Congressman: “Bomb Meca”
A Colorado congressman told a radio show host that the U.S. could “take out” Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons.
Rep. Tom Tancredo made his remarks Friday on WFLA-AM in Orlando, Florida. His spokesman stressed he was only speaking hypothetically.
Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.
“Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites,” Tancredo answered.
“You’re talking about bombing Mecca,” Campbell said.
“Yeah,” Tancredo responded.
The congressman later said he was “just throwing out some ideas” and that an “ultimate threat” might have to be met with an “ultimate response.”
CNN: Congressman suggests way to retaliate for nuclear terror
Now, I’m not going to get into a pointless argument about whether or not this asinine statement is more or less irresponsible than a) Dick Durbin comparing the actions of American soldiers to Nazis, b) Dean claiming that Bush may have known about 9/11 in advance or c) one of many people who claimed that Bush had captured Osama bin Laden and was going to reveal his capture in October, 2004, in order to get an election boost. I like to think that there is something called the “asshole threshold.” Once you cross the asshole threshold, it’s impossible to compare relative repugnance. To me, they’re all just assholes.
Tom Tancredo
[...] What an idiot. That pretty much lines up with this kind of idiocy. [...]
I have advocated this solution for a couple of years now. The President should get on television and simply say that nuclear weapons have been targeted on both Mecca and Medina. Further terrorist atrocities will result in the geographic extinction of those two cities.
Doesn’t matter whether we have the courage to do it…it only matters that the Islamofacists BELIEVE we are crazy enough to do it.
Rose Noble 2008
Rose,
Before I respond to what you stated, I would like to state that I am an American Muslim who converted to Islam over 16 years ago. I was born in this country and I was working in the WTC on 9/11. My son was attending daycare in the WTC as well and thank God he was not here on that day. I know people who died, I watched people jump to their deaths, I saw the plane hit the second building and I watched firsthand as those buildings came down. First of all you and others like you who think like this need to think this through a little more clearly. If 20 men were willing to destroy themselves and 3000+ human beings for the sake of their distorted image of Islam, I don’t believe the THREAT of nuclear weapons pointed at Makkah, Madinah and Jerusalem (for that is an Islamic holy site as well) is going to make them change their mind or scare them to change their agenda. To be honest I feel this is exactly what is wanted because this would unite the 1.5 billion muslims in the world who come from every ethnicity (chinese, japanese, arab, african, australian, malaysian, american, etc.) and they would be very very pissed off, myself included even if only as a threat. There are Islamic prophecies referring to the end of time and this scenario of Makkah being attacked by the AntiChrist is one of them. I don’t really think America or Americans would like to be known for fulfilling this prophecy. As bad as America’s image is now throughout the world these are foolish statements and will encourage more of this madness. I also believe that not only is America not courageous enough (for surely this is not courage)to do it but these Islamists would at best not believe the threat anyway and at worst desire it to occur. May God guide you and others who think like this to the truth and may peace prevail.
AbuAmir
Sir,
Let me thank you for the reasonable tone of your response. I did not intend to be taken seriously, but since you have taken it seriously, I will attempt to demonstrate that I have ‘thought this through clearly’.
I am tired of hearing people make excuses for the murderous behavior that is going on. Yes, there are many problems in this world, but a review of the headlines recently makes it clear that there is a pattern. Pretending we don’t see the pattern is simply a form of denial and a recipe for our own extermination.
It seems to me that Islam is having trouble co-existing with other beliefs around the world, fighting the Hindus in India, the Jews in Israel, other Muslims across the Middle East, and the Christians in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America, not to mention secularists as in France and elsewhere. Every where you turn there are Muslims who are, for religious reasons, destroying and murdering. They would seek to impose upon all of us the extreme form of their worship, namely a strict existence subject to Shariah law, forbidding all forms of dissent, unbelief, and disbelief. They would crush the liberties that civilization holds dear, espcially the rights of women. They would eliminate music, dancing, and all forms of art and entertainment that they disapprove of. They justify their behavior by saying it is the will of Allah, so no amount of compromise or reasoning is possible.
This cannot be allowed to continue.
Civilization cannot ignore this threat, or allow itself to be consumed piece meal. True Islam needs to learn to rein in these militants, before the governments around the world are pushed to the point where they feel their own existence is threatened, for if and when that point is reached, disaster will occur.
My own religion teaches that Armageddon is God’s war on the wicked, but it is preceded by an attack by the political system on the religious system. I can see this prophecy taking place in the near future, as one of the world’s major religions continues to invite the wrath of the rest of humanity.
I am sick of the excuses. I am sick of the half-apologies. I am sick of the random bag checks when we all know that the suicide bombers fit a certain profile.
If this stuff keeps happening, people are going to demand that someone put an end to it.
George Bush is trying to do this the nice way, by introducing freedom and liberty (i.e. democracy and capitalism) to an oppressed and downtrodden people. If this grand gesture fails, there will be others who will suggest more radical solutions.
