What's your experience been like with Christians?

Red letter Christians are lovely people.

The Pauline camp are absolute trolls.

Scimi

format_quote Originally Posted by Delphi

The interfaith makes me hopeful of the future, that we can all find a way to live together in peace.

I already do, in London. What are you talking about exactly?

Scimi

Assalamu alaykum,

My Christian neighbour gave us a lemon drizzle cake for iftaar - it was delicious.

My experience has been with people. Religious denomination is always secondary. In other words it is like the saying islam is perfect.. the people aren't..

I have many good friends who are not muslims. Some are Christians although not church goers but believe in Christianity and the spirit of doing good.

They are also amongst the people who have shown very high intergrity and care.

I have very close friends of other religions too like Hinduism and Buddhism. Some of them, in character, I hold in higher esteem than some of those I know as muslims.

Sure brother,

If you go into a Bible store (normally known as The Good News bookshops) ask for a "Red letter Bible", in this, everything that Jesus pbuh supossedly said is in red letters, and you will find that he calls himself "the son of man" not the son of God... Jesus pbuh was a strict monotheist.

With regard to trinity, I have a very logical debunk which to date I have not seen anyone else notice:

If Trinity polytheism is warranted theology stemming from the Old Testamen mental gymnastics the Trinitarians claim, then before Jesus's pbuh birth on earth, there must have beena duality of theology - in the vein of "God and Holy Spirit" being worshipped together... yet in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is not an object of worship, so how did the Christians get from 1 God to 3 and miss out the 2???

You follow?

I'll tell you how.

Constantine the Roman polytheist who was of the trinitarian cult of "Mithraism" canonised the bible (read as butchered it) in order to interpolate a tinitarian theology. You may ask why he did such a thing? It was to consolidate an already dwindling empire but factoring in the Christians as part of the Roman empire, so as to increase their numbers and therefore, taxes. it was sheer pragmatism on his behalf. Circa 325CE.

Paul (who was alive around and after the time of Jesus pbuh and was a Roman citien) was rejected not only by the apostles of Jesus pbuh but also the Jews, (paul was hitman, a mercenary hired to kill the early Christians and then became a Christian himself and claimed to be an apostle of Jesus pbuh when he never even met Jesus pbuh once in his life).

The Jews of Jerusalem tried to kill Paul for his blasphemies (oh did he blaspheme) and the Jews and the Christians were united in their hatred of him, guess who came to his rescue? The Romans - they shielded him and told him to "preach to the gentiles", another corruption seeing as Jesus pbuh was only "sent to the lost sheep of Israel.

Hope this clarifies for you why the "red letters" are important.

Scimi

format_quote Originally Posted by ardianto

Not the version of Bible that make a Christian being lovely or not lovely, but how he practices the teaching of Christianity.

Whatever version of Bible that a Christian read, if he practice Christianity with love in his heart, he will be lovely. But if he has lost the love in his heart, then he will not different than radical Muslims who commit violence in the name of God.

Bro, all holy books teach us moral codes, I'm no denying this - but your moral codes mean nothing if you are sponsoring a deviated theology.

Any Christian who does his homework will find that Islam is the perfection of the theological grounding since the time of Adam pbuh to Muhammad pbuh, with all the prophets and messengers saying the same "there is no deity worthy of worship except for the ONE GOD".

When 1+1+1=1 we have a basic math issue that butchers the theology of the true creed which Abraham pbuh preached.

Scimi

Thank you for your reply bro Pops,

I agree mostly with what you say and though I may have certain issues regarding some points, I will not make this thread any more about theology as I understand this was not the intent of the OP nor a thread which should be taken off topic.

Suffice it to say that I agree with a lot of what you have said, and that which I do not agree with is at this point, not my concern.

God bless,

Scimi

format_quote Originally Posted by LaSorcia

I know a lot of folks here live in the UK or USA, where Christianity is practiced as well. I'd like to ask some questions! I'm sticking to Christians, because that's what I know most about.

Great! Thanks for asking.

What has your experience been like with Christians (only if you know they are Christian, far too many people are unbelievers nowadays, even in so-called Christian countries)?

