Rastafarianism

[KnightofChrist]

Any religion that rejects the Divinity of Jesus Christ does not believe in the one True God.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' date='25 June 2010 - 06:00 PM' timestamp='1277503203' post='2134203']
I'm just genuinely curious. I can see both sides of the Islam thing, I'm just wondering, from your point of view, whether the religion of the post-Christ Jews are Abrahamic or not.
[/quote]

I guess I would say "no" because said Jews do not follow Biblical Judaism, as has been pointed out. I would say, however, that they do worship the God of Abraham. For Islam, I believe that they are not Abrahamic and I believe that they do not worship the God of Abraham. If they were Abrahamic and if they did worship the God of Abraham, their holy book would not insult the Jews and Christians, and their holy book (which came after Christ) would not tell the tall tale that Christ was never crucified but replaced by another man. While the Jews deny the Divinity of Christ, they do not deny (or they do not rewrite) history the way Islam does.

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='25 June 2010 - 02:58 PM' timestamp='1277499534' post='2134183']
I do not know any Muslim who would agree that they worship the same God as Christians and Jews.
[/quote]

Again, I don't really understand it. However as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather trust the Church than Muslims on the issue. If church theologians and popes can say that we worship the same God, then it really doesn't matter to me if the Muslims say we do or not. He said/she said kind of thing. I go with the opinion that is more trustworthy to me.

Oftentimes, in non-infallible issues where theologians post-Vatican II disagree with theologians pre-Vatican II, I tend to stick with the traditional opinion. However it would seem that on this issue, the Church has always agreed (or at least I don't see a prominent theologian who spoke otherwise) that the Muslims worshiped the one true God, albeit an erroneous and disfiguring image of God (as the CCC 844 might point out.)

Edited June 25, 2010 by goldenchild17

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='25 June 2010 - 06:41 PM' timestamp='1277505708' post='2134223']
Again, I don't really understand it. However as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather trust the Church than Muslims on the issue. If church theologians and popes can say that we worship the same God, then it really doesn't matter to me if the Muslims say we do or not. He said/she said kind of thing. I go with the opinion that is more trustworthy to me.
[/quote]

Is that the opinion of certain theologians and popes, or is it infallible teaching? For I cannot in good conscience believe that Allah is my Heavenly Father.

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='25 June 2010 - 04:51 PM' timestamp='1277506264' post='2134232']
Is that the opinion of certain theologians and popes, or is it infallible teaching? For I cannot in good conscience believe that Allah is my Heavenly Father.
[/quote]

Probably just theological opinion (although a scholar here would probably know more). I can see your point though, just saying that it isn't particularly a brand new idea. Honestly, I can see where your coming from. I just can't look at it that way because personally if I were to see it that way, then I'd have to say that I couldn't in good conscience believe that the God of Calvinism was my Father either, or really any protestant explanations of God as they all fail in one way or another, but that for example.

Edited June 25, 2010 by goldenchild17

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='25 June 2010 - 06:55 PM' timestamp='1277506544' post='2134235']
Probably just theological opinion (although a scholar here would probably know more). I can see your point though, just saying that it isn't particularly a brand new idea. Honestly, I can see where your coming from. I just can't look at it that way because personally if I were to see it that way, then I'd have to say that I couldn't in good conscience believe that the God of Calvinism was my Father either, or really any protestant explanations of God as they all fail in one way or another, but that for example.
[/quote]

Since a Protestant is a Christian, I feel perfectly safe to say that yes, we both worship the True God.

I will never, ever say that I worship the same god Muslims do. For my God is all loving and merciful.

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='25 June 2010 - 05:09 PM' timestamp='1277507358' post='2134241']
Since a Protestant is a Christian, I feel perfectly safe to say that yes, we both worship the True God.

I will never, ever say that I worship the same god Muslims do. For my God is all loving and merciful.
[/quote]

Fair enough, it seems the option is open to see it both ways. I'm disturbed by quite a few of the ways that protestants see God so if I were to look at it like that, then I'd have to say the same about them, the label of "Christian" notwithstanding. But I just go with the assumption that they know not what they do and like Paul says in Acts 17:23, they also know not Whom they worship.

But yes, what you say makes sense too.

[KnightofChrist]

No one here or in "real life" that believes Allah is God the Father has logically explained to me how someone can reject God but believe in God. Vatican II stated that Muslims [i]claim to[/i] believe in the God of Abraham, just a small part of the ambiguity found in much of the VII documents. Claim to believe can mean they do or just think they do.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' date='25 June 2010 - 07:19 PM' timestamp='1277507959' post='2134250']
No one here or in "real life" that believes Allah is God the Father has logically explained to me how someone can reject God but believe in God. Vatican II stated that Muslims [i]claim to[/i] believe in the God of Abraham, just a small part of the ambiguity found in much of the VII documents. Claim to believe can mean they do or just think they do.
[/quote]

Which leads me back to saying - no Muslim I know would claim to believe in my God, or thinks they believe in my God.

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' date='25 June 2010 - 05:19 PM' timestamp='1277507959' post='2134250']
No one here or in "real life" that believes Allah is God the Father has logically explained to me how someone can reject God but believe in God. Vatican II stated that Muslims [i]claim to[/i] believe in the God of Abraham, just a small part of the ambiguity found in much of the VII documents. Claim to believe can mean they do or just think they do.
[/quote]

I can't claim to know how to explain it. All I know is what the Church says. (Warning: quote dump in spoiler tags. If you don't like it, too bad just avoid it ) None of these references say that Islam CLAIMS to worship the one true God, but that they actually DO worship the one true God. How can it be? I don't know, otherwise I would be doing something far more useful with my life and this knowledge than arguing about this on the internet.

