XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: theswain@operamail.com
darylgene@aol.com wrote:
> On Apr 29, 11:40�am, Larry Swain wrote:
>
>>darylg...@aol.com wrote:
>>
>>>On Apr 25, 6:27?am, Larry Swain wrote:
>>
>
>>Please, don't be ridiculous if you can help it. �As others have pointed
>>out to you, Greek Orthodox or Coptic Christians for example do not
>>accept the Apostle's Creed as definitive to their Christian faith. �By
>>your definition these groups of Christians aren't Christians. �We do not
>>even have to get into the question of defining "heresies" as also
>>Christian (whether they are orthodox or not is a different question) to
>>prove your consistently touted position to be in error.
>
>
>
> Fine, though I suspect we are just getting into semantics, yet STILL
> you won't tell me where you would draw the line.
Semantics is the study meaning, so yes, we're talking about what
something means. You've never asked me where I would draw the line, so
I don't know what you're on about there. But I wouldn't draw the line
or a line, except perhaps very loosely. The reason for that is that
lots of people and groups have drawn lines based on the "Bible": one
group I know of firmly believes that their small, non-denom,
quasi-pentecostal, all white church of 125 people are the only people on
earth currently "saved" and going to heaven. At the other extreme there
are those who draw the line to include pretty much everyone because God
is love and wants none to perish. The line has even been drawn to make
Jesus a Buddhist based on the similarities between a great deal of
Jesus' teaching and that of the Buddha. So I'm not in to drawing lines.
When speaking of Christianity as a religion, rather than who is "saved,"
or who is living a "Christian" life or some more personal measure, the
essential element is simply that Christ occupies the central place in
the religion. That gets us into trouble in some places and of course
needs refinement.
>
>
>>Second, your examples of the Voodoo priest and Hindus are inaccurate.
>>Neither of those claims to worship Jesus as the "son of YHWH who
>>appeared to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses"; as for Jews, Muslims, and
>>Chrisitians, they do in fact say that they are worshipping the YHWH who
>>appeared to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses among others and who
>>created all that there is, i. e. the same divine being.
>>
>
>
> Is this claim enough to establish identity? I do not doubt that many
> Jewish people worship God, Jesus was, among other things, Jewish. I do
> not doubt that many Moslems worship God, at least as well as I do.
> What strains credibility is that so many conflicting attributes can be
> contained in the same being.
Why? Human beings are complex and have many conflicting attributes. If
human beings are so complex, is not the divine even more so?
There have to be qualities that address
> His essence, when I am speaking about God I have an understanding of
> what that means and implies, if you do not share at least that
> understanding to some extent how can we be speaking about the same
> thing?
When my first wife and I went to marriage counseling, I was shocked to
learn how two people in earnest, who had lived together for some years,
could experience the same events and look at them so very differently as
to make the outsider believe that different events, not the same events,
were being spoken of. Again, if that's true of the human, if must be
more true of the divine who is revealed in the Scriptures as being
beyond our comprehension and understanding. It seems to me your God is
simply too small if God's "attributes" can be listed on paper and then
applied to Judaism and Islam and other places and say "different god".
>
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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