Posted on 03/25/2015 10:46:15 PM PDT by Steelfish
Do you deny the King James Version translation of Acts ? Do you also deny "The God of Abraham" that the Jews and Moslems say they worship ? Since Paul said even the Athenians worshipped "The God," albeit in serious error, your position that Moslems, and ostensibly Jews, do not is untenable, for they both acknowledge God as the one and only God of Abraham and Moses, and that God gave his special name to Moses. Both Jews and Moslems hold this name in reverence as the unpronounceable name of "The God of Abraham," who is the only God, while, it seems to me, you think you can pronounce it, albeit in Arabic, since you write its transliteration. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
Acts, Catholic chapter seventeen, Protestant verses twenty two to twenty nine,
as authorized, but not authored, by King James
And I have not even turned to the Samaritans yet.
It’s becoming really sad watching you dance around this issue. It doesn’t matter what the Muslims say. It’s obvious on many levels that they do not serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That the Catholic Church doesn’t acknowledge that fact is evidence of their not even understanding the difference.
They don't serve the God of Abraham as evidenced by their descriptions of the god they serve.
And it's becoming rather sad and telling to watch.
I can see by your language, including changing to use the word serve in place of "worship" that you have lost the debate regarding whether Moslems worship and adore the God of Abraham, although they do so in serious error. They acknowledge Him as "The God" by the same name you wrote. This is unrefuted.
How far does your exclusivity carry ? Do you agree that the Jews who categorically reject the books of the New Testament, Jesus as Messiah, and Messiah as God, worship and adore the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ? They certainly assert that they do ! Do you maintain they serve a different God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob than you ? Do Catholics worship and adore the God of Abraham ? Do Protestant faith communities, sects, and cults worship and adore the God of Abraham ?
I asked: "Do you worship the “The God of Abraham” that they worship?"
It seems to me your answer is no, even though He is "The God" who gave His name to Moses, and both Jews and Moslems deem it holy and unpronounceable for now.
You have now asserted you believe there is "the god of Islam" and what is quite odd, with the same name you previously wrote on this thread, given by the God of Abraham to the prophet Moses.
The Moslems are distinct from all the other Gentiles who are not Christians in that they accept there is only one God, the God of Abraham, whom Moses served. They err greatly, in only accepting Jesus as a prophet, rejecting the New Testament, rejecting the Trinity, and adding the Koran as their scripture. This is very serious error. They are not Christians. They worship and adore the same God, but not as required.
I’ll put you down as serving and worshipping the same god as Muslims.
“Oh, I believe that the wedding had run out of wine, but that the governor makes no comment about that. Meaning that MAYBE he hadn’t caught on to the shortfall yet. Jesus Christ is never late.”
THEY had no wine.
“Do you deny that Jesus knew what he would do in advance, that he knew Mary would ask him to do something about it?”
Nope. Do you deny that God already knows when you’ll pray for a friend who has cancer and whether or not He’ll heal that friend or allow him to die?
“Your position appears to paint Mary to be as big of a savior of the wedding as Jesus.”
Nope. When you pray for that friend with cancer are you as “big of a savior of” that friend as Jesus? Did that ever even occur to you?
“That means NO WINE for MARY, JESUS and his disciples, either. Deny that.”
Why would I deny it? It just proves what I am saying. The marrying couple ran out of wine - THEY HAVE NO WINE - and would have been humiliated when their guests would go without.
“You’ve failed to prove Mary to be the post-life intercessor you claim her to be.”
I didn’t try to prove it. I said that the story of the wedding of Cana has been thought of as an example of her intercession in scripture. The story speaks for itself. She interceded with Jesus.
“What part of that do you not understand?”
What I don’t understand is why you assume I was trying to prove something I wasn’t when I never even said I was trying to prove it?
“Challenging me is only going to make you look worse,”
Challenging you? So showing that you were denying what the explicit text said - THEY HAVE NO WINE - is challenging you? Gee, should we all be afraid now because you were challenged?
“on this subject, or any other scriptural debate, because your catholicism is ‘iron mixed with clay’ (portions of scripture mixed with man-made traditions).”