It's been varied, but for the most part quite good. I am an Evangelical Christian and that means there's a wide range of Protestant Christians that I can get on very well with, even if there are some doctrinal differences we can easily ignore them or have good conversations about them. It's even been pretty good with Catholics, except- and this is important- on the Internet. In my experience, discussions pertaining to religious differences have always gone vastly better in person than they have online (with a few exceptions, but this is the general rule).

Do you think they have a true understanding of what Muslims think and believe, their faith and practices?

No. Unless they're from a mostly-Muslim country originally, and even then there's a range of opinions. For Christians who are from the US or UK originally, there's basically no chance of a decent understanding.

Do you think you have a true understanding of what Christians think and believe, their faith and practices?

Me personally? I would hope so. I am one, and I've gotten around to a pretty good extent.

Would you be interested in a church or mosque sponsoring an interfaith meeting to promote unity and understanding between the faiths?

Maybe, are Muslims comfortable meeting with people whose main goal is to convert them?

Any other comments or thought?

One comment working off the last question- if you're wondering whether we'd consider a cessation of attempts to convert Muslims in the interest of doing something else, my comment is we will not consider that (Evangelical Christians, at least, other types of Christians might be more open to that). So if this type of meeting is going to happen, that's going to be a part of the picture. Either that or you'll have to pick and choose which kinds of Christians you reach out to. Catholics might be ok with it, but you'll have to be very delicate when you're trying to explain why you think Jesus was a Muslim and Peter and/or Paul essentially took a religion into apostasy. You know what Peter and Paul mean to the Catholic Church, right? And to a similar extent, also to mainline Protestant churches like the Anglicans and Lutherans.

Actually, you might do better by looking to certain parts of Marginal Christianity if you want some good conversation that gets past misunderstandings. Jehovah's Witnesses would not be a good option- they're fairly hostile- but generally, I think Mormons and Christadelphians would be more inclined to get into that. They can relate, they're also working to get past hostility and being misunderstood.

I mean this thread with the best of intentions; I'm not trying to debate, argue or say Muslims or Christians follow God the wrong way. Let's keep it friendly.

And for that, we thank you.

format_quote Originally Posted by Timi Scar

With regard to trinity, I have a very logical debunk which to date I have not seen anyone else notice:

If Trinity polytheism is warranted theology stemming from the Old Testamen mental gymnastics the Trinitarians claim, then before Jesus's pbuh birth on earth, there must have beena duality of theology - in the vein of "God and Holy Spirit" being worshipped together... yet in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is not an object of worship, so how did the Christians get from 1 God to 3 and miss out the 2???

You follow?

I'll tell you how.

Constantine the Roman polytheist who was of the trinitarian cult of "Mithraism" canonised the bible (read as butchered it) in order to interpolate a tinitarian theology. You may ask why he did such a thing? It was to consolidate an already dwindling empire but factoring in the Christians as part of the Roman empire, so as to increase their numbers and therefore, taxes. it was sheer pragmatism on his behalf. Circa 325CE.

Paul (who was alive around and after the time of Jesus pbuh and was a Roman citien) was rejected not only by the apostles of Jesus pbuh but also the Jews, (paul was hitman, a mercenary hired to kill the early Christians and then became a Christian himself and claimed to be an apostle of Jesus pbuh when he never even met Jesus pbuh once in his life).

The Jews of Jerusalem tried to kill Paul for his blasphemies (oh did he blaspheme) and the Jews and the Christians were united in their hatred of him, guess who came to his rescue? The Romans - they shielded him and told him to "preach to the gentiles", another corruption seeing as Jesus pbuh was only "sent to the lost sheep of Israel.

Hope this clarifies for you why the "red letters" are important.

Scimi

Ok, three things. One- I have heard exactly this argument before, although it's not all that common outside of Islam. An incredibly similar argument was made to me by a Christadelphian. That would be a non-Trinitarian restorationist group that began in England and was initially made up of ex-Anglicans. This particular Christadelphian church just happens to be situated right next door to an as-yet-partially-built (but somewhat functional and in-use) mosque. Not your kind of mosque though, it's an Ahmadi mosque. It's quite an interesting situation.

