Harmony between the Bible and the Qur'an

[Rou]

Im sorry throughout this whole thread and to tell the truth when ever a question is asked to many christians the answer are never straight forward nor clear..i mean no offence by any of this im just saying it how it is seen...

a simple question....

when it is stated many time in the bible that jesus talks to god or refers to god as a third person then why is it stated that he is god? oalso obviously the next question...if he is god then how can he be the son of god? there is no real factual information in teh bible to explain any of this...

the troah mentions nothing of such matters nor that god himself will come down at all this was never stated..

all athat was said that a mesiah will come and indeed jesus came...so to state he was god this does not go hand in hand with teh torah at all!?

also lets keep this all simple two verses:

1.For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. (John 5:26–27)

son of man....ok now that seems very clear...he is not the son of god he i the son of man and he is not god as he is the son of man?

2."I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God"

Once again i ask this is very clear the torah in the way it is wrriten is quite straight forward and by standards does not need the same type of human imagination tio make sense of any of it!? one must think why would the new testament need such human intervention? i would say it does not..

if we beleive the author is the same the almighty then it shall not change...

inshallah we can talk clearly about these two verses...in simple format to explain there meaning

peace be upon you all

 

[BlackMamba]

Okay I think we are coming closer to a conclusion of the topic hopefully.
Grenville, do you believe in the trinity? That Jesus one of 3 parts of the one God or something like that? Because trinity is never mentioned in the bible.

 

[GreyKode]

Yes, he gave different options as to how one might answer the question. But let me try to re-phrase the question:

In Islamic thinking, is Allah of a particular defined form, essence, or substance?

God created the substance, how can he be made of substance?
That would equate him to creation.
So to try to assume a certain substance for God is in the Islamic view is blasphemous, simply because he(swt) is unique.

 

[GreyKode]

One substance, 1 x 1 x 1 = 1. 1 to the 99th power = 1.

Someone please explain how this example is of any relevance.

 

[جوري]

Someone please explain how this example is of any relevance.

for it to have any relevance God wouldn't be in three different shapes and beings... thus you are correct, it has no relevance..
once 1+1+1=1 can it have some relevance but unfortunately as it stands now in the laws of mathematics 1+1+1=3

 

[Follower]

In math:

You have 1 apple and keep adding to it by one, up to 3 apples, completely separate prices of fruit that never were or can be 1 piece of fruit.
1 + 1 + 1 = 3

Now you have 1 apple, then smash the apple- still the same apple but in different form, bake the apple- still the same apple, same substance but in 3 different forms.

1 x 1 x 1 = 1

You can do this with water too 1 glass of water if you add 2 more glasses you have 3 glasses of water.

1 + 1 + 1 = 3

OR

Take the 1 glass of water and freeze it, or turn it into steam- is the very same substance - water, just the physical property is changed.

1 x 1 x 1 = 1

What substance does love have? Don't know but I can see what happens when it is experienced or not. What substanece does the soul have? I don't know, yet we all have one.

Did I miss the answer to this question? Do muslims believe that Allah is incapable of manifesting in different ways? or is it that they just don't believe he did?

 

[aadil77]

Why continue to use that stupid number anology?

 

[Muhammad]

Greetings,

On the issue of trinity analogies:

http://www.islamicboard.com/12815-post5.html

http://www.islamicboard.com/159707-post93.html

But here we are not talking about the same substance existing in three different states. The trinity says that ONE God exists in three different persons. By analogy, you need to bring me an example of ONE entity existing as three seperate entities, each being co-equal and equal to the overall entity. Can you bring me molecules of water that exist IN ALL THREE STATES AT THE SAME TIME? Of course not. The closest to this is the triple point of water in thermodynamic equilibrium, but of course here it is different water molecules in different states, not the SAME molecules existing in all three states.

Geisler and Saleeb state: “Only if one and the same person, who is God and man, dies on the cross for our sin can we be saved. For unless Jesus is both God and man he cannot reconcile God and man” (page 268). Despite having a divine nature as God, Jesus also has a human nature as man. Geisler explains this dualism: “Did Christ die? In his human nature, he did die. But in his divine nature he did not die. The person who died was the Godman, but his Godness did not die.”