Rose,
I do take what you and others have stated very seriously. I don’t see why you would state something like that just jokingly. I agree with you that I am also tired of people making excuses for murderous behavior and that is exactly why I took what you said very seriously. The threat of using nuclear weapons, especially coming from the only nation on earth who has used nuclear weapons on other human beings is a very serious matter. Two cities were entirely decimated by this nation with over 100,000 people dead and 100,000 wounded and not to finish a war but to put some fear in the USSR. Now that sounds like some real terrorism to me. Nuclear bombing of these cities (Makkah, Madinah, etc.) in particular let alone any city would cause utter chaos globally. Now you state that Islam is having a problem coexisting with other beliefs in the world. It’s funny you state that because prior to the 20th century, historically Islam has probably been more tolerant than most of other faiths especially compared to Christianity. Hell, when Jerusalem was conquered by Umar the second caliph of Islam and reconquered by Saladin during the Crusades you don’t read anything about slaughter or vengeance. Read up on how when the Muslims ruled Spain, Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side by side in toleration and respect of each others beliefs and created a great culture and civilization. It wasn’t until the imperialism of the west, colonizing and dividing the world up into nation states did you see Africa, the far east and in particular the near east get pissed off at what had happened to them. If you read the history you will understand why Muslims are fighting the Hindus in India, The Jews in Palestine and anyone else in the world. Are these Muslim countries or peoples technologically superior than these countries they are fighting and are aggressing against them? Or is it that these countries are aggressing against them supported by America and other Western nations? Let’s start with one example. Prior to World War 1 who lived in Palestine, Arabs or Jews? You can easily look up online and see that prior to World War 1 that land was known as Palestine, was controlled by the Ottomans who were Muslim and controlled a vast empire which stretched across North Africa and what we now call the middle east and was inhabited by arabs. Not even one hundred years later the land has become a “Jewish State” and there are concentration camps of these remaining arabs being pushed farther and farther off their land. Who is really doing the murdering? You have people throwing rocks and blowing themselves up against real Weapons of Mass Destruction which are bulldozing their homes, stealing their land, raping their women and murdering their children. All supported by the good ole US of A. Now how long has this “terror” been happening in the middle east? Seriously, you can easily look this stuff up. If you can show me historically where Muslims have been forcing their beliefs on people and subjugating them to Shariah law prior to World War 1 I will be very interested to read it. I’m not saying that due to modernism there has not been a backlash in the past century. I’m not saying that this backlash is good but the way you are stating things, it is as if the Islamic Monster has been raging away since it was begotten 1400 years ago. The way you word it also sounds as if the West (and in particular America) is civilized where as the rest of the world is not. True Islam cannot rein in these militants because the American government supports and created fascist regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. Saddam was put in power by the American government. He was supported by them because he was at war with Iran. His nowhere to be found Weapons of Mass Destruction were funded and purchased from America. His chemical weapons which he used to gas Kurds, Shiites and Iranians were given to him by the US. Bin Laden is another case. When he was fighting the Russians he was a freedom fighter. America gave him weaponry. It goes on and on. America is the problem that is going on in the world. Not the American people but America’s policies. They are contradictory and self serving. In regards to suicide bombers fitting a profile, that is just foolish. As can be seen in the recent attacks on London, they have been pakistani and one of them carribean. Pakistanis do not look like arabs. The attacks that happened last week might have even included an ethipian or somalian. Not that I am a terrorist but I am white American Muslim. Chechens are white russian muslims. Indonesians and Malaysians actually make up the largest concentration of Muslims and would look Chinese or South East Asian to many Americans. Profiling just Arabs is not going to work. What is going to work is
#1 America working on its foreign policies in particular the Palestinian issue. Unilateral support of Israel is not going to work. How can the joke of a “Palestinian Authority” which has no infrastructure and divided between the West BAnk and Gaza ever be able to control its millitants? Seriously, think about this.
#2 Democracy cannot be forced on a people. It will never work. It needs to be homegrown. Do you think if during the civil rights movement some foreign nation came in and forced us to resolve the issue it would have worked? I don’t think so. I think you would have seen Americans fighting against these invaders. America needs to help democracy grow by supporting democratic governments and letting them work out their problems on their own.
#3 It needs to get out of countries it doesn’t need to be in
After saying all this I want it made clear that as a Muslim I am against suicide bombing and against attacking civilians. The Qur’an and the example of Muhammad is very clear about this and I could prove this in another discussion. I beleive that Muslims worldwide do need to take responsibility and do something about what is going on. I don’t think blaming America is going to solve the problem but America does need to face up to what it has done in the world and what it could do to make the situation better. Before signing off though I would like you to consider this. When Saddam was in power in Iraq, did you ever hear about Iraqis fighting against him or blowing themselves up? Why is it that they would do that now against the Americans?
