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Lapell
Guest
Yes, and by NON-JEWS!!! So what? They still are the same people as those you’ve been calling the Nazarenes…
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Ben_Masada
Guest
**Because it didn’t. Judaism orginated with Abraham. The opposite is true that Abraham had to leave Polytheism to give origin to the Monotheistic religion of Judaism.You did not answer my remark about Judaism originating as a polytheistic religion.
Christianity yes, it originated in the Polythistic mind of Paul about the Trinity.**
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Ben_Masada
Guest
Lapell, again you have missed my point. What I mean by the attacks of Chritianity is to pick up a Jew and claim that he was the son of God as if in Judaism there is room for Greek Mythology. That’s what I mean by attacking the integrity of Judaism. This is a distorsion of the image of Judaism before the world.I would think “Judaism” can take care of herself.
It may be that there were many Christian individuals who attacked Judaism and the Jews. Not “Christianity” herself! No more than Judaism would have attacked the Christian Faith, though some Jews have attacked Christianity, at least by mouth and by pen…
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Ben_Masada
Guest
No Lapel, they were not. And I will quote for you the difference. The converts of the Nazarenes would become staunch defenders of the Law. (Acts 21:20) Whle Paul would teach the Jews to abandon Moses, to stop circumcising their children and to renounce the Jewish customs. (Acts 21:21)Yes, and by NON-JEWS!!! So what? They still are the same people as those you’ve been calling the Nazarenes…
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Lapell
Guest
That the Gentiles would have a share in the Christian Covenant without having to be physically circumcised was bad enough for the Jews, so in the beginning the Christians (or the Nazarenes if you will) must have been another Jewish sect. They attended the synagogues and the Temple. Because of what Paul (among others) preached, the Jews probably thought the new sect would bring Gentiles in sections not open to them, which was not what any of them, even Paul, would do…No Lapel, they were not. And I will quote for you the difference. The converts of the Nazarenes would become staunch defenders of the Law. (Acts 21:20) While Paul would teach the Jews to abandon Moses, to stop circumcising their children and to renounce the Jewish customs. (Acts 21:21)
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Lapell
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You forgot it was just some of the disciples of Jesus of Jewish origin who would say those of Gentile origin would have to be circumcised… You have drawn a general conclusion from just a few examples.No Lapell, they were not. And I will quote for you the difference. The converts of the Nazarenes would become staunch defenders of the Law. (Acts 21:20) Whle Paul would teach the Jews to abandon Moses, to stop circumcising their children and to renounce the Jewish customs. (Acts 21:21)
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Ben_Masada
Guest
You see? You keep repeating the same posts over and over again, as a wasting of our time. I think I must take a leave of you, at least until you have something new to share.You forgot it was just some of the disciples of Jesus of Jewish origin who would say those of Gentile origin would have to be circumcised… You have drawn a general conclusion from just a few examples.
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Lapell
Guest
As far as I am concerned, if you didn’t comebackwith the same thingswe wouldn’t have to come back with the same answers. 2+2=4 all the time (when we count in base 10, of course!) And if you took the pain to read the 2nd letter of Peter, chapter 3, where he speaks of the letters of “our dear brother Paul”, you could not say that the Gospel preached by Paul was not different in its essence from the one preached by the Apostles. You don’t believe in Jesus the Messiah, you don’t believe the Apostles and especially Paul really received the message they proclaimed from the resurrected Jesus Himself, each one according to the grace he received… you don’t believe in the unity of it… Why have you taken the pain to come on the CAF and share us some things taken from enemies of the Church in the way an enemy of the Church would do?
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Lapell
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The Church was Jewish when it started. The extraordinary things that happened when Jesus came would certainly have overwhelmed us had we been Jews living in his days. As for yourself, you have consistently distorted the message of Christianity and her beginnings in all your threads.Lapell, again you have missed my point. What I mean by the attacks of Chritianity is to pick up a Jew and claim that he was the son of God as if in Judaism there is room for Greek Mythology. That’s what I mean by attacking the integrity of Judaism. This is a distorsion of the image of Judaism before the world.
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L2P2
Guest
But then why continue to use Scripture that clearly dates in scientific terms to the polytheism of Abraham’s ancestors?Because it didn’t. Judaism orginated with Abraham. The opposite is true that Abraham had to leave Polytheism to give origin to the Monotheistic religion of Judaism.
All I am saying is that any monotheistic religion is going to have tendencies toward a version of polytheism despite orthodox and clear teaching to the contrary. This happens within Judaism too. Sometimes the idea that the Jews are the Chosen People gets carried to the point of thinking Jews are God-like over against non-Jews. Or the elements of the Chabad movement in the U.S. who believe Rabbi Schneerson is the Messiah and seem to worship him. Even Islam, which is much more stringent in its insistence on an exalted God than Judaism, venerates the descendants of the Prophet (or at least Shiites do).