Confused yet? It is little wonder why nearly all Christian apologists who have tried to explain the Trinity find themselves reduced to drawing triangles and scribbling grade-school level equations. So to recap: Christ died as God in his person, he died as man in his nature, but not as God in his nature. In other words, he was two-thirds dead, but the one-third that really counted, the divine nature, survived and resurrected him on the third day. Therefore, Jesus has the unique honor of being of two natures, God and man in one person. (Ataie, pp. 41-42)
​

 

[AntiKarateKid]

In math:

You have 1 apple and keep adding to it by one, up to 3 apples, completely separate prices of fruit that never were or can be 1 piece of fruit.
1 + 1 + 1 = 3

Wrong. Each piece of an apple is not a whole so it is limited in that respect. Are you saying God the Father is limited? Jesus is limited? The Holy Spirited is limited unless they combine? Or are each of them fully God or each piece a full apple?

Now you have 1 apple, then smash the apple- still the same apple but in different form, bake the apple- still the same apple, same substance but in 3 different forms.

1 x 1 x 1 = 1

I have no clue how you translated this into multiplication. A baked apple has different properties than an apple and cannot be an apple at the same time. Would you drink "baked apple juice" as opposed to "apple juice?" Do you think that Jesus pbuh has different powers than God the Father? Or that Jesus pbuh is a separate entity than Him?

You can do this with water too 1 glass of water if you add 2 more glasses you have 3 glasses of water.

1 + 1 + 1 = 3

Again, if it takes a whole glass to make a God. Then what is Jesus, a third of a God? Is he a demi-god then? In what ways has he now been limited? Apparently it takes the combines powers of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy SPirit to make a full God according to your analogy.

OR

Take the 1 glass of water and freeze it, or turn it into steam- is the very same substance - water, just the physical property is changed.

1 x 1 x 1 = 1

Again, how does this translate into multiplication. Ice has different properties than steam or water yet you say all three of the trinity are one and the same. A block of ice is not a block of water. So the next time you ask for a couple of ice cubes for your soda you wouldn't mind if I sprayed you with steam right? After all ice is steam and steam is ice just as Jesus is God and God is Jesus?

What substance does love have? Don't know but I can see what happens when it is experienced or not. What substanece does the soul have? I don't know, yet we all have one.

Did I miss the answer to this question? Do muslims believe that Allah is incapable of manifesting in different ways? or is it that they just don't believe he did?

Take another look at your analogies Follower.

 

[malayloveislam]

G-d manifest in different ways in the earth? Na'h, how do we know that He manifest when He never said that He manifests Himself in the earth in Quran? Those manifesting things only exist in Hinduism, if for me because I'm not really familiar with Greek philosophy because Greece is far from here and we have khurafat (superstitious) traditions from Hinduism and Animism here although most Malays are Muslim.

Brahman manifests in Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. Shiva than manifests in his consort, Parvathi. Parvathi manifests as Durga when she opposing Maheshasura (the cow demon). Then when Durga is going to stab her trishul (trident) into Maheshasura, she manifest again as Kaali. Shiva also has sons. Ganesha and Kaartigeya (Skandha). Ganesha has elephant head because Shiva cut his head of because he is surprised to see other man beside his consort which is also himself, Shiva then can't find the head after he cut his son head so he changed it with elephant's head. He is the son of Shiva and Uma. Uma is another manifestation of Parvathi, it is the early manifestation of her. Uma is the daughter of father Himalaya. Himalaya was personified as a person.

Uma is also Sakthi the feminine aspect of Shiva which is a manifestation of G-d. Without Sakthi, the cosmos will be out of balance. Many other gods emerged from G-d. And it is just a headache if we listed long stories that came from human imaginations.

Vishnu also has 10 manifestations. The first four is in lilavataram. They appearer in Satya Yug (Hindu time Cycle). The next three manifestation in Traeta Yug. The eighth manifestation is in Dvapara Yug. The ninth is in Kali Yug. Vishnu manifest himself as fish (Macha), tortoise (Kurma), boar (Vraha), half man half lion (Narasinga), Dwarf (Vaman), Parashuraam (Rama with Axe), Ramachandra who is the king of Ayodhya, Krishna, Buddha, Kalki. Kalki still not yet come, they said. When Kalki come the world is almost meeting the end, and new Satya Yug will appear. Those manifestations are all G-d, merged from One G-d said Hindus. How different if it is three in One and thousands in One?