To Rose
I am not for an eye for a eye. Plus, you must understand Muslim fundamentalist terrorists are doing something evil in the eyes of God and don’t back up evil and make excuses for them. As a Christian and other, we are seen this as you are half ways supporting their actions. If you are for peace ask for forgiveness because we are not perfect. See if we all ask for forgiveness we will be better off. People that are against peace only take about justification their action for violence. You have wrote a lot about what you heard about Muslim and the world in the past, but I am not going to answer every single question. Give information about islam, peace, and violence and Crusades.
The time of the Crusades Muslims had conquered half of the Christian world and had begun to interfere with Christians going on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. If Christians had conquered half of Muslim territory, including Mecca, and had begun to interfere with Muslims going on the Hajj, would you expect Muslims to try to defend their faith and take back territory that had been seized? The Crusades was not aggression for the sake of aggression. The Crusades were a set of defensive wars trying to retake what had been conquered, particularly the holy sites.
By By Jimmy Akin
I make a point to be friendly when I meet foreigners who are visiting the United States. I ask where they are from, smile, tell them that I hope they enjoy their stay in our country. If I can, I try to make some gesture acknowledging their culture. I figure that providing a friendly face for America, even on this small scale, makes a little contribution to international relations.
One night last year–before September 11–I was out buying some DVDs in one of those big, cavernous electronics warehouse stores, the kind so massive that they have an employee assigned to do nothing but point customers toward the next open cashier among several dozen on duty.
That night the employee pointing customers to cashiers was a young woman with a headscarf. She was clearly Muslim and looked Indonesian to me. I thought, as a way of being friendly, I might tell her “Nice pasa malam you have here.” (The pasa malam or “night market” is an important part of Indonesian culture where people go shopping in the evening.) Since Muslims tend to assume that all Americans are Christians, being nice to her would send a double message: Not only can Americans be nice, Christians can be nice.
Before joking about the pasa malam, I asked where she was from, and she surprised me by saying, “Yemen.”
As I paid for my DVDs, I tried to think of what greeting would be used in Yemen, and as I passed her on my way out, I waived and said, ” Salaam.”
“Salaam,” she replied.
I smiled, then went home with my DVDs.
The next morning two jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center at the behest of another Yemeni–Osama bin Laden.
In the confusion, anger, and grief of that day, I thought of the woman I had greeted the night before. I knew that her experience of America was about to change, that there would be reprisals against Muslims, that she would be afraid to be seen in public with her headscarf, and that people probably would say cruel things to her based on her religion and national origin.
I was glad that I had the opportunity, on the eve of the unspeakable horror, to show her a different side of America. I hoped that she would remember that Americans and Christians can be friendly and that this might in some way serve in her heart as a preparation for the gospel.
The news in the coming days recorded the expected reprisals against Muslims in the U.S., but mercifully there were not nearly as many as there could have been. Most Americans understood that ordinary Muslims could not be held accountable for the actions of their terrorist co-religionists. Indeed, people did so well in this regard that some Muslims commented that the American public was handling the situation “a lot better than we would” if the situation were reversed.
The perception was shared by many that Muslims would have reacted violently against ordinary Americans in their midst if American terrorists struck one of their nations.
Despite this, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 there were a lot of words said to play down the idea of Islam as a religion of violence. President Bush went on TV and said a lot of nice things about Muslims being peaceful people. He had photo ops with Muslim leaders. Various Muslim apologists came out of the woodwork to tell us that “Islam is a religion of peace.”
Some hearing this drumbeat were indignant, sensing that considerations of political correctness were at work. I myself didn’t mind these blandishments, because nobody was really meant to believe them. Americans weren’t expected to believe that Muslims are actually a bunch of pacifists except for Osama bin Laden’s gang. Neither were Muslims expected to believe that Americans viewed them in such a ridiculously positive light.
All this was the language of diplomacy. It was meant to accomplish certain goals, not get people to believe what was said. The goals were (1) to keep Americans from conducting reprisals on innocent Muslims in greater numbers and (2) to keep the issue from being framed in terms of America versus Islam, causing the Muslim world to band together and World War III to start. These goals were achieved (at least for the moment), for which we can all be grateful.
Of course, that still leaves us to assess Islam’s actual potential for violence.
Characterizing almost any religion as being “of violence” or “of peace” is overly simplistic. As Solomon pointed out, “For everything there is a season; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time for war, and a time for peace” (Eccl. 3:1, 3, 8). That’s the way of a fallen world, and every religion capable of serving as the basis of a culture has recognized both the need for peace and the need for the use of violence in certain circumstances.
Sects that are pacifistic have to rely on the good graces of others who are willing to use violence to protect them. Sects that are devoted to violence don’t survive long since they either kill themselves off or are broken up by their neighbors as a matter of self-protection. For a religion to serve as the basis of a culture, it must both seek to preserve peace in substantial measure but also be willing to use force. All the major world religions tend toward this mean.
Still, some religions are more inclined to violence or peace than others. Of the three major western religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-Islam has the greatest potential for violence. This can be seen by considering the natures and the founders of the three.
