theological wrote: » I'm not actually sure the Islamic view of God coheres as closely to the Jewish idea of God. There are also fundamental differences there too. For example, who is the child of the promise, and the nature of sin. I don't think the Jewish idea of God post-rejection of Jesus is actually the same God either. In so far as they reject Him as coming from the Son of God, they don't believe in the same God as the God Moses spoke about. That's the point that He is labouring at the end of John 5. Jesus is the one who makes God known (1:18). Jesus is the very word of God who spoke from creation (1:1-3). If we say that Jews and Muslims believe in the same God, we are denying that belief in Jesus is essential to knowing God in His true form. In one of the more heated exchanges Jesus has in John's gospel we see the following: I don't worship the same God as Jews who have rejected Jesus, because believing in Jesus is essential to knowing God. Shying away from the distinctives and the centrality of the Christian gospel namely that Jesus is fully God and fully man and that this is essential to God's character sells Jesus short. That's why I reject the idea that Christians follow the same God as Muslims and Jews. We don't, we follow the God of the Bible who is revealed to us supremely in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1).
santana75 wrote: » What is this about? Why would Jesus allow any concession to demons? Why not just cast them out and throw them into the so called bottomless pit? It seems like a compassionate act by Jesus, but compassion for demons, why?
ChrisJ84 wrote: » Finally, it shows Jesus' authority over all created things, including the demons - they can only do what he permits them to do.
Peregrinus wrote: » Mmm. The same logic would lead to the conclusion that Jews and Christians don't believe in the same God. But the same Christians who tell you they worship a different God from Muslims would indignantly deny that they worship a differfent God from Jews. Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God - the One God, the omnipotentent, omniscient, all-loving God who created all things other than himself, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. If there's an outlier among the three groups its the Christians, who believe that God is Trinity, and that God became incarnate in the person of Jesus. Jews and Muslims both deny this. Whatever other differences they may have, Jews and Muslims are in absolutely no doubt, and never have been in any doubt, that they both worship the same God. And they agree that Christians also worship that God, albeit that Christians have some pretty odd ideas about him. This presents a real problem for those Christians who wish to claim that they worship the God of the Jews, but that Muslims worship a different God, because that's very hard to reconcile with the fact that Jewish and Muslim ideas about God have a lot more in common with one another than either of them do with Christian ideas.
John 8:42-47 wrote: Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
theological wrote: » In short - no they don't believe in the same God. If they believed in the same God, they would believe the same things about Jesus. That's basically the same approach Jesus took to explaining it in John 5 for example.
realdanbreen wrote: » Answering yes would not have changed anything but not giving a straight answer to my post isn't much help either. Do you think the 2.3billion Christians and the 1.3billion muslims are worshiping the same God?
theological wrote: » In short - no they don't believe in the same God.
Effects wrote: » Nah, same god. Just different stories about him. You hardly think there’s two different gods in heaven do you?
theological wrote: » In short - no they don't believe in the same God. If they believed in the same God, they would believe the same things about Jesus.
realdanbreen wrote: » So what you're saying is that 1.3billion people believe in one God and 2.3 billion people believe in a different God not to mention the other couple of billion who believe in a completely different assortment of Gods! Is it any wonder that I along with many others are sceptical about the whole thing.
theological wrote: » Muslims don't believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God or in the Trinity or in any other number of essential beliefs that Christians do. They deny the essential place of the cross in solving the problem of how a holy God dwells with a sinful people. Despite popular belief the difference between Christianity and Islam is not small. Islamic teaching about Jesus deviates so far from Christianity that they cannot be said to be the same in this regard. In fact that Qur'an is pretty revisionist in what it does share in common with Christianity, even in accounts from the Old Testament that feature it differs on important points. In short - no they don't believe in the same God. If they believed in the same God, they would believe the same things about Jesus. That's basically the same approach Jesus took to explaining it in John 5 for example.
realdanbreen wrote: » It's good to hear It's good to hear that you get such benefit from your faith. The God that you pray to, is that the same God that the 1.3 billion Muslims pray to? I'm not trying to be smart I just need someone to clarify these things.
John 5:36-47 wrote: For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”
Effects wrote: » She had sex outside of wedlock and became pregnant. She was lucky that Joseph took her in. She wouldn’t have been so lucky in 20th Century Ireland.
theological wrote: » It's odd that you say this and then go on to say what is more certain to you without any eyewitness testimony at all.