How far it is manifestation of G-d with Pantheism?

What is Avatar? Avatar means G-d manifests Himself in other forms, incarnations of G-d, descendants of G-d, and etc. The incarnations, manifestations, descendants are all G-d.

What is the different when G-d the Father manifest in Jesus? Also G-d the Father being Holy Spirit?

What is Brahman in Hinduism?

It is said to be eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and ultimately indescribable in human language.

We don't need mediators, manifestations of G-d or etc to contact Him. We have our scripture and we believe that He is Holy unimaginable by our mind. He is not the same as His creations with eyes, mouths, hands and etc. It defiling His Holy image when we never see Him and saying that He looks like this and like that. It is impossible that He looks like human, woman, man, boar or elephant. We only have the knowledge on what He had revealed to us. We can't exceed the limit.

 

[Grace Seeker]

Why does it matter? When God told us that he was one did he have to specify substance, essence, or form?

It may not matter to you any more than it matters to me what type of rock the moon is made out of, but I'm curious and if you have information or even an opinion it might help me to better appreciate how you conceive of Allah. And that last bit just might be more important to you than it is to me. Then again, it may be that you prefer to keep me in the dark as to how you understand Allah.

 

[Grace Seeker]

Dear Grace Seeker:



Please note:

1. I believe the Bible uncompromisingly.
   
2. I have found that the Bible does not support the religious traditional teaching that Jesus is God.
   
3. I presented evidence to show that the Bible appeared to explicitly teach that Jesus was not God.
   
4. I invited you to examine all of the evidence in detail in Brothers Kept Apart. You can read it at your local library free of cost. I would be very interested to learn your interpretation of the evidence provided since I highly value your opinions.

What I note is that you consistently present only about half of what the Bible says about Jesus. A half-truth in this case becomes an untruth and that is what you get when you say that the Bible appears explicitly teaches that Jesus is not God.

And when the whole truth is presented to you:

The Word is God.
The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us.
Jesus is this word become flesh.​

You still seem to miss the syllogism that is produced from such a series of statements. Mainly that the Bible presents Jesus as God in the flesh. Nothing could be more clear, but still you miss it. It would be better to answers as Muslims do that you simply can't trust the Bible because it gives contradictorary teachings, than to ignore this clear teaching of scripture on the dieity of Christ and to read only those other passages that make you question it. At least there is integrity in the Islamic position that the Bible just can't be trusted. But to say as you have that you believe the Bible uncompromisingly and then to compromise its core teachings by only reading those passages that can bolster the theology you bring to the book rather than one exegetes from the text, that is simply to delude one's self. I'm sorry that I have to say these things so forcefully, but it is as if you have your head buried in this one book, and can't see its errors for yourself. If you want me to read, please send me a copy and I will, but I fear that I will not find it the eye-opener that you do, but only a confused mess of isogesis.

 

[Walter]

Dear Grace Seeker:

It seems that you have not read my post 280 properly. Let me repeat that I believe the Bible uncompromisingly. While I am defending what the Bible explicitly states, you appear to be defending your religious tradition.

You wrote:

What I note is that you consistently present only about half of what the Bible says about Jesus. A half-truth in this case becomes an untruth and that is what you get when you say that the Bible appears explicitly teaches that Jesus is not God.

And when the whole truth is presented to you:

The Word is God.
​

But what does the Bible state.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1–2)​

So the Bible states “the Word was God”, and your religious tradition has taught you that this has to be interpreted to mean “the Word is God”. Having embraced your tradition, rather than what is explicitly stated in the Bible, you inexplicably conclude that your religious traditional interpretation is infallible, and then accuse me of being untrue and lacking integrity. Good grief Grace Seeker, you must know that that is not the right way. That is not the right way at all.

As previously suggested, please visit your local library, borrow the book, and examine the evidence before making your premature conclusions and baseless accusations.