Though belief in the true God goes back to the dawn of mankind, Moses founded Judaism in its traditional form. Evaluated politically, Moses could be considered a warlord, leading the tribes of Israel toward the Promised Land and the conquest that would follow. The Old Testament contains numerous commands to use violence to protect and promote the nation of Israel. This potential for violence is limited by the fact that Judaism is a religion for just one ethnic group that, in the Bible, is confined to one territory.
Christianity is a pan-ethnic religion, meant for all peoples in all countries. It has much greater reach, but much lower intrinsic potential for violence. Its founder-Christ-was a martyr who refused to fight to save his life. Though the New Testament recognizes that the Old Testament revelation is from God and that violence is sometimes justified, it does not contain new commands to use violence, as Christianity was not to be allied from its birth to a state as Judaism was.
Islam’s founder, Muhammad, was a warlord who rose from nothing to be the virtually undisputed master of the Arabian Peninsula. The holy book he produced is filled with commands to use violence in the service of its religion and nation. This potential for violence is similar to that possessed by Judaism except it is immensely augmented by the fact that Islam, like Christianity, sees itself as a pan-ethnic religion meant for all peoples in all countries. It therefore has been willing to employ violence on a massive scale, as illustrated by the first century of its existence, when the Islamic Empire exploded outward and conquered much of the known world of the time.
Among the many passages exhorting violence in the Qur’an is the command to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them” (Q 9:5). This was a command to use conversion by the sword against the polytheists living in Arabia at the time.
The Qur’an does indicate a somewhat less harsh treatment of Jews and Christians. As “people of the Book” (i.e., followers of Scripture), Jews and Christians get to be treated as second-class citizens rather than be given a simple choice to convert or die. In being reduced to second-class citizenship, they would have to pay a special tax, acknowledge the political superiority of Muslims, and live in subservience. If they refuse to do these things, they too would be killed. The Qur’an states: “Fight those who do not . . . follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians], until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection” (Q 9:29).
Of course, there are people of peace and people of violence in all the major religions. There are violent Christians. There are peace-loving Muslims. Changing historical circumstances do much to bring out tendencies toward violence and peace among the followers of different religions.
After 9/11, when presenting Islam as a religion of peace, some Muslims apologists asserted that even its name means peace. They pointed out that the word islam is based on the same root (s-l-m) that is behind the Hebrew word for peace, shalom.
While Arabic and Hebrew are related languages, not everything based on the s-l-m root means peace. Indeed, the normal meaning of islam is submission. To the extent that it signifies peace, it indicates the peace that exists when one party is in submission to another, not the friendly peace that exists between equals.
Further, the islam that the religion is named after is not peace between man and man but between man and God-divine peace though submission to God, not peace among men. The portrayal of Islam as a religion of peace based upon its name thus falls into the category of “useful fiction” for Muslim apologists.
In actuality, the normal Arabic word for peace is an s-l-m derivative, but it is not islam. It’s the word I used the night before 9/11 as a gesture of Christian and American goodwill to the Yemeni clerk: salaam.
To Rose
I am not for an eye for a eye. Plus, you must understand Muslim fundamentalist terrorists are doing evil in the eyes of God and don’t back up evil and make excuses for them. As a Christian and other, we are seen that you are half ways supporting their actions. If you are for peace ask for forgiveness because we are not perfect. See if we all ask for forgiveness we will be better off. People that are against peace only take about justification their action for violence. You have wrote a lot about what you heard about Muslim and the world in the past, but I am not going to answer every single question. I am going to point out information about Islam, peace, and violence and Crusades.
The time of the Crusades Muslims had conquered half of the Christian world and had begun to interfere with Christians going on pilgrimages to the Holy Land. If Christians had conquered half of Muslim territory, including Mecca, and had begun to interfere with Muslims going on the Hajj, would you expect Muslims to try to defend their faith and take back territory that had been seized? The Crusades was not aggression for the sake of aggression. The Crusades were a set of defensive wars trying to retake what had been conquered, particularly the holy sites.
By By Jimmy Akin
I make a point to be friendly when I meet foreigners who are visiting the United States. I ask where they are from, smile, tell them that I hope they enjoy their stay in our country. If I can, I try to make some gesture acknowledging their culture. I figure that providing a friendly face for America, even on this small scale, makes a little contribution to international relations.
One night last year–before September 11–I was out buying some DVDs in one of those big, cavernous electronics warehouse stores, the kind so massive that they have an employee assigned to do nothing but point customers toward the next open cashier among several dozen on duty.
That night the employee pointing customers to cashiers was a young woman with a headscarf. She was clearly Muslim and looked Indonesian to me. I thought, as a way of being friendly, I might tell her “Nice pasa malam you have here.” (The pasa malam or “night market” is an important part of Indonesian culture where people go shopping in the evening.) Since Muslims tend to assume that all Americans are Christians, being nice to her would send a double message: Not only can Americans be nice, Christians can be nice.
Before joking about the pasa malam, I asked where she was from, and she surprised me by saying, “Yemen.”