[spoiler]Pope Gregory VII (1020-1085), written in 1076 to al-Nasir, Prince of Bougie (in Algeria): [quote]'You and I owe this charity to one another even more than we owe it to other people, as we recognise and profess - in different ways, it is true - the One God, whom we praise and venerate each day as the creator of all and master of the world, according to the words of the Apostle: For he is our peace,; in his flesh he has made both groups into one' (Eph 2,14).[/quote]


The great Jesuit scholastic of the Counter-Reformation, Francisco Suarez, explains in one of his commentaries on St. Thomas:

[quote]"Thomas, however, rightly distinguishes two kinds of religious practices: there are those which go against reason and against God insofar as he can be recognized through nature and through the natural powers of the soul, e.g., the worship of idols, etc. Others are contrary to the Christian religion and to its commands not because they are evil in themselves or contrary to reason as, for example, the practices of Jews and even many of the customs of Mohammedans and such unbelievers who believe in one true God." Suarez, Tract. de Fide Disp. 18 Sect. III [/quote]

Catechism of Pope Pius X:

[quote]12 Q. Who are infidels?
A. Infidels are those who have not been baptised and do not believe in Jesus Christ, because they either believe in and worship false gods as idolaters do, or though admitting one true God, they do not believe in the Messiah, neither as already come in the Person of Jesus Christ, nor as to come; for instance, Mohammedans and the like. Catechism of Pope Pius X (Section Communion of Saints, Q. 12)[/quote]

St. John Damascene in his "Founts of Knowledge"

[quote]These used to be idolaters and worshiped the morning star and Aphrodite, whom in their own language they called Khabár, which means great. And so down to the time of Heraclius they were very great idolaters. From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy....He says that there is one God, creator of all things...[/quote]

Catholic Encyclopedia (1917): [quote]As in ecclesiastical language those who by baptism have received faith in Jesus Christ and have pledged Him their fidelity and called the faithful, so the name infidel is given to those who have not been baptized. The term applies not only to all who are ignorant of the true God, such as pagans of various kinds, but also to those who adore Him but do not recognize Jesus Christ, as Jews and Mohammedans.[/quote]

Second Vatican Council:

[quote]The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. [/quote]

also, Hilaire Belloc in his book on the heresies describes Islam as a heresy and explains how it deviated from Catholicism, but was not an alien religion in and of itself:

[quote]Mohammedanism was a <heresy>: that is the essential point to grasp
before going any further. It began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It
was not a pagan contrast with the Church; it was not an alien enemy. It
was a perversion of Christian doctrine. It vitality and endurance soon
gave it the appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary
with its rise saw it for what it was_not a denial, but an adaptation and a
misuse, of the Christian thing. It differed from most (not from all)
heresies in this, that it did not arise within the bounds of the Christian
Church. The chief heresiarch, Mohammed himself, was not, like most
heresiarchs, a man of Catholic birth and doctrine to begin with. He
sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic
doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world_on the frontiers
of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose
territories he had known by travel_which inspired his convictions. He came
of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the
conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans' while.

He took over very few of those old pagan ideas which might have
been native to him from his descent. On the contrary, he preached and
insisted upon a whole group of ideas which were peculiar to the Catholic
Church and distinguished it from the paganism which it had conquered in
the Greek and Roman civilization. Thus the very foundation of his teaching
was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The
attributes of God he also took over in the main from Catholic doctrine:
the personal nature, the all-goodness, the timelessness, the providence of
God, His creative power as the origin of all things, and His sustenance of
all things by His power alone. The world of good spirits and angels and
of evil spirits in rebellion against God was a part of the teaching, with
a chief evil spirit, such as Christendom had recognized. Mohammed preached
with insistence that prime Catholic doctrine, on the human side_the
immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life,
coupled with the consequent doctrine of punishment and reward after death.[/quote]
http://www.ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/HERESY4.TXT[/spoiler]

Edited June 25, 2010 by goldenchild17

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='goldenchild17' date='25 June 2010 - 06:55 PM' timestamp='1277506544' post='2134235']I couldn't in good conscience believe that the God of Calvinism was my Father either, or really any protestant explanations of God as they all fail in one way or another, but that for example.
[/quote]
This is an extremely good example. The God I worship would not da[u][/u]mn someone to Hell before he was even conceived.
Which bring us to:

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='25 June 2010 - 07:09 PM' timestamp='1277507358' post='2134241']
Since a Protestant is a Christian, I feel perfectly safe to say that yes, we both worship the True God.
[/quote]
The way I see it is that - assuming for a second, it is the same God - both we and the Muslims are looking at the same God. Our telescope of 2000 years of tradition and infallibility provides a clear and sharp view of Him, while their telescope whose lens has been broken with the teachings of a false prophet are now left with a distorted and confusing view, leading to misunderstandings about what He really looks like.

[HisChildForever]

Muslims cannot possibly worship the One True God. The god of Islam and the God of Christianity are completely different deities.

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' date='25 June 2010 - 05:46 PM' timestamp='1277509605' post='2134258']
This is an extremely good example. The God I worship would not da[u][/u]mn someone to Hell before he was even conceived.
[/quote]

One primary reason I mention them specifically in my example.

[Vincent Vega]

Which...is why it was an extremely good example.

[goldenchild17]

[quote name='HisChildForever' date='25 June 2010 - 05:47 PM' timestamp='1277509661' post='2134260']
Muslims cannot possibly worship the One True God. The god of Islam and the God of Christianity are completely different deities.
[/quote]

You're entitled to your opinion, yet if there is not going to be any interaction with my references, then I suppose there's no point in continuing though. peace

Edited June 25, 2010 by goldenchild17