Regards,
Grenville

 

[Walter]

Hi Shakoor:

Okay I think we are coming closer to a conclusion of the topic hopefully.
Grenville, do you believe in the trinity? That Jesus one of 3 parts of the one God or something like that? Because trinity is never mentioned in the bible.

I believe that Jesus is exactly who the Bible describes Him to be. Jesus is the Messiah, sent by God to reconcile people to God so that they might know God as their Father.

The Bible does describe a Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is explained in the last words of Jesus after He was resurrected.

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)​

While the Bible explicitly states “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”, Christian religious tradition has taught that this must be interpreted to mean “baptizing them in the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit”. Unfortunately, this is taught to Christian children who grow up to believe, with all of their heart, that the Bible actually states the latter.

I do not believe that the Bible teaches a trinity of God or gods. You would need to understand the concept of baptism to understand the role of this trinity. You can investigate it for yourself, or read the evidence in Brothers Kept Apart at your local library.

Regards,
Grenville

 

[Muhammad]

Greetings,

Therefore, in reflecting on these apparent contradictions and trying to make sense of the clear proclamation of God's oneness that is in scripture and the clear experiences of God in each of these individual persons that they also recorded in scipture, the church reached an understanding that both had to be true at the same time. There were dissenters to that idea, but that idea nevertheless was the idea that won the day. God is one, but he exists and makes himself known to us in these three different persons who have manifested themselves to us.

There is no Biblical requirement for Christians to believe that Jesus is God. This teaching was first explicitly stated in early Christian literature approximately 150 AD, with the trinity making its way onto early church writings approximately 200 AD. It took another 125 years or so for the idea of Jesus being God to be a mandatory belief with harsh consequences (including torture, property confiscation, and death) for those who simply believed what the Bible explicitly stated.

If I may ask a question here - apologies if it has already been mentioned before. Why is it that teachings at the core of Christianity, teachings about the very nature and role of God, were apparently only established hundreds of years after Jesus' stay on earth (from what I understood from the above)? Usually, God sends a message and a Prophet to explain that message. If Jesus did not convey the core beliefs of Christianity, who then had the authority to do so? Were the disciples considered as Prophets, being inspired directly by God?

The other thing is about the church debating over various issues, and people being forced to accept it. This suggests that the true message of God must have been lost, and that it was the ideas of people that remained.

Now, I myself, don't get how some Muslims connect this to say that Christians believe in a Trinity composed of Father, Mother, Son, but I have run into many who do.

Why do Christians have statues of Mary, and why do we often hear them referring to her as "Mother of God"?

for Christians simply do NOT now, nor never have meant Father, Mother, and Son when they speak of the Holy Trinity.

How do you know this, when there has been so much dissention regarding what is and isn't the trinity amongst Christians?

I'll leave it at that for the time being.

Regards.

 

[Walter]

Dear Muhammad:

Please note that the teachings of the Bible are quite clear. However, all manuscripts, whether religious, political, scientific or political, can be misinterpreted.

It is natural for persons to misinterpret documentary evidence because people have different levels of knowledge about the subject. That is why honest discussion is very beneficial, and even critical, for proper interpretation of evidence.

Let me stress that there is a difference between honest discussion, where both sides have the same aim of learning the truth, and debate where each side uses rhetoric to win an argument or defend their interpretation. I am not in this forum to debate anything, but to discuss the evidence so that we may learn more of the Truth.

History has shown that our understanding of a topic has generally been immature when one influential group has decided that their interpretation is the only correct one, and then they persecuted any one who wished to discuss the evidence. This has been true in religion, science, social studies, and politics, with disastrous results for humanity.

Despite this historical example of what not to do, we never seem to learn. We keep trying to learn the truth by debating rather than by discussing, and by persecuting each other rather than accepting that we are imperfect and that our interpretations may be imperfect, but the evidence is sound.

Mohammed, as I noted, the teachings in the Bible are clear enough, as are the teachings in the Qur’an. The problem is with the interpretations which conflict with the evidence, but which form part of our religious traditions.

Christianity has traditions that conflict with the Bible, and Islam has traditions that conflict with the Qur’an. However, most of these traditions are not barriers to Christian-Muslim relations, but some are. The Christian and Islamic religious traditional teachings that are unsupported by either Book, and which have become barriers that have kept Christians and Muslims apart for over 1,300 years, are included in Brothers Kept Apart.