Buddy, you denied that THEY HAVE NO WINE meant that THEY HAVE NO WINE. Quite frankly it isn’t Catholicism or I that is “iron mixed with clay” here. Remember, THEY HAVE NO WINE.
“There are events in the OT that are spiritually similar to the church age. The repopulating of Israel with people of other nations, with their man-made religious traditions, was thought to be corrected by having Hebrew priests instruct them in the ways of the God of Israel. The result was a religious mix:”
You’re not saying anything that has anything to do with what we were talking about. And that doesn’t surprise me one bit.
THEY HAD NO WINE.
So true. And when they can't answer one SIMPLE question, why should anyone give ANY credence to ANYTHING that they say?
Lots of verbiage and absolutely NO substance. No visible means of support.
Hoss
In the spirit of Good Friday, we have removed your reply for which you are expressing regret for voicing those thoughts publicly.
The post quoting it was removed also.
Having just returned from The Procession of the Dead Christ at my parish church I am grateful that the words I wrote in anger have been expunged from the record. Thank you.
Is the simple question "do Catholics and muslims worship the same God?" Because if it is I have a simple answer; no.
The muslims may think they worship God but they don't. Hilaire Belloc's commentary on islam being a heresy of Catholicism though is worth a look:
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.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/HOMELIBR/HERESY4.TXT
Belloc goes on to draw a comparison between islam and Calvinism in terms of enthusiasm and rigor but he also writes this:
He [mohammed] was content to accept all that appealed to him in the Catholic scheme and to reject all that seemed to him, and to so many others of his time, too complicated or mysterious to be true. Simplicity was the note of the whole affair; and since all heresies draw their strength from some true doctrine, Mohammedanism drew its strength from the true Catholic doctrines which it retained: the equality of all men before God_"All true believers are brothers." It zealously preached and throve on the paramount claims of justice, social and economic.
Sounds strangely familiar...
Regardless, islam may have started as a Christian heresy but it has since morphed into its own thing. Paragraph 841 of the CCC is simply... wrong. It does not express the ancient Faith of the Church with fidelity, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to see that.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you thank you.
Now... Can you please reconcile CCC 841 to your (thankfully) truthful statement just as pithily? You may disagree -- but reading it it plainly states that Catholics and Muslims "adore"and "acknowledge' the "one, merciful God."
Hoss
No, the only thing I can say is modernists have taken over and the CCC is the product of committees run amok. It will eventually be repudiated... I HAVE to believe that in order to sleep nights.
When confronted with the post WWII world the vast majority of the bishops of the Catholic Church blinked, and they've been blinking ever since.
Good grief, I mean CCC 841 will be repudiated, not the entire CCC, there are some very beautiful passages in the new catechism.
“I mean CCC 841 will be repudiated”
No.
**Buddy, you denied that THEY HAVE NO WINE meant that THEY HAVE NO WINE. Quite frankly it isn’t Catholicism or I that is “iron mixed with clay” here. Remember, THEY HAVE NO WINE.**
REMEMBER I SAID (in post 556)?
Further, not only was there NOT wine for the wedding party, there was NO wine for Mary, Jesus’ brethern, or he and his disciples. Mary wasn’t going to have any wine, along with everybody else. That’s not exactly intercessing; it’s more like making “your requests be made known to God”. (Phil. 4:6)
ALSO, DO YOU REMEMBER I SAID (in post 682)?
Verse 1. Marriage in Cana, and Mary was there.
verse 2. Jesus and his disciples were called to the marriage. (It sez they were called, as though they weren’t there from the start, or it probably would have said that they were ‘there’, just as Mary was ‘there’.
verse 3. “And when they wanted wine....”. Who is they?....we just got done talking about Jesus and his disciples showing up because they were ‘called’. Mary has to break it to them that they are OUT OF the wine.
You see?.... I DID mention that they were out of wine. So, now you can retract the following statement:
**So showing that you were denying what the explicit text said - THEY HAVE NO WINE - is challenging you? Gee, should we all be afraid now because you were challenged?**
I said that the governor was apparently unaware of that fact: “And he said unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men HAVE well drunk, THEN that which is WORSE: but thou HAST KEPT the good wine UNTIL NOW.” Jn 2:10
**She interceded with Jesus.**
You just couldn’t resist using the word ‘with’, as though she was nearly equal in the rescue of the wedding feast. (now, you’ll probably focus on what I just said, and ignore what follows).