There are many reasons for this, some quite legitimate. Monotheism creates a big problem when it comes to explaining evil because, if there is only one God, he is also responsible for evil. There are many Jews of a certain generation who are angry at God because of the Shoah. Is it good to be angry at God? Catholics handle this by having a more developed concept of the Devil. You can call that polytheistic (I wouldn’t), but it does help solve the problem of theodicy.
As Catholics, we know God is one and above all human attributes. But in terms of daily worship, we ask saints for intercession with God (Protestants often say that Catholics worship saints as Gods), and we accept that the Trinity is a mystery that includes three persons in one God. These are simply ways of making God feel closer; it’s not polytheism. It is just the way our religion has of making God present in daily life.
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Ben_Masada
Guest
**There is no problem with Monotheism to explain evil. God is not responsible for evil. How? Because evil does not exist. Evil is only the absence of good. There is good but not evil. When God created light, He saw how good the light was. Everything God created was good. Therefore, there is good because God created good. There is no evil, God did not create it and He is not responsible for it.There are many reasons for this, some quite legitimate. Monotheism creates a big problem when it comes to explaining evil because, if there is only one God, he is also responsible for evil. There are many Jews of a certain generation who are angry at God because of the Shoah. Is it good to be angry at God? Catholics handle this by having a more developed concept of the Devil. You can call that polytheistic (I wouldn’t), but it does help solve the problem of theodicy.
If you read Ecclesiastes 7:29, you will see that man was created good and straight but, through the use of his freewill, he caused much evil where good became absent. Therefore, man creates evil, not God. And man is responsible for the evil he causes to happen to him and to others.
The anger of some Jews at God because of the Shoah, is just a caprice of human nature
for lack of better knowledge of God. The Shoah did not happen by the will of God but by the will of man. The aggressive part of the men who caused the Shoah just went too far beyond the threshold of the absence of good. And the victimized part of men in the Shoah just happened to be on the wrong place at the wrong time.**
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L2P2
Guest
If it true that only man creates evil, then God is either not all-knowing or not all-powerful because he did not know or could not prevent terrible events. If either of these conditions is true, then he is not God because his knowledge and power are not fully transcendent.Therefore, man creates evil, not God. And man is responsible for the evil he causes to happen to him and to others.
Explaining evil in a strict monotheistic framework is an ancient logical problem; there are many books on the subject. Sometimes relaxing your logic gets you places, and that is effectively what Catholicism does. I admire the consistency of your arguments and have a deep reverence for Judaism, but unrelenting monotheism backs one into a corner on certain questions.
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Ben_Masada
Guest
What do you really think of God or want of Him, that he keep the umbilical cord attached and never give you freedom to be yourself? Think of a crazy mother who, after giving birth to a child wants to keep the umbilical cord attached until the babe becomes a man. Think of someone who wants to get honey from a beehive and gets upset at God Who being all-powerful did not prevent him from being stung by the bees. Think of Scientists warning the populace not to build close to the Vesuvius Vulcano because it could erupt at any time. They don’t care, do all the same and then blaspheme against a weak God who could not prevent them from being killed when the vulcano went off. I think it is enough. That’s exactly what you are trying to do with your post above. It has nothing to do with an all-knowing and all-powerful God. Think it through.If it true that only man creates evil, then God is either not all-knowing or not all-powerful because he did not know or could not prevent terrible events. If either of these conditions is true, then he is not God because his knowledge and power are not fully transcendent.
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L2P2
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Many have thought this through. It’s a logical difficulty in the study of the problem of evil (theodicy) within monotheism. Different religions handle it differently.Think it through.
Your metaphor of God as a parent means that you accept that God is either not all-powerful or that he thought it wise to let the Shoah happen, which makes him not especially benevolent. Without either one of those attributes (glory, goodness) is he really God? A Catholic would make reference to the Devil and would not worry so much about the charge of polytheism, even though one could level the charge that the Devil verges on being an evil god, as in Greek and Roman mythology. We aren’t polytheists but we are not as worried about the question as Jews or evangelical Protestants.
To me, people like Elie Weisel who express anger at God over the Shoah are being logically strict monotheists. My personal choice is to relax my logic on the question of whether God is responsible for horrible things happening. Catholic theology allows me to do this.
But to return to the original topic of the thread. I went to Catholic school and spent 3 years in div school, and I never encountered a justification for the Trinity based in Hebrew scripture. Christology was not my area of specialty, but you should be aware that the argument you are attacking is not the one commonly made, for Catholics at least.
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Lapell
Guest
Y., how do you personally deal with God? Same way as Tevye the milkman does (only slightly more learned), or quite differently? (You may not believe it, but I mean no sarcasm here…)
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Ben_Masada
Guest
**I don’t think my metaphor of God as a parent would mean that God is not all-powerful.Many have thought this through. It’s a logical difficulty in the study of the problem of evil (theodicy) within monotheism. Different religions handle it differently.