Therefore, the message is not lost. I have found that it is explicitly stated in the Bible and supported by the Qur’an.

Regards,
Grenville

 

[AntiKarateKid]

About Mary being a part of the Trinity, Graceseeker has misinterpreted the verse of the Quran.

*{O Jesus son of Mary did you say to mankind, "Take me and my mother to your selves as two gods, apart from Allah?" He said, "All Extolment be to You! In no way is it for me to say what I have no right to. In case I ever said it. then You already know it. You know whatever is within my self, and I do not know what is within Your Self; surely You, Ever You, are The Superb Knower of the Things Unseen. In no way did I say to them (anything) except whatever You commanded me (saying), “Worship Allah, my Lord, and your Lord.” And I was a witness over them, as long as I was among them; then as soon as You took me up, You, Ever You, have been The Watcher over them, and You are Ever-Witnessing over everything. In case You torment them, then surely they are Your bondmen; and in case You forgive them, then surely You, Ever You, are The Ever-Mighty, The Ever-Wise.}* (Al-Ma'idah 5:116-118)


Nothing is said about the Trinity. Only that Christians have deified Jesus pbuh and Mary. As discussed in countless threads before, when you pray to Mary, you are deifying her. When you ask of her for something only God can give, you are deifying her. When you listen to your priests instead of the scipture you are deifying them. When you love and follow someone to the exclusion of God, you are deifying them.

The verse is straightforward and not talking about the trinity. The only reason anyone would assert it does would be either due to their ignorance about the verse or desire to make the Quran seem contradictory to history.

 

[Grace Seeker]

About Mary being a part of the Trinity, Graceseeker has misinterpreted the verse of the Quran.

*{O Jesus son of Mary did you say to mankind, "Take me and my mother to your selves as two gods, apart from Allah?"

No, I did not misinterpret this verse of the Qur'an. First I personally don't read it to say this is the Islamic definition for the Trinity. And if you will read my post again, I think you will see that I made the distinction. If it wasn't clear then I apologize, and make that statement then here.

Second, I know that well read Muslims don't have this mistaken understanding either. For instance AKK, I don't think you are of that mindset, nor is Woodrow. But....

Third, there are some Muslims who frequent this board who are so mistaken. I have seen this very verse cited as evidence that Christians believe in some sort of Father, Mother, Son type of Trinity. Not just once or twice, but repeatedly. I would have liked to have posted a few examples of them for you, but when I do a search the number of posts I would have to scan through on a subject like the Trinity is just too daunting to undertake.

So, I'm not saying that this is what the verse actually means nor that all Muslims think that erroneous way, but I am saying that a there are many that do enough that I suspect that this erroneous idea is actually being taught in some Islamic circles.

 

[Grace Seeker]

Greetings,
If I may ask a question here - apologies if it has already been mentioned before. Why is it that teachings at the core of Christianity, teachings about the very nature and role of God, were apparently only established hundreds of years after Jesus' stay on earth (from what I understood from the above)?

What are you considering the "core of Christianity"? If you mean our doctrinal teachings, you are correct that they came later. If you mean our scriptures, then they came first. I see the same thing happening in Islam. I once asked what I thought was a rather innocous question about music in Islam, and found that I had accidentally stirred up a hornets nest. Different followers of Islam would quote different verses at each other to prove their point which in the end seems to be based more on latter interpretations of the meaning and applications of those verses than the verses themselves, for in fact the verses have been taken two different ways by people who I suspect see themselves as equally true to Islam, but have different answers to that very simple quesiton. So, you see the development of doctrine does take place over time.

This is so especially with things like the Trinity or the way that Catholics speak of Mary of "mother of God". You won't find those terms in scripture. So, the development of those terms was something that came out of the conversations that subsequent readers of the scriptures would have with one another about what they read and their proper meaning.

