Islam, Judaism, and Christianity - Same God?

[Priestley]

comfortably_dumb

zz1000zz

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The Amazing Ryuu

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If we're saying we're all worshiping the same God, then either Jews and Muslims say that they follow and pray Jesus and live by the power of Spirit like we do, or we deny the Trinity.

I think it's completely fair to say that we worship the same God. Islam traces its roots back to Abraham, just as the Jews and Christians do. Whereas the latter two followed Abraham's line through Issac, the Muslims follow it through his firstborn son, Ishmael. Yes, eventually the three faiths deviated into their own beliefs and traditions, but we still share the same core, the same God.

As a Christian, you believe the Father is God and Jesus is God and the Spirit is God.
As a Jew and Muslim, you do not. Sure, it has the same foundation, but it is very different.

As different as the faiths may be, believing different things about a god does not mean you believe in different gods.

Umm... it goes beyond different things and to a different god.
YHWH the same? Sure. Of course. But Jews to not believe in Jesus and Muslims do not consider him divine and both do not believe in the Holy Spirit. They are not all the same. If you tell a Jew that they believe in the same God a Christians, some are very likely to get offended. If you tell a Muslim, some are very likely to get offended, although I would say maybe not as much as a Jew since I am not sure if Muslims hold the same opinion that Jesus and the Spirit are idolatrous.

It is the same God regardless of who is offended by the statement. How offensive a statement might be is nothing to do with how true or false it is.

comfortably_dumb

@PriestlEy: And the Christians that deny the Trinity are often viewed as heretical, since the Trinity is major Christian Doctrine.

Yet these "heretical" Christians are still Christians in themselves and in their like-minded community. As you said, they "are often viewed as heretical". This does not necessarily mean that they are heretical, or that they should be. All it means is that it is how they are perceived by others.

Any mention of the Trinity could equally be viewed as heretical on the basis that there is little mention of it in the Old Testament and the Gospels and by the suggestion that the Gospels were influenced by the ideas about magical/divine trinities that were floating around Greece and the Mediterranean at the time.  

[comfylove]

Priestley

comfortably_dumb

zz1000zz

comfortably_dumb

The Amazing Ryuu

I think it's completely fair to say that we worship the same God. Islam traces its roots back to Abraham, just as the Jews and Christians do. Whereas the latter two followed Abraham's line through Issac, the Muslims follow it through his firstborn son, Ishmael. Yes, eventually the three faiths deviated into their own beliefs and traditions, but we still share the same core, the same God.

As a Christian, you believe the Father is God and Jesus is God and the Spirit is God.
As a Jew and Muslim, you do not. Sure, it has the same foundation, but it is very different.

As different as the faiths may be, believing different things about a god does not mean you believe in different gods.

Umm... it goes beyond different things and to a different god.
YHWH the same? Sure. Of course. But Jews to not believe in Jesus and Muslims do not consider him divine and both do not believe in the Holy Spirit. They are not all the same. If you tell a Jew that they believe in the same God a Christians, some are very likely to get offended. If you tell a Muslim, some are very likely to get offended, although I would say maybe not as much as a Jew since I am not sure if Muslims hold the same opinion that Jesus and the Spirit are idolatrous.

It is the same God regardless of who is offended by the statement. How offensive a statement might be is nothing to do with how true or false it is.

comfortably_dumb

@PriestlEy: And the Christians that deny the Trinity are often viewed as heretical, since the Trinity is major Christian Doctrine.

Yet these "heretical" Christians are still Christians in themselves and in their like-minded community. As you said, they "are often viewed as heretical". This does not necessarily mean that they are heretical, or that they should be. All it means is that it is how they are perceived by others.

Any mention of the Trinity could equally be viewed as heretical on the basis that there is little mention of it in the Old Testament and the Gospels and by the suggestion that the Gospels were influenced by the ideas about magical/divine trinities that were floating around Greece and the Mediterranean at the time.

As a Christian, you worship Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God. As a Jew and Muslim, you do not. It has the same foundational God. We all believe in the God of Abraham, but saying that they are completely the same is false. Christian God is trinitarian, and the Jewish God and Islamic God is not.

As much as you say it, it's still different. We believe and worship the Trinity, they do not.

Of course the heretics consider those in their own denomination Christian. Isn't that obvious? And they are considered heretics. If you do not believe in the Trinity, then you are going against Christian Doctrine which, um, last I checked is heretical and would make you a heretic.

And while the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible, it is all over the place. Would you like verses?

Sorry I spelled your name wrong.  

[freelance lover]

comfortably_dumb

As a Christian, you worship Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God. As a Jew and Muslim, you do not.