Second. There are certain phrases in the Old Testament that hint and suggest at some sort of plurality when it comes to God (let us make man in our own image is one), and up to a certain point there were some reasonably well-developed schools of thought within Judaism (not just a comment or two here and there) considering some different possibilities of how that could be interpreted. As soon as Christianity came along though, that ceased to be a place of lively debate and things were clamped down pretty quickly. Something more orthodox was settled on, and that discussion was no more. But at one time, there was something happening there.

Third, Constantine was not a theologian, nor was he very much of a Trinitarian (although his points of view shifted a bit over time). Constantine, on the whole, was more sympathetic to Arianism than he was to the Trinitarian formula, and the First Council of Nicea affirmed the Trinity in spite of his preferences rather than because of them. Here are some quick facts. Constantine was converted to Christianity by an Arian. Constantine had some family that was Arian, one of which was an Arian priest. Not that Arians had formally broken away from the Catholic Church, of course, he would have called himself a Catholic. But he did believe in Arian doctrine. And that slightly distant family member, the priest who was Arian, is the priest that baptized Constantine just hours before his death (because Constantine wanted to save it to the end, which is something that the Catholic Church would now consider a problematic way of handling the sacraments). Also, after initially exiling Arius at the behest of the Council that reached a conclusion he didn't really like, Arius wrote a letter to Constantine and tried to change his mind about the exile. It worked, and Constantine recalled Arius and exiled Athanasius instead (he's the main defender of the Trinity). It wasn't until he died that other rulers arranged for Athanasius to return and for Arius to be exiled again, but then Constantine's son, Constantinius, followed the example of his father (his son leaning toward Arianism as well) and he recalled Arius from exile for the second time and exiled Athanasius for a second time. (After Constantine the empire was initially split into three parts under the rule of three different sons, one who supported the Trinity, one who supported Arius, and one who was pretty much indifferent, but then it later came entirely under the control of the Arian supporter....which is one main factor that necessitated Nicea II....)

Anyway, the point is that the emperors of this time period, even speaking more broadly than this, did not determine the outcomes of these councils. They had their preferences, these preferences are known to us, but they actually didn't get what they wanted. At least not when it came to the Trinity. The Arian controversy (which hinged on the question of Jesus' eternal existence more than anything else) was principally decided by bishops from Egypt, Turkey, and Syria, if we're going to use modern-day countries. And it took almost a century of arguing and controversy before everything was pretty well settled- and that was due in part to the fact that Constantine, Constantinius, and quite a few others (not necessarily all emperors) either did not support the Trinity or felt that it shouldn't be trying to suppress other ideas or they just liked the Arian ideas better. In the specific example of Constantine, he didn't know very much about it at first (and never became anything close to an expert) but he did like the Arian perspective better, and he did plenty to act that way as well.

So basically, this idea that Constantine made the Trinity happen is a common idea that you'll hear a lot from non-Trinitarians, but it's a lot more complicated than that and it's basically inaccurate when you really get down to it.

Here's a link that shows you a timeline of the Arian controversy. http://ecole.evansville.edu/arians/arianchr.htm

I've wondered how many Christians claim to have the holy ghost - yet contradict each other in theology and other matters pertaining to the "personally interpreted dissemination of the NT"... I do not believe God is the author of confusion, humans are - and the proof is in your camp.

This debate - For another thread mate

Scimi

format_quote Originally Posted by cooterhein

Ok, sorry about that. I'm still getting a handle on which sub-forums are for debating, thanks for pointing that out.

If we do revisit this on a different thread, please be aware that I'm going to focus on Athanasius being exiled a total of four different times in his life. That's likely to be a starting point.

Since you are here, you try to find out any negative point about Islam and Muslims, you are here just to spread problems and hate!

If i register to a Christian forum, the first thing i starts with, is showing the common ground between Islam and Christianity and not by sneaking in the forum and looking for any subject which can bring division and hate !!!