One modern day theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, reflected on this same question you have raised commenting, "The Church seldom knows what it believe until someone gets it wrong. Indeed, often it is not even clear ath the beginning what has been got wrong." Time and again scriptural interpretation is at the core of disputes between positions that would be declared orthodox and those that would be declared heretical. (That is exactly what is happening between me and Grenville in this thread as well.) Heretics, for example, frequently make use of Scripture -- drawing on the same sources as the orthodox in many cases. This is a big part of the problem, for it makes what they produce to at first appear so plausible, even legitimate:

They endeavor to adapt with an air of probability to their own peculiar assertions the parables of the Lord, the sayings of the prophets, and the words of the apostles, in order that their scheme may not seem altogether without support.

(Against Heresies, Irenaeus, Book I, chapter 8, paragraph 1)

There is also sort of an order to the heresies and that in turn resulted in there being an apparent order to which the core doctrines of the early church were wrestled with and developed. First, you will have to recognize that as a Muslim the questions that you might ask will be different from those who were followers of Christ were asking. Muslims are focused, understandably so when your key scriptures are seen as a recitation of what Allah himself spoke (or had spoken), on getting a particular message. The focus of Christianity was in telling a particular story about the person of Christ, not the message that Muslims believe he came to deliver. No one can fully understand Christianity (even if you were raised in a church) if one is focused more on what Christ said or might have said than on what he did and who he himself was. What the early Church was therefore interested in was not just stories about what Jesus might have said -- a record of all of his sermons would not have satisfied their appetite -- but knowledge about Jesus himself. The essential philosophical questions that people ask about themselves: "Who am I?", "Where did I come from?", and "Why am I here?" were all questions that Christians asked and turned to scriptures to answer about Jesus.

Again, another Christian writer, Anna Williams, deals with your question:

The Church's quest for knowledge of [its] Lord it to debate, in fairly rapid succession, four possible portraits of Christ, rejecting each in turn....

The first two heresies concerning this Christ which were condemned by the early Church were Arianism and Apollinarianism (a kind of Docetism). Together, these condemnations established as the postive content of Christian belief the notion that Jesus Christ had two natures, one fully divine and one fully human. The next two heresies represented an answer to the question of how the two natures were related: Nestorianism and Eutychianism could not have arisen without the earlier condemnations of Arianism and Apollinarianism establishing that there are two natures in Christ. The logical ordering of these four heresies concerning Christ's person reflects the process of the Christian community's meditation on the Bible, its slowly being drawn by the Spirit into greater knowledge of the truth of the Logos.

from Heresies and How to Avoid Them, Ben Quash and Michael Ward, Hendrickson Publishers, c. 2007, p. 34

The problem with heresies was certainly not the questions they asked. All of Christendom was wrestling with those same questions. And it wasn't even the gensesis of their answers. For often they began with a salient point that needed further exploration. The problem with most heresies is that they simply took a good point and allowe it to get out of proportion to the rest of scripture -- by the way my exact complaint about those who see in a few verses of scripture a distinction between the Father and the Son and then think that therefore there can be no unity between them despite the fact that other scriptures clearly portend that there is.

Usually, God sends a message and a Prophet to explain that message. If Jesus did not convey the core beliefs of Christianity, who then had the authority to do so? Were the disciples considered as Prophets, being inspired directly by God?

What you declare to be the way God "usually" communicates with people, I would say is not the way that God usually worked at all. Not that he never did, but that it is not his usual means. And it isn't what I understand Jesus' presence on earth to have been about either. Jesus' preaching was ancillary to the reason that he came, which was simply to reconcile people back to God. Not by calling them to righteousness and obedience -- though he did that as well -- but by being a means to bridge the gap between God and humanity. Jesus established, in his own words, "a new covenant in my blood." This had been prophesied generations before by the prophet Jeremiah (see Jeremiah 31:31), and then was accomplished by Jesus and that accomplishment is what the Gospels are about, not some message contained in a lost Injeel.


As to who had the authority to convey this story, anyone who had knowledge about it. It did not take divine revelation and inspirtation for people to tell one another about that which they had experienced for themselves. You see, the question you asked presumes that there is need for special revelation when in fact there is not. Jesus had made all of this known and people were free to share experience with one another. Now, Christians do believe that what we have recorded in the NT is inspired, but the simple sharing of the gospel message from one person to another was not contingent on one being a specially anointed prophet of God than it is necessary to be one today to continue to tell Jesus' story.