I do not worship Jesus. I worship God, and am able to do so by Jesus sacrifice. The Holy Spirit is how God has made himself present on earth after Jesus sacrifice. The God I worship has all the same characteristics and history as the God is Islam and Judaism. Both of those religions recognize Jesus as well, as a great prophet or teacher (respectably).  

[The Amazing Ryuu]

freelance lover

comfortably_dumb

As a Christian, you worship Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God. As a Jew and Muslim, you do not.

I do not worship Jesus. I worship God, and am able to do so by Jesus sacrifice. The Holy Spirit is how God has made himself present on earth after Jesus sacrifice. The God I worship has all the same characteristics and history as the God is Islam and Judaism. Both of those religions recognize Jesus as well, as a great prophet or teacher (respectably).

^ Second.  

[comfylove]

freelance lover

comfortably_dumb

As a Christian, you worship Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God. As a Jew and Muslim, you do not.

I do not worship Jesus. I worship God, and am able to do so by Jesus sacrifice. The Holy Spirit is how God has made himself present on earth after Jesus sacrifice. The God I worship has all the same characteristics and history as the God is Islam and Judaism. Both of those religions recognize Jesus as well, as a great prophet or teacher (respectably).

I know many Jews that do not recognize Jesus as a Prophet. That cannot really be said as a blanket statement. For Islam, sure, but not really for Judaism since plenty Jews hate Jesus. Case and point -- IMR from the ED, although I do love her.

And what denomination are you?  

[Priestley]

comfortably_dumb

Priestley

comfortably_dumb

zz1000zz

comfortably_dumb

As a Christian, you believe the Father is God and Jesus is God and the Spirit is God.
As a Jew and Muslim, you do not. Sure, it has the same foundation, but it is very different.

As different as the faiths may be, believing different things about a god does not mean you believe in different gods.

Umm... it goes beyond different things and to a different god.
YHWH the same? Sure. Of course. But Jews to not believe in Jesus and Muslims do not consider him divine and both do not believe in the Holy Spirit. They are not all the same. If you tell a Jew that they believe in the same God a Christians, some are very likely to get offended. If you tell a Muslim, some are very likely to get offended, although I would say maybe not as much as a Jew since I am not sure if Muslims hold the same opinion that Jesus and the Spirit are idolatrous.

It is the same God regardless of who is offended by the statement. How offensive a statement might be is nothing to do with how true or false it is.

comfortably_dumb

@PriestlEy: And the Christians that deny the Trinity are often viewed as heretical, since the Trinity is major Christian Doctrine.

Yet these "heretical" Christians are still Christians in themselves and in their like-minded community. As you said, they "are often viewed as heretical". This does not necessarily mean that they are heretical, or that they should be. All it means is that it is how they are perceived by others.

Any mention of the Trinity could equally be viewed as heretical on the basis that there is little mention of it in the Old Testament and the Gospels and by the suggestion that the Gospels were influenced by the ideas about magical/divine trinities that were floating around Greece and the Mediterranean at the time.

As a Christian, you worship Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God.

As I just said: not necessarily. Some followers of Christ don't. That's the way it is. Take them or leave them, but you have not proven that belief in the Trinity is a prerequisite for being a Christian, nor that not believing in the Trinity disqualifies a person from being a Christian.

comfortably_dumb

As a Jew and Muslim, you do not. It has the same foundational God. We all believe in the God of Abraham, but saying that they are completely the same is false. Christian God is trinitarian, and the Jewish God and Islamic God is not.

...according to "Christian Doctrine".

comfortably_dumb

As much as you say it, it's still different. We believe and worship the Trinity, they do not.

Of course the heretics consider those in their own denomination Christian. Isn't that obvious? And they are considered heretics. If you do not believe in the Trinity, then you are going against Christian Doctrine which, um, last I checked is heretical and would make you a heretic.

...according to those who practice this "Christian Doctrine". Equally it can be said that the Trinity is a heretical idea. Just because the Nicaean council agreed to incorporate it into the Bible doesn't make it any less heretical, nor any truer. Think outside the box.

comfortably_dumb

And while the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible, it is all over the place. Would you like verses?

Certainly.

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Sorry I spelled your name wrong.

No apology necessary, just remember for next time.

As follow-upl questions, I would like to ask: how you respond to Jesus' wishes not to be worshipped and his indications towards God who should be? Do you do it anyway?  

[comfylove]

Where does it say that the Trinity is heretical?

Trinity as Doctrine
Trinity as Doctrine
Trinity as Doctrine Augustine has four books on Doctrine that, I believe, all talk about the Trinity, but I won't post them because it gets excessive.
Trinity as Doctrine
Trinity as Doctrine



Nicene Creed is trinitarian
And the Apostle's Creed


The Bible even says that we are to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, which is trinitarian.


