Happen like most words has several definitions but I see you chose the one that best suits your point.
I’m suppose to guess which one you meant. How do I know you didn’t mean what I thought you meant?
Well you could start by re-reading the post in question…
I stated the cause… you apparently stopped reading at “happened”. So again… your issue, not mine.
You are free to say that the Crusaders and the Inquisitions are Christianity belief, but I don’t, in the context of this thread.
How often do I see non-Catholics who cannot resist the temptation of jumping on these two topics (Inquisition and Crusaders) to paint them as Christian belief which of course what they mean is Catholic belief. Then we can go into what happened during both and how they gleefully picked out the things people did at that time. I can understand though how the Jew, Protestant and Muslim victims felt about the Inquisition and the abuses during the Crusades (indulgence being one of the popular examples).
I have given my reasons for thinking that they are.
Both
Do not jump to that conclusion when I very carefully avoided implying any such thing. As an Anglican, I claim the pre-Reformation tradition as mine–warts and all.
Not mine, but that of a number of recent “revisionist” historians in the case of the Crusades, who have pointed out that the Crusaders’ actions make no sense if they were motivated by greed (because the majority of them gave up a good deal to go on Crusade and gained very little). Admittedly, I’m biased against reductionistic claims–I assume that religious motivations are sincere unless I see good evidence to the contrary. (I find Mitch Romney’s prolife stance highly suspect, for instance, because it came just about the time he was starting to prepare for a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. And [French] Henry IV’s conversion to Catholicism seems to have been largely political. Even in those two cases, though, I wouldn’t claim that the decisions were entirely cynical.)
Simple! There is none in Christianity which calls for Christians to kill. The Fifth Commandment commands us not to kill.
You have not demonstrated that the Inquisition (specifically Spanish Inquisition, since that’s what is referred here) and the Crusades are Christian belief. All that you say is more or less what I was saying – these are what Christians did. You were saying about motivation as to why they did the thing that they do.Both
Christianity and Islam are both religions which have fairly often been motivations for violence. (By this I mean that followers of both religions have engaged in violence for reasons that appear to have had a lot to do with their sincere understanding of the teachings of their religion, and with their deep emotional attachment to that religion.)
However, there are plenty of differences in how this has happened. For instance, it seems to me that:
Christianity has more resources for promoting absolute non-violence, while Islam has a lot of regulations on how violence should be conducted.
Christianity has been more prone to internal heresy-hunts (not that these have been absent from Islam), while Islam has a stronger mandate to expand the rule of Islam through the sword (again, Christians have done this too).
Muslims are more concerned with establishing the honor and dominance of Islam, while Christians have been more prone to think that their religion is insulted by the mere *existence *of unbelievers within a Christian society.
Christianity is much more susceptible of doctrines separating church from state.
Historically (this is the root of many of the differences described above), Christianity had three centuries as an apocalyptic religion without power, while Islam had to deal with issues of power and violence very early on: “Muhammad was his own Constantine.” Christians know how to deal with a situation of persecution and minority status, where Muslims seem to react with rage to anything that remotely resembles persecution. On the other hand, Muslims developed early on a doctrine explicitly calling for religious minorities to be allowed to exist (albeit under severe restrictions), where Christians’ apocalyptic mentality made them uncomfortable with any reminders that not everyone had yet accepted the rule of Christ.
All these claims may, of course, be debated!
Edwin
Please remember that you were responding to my post which responded to another poster, mdrummer5, who out of the blue brought up the issues of the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusaders as an example of religious extremism.
Still, you have not given me that the Crusades were indeed Christian belief. You were merely agreeing with me that these were what Christians did.
The context of the OT makes it very clear that the Fifth Commandment forbids unlawful killing and not all killing. Do I really have to list for you all the places in the OT that command killing, including the killing of women and children (which is forbidden in Islamic law)?
Forced conversion has been generally forbidden in Christianity and Islam. However, if you look at the records of anti-Jewish persecution, you find that this was interpreted extremely narrowly. For instance, there’s one case where a Jew took refuge in a church from a Christian mob, and was told by the church officials that the only way to gain protection was to be baptized. A court later found this not to be a case of forced conversion (because no one was actually holding a sword to his throat at the time) and upheld the validity of the baptism. I’ve read of Muslims using similar tactics to get around their injunctions against forced conversion. In at least some cases, these seem to have been motivated by genuine religious zeal–letting a Jew walk away from baptism seemed like an insult to the Faith.
We’re talking past each other. You are speaking of “official belief.” I mean “things Christians did on the basis of their belief.”
You are out of topic. I maintain that there is no killing commandment in Christianity. You have to find out why, which I am sure you know; you are not exactly ignorant about this.
Another nonsensical and irrelevant comment - I don’t assume Sola Scriptural and I cannot imagine in all things under the earth why you should go saying this. You are not as smart as I thought.
I did not say there is force conversion in Islam as their belief. Your problem is, you came in the middle of nowhere here, without reading the context of the thread. Me saying that the Inquisition and Crusades being not Christian belief was too tempting for you not to let go; thus the only reason you butt in. Now please get into the proper perspective!
Goodness, of course I am speaking about official belief. What else do you think I am doing here? I have repeated that and hopefully that’s utterly clear for you.
What if I say to you that even the Pope could be wrong? We know what happened then, there was abuse and there were things done that should not be.
Thank Mrs. Beth. Welcome to the Forum.
But that’s not originally what you said. You said that it wasn’t Christian belief.
I brought up the OT because you did–you said that the Fifth Commandment forbade all killing, which is contrary not only to the OT context but to traditional Christian interpretation.
Because you immediately leap from the question of whether something is Christian belief to the question of whether it is commanded in Scripture. The Inquisition and the Crusades were the result of Christian belief. Of course Christians were interpreting Scripture to come up with these beliefs, but their beliefs were not based on a simple command from Scripture.
My point is that while this is technically true, the definition of “forced conversion” at work historically has been extremely narrow, and has left room for a good deal of coercion.
I think it’s misleading to say “belief” when you mean “official belief.” Official belief is just the tip of the iceberg, and we can argue endlessly about what counts or not as an “official belief.” It’s far too easy for us to look back and say, “well, they may have thought that the Faith required it, but we can now see that Scripture, Church documents, etc., can be interpreted otherwise, so we won’t count that belief as ‘official.’”
I did not answer this post because I only said Allah rewards those who kill and die for the cause of Islam NOT for Muslim simply to kill for the sake of killing. So that post was a misrepresentation of what I said and I decided to ignore it.
I explained to him (not to elwill).
I have summarized to you what has taken place but I SUGGEST YOU READ THE WHOLE THREAD AGAIN AND TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT OF THIS THREAD.
I think this is a game that two can play and I thought I and elwill played it well. There is an unwritten understanding that we know what we were talking about, **me and elwill **having crossed path many times in this Forum, in fact the exchanging here seems a reminiscence to what heave been argued before, so that’s why you see the line of exchanges between us is as what it is.