The other thing is about the church debating over various issues, and people being forced to accept it. This suggests that the true message of God must have been lost, and that it was the ideas of people that remained.

Again, you are assuming that the whole purpose of Jesus' coming was to deliver a message. That is not our understanding.

Why do Christians have statues of Mary, and why do we often hear them referring to her as "Mother of God"?

First, it is only some Christians that have these statues and speak this way. I am not one of them, so you might want to ask this quesiton again of those who do -- a Catholic might answer differently than me. But I will do my best to speak for them as there relatively are few Catholics on LI right now.

Reason for calling Mary "Mother of God" is simply because as Christians we recognize Jesus as being God. Mary was Jesus' human mother. And therefore, by extension, she can be called the mother of God. Don't get too hung up on that. Even with the big emphasis that some Catholics will make in honoring Mary this way, it really isn't central even to Catholic theology, let alone the rest of Christendom. Catholics don't believe that God needs a mother. Only that Mary had the role of carrying in her womb, giving birth too, nursing, and raising (all things associated with motherhood) one who we recognize as God in human form. It is Jesus, not Mary, who is worshipped.

As far as statutes go, these are just visual aids to remind us of important figures (pun not intended) in the history of our faith. They serve the same role as paintings and photographs. And while I know that Islam also excludes them from houses of worship, I do know that Muslims have personal photographs of family members and other important people in their lives. Statues are not to be worshipped for that would be idolatry. But the representation of a person is not in and of itself idolatry unless that figure is also worshipped in place of God. Like I said, I don't participate in the using of such figures in a house of worship because I think that some people can get confused and begin to give more attention to the figure than to God, and I don't want to set that risk up for them. But when it happens the problem is with people's ability to remain focused on God as they should, not with the figure. I've seen similar issues when people focused to much on some other artifact that was present in a worship center because they had given it (supposedly to the glory of God) as a memorial in their loved one's name, and when that object was removed they got upset as if one was attack the very focus of their worship. As far as I'm concerned that is just as much idolatry as any other form, and yet it doesn't involve a figure of a person or any other thing. But people still sometimes give things more devotion than they do God and whatever the object is that they devote to it is wrong.

originally posted by Grace Seeker
for Christians simply do NOT now, nor never have meant Father, Mother, and Son when they speak of the Holy Trinity.

How do you know this, when there has been so much dissention regarding what is and isn't the trinity amongst Christians?

I'll leave it at that for the time being.

Regards.

I'm speaking of Christians as a group. I'm sure that there are individuals who have gone astray in all sorts of ways and their strayings have been forgotten.

When one looks back at the historical record, what one sees is that when people did develop these other ideas, that they were challenged. And if, after being challenged, they continued in these erroneous ways, they were removed from the Church. Also we have much better records of these doctrinal debates than you might imagine. While there were occassions when the writings of those who were labelled heretics were either intentionally destroyed or lost because those faiths themselves were abandoned, the writings of those who wrote to refute them were not. And there is nothing in the historical record to suggest that the Church was ever challenged by those within it who taught that what the Church meant by Trinity was Father, Mother, and Son.


I hope that helps.

 

[AntiKarateKid]

No, I did not misinterpret this verse of the Qur'an. First I personally don't read it to say this is the Islamic definition for the Trinity. And if you will read my post again, I think you will see that I made the distinction. If it wasn't clear then I apologize, and make that statement then here.

Second, I know that well read Muslims don't have this mistaken understanding either. For instance AKK, I don't think you are of that mindset, nor is Woodrow. But....

Third, there are some Muslims who frequent this board who are so mistaken. I have seen this very verse cited as evidence that Christians believe in some sort of Father, Mother, Son type of Trinity. Not just once or twice, but repeatedly. I would have liked to have posted a few examples of them for you, but when I do a search the number of posts I would have to scan through on a subject like the Trinity is just too daunting to undertake.

So, I'm not saying that this is what the verse actually means nor that all Muslims think that erroneous way, but I am saying that a there are many that do enough that I suspect that this erroneous idea is actually being taught in some Islamic circles.

That aside, my point of deification still stands.