I'll get those verses for you. I'll have to go through my entire Bible and collect them all, so probably tomorrow or the next day. Shouldn't be too hard. I mark any trinitarian references in my Bible with a triangle. 8D


And I can also pull out my Systematic Theology book and tell you what it says about the Trinity if you'd like. Of course, it would be a lot... >_> I have Wayne Gruden's ST. So I'd have to really condense it.  

[comfylove]

Priestley

As follow-upl questions, I would like to ask: how you respond to Jesus' wishes not to be worshipped and his indications towards God who should be? Do you do it anyway?

Tell me the verse and I will take a look at it and get back to you.  

[freelance lover]

comfortably_dumb

freelance lover

comfortably_dumb

As a Christian, you worship Jesus as God and the Holy Spirit as God. As a Jew and Muslim, you do not.

I do not worship Jesus. I worship God, and am able to do so by Jesus sacrifice. The Holy Spirit is how God has made himself present on earth after Jesus sacrifice. The God I worship has all the same characteristics and history as the God is Islam and Judaism. Both of those religions recognize Jesus as well, as a great prophet or teacher (respectably).

I know many Jews that do not recognize Jesus as a Prophet. That cannot really be said as a blanket statement. For Islam, sure, but not really for Judaism since plenty Jews hate Jesus. Case and point -- IMR from the ED, although I do love her.

And what denomination are you?

I'm United Methodist.

And if you go back and read what I said, I mean Muslims regard Jesus as a prophet (he is actually the most mentioned of any prophet in the Qu'ran) and Jews often see Jesus as a great teacher or rabbi.

I'm sure the reason some Jews (though I've never encountered any) may dislike Jesus is because they feel his teachings are anti-Jewish. My reply to that would be to read The Misunderstood Jew by Amy-Jill Levine. Levine is an Orthodox Jew who teaches New Testament studies at Vanderbilt Seminary. The book is entirely about how the NT is NOT anti-Jewish and about how Jewish Jesus in fact was. I could probably ramble on more about it, but I would never do Levine's book justice. It's a very good read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Jesus' Jewish culture and how we can keep anti-Jewish readings out of the Bible.

And this is kind of segway off or Priestly question, my guess is the verses are somewhere in Mark's Gospel. Each Gospel has a different agenda and different portrayal of Jesus. In Mark's Gospel Jesus never once equates himself with God. When others make regards to him being the Son of God or equal with God, he will always redirect their attention towards God. John's Gospel has the exact opposite approach, showing a Jesus who is in control of his fate and is consciously working towards the crucifixion. He is much more divine in character. Of course, John is much more gnostic than the three synoptic Gospels, so it differs in a lot of ways.

Aaaand, last thing in this thread I need to catch up and address is the Trinity and how it is not heretical. Here's how it worked. There's God. God made a covenant with the Israelites in the Old Testament. The Greek for testament is the same as covenant, so the Old and New Testaments are better understood as the Old and New Covenant in cases like this. So that's the covenant set in the OT. At the beginning of the NT, Jesus has come down to earth and is teaching. This has changed how God is at work in the world, making some of the ways of the previous covenant irrelevant. Shortly after Jesus death, God descends as the Holy Spirit, which is still how he functions on earth today. This is the New Covenant he has made with the people or earth. The Trinity seen this way is not heretical at all in that all three are faces of the same God. Each one is simply how God has worked in the world differently at different time.

Whew! Wall-of-text done!  

[Priestley]

comfortably_dumb

Where does it say that the Trinity is heretical?

"It", whatever it is, doesn't. I say it is heretical because Jesus never taught it. It was never popular until it was pushed through and imposed on the Church nearly three centuries after Jesus' supposed death, hence it was heretical. But I suppose, if we're being technical, now the Trinity is the popular idea, anything that speaks against it is 'heretical'.

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Trinity as Doctrine

This is a Wikipedia article written to be neutral, so it provides information for and against the idea.

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Trinity as Doctrine

The relevant point (2) in this link makes the claim that God is a Trinity based on the mere pattern of three things being mentioned without any reference to them constituting God.

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Trinity as Doctrine Augustine has four books on Doctrine that, I believe, all talk about the Trinity, but I won't post them because it gets excessive.

Note that this teaches many things, most of which lack any reference to the Trinity. It is mentioned twice in Chapter 5, which teaches the idea of the Trinity, but references Romans 11:36 which does not support the idea of a Trinity. It is mentioned once at the end of Chapter 33, which reserves this Trinity as a special place for joy, but does not support its existence with Scripture.

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Trinity as Doctrine

This presents a brief history of the idea, providing statements from churches that believe in it, but mostly criticisms of it.

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Trinity as Doctrine

This presents the idea of the Trinity and argues against it.

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Nicene Creed is trinitarian
And the Apostle's Creed

Read my statement above about Wikipedia articles.