Most certainly on what basis? You're not following your own rules on what counts as valid testimony
gozunda wrote: » Why would mary have been a 'fallen woman'?
santana75 wrote: » realdanbreen wrote: » I suppose I should cut to the chase. As a young fella growing up I had a faith/belief in the existence of God as most of my peers had. Now as I've grown older I am a little less inclined to have that faith/belief. Would you, or other posters here, feel much the same? I'd have the opposite experience. I grew up catholic but turned away from it when I was a teenager. But I came back to faith by my own volition, gradually over time. I feel like my faith grows in proportion to how much of my time I devote to God on a daily basis. I used to just get up in the morning and set about the days tasks, and by the end of the day I wouldnt have given any time to God really. So I changed things in my life and made God number 1. In the morning I get up and I read the scriptures, I pray, I sit and meditate on the word of God. This has made a massive difference in my faith. Its simple, the more time I devote to God the more my faith and belief grows.
realdanbreen wrote: » I suppose I should cut to the chase. As a young fella growing up I had a faith/belief in the existence of God as most of my peers had. Now as I've grown older I am a little less inclined to have that faith/belief. Would you, or other posters here, feel much the same?
Peregrinus wrote: » Oh, sure, I wouldn't disagree. But I think we have to acknowledge that it's a reading that is heavily influenced by (a) faith in Jesus Christ, and our reflections on the implication of that faith, and (b) reading the Jewish scriptures together with, and in the light of, the New Testament texts. And, obviously, these are factors which were not at work, cannot have been at work, when the OT scriptures were produced, and when they were first received as inspired scripture. So, Christian readings of the OT texts are driven by something outside the OT texts themselves. Which doesn't in any way invalidate those readings, or make them incoherent or inconsistent. It just means we can't claim that the Christian readings reflect the texts' "own intent", which is the claim I came in to argue with. I think Jewish readings of the OT texts have a much better claim to reflect the "own intent" of those texts than Christian readings do.
realdanbreen wrote: » But the people who lived before Jesus arrival never heard the word of God so can't have been judged in the same way as those who did hear the word of God. So if you happen to believe in heaven and hell then the early humans got the better deal?
Effects wrote: » The problem is with the reporting of what Jesus' said. We have no way to corroborate what the bible tells us Jesus said.
Effects wrote: » Mary was most certainly not a virgin, but this narrative fits the misogynistic views of the bible/catholic church.
realdanbreen wrote: » I've asked this question before but never got a straight answer. Humans are on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years so therefore why would God only decide to send his son, Jesus, to earth only 2000 or so years ago? What became of the billions of humans who lived and died before God sent his son to spread the word?
Peregrinus wrote: » I think pretty well everyone who has grown older has a different faith or belief from the one they had as a youth; that comes with the territory of growing up. And one of the things I notice - don't take this personally; it's not a dig at you or at anyone in particular - is that a lot of atheist critiques of faith are framed as critiques of a very childish, simplistic faith. This is partly because (a) it's easy to critique; it's like shooting fish in a barrel, but possibly also because (b) what they are actually critiquing is their own childish faith that they rejected when they stopped being children, because that's the form of faith they are most familiar with. No doubt there are adult believers who still hold a very child-like, simple faith. I could name one or two. But it's not typical, or normal. Your question about vocations assumed that all the vocations in the 1950s were genuine spiritual vocations (and had nothing to do with, e.g., the social capital that priesthood represented at the time; the limited other opportunities that people had) and that the current lack of vocations is simply the result of God not calling people, and is not influenced by other factors. I doubt that many adult Christians believe either of those things, so your question doesn't really pose much of a challenge to their faith.
Peregrinus wrote: » You're making two assumptions there, Dan. The first is that, 60 years ago, the people who thought they had a calling to the priesthood did in fact have a calling to the priesthood. The second is that, today, people who don't discern a calling to the priesthood aren't in fact called to the priesthood. I myself am a little more sceptical than you, because I'm not prepared to make either of those assumptions.
Peregrinus wrote: » We can't say that they never heard the word of God; only that they never heard the word of God (a) in the person of Jesus Christ (b) during their own earthly lives. The Christian tradition is that Jesus preached salvation to the dead also, and they had the same opportunity to respond as the rest of humanity; you just didn't observe it because you weren't dead at the time. Google the "harrowing of hell' for artistic representations of this theological concept.
Peregrinus wrote: » The Christian view is that the sacrifice of Christ is for the redemption of the whole of humanity. There is no distinction between those who lived and died before Jesus's time, Jesus's contemporaries, or those who came after.
Effects wrote: » Well there's only two things that could have happened. God created the world, and started the ball rolling in terms of evolution. He then stepped back to see what his creation would become. He had no idea how man was going to turn out. The other option is that, again, he started the process of evolution, but he knew exactly how Homo Sapiens was going to evolve and become the dominant species of the genus Homo. In either case, God knew that he had to wait until the right time to introduce his son Jesus to the world, to be born of a fallen woman, Mary. Mary was most certainly not a virgin, but this narrative fits the misogynistic views of the bible/catholic church. To add to your question, I think it's more important to discuss when souls became existent. Did god only introduce them with homo sapiens, or do earlier precursors to modern humans have them? Do they go to the same heaven as we do, or is it a different existence?