Your metaphor of God as a parent means that you accept that God is either not all-powerful or that he thought it wise to let the Shoah happen, which makes him not especially benevolent. Without either one of those attributes (glory, goodness) is he really God? A Catholic would make reference to the Devil and would not worry so much about the charge of polytheism, even though one could level the charge that the Devil verges on being an evil god, as in Greek and Roman mythology. We aren’t polytheists but we are not as worried about the question as Jews or evangelical Protestants.
To me, people like Elie Weisel who express anger at God over the Shoah are being logically strict monotheists. My personal choice is to relax my logic on the question of whether God is responsible for horrible things happening. Catholic theology allows me to do this.
But to return to the original topic of the thread. I went to Catholic school and spent 3 years in div school, and I never encountered a justification for the Trinity based in Hebrew scripture. Christology was not my area of specialty, but you should be aware that the argument you are attacking is not the one commonly made, for Catholics at least.
He created the Universerse, fit some of the planets to human adaptation and said, “Grow and multiply and control the earth.” Then, he cut the umbilical cord by making us free to grow also mentally and live our own lives. **
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L2P2
Guest
If he cuts the umbilical cord, then it would seem to me that he renounces his all-powerful nature.**I don’t think my metaphor of God as a parent would mean that God is not all-powerful… . . Then, he cut the umbilical cord by making us free to grow also mentally and live our own lives. **
But we are getting into a logical go-around that could extend forever, and I am not a fan of Catholic apologetics where they attack other religions. I want to emphasize that I am not criticizing your point of view, merely observing that it is one way of solving the problem of evil within monotheism. The intimacy that Jews invoke with respect to God I deeply admire. Catholics have a different method that we cannot say is in any respect better.
I would rather leave the above observation aside and say this. I remember hearing a lecture by a Roman Catholic professor of mine in a course on suffering and the Book of Job. The prof was a deeply learned scholar of the Hebrew Bible, and he made an observation about one crucial difference between Catholicism and Judaism, based in Genesis 32:24, where Jacob can be understood to wrestle with God. The intimate and contested nature–exemplified by this passage, he said–of the relation between God and an observant Jew does not exist in Roman Catholicism.
The perpetual Jewish habit of questioning and developing one’s individual conscience is one we Roman Catholics lack, I believe, to our detriment. Instead of intimacy with God, we tend to venerate God’s glory. The implications for our understanding of the problem of evil are obvious in that we must develop a concept of the Devil–how else explain God’s failure to control evil?–and be skeptical of an immanent God, even if given flesh.
Still, an emphasis on the intimacy of God, as you espouse, is the opposite of an insistence on his absolute Glory. Only the latter seems to me to be clearly monotheism.
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Seeker
Guest
Ben,Why would God be in three persons, because Christians have decided that He should be? You are not making sense Lapell.
I’d like to ask you a few questions, and please answer it from a Jewish perspective:
- Is God an Infinite Being from a Jewish perspective?
- Did this Infinite Being Create the World we live in, and everything around beyond it?
- How did the Infinite Being Create the World and everything around and beyond it?
- Is this Infinite Being a male or female?, If NO, then Who was this Infinite Being?
Seeker
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Seeker
Guest
Ben,**Alan, let me ask you a question: Did Matthew and John apostated from Judaism like Paul did? No, they did not. Therefore, they did not write those gospels that carry their names. Too Hellenistic to be written by Jews loyal to Judaism. Not only Hellenistic but also complete disregard or ignorance of Jewish culture and customs. I bet 101 percent of my word that none of the books of the NT was written by a Jew.
To be hypothetical is to speak through suppositions. For example, “Suppose there was an eyewitness to Jesus’ resurrection, would you become a Christian?” This is to be hypothetical. Or any statement starting with the conditional “if.” **
let me ask you a couple of questions,
- how do u know that Mathew and John did not “apostate” from Judaism?, where in your scriptures does reference them?
- can you prove to me that Paul “apostated” from Judaism?
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Ben_Masada
Guest
If he cuts the umbilical cord, then it would seem to me that he renounces his all-powerful nature.
The implications for our understanding of the problem of evil are obvious in that we must develop a concept of the Devil–how else explain God’s failure to control evil?–and be skeptical of an immanent God, even if given flesh.
**When the Doctor cuts the umbilical cord at the birth of a baby, does it mean the mother is renouncing her all-powerful influence over the baby? I didn’t think so. I think that God rather confirms His purpose in this world: That we all be the owners of freewill, which differentiates us from robbots or irrational animals. That’s what God intended for us and is endorsed with the cutting of the umbilical cord.
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