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The Bible even says that we are to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, which is trinitarian.

Point me to Jesus saying it, please.

comfortably_dumb

I'll get those verses for you. I'll have to go through my entire Bible and collect them all, so probably tomorrow or the next day. Shouldn't be too hard. I mark any trinitarian references in my Bible with a triangle. 8D

Please do.

You realize that I'm probably going to say the same thing about every reference to the pattern "Father, Son, Spirit", right? That their mention together does not indicate that they are three-in-one.  

[The Amazing Ryuu]

Priestley

As follow-upl questions, I would like to ask: how you respond to Jesus' wishes not to be worshipped and his indications towards God who should be? Do you do it anyway?

Of course he told everyone not to worship him. The typical human reaction would be to brush him off completely at best, or turn him over to the religious leaders as a heretic if he just came out and said "I am God." But he says other things such as "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. ...Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me..." (John 14:10-11) and "I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in me will live, even though he dies" (John 11:25). He is claiming the power of God for himself, through his own words and through the myriad miracles he performed. While he was on earth, people would have been worshipping a man, not fully understanding who/what he was. Once he transcended human form, it would have been more obvious that he was more than JUST a man.

Side note: This is the best I could come up with, seeing as how I myself don't really worship Jesus.  

[Priestley]

The Amazing Ryuu

Priestley

As follow-upl questions, I would like to ask: how you respond to Jesus' wishes not to be worshipped and his indications towards God who should be? Do you do it anyway?

"Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. ...Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me..." (John 14:10-11)

Clearly this is figurative. He was doing the Father's will exactly, because the Father is spirit and the spirit was inside Jesus through which he did what he did. He was not actually the spirit.

I can understand why people take this literally, but if you look at something like when Jesus spoke of being "born again", you can understand he didn't mean the above literally.

The Amazing Ryuu

"I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in me will live, even though he dies" (John 11:25).

Having faith in something is not the same as worshipping something. He was referring about his cause, his reason for being. He was the embodiment of the redemption of man by human sacrifice.

The Amazing Ryuu

He is claiming the power of God for himself, through his own words and through the myriad miracles he performed. While he was on earth, people would have been worshipping a man, not fully understanding who/what he was. Once he transcended human form, it would have been more obvious that he was more than JUST a man.

He wasn't claiming to be anyone other than a person doing God's will. He even states that he has no knowledge of what God knows, so that implies he's not God. You're assuming his physical death and resurrection was because he was God, not because of some other special status like doing God's will perfectly, having no sin, having some other things to fulfill after ascension, or that the Father willed it to be so, for example.  

[The Amazing Ryuu]

Priestley

He wasn't claiming to be anyone other than a person doing God's will. He even states that he has no knowledge of what God knows, so that implies he's not God.

Unless he had no access to that knowledge while on earth. blaugh But really, why can't Jesus be a PART of God, instead of each third of the Trinity having to be ALL God ALL the time? What if God broke himself into three parts for us dunderheads so we have smaller pieces of information to digest rather than this overwhelming thing in the sky that's complex and multi-faceted? (Again, this is all Ryuu's Theory of Ridiculousness. Feel free to disregard.)

Priestley

You're assuming his physical death and resurrection was because he was God, not because of some other special status like doing God's will perfectly, having no sin, having some other things to fulfill after ascension, or that the Father willed it to be so, for example.

I merely assume that he was something more than human and less than fully divine. A normal, regular human being, even one touched by God, can't go thirty-odd years without sin. All of God's favorites throughout the entire Bible have flaws, and the Bible freely admits that. And yes, I think that Jesus is God's son in more than just a spiritual sense, that parts of them are intertwined. But those are all just my personal opinions.

Although, what then do you make of the verse that reads as such, and implies that God is not alone wherever he is:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1.  

[freelance lover]

The Amazing Ryuu

Priestley

He wasn't claiming to be anyone other than a person doing God's will. He even states that he has no knowledge of what God knows, so that implies he's not God.

Unless he had no access to that knowledge while on earth. blaugh But really, why can't Jesus be a PART of God, instead of each third of the Trinity having to be ALL God ALL the time? What if God broke himself into three parts for us dunderheads so we have smaller pieces of information to digest rather than this overwhelming thing in the sky that's complex and multi-faceted? (Again, this is all Ryuu's Theory of Ridiculousness. Feel free to disregard.)

Ryuu, I like how your Theory of Ridiculousness and mine are basically the same.

This theory also isn't that unusual, since that's how most Eastern religions operate. The various Buddha's in Buddhism and the different gods in Hinduism operate in basically the same way. They're basically ways of understanding the ultimate form of power in the religion (I say form of power since Buddhism is much more atheistic and doesn't always recognize a God). They're learning devices to help less spiritually developed people understand the message of the religion.