Danieltwotwenty wrote:Ivellious wrote:So murdering people in the name of Christ is better than beating your wife?
I'm saying they are essentially the same in your logic. You say that Muslims beat their wife because they think their religion says so, and I say that Christians have fought holy wars because they thought their religion said so. How is that all that different?
His point is, nowhere in the Bible does it condone any of the crusades, where as the Koran condones the miss treatment of women.
And he is right!
RickD wrote:Jac, I've read from you, that some of us are arguing that Muslims and Jews have a different God than Christians. That is not my argument. There is one God. Everybody has the same God. I'm talking about believing in the same God. There's a difference that you may not be seeing. The God I believe in, is a trinitarian God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God. The God that Muslims believe in, is Unitarian. Jesus is not God to them. Christians believe Jesus is God. Muslims don't believe Jesus is God. Muslims and Christians believe in a different Jesus, therefore Muslims and Christians believe in a different God. I think you're making my argument out to be something it's not. It's pretty simple. If one believes in a different Jesus, than the biblical Jesus, then one believes in a different God. I'm not talking about disagreeing with attributes or features of God. Jesus is not an attribute or feature of God. He is God. If one doesn't believe in Jesus, one doesn't believe in the one true God, but some other god.
And, just because Muslims believe they believe in the one true God, that doesn't mean they do. You really need to think about the possibility that Allah, is a deception from the prince of the this world, to deceive Muslims into believing in a false god.
I might even be more nuanced then Paul here, as I've argued that everyone
believes in the same God. They just believe different things to be true
about that same God (although maybe that's his position, too). It's just silly to suggest that if someone believes something untrue about someone else, then the don't really believe that person exists. To use the example I quoted in my first reply, if I believe that Einstein created the atomic bomb, I am mistaken. That was Oppenheimer. It does not, however, follow that I believe in "a different Einstein" than you do (assuming you believe that Oppenheimer, and not he, created the bomb). Again, what all of you who are arguing against this are failing to see is that you are making it impossible to speak wrongly about God, which the Bible itself refutes (Job 42:7).
That you believe God is Trinitarian and Muslims and Christians do not does not mean you believe in different gods. It means that one of you think one thing about God and another thinks another thing about God. It means that you are correct and they are incorrect. But something you
really need to see is that, on your line of thinking, when Muslims or Jews say "God is not a Trinity" you CANNOT say, "You are mistaken!" You would have to say, "You are right!" understanding that "God" for them means something other than it means for you. And in that case, why stop at the Trinity? If you are going to be consistent, Rick, then you need to say that every single person on this board believes in a "different God" insofar as NONE of us have exactly the same theology. Gman, for instance, thinks we can "give our salvation back." I strongly disagree with that. So we have different gods? That's absurd. But both are theological statements as to the very nature of God no less than the Trinity is.
edit:
BTW, for those of you who argue that people who reject the Trinity have a different God, what do you do about Origen or Eusebius or a myriad of other church fathers I could name? Do you realize that all of them rejected the Trinity as we have come to accept it? What do you do about Sebellius, who rejected the Trinity entirely? Granted they were heretics, but do you really think they had a different
God? To make the Trinity the defining factor in deciding who has the same God is dangerous if you study the philosophical history of the doctrine itself. In fact, if you really want to talk about it, then you'd have to say that the Greek Orthodox Church has a different God, because they reject the
filoque. So really? The Greek Orthodox Church believes in a different God than Protestants do?
It's all well and fine and good and easy to argue that Muslims have a different God. After all,
they're Muslims!. But I wonder how many of you are willing to be consistent with your logic.