As I paid for my DVDs, I tried to think of what greeting would be used in Yemen, and as I passed her on my way out, I waived and said, ” Salaam.”
“Salaam,” she replied.
I smiled, then went home with my DVDs.
The next morning two jetliners slammed into the World Trade Center at the behest of another Yemeni–Osama bin Laden.
In the confusion, anger, and grief of that day, I thought of the woman I had greeted the night before. I knew that her experience of America was about to change, that there would be reprisals against Muslims, that she would be afraid to be seen in public with her headscarf, and that people probably would say cruel things to her based on her religion and national origin.
I was glad that I had the opportunity, on the eve of the unspeakable horror, to show her a different side of America. I hoped that she would remember that Americans and Christians can be friendly and that this might in some way serve in her heart as a preparation for the gospel.
The news in the coming days recorded the expected reprisals against Muslims in the U.S., but mercifully there were not nearly as many as there could have been. Most Americans understood that ordinary Muslims could not be held accountable for the actions of their terrorist co-religionists. Indeed, people did so well in this regard that some Muslims commented that the American public was handling the situation “a lot better than we would” if the situation were reversed.
The perception was shared by many that Muslims would have reacted violently against ordinary Americans in their midst if American terrorists struck one of their nations.
Despite this, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 there were a lot of words said to play down the idea of Islam as a religion of violence. President Bush went on TV and said a lot of nice things about Muslims being peaceful people. He had photo ops with Muslim leaders. Various Muslim apologists came out of the woodwork to tell us that “Islam is a religion of peace.”
Some hearing this drumbeat were indignant, sensing that considerations of political correctness were at work. I myself didn’t mind these blandishments, because nobody was really meant to believe them. Americans weren’t expected to believe that Muslims are actually a bunch of pacifists except for Osama bin Laden’s gang. Neither were Muslims expected to believe that Americans viewed them in such a ridiculously positive light.
All this was the language of diplomacy. It was meant to accomplish certain goals, not get people to believe what was said. The goals were (1) to keep Americans from conducting reprisals on innocent Muslims in greater numbers and (2) to keep the issue from being framed in terms of America versus Islam, causing the Muslim world to band together and World War III to start. These goals were achieved (at least for the moment), for which we can all be grateful.
Of course, that still leaves us to assess Islam’s actual potential for violence.
Characterizing almost any religion as being “of violence” or “of peace” is overly simplistic. As Solomon pointed out, “For everything there is a season; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time for war, and a time for peace” (Eccl. 3:1, 3, 8). That’s the way of a fallen world, and every religion capable of serving as the basis of a culture has recognized both the need for peace and the need for the use of violence in certain circumstances.
Sects that are pacifistic have to rely on the good graces of others who are willing to use violence to protect them. Sects that are devoted to violence don’t survive long since they either kill themselves off or are broken up by their neighbors as a matter of self-protection. For a religion to serve as the basis of a culture, it must both seek to preserve peace in substantial measure but also be willing to use force. All the major world religions tend toward this mean.
Still, some religions are more inclined to violence or peace than others. Of the three major western religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-Islam has the greatest potential for violence. This can be seen by considering the natures and the founders of the three.
Though belief in the true God goes back to the dawn of mankind, Moses founded Judaism in its traditional form. Evaluated politically, Moses could be considered a warlord, leading the tribes of Israel toward the Promised Land and the conquest that would follow. The Old Testament contains numerous commands to use violence to protect and promote the nation of Israel. This potential for violence is limited by the fact that Judaism is a religion for just one ethnic group that, in the Bible, is confined to one territory.
Christianity is a pan-ethnic religion, meant for all peoples in all countries. It has much greater reach, but much lower intrinsic potential for violence. Its founder-Christ-was a martyr who refused to fight to save his life. Though the New Testament recognizes that the Old Testament revelation is from God and that violence is sometimes justified, it does not contain new commands to use violence, as Christianity was not to be allied from its birth to a state as Judaism was.
Islam’s founder, Muhammad, was a warlord who rose from nothing to be the virtually undisputed master of the Arabian Peninsula. The holy book he produced is filled with commands to use violence in the service of its religion and nation. This potential for violence is similar to that possessed by Judaism except it is immensely augmented by the fact that Islam, like Christianity, sees itself as a pan-ethnic religion meant for all peoples in all countries. It therefore has been willing to employ violence on a massive scale, as illustrated by the first century of its existence, when the Islamic Empire exploded outward and conquered much of the known world of the time.
Among the many passages exhorting violence in the Qur’an is the command to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them” (Q 9:5). This was a command to use conversion by the sword against the polytheists living in Arabia at the time.
The Qur’an does indicate a somewhat less harsh treatment of Jews and Christians. As “people of the Book” (i.e., followers of Scripture), Jews and Christians get to be treated as second-class citizens rather than be given a simple choice to convert or die. In being reduced to second-class citizenship, they would have to pay a special tax, acknowledge the political superiority of Muslims, and live in subservience. If they refuse to do these things, they too would be killed. The Qur’an states: “Fight those who do not . . . follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians], until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection” (Q 9:29).