I believe Jesus would have bailed out the wedding party regardless of who asked him to help. Just like he performed the miracle of healing, for the servant of the centurion, who said unto him : “..but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed.” Do you pray to that centurion who showed such great faith?
There are many other of the Lord’s miracles recorded in scripture, where the people made their request to him FOR the SAKE of OTHERS.
That is the example also shown to you earlier from post 556:
Jesus taught often on prayer, such as the examples of asking a friend at midnight for loaves of bread (Lk. 11:5-8), and the widow petitioning the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-8).
Yet, you say that the Cana miracle is proof of Mary intercessing then and into the afterlife, when Jesus teaches us to ask God. And yes, James taught prayer, ‘one for another’ (5:14-18) to those believers still alive and living for God. He wasn’t writing to those that had already died in Christ, (in case you didn’t know that).
Did you follow that?...or did you somehow (conveniently maybe) overlook it?
**Do you deny that God already knows when you’ll pray for a friend who has cancer and whether or not He’ll heal that friend or allow him to die?**
Certainly not. But, He also knows that I will pray directly to him.
**When you pray for that friend with cancer are you as “big of a savior of” that friend as Jesus? Did that ever even occur to you?**
That’s a VERY poor comparison to what you are doing by praying to Mary. You’re the one giving her boatloads of credit for what happened in Cana:
**She interceded with Jesus.**
I suggest you go read up again on all of the miracles that Jesus performed in the four gospels. If nothing else, you’ll be able to put together a new list of deceased intercessors, and ask them to intercede for you.
I don’t pray to a friend in heaven other than God. He can hear just fine. I ask friends down here to pray (directly, of course) TO GOD (as the afore mentioned passage from James instructs us).
Hope your weekend is blessed!
Why, because that means Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate will have to go out the window too? Just so everyone else gets a chance to understand how unambiguous the VatII position on islam is let's take a look at NA3:
3. 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,(5) 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. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.
Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.
That "(5)" in NA references one line of a letter of Pope St. Gregory VII (1073 - 1085) to Anazir, king of the province of Mauretania wherein the sainted Pope writes This affection we and you owe to each other in a more peculiar way than to people of other races because we worship and confess the same God though in diverse forms and daily praise and adore him as the creator and ruler of this world. Which sounds like VatII until one realizes that this same sainted pope called muslims a pagan race when calling a crusade in 1074. So which has more weight, diplomatic correspondence or:
Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to all who are willing to defend the Christian faith, greeting and apostolic benediction.
We hereby inform you that the bearer of this letter, on his recent return from across the sea, came to Rome to visit us. He repeated what we had heard from many others, that a pagan race had overcome the Christians and with horrible cruelty had devastated everything almost to the walls of Constantinople, and were now governing the conquered lands with tyrannical violence, and that they had slain many thousands of Christians as if they were but sheep.
The Church doesn't build doctrine based on the diplomatic correspondence of a pope, sainted or not. For that matter Walter Cardinal Brandmüller has said VatII's declarations on non-Christian religions and religious freedom do not contain “binding doctrinal content” and CCC841 is based on exactly that... nonbinding content. If it is nonbinding it can be debated, if it can be debated it can be refuted and if refuted, repudiated.
How many more years do we have until that same pagan race is slaughtering Christians in the streets of New York (assuming they can find any)? THIS is what keeps me from sleeping at night, the very idea that the Catholic Church would proclaim that the Almighty God and Father of Jesus Christ is one and the same as the pagan moon god of islam. No, no, it cannot be, CCC841 and the documents supporting it must be thrown on the trash heap of history before we find ourselves dragged out into the streets and beheaded in front of our children.
There must be a new crusade, that unites all who call on the Holy Name of Jesus, to rid this world of the worship of the very devil himself before it's too late. I will not have my three daughters raped and my two sons impaled in the name of the Second Vatican Council's Decrees on religious liberty and inter-religious dialogue with pagans. No, there's your "No".
Finally. Common sense and honesty.
Thank you
Hoss
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