christians for believing that two of these “gods” are the same. How can the three be separate gods, and yet the same God? The Qur’an is actually making a subtle contradiction here, and this contradiction happens to perfectly mirror the contradiction (or ‘mystery’ as Christians would prefer it) inherent in Trinitarian doctrine, that three can be one. Put in another way, these two verses break down the Trinity into two parts and attacks both independently, 5:72 tackling the Incarnation and 5:73 the three hypostases, and while doing so highlighting the contradiction created these two doctrines. This requires the author of the Qur’an to have had quite a sophisicated understanding of the Trinity.
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aspirant
Guest
The verse says Christians believe Allah is “one of three.” We do not. There is only one God, one Allah, in Christianity.
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Kadaveri
Guest
The Qur’an does not dispute that you believe there is only one God. It says you believe there is only one God, who is ‘three’.
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dzheremi
Guest
I’m not sure what I can tell you that would add to my thoughts in post #31, which you roundly rejected in favor of Islamic lies that you believe are “flawless”. Sometimes trying to talk to Muslims is like trying to talk to alcoholics: You have to recognize that you can’t help them unless they admit they have a problem. The problem here, I think, is that you refuse to let Christians speak for themselves, as we let Muslims speak for themselves by using THEIR scriptures as a basis for our questions, not ours. If you use your own scriptures to try to define other people, you can hardly be surprised when they stand up and insist that you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s all I’m doing. That’s all any of us are doing.
The text of 6:101 says the following:
“The Originator of the heavens and the earth! How can He have a child, when there is for Him no consort, when He created all things and is Aware of all things ?”
As we Christians call Jesus Christ “The Son of God”, I don’t see how this does not apply to the incarnation, It says in the previous verse that “those who ascribe partners to Allah” are to be condemned for it. This is often what we are charged with by Muslims who believe that we are polytheists due to their own misunderstanding of the Trinity, imbibed directly from the Qur’an.
Are you being serious right now? I am shocked at your cowardice! Maybe this is your way of being polite, but the way I see it you are just trying to avoid having to make any firm declaration because you don’t want to admit that the Qur’an is wrong. I don’t blame you. If I had to defend the Qur’an I probably wouldn’t feel up to it in the face of repeated questioning, either.
Wait a minute. This makes no sense. The Qur’an would condemn the Zoroastrians specifically for believing in two Gods but not Christians for believing in “three”? Why is that? And if it not three gods, then what is the problem with it? If you recognize it as one God as we do, then why is it an issue? Why say “do not say three” if it is NOT in fact making God into “three”? It is obvious to me that you want to have it both ways: When we point out that the Qur’an is wrong in its description of our beliefs, you want to say that it is not saying what we think it is saying, but you don’t want to tell us what it IS saying, either. And you don’t want to tell us what the problem is with the Trinity as far as Islam is concerned because it would expose the fact that the Qur’an incorrectly represents the Trinity. Just admit that there is a problem already. Sheesh!
A very “sophisticated” understanding to you is nonetheless very wrong to us. Again, you fall back on “how can three gods be one” and we answer that it is not three gods that is one, but ONE God that has made Himself known to us in three persons that are co-equal and co-eternal. You can’t even give up your own misunderstanding when you’re trying to make the point that you have a very sophisticated understanding of the Trinity!
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