Of course, there are people of peace and people of violence in all the major religions. There are violent Christians. There are peace-loving Muslims. Changing historical circumstances do much to bring out tendencies toward violence and peace among the followers of different religions.
After 9/11, when presenting Islam as a religion of peace, some Muslims apologists asserted that even its name means peace. They pointed out that the word islam is based on the same root (s-l-m) that is behind the Hebrew word for peace, shalom.
While Arabic and Hebrew are related languages, not everything based on the s-l-m root means peace. Indeed, the normal meaning of islam is submission. To the extent that it signifies peace, it indicates the peace that exists when one party is in submission to another, not the friendly peace that exists between equals.
Further, the islam that the religion is named after is not peace between man and man but between man and God-divine peace though submission to God, not peace among men. The portrayal of Islam as a religion of peace based upon its name thus falls into the category of “useful fiction” for Muslim apologists.
In actuality, the normal Arabic word for peace is an s-l-m derivative, but it is not islam. It’s the word I used the night before 9/11 as a gesture of Christian and American goodwill to the Yemeni clerk: salaam.
AbuAmir -
You have attempted to take this discussion away from its original topic. What are we here to debate?
The debate is not about whether Islam is the true religion. – I would be happy to have that conversation with you, although this is probably not the venue for it. I have extensively studied the world’s major religions, and I have come to the inescapable conclusion that, although Islam claims to worship the One God, it is a false religion, and Mohammed was a false prophet.
The debate is not about how well Islam has behaved for the last 1400 years. – I would also be happy to have this conversation in a different venue. We all know about Saladin and the Crusades, but the fact is that the portion of the world under Muslim control has languished. The nations of Christendom in particular have outpaced the Islamic world for the last 500 years or so in the areas of science, math, and especially technology. You can’t spend your kids’ entire education teaching them religion and hatred of Jews and Christians, and then blame the West when they can’t compete in the sciences. Islam stifles thought, progress, and innovation in the name of religion. Besides, it is the behavior of the last few years that is at issue.
The debate is not about America’s use of the atomic bomb over Japan. I am not willing to discuss this issue with you, since anyone who thinks that more lives were lost by using those weapons than would have been lost in a land invasion of Japan needs to go back and do a little more studying. And while the claim that it was only to ‘put some fear in the USSR’ is patently false, even if it were true it would represent the saving of millions of lives.
The debate isn’t about America’s support of Saddam 20 years ago. – The world isn’t just black and white, there are many shades of gray. Back then, Iran wore black, America wore white, and Iraq wore gray. Many times, the good guys have to hold their noses and fight the bad guys with the help of some shady characters. Iraq changed to wearing black when it invaded Kuwait, so its relationship with America changed from untrustworthy ally to enemy.
The debate is not about Israel’s right to exist. – There is no point having that conversation, since only I can be objective, being neither Muslim nor Jew. The One God promised the land of Palestine to the seed of Abraham’s son Isaac, not to his son Ishmael. The Israelites took possession of the land over 3,500 years ago. In the last 50 years they have built a thriving, western-style democracy out there in that miserable strip of desert. America should absolutely support Israel, since Israel is the only true ally America has in the entire Middle East. There is no so thing as ‘the Palestinian people’, that is a name contrived to define the people who should just pack up and move to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia…oh, thats right, those Arab nations FORBID them from moving in. Makes you wonder why.
The debate is not about racial profiling. – Believe me, its an idea who’s time has come. All of this PC crap is going to get us killed.
This debate touches on whether democracy can be ‘forced’ on people, which clearly does work, and has worked in many places, most notably Germany and Japan. Not exactly historical failures. Anyone who says it won’t work in the Arab world is not giving Arabs much credit.
But what is this debate really about?
It is about whether the USA should consider using nuclear weapons against the Muslim world as a response to continued terrorist atrocities.
There would not be a military justification for such an act, and it would result almost entirely in the killing of civilians. The difference between the “good ole US of A” and its jihadist enemies is that “we” are not the deliberate perpetrators of the slaughter of innocents, nor do we sentence civilians to death because they don’t worship God the way we think they should.
But what about the threat? Is it wrong to threaten to do something horrible in order to obtain a benefit from the threat? I’m not so sure. Despite your assurances to the contrary, I think its worth considering that the jihadis might believe we’d do it and would be so horrified at the thought that they might scale back the quest to kill us. And it might encourage so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims to do a better job of cracking down on extremism in their ranks. And an attack itself, if it destroyed the cities of Mecca or Medina, would pretty much prove that Islam was not being protected by the One God.
Bottom line, I don’t think we should take any option or target off of the table, regardless of the circumstances.
Ok Rose. So I say you go for it. It looks like you and Tom have some supporters. I’ll even support your premise. Let’s see how it plays out…Personally, and I’m saying this facetiously, I’m “betting” on the Muslims but I guess you would expect that. Actually, you can’t totally blame me for taking the discussion away from the original topic because I was answering your post and the topics you raised. I was very tempted to respond point by point to your latest response but what I am really interested in hearing though is how Islam is a false religion and how Muhammad is a false prophet. Shall we start a seperate thread or continue here? In peace…
AbuAmir
No objection from me to continuing it here. I’m enjoying the debate.
Sidenote,
Even though I’m now “supporting” your argument, I just want it made clear to other readers that my original argument was that the threat or actuality of using nuclear weapons will not deter terrorists and will only fuel the fire. I believe it will enrage the Muslim world and prove to them that this is a crusade or a West vs. Islam situation. I base my argument on the fact, and I should have stated this earlier, that since America has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism has only increased. Now for Afghanistan I felt America had good enough reason to go in and try to catch OBL. I believe America has been somewhat effective on that front in that it has scattered al Qaeda and destroyed its training camps and base. But terrorism has not decreased, only increased since 2001. As for Iraq, I feel this war is totally unjustified even though the riddance of Saddam is of great benefit. I feel though the Iraqi people should have done this themselves and I find it interesting that they did not have the cajones to do it when he was in power but they do have the cajones to fight against the world’s only superpower. I feel that especially since the invasion of Iraq terrorism has increased dramatically. I don’t know if that is a true statistic but its definitely on the news all the time now. Or maybe it has been happening all along and because it has affected us, Americans are finally interested. Anyway, back to the point, in regards to your statement “”we” are not the deliberate perpetrators of the slaughter of innocents, nor do we sentence civilians to death because they don’t worship God the way we think they should”, I think historically I could describe many scenarios including relative recent history (NAtive Americans, African Americans, vietnam, etc) which could disprove that. As for the argument “if it destroyed the cities of Mecca or Medina, would pretty much prove that Islam was not being protected by the One God.” doesn’t make sense for 2 reasons. First, nowhere does Islam hinge on the fact of Makkah or Madinah being attacked or destroyed. makkah has been attacked and destroyed on several occasions. If that argument were true we could say the same for Jerusalem. Why is that the Muslims were able to capture Jerusalem and keep control of it for roughly 1300 years? You could reply well that is the will of God and the prophecies concerning it. I could say the same for Makkah and Madinah because like I said before there are prophecies concerning them. I end with a verse from Qur’an:
“Those who follow the messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find mentioned in their own (scriptures),- in the law and the Gospel;- for he commands them what is just and forbids them what is evil; he allows them as lawful what is good (and pure) and prohibits them from what is bad (and impure); He releases them from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are upon them. So it is those who believe in him, honour him, help him, and follow the light which is sent down with him,- it is they who will prosper.”
[...] Tom Tancredo és un gilipolles d’Estats Units que se li ha acudit dir que el que haurien de fer és amenaçar amb bombardejar la Meca. A mi em sembla que el que haurien de fer és foter-li un petardo a la butxaca al paio aquest. Total que, com que sembla que és moda ara, vaig buscar la Meca al Google Earth. Les iacugues no sé si es veuen des d’aquíAl Google Earth s’hi poden trobar moltes coses. Jo he trobat casa meva, TV3, Antena3, la casa de Gran Hermano, cases d’amics i Tele5 encara no pq no he trobat Fuencarral, pero todo se andará. El que m’ha agradat molt és que la natura és curiosa. He trobat un desert a Arabia Saudi que sembla una emprempta digitalAixò suposo que és una mica com els fractals, no?Buf, deixeu-me que recuperi el ritme i vindran posts millorsHola Dani. [...]
[...] Cierto . Por otra parte, he leÃdo por ahà que un congresista estadounidense ha propuesto bombardear La Meca como solución al problema del terrorismo islámico. Hay que ver la de burradas que dicen algunos sin siquiera pararse a pensar lo que dicen… http://txfx.net/2005/07/18/congressman-bomb-meca/ Fars_________________Uno de los tesoros más valiosos para Alejandro era una antigua copia de la IlÃada, que tenÃa debajo de su almohada y solÃa leer todas las noches… [...]
[...] Cierto . Por otra parte, he leÃdo por ahà que un congresista estadounidense ha propuesto bombardear La Meca como solución al problema del terrorismo islámico. Hay que ver la de burradas que dicen algunos sin siquiera pararse a pensar lo que dicen… http://txfx.net/2005/07/18/congressman-bomb-meca/ Fars_________________Uno de los tesoros más valiosos para Alejandro era una antigua copia de la IlÃada, que tenÃa debajo de su almohada y solÃa leer todas las noches… [...]
AbuAmir -
I welcome the opportunity to have a serious, respectful discussion regarding the merits of Islam and the prophet Mohammed. Mark, thank you for permitting us to continue the discussion here.
Suppose you started out on a long journey, and at a crossroad you met a man trying to get to the same place. When he heard where you were going, he at once tried to convince you that you are going in the wrong direction. Would you become angry with him because he claimed that you had made a mistake, strike him a blow, and continue on your course? Or would you each calmly state your reasons why you thought your way was the right way and then make a comparison of the sources of your information? For, after all, both of you want to get to your destination.
This is how I would like to discuss the Quran and compare it with the Bible. Muslims and Christians alike are traveling on life’s road, and both are confident that they are going in the direction that leads to eternal life in happiness. Yet they are heading in different directions because they are consulting differing sources of information.
I will base this discussion on my belief that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all claim to worship the ONE GOD, creator of heaven and earth. He is Allah to Muslims, Yahweh (Jehovah) to the Jews (although they won’t speak the Divine Name), and simply God to Christians. Some Christians believe that Jesus is “God the Son”, but the belief in the Trinity is inconsistent with the Bible’s teaching of ONE GOD, so for purposes of this discussion, Jesus will be the man who the Bible presents as the Son of God, not the ONE GOD himself.
Before going any farther let us agree that the Quran should be considered separate and apart from those who claim to represent it. We can discuss the actions of its adherents after we establish its own validity. Likewise, I do not judge the Bible by many of the popular religions of so-called Christendom, for they do not properly represent it. In fact, much of Christendom has absolutely no right to the name “Christian”Â, as her doctrines, her crusades, her wars, her politics, her commercial exploitation, her racial discrimination and oppression of the peoples are as far removed from what Christ Jesus taught and practiced “as the east is from the west”Â. So let Muslims not reject true Christianity and ignore the Bible simply because of the abominable record that an apostate Christendom has made upon the pages of history.
Where did the Quran originate? It was given by Mohammed in the 7th century when, at about the age of forty, he was convinced that he had received a message from the angel Gabriel together with a call to make known that there is ‘no god but Allah and that Mohammad is his prophet’. For the remaining twenty-three years of his life he professed to receive many more such messages or revelations, which he dictated for others to write down, as he himself, it is held, was illiterate. Shortly after his death these were compiled from white stones, skins of animals, ribs of palm leaves and the breasts (memories) of men, and became known as the Holy Quran.
As copies multiplied various readings sprang up, causing serious disputes. So some twenty years later another official copy was made and all previously existing copies were committed to the flames. For about twelve centuries the Quran has had very little change in text.
With few exceptions the Quran is written in the first person, with Allah as the speaker. According to its own testimony the “Mother of the Book” exists in God’s presence and was revealed to Muhammad by Gabriel in order to strengthen those who believe, and as a Guide and Glad Tidings to Muslims”Â. (This is why I dispute those who say Islam means “Peace”. It actually means “Submission”, in the sense of surrender to God.)
What about the Bible? The English word “Bible” comes through the Latin from the Greek word biblia, meaning “little books.” There are 66 of these little books. The first 39 are the “Old Testament”, which the Jews call the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets. The 27 books of the “New Testament” concern the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and his disciples.
Although written by 40 different men, the Bible claims the ONE GOD as its author. Writing began in the 16th century BC, and concluded in the first century AD. The overall theme of the Bible is the fall of man from grace and his redemption by the blood of Christ.
I will stop here for now, and allow you to respond. Then, if it seems reasonable to you, I will continue with a discussion of the authenticity of the two books.
Regards,
May I know what is the topic of your debate? I really want this kind of debate, where this thing is ‘talked’ like human beings, i mean with peace.
Sounds good so far. The only thing I would disagree with is “As copies multiplied various readings sprang up, causing serious disputes. So some twenty years later another official copy was made and all previously existing copies were committed to the flames. For about twelve centuries the Quran has had very little change in text.” Those various readings do still exist and to the best of my knowledge, the variations are in pronunciation and do not change the meaning. I can provide examples of this but I feel I would prefer you to continue so we can get to the heart of the matter. In response to Some1, we originally were discussing the comments that congressman Tom Tancredo made about bombing Muslim holy sites. Rose agreed and I disagreed. We are now discussing why Rose believes Islam is a false religion and Muhammad a false prophet. In peace…
AbuAmir
I am going to a new topic this is getting out of order. Some people are not fallowing the topic. It is not getting into an intellect discussion. Some fundamentalist and some other people can’t separate from holy war and secular war. Try prove Islam is a true religion or Christianity is good religion or false religion. First of all the Crusades was to again back our right for all christen to go on a pilgrimage to the holy land. Has the Catholic Church has taken by war your holy sits and stopped you from going to Mecca. The answer is no. Is Bush our Holy Pope of the Catholic Church and USA the Vatican. If you say yes you are very wrong and living in world of lies. Remember the majority of Christen are Catholics. If you don’t accept it that the Catholic Church are main christen, it can be traced to the Peter the Apostil of Jesus Christ which is the first Pope of Christianity (it is not a theory). If you still don’t say main christen, look at the old buildings and the catacombs (material evidence and historical). Another look the bible and holy tradition, they will point to you Catholic Church (written evidence). Most of all look at the Catholic Church history. Bush is not a catholic. Bush belongs to secular government. He is not servicing particular interest of a small group in this country. I am aware of his past education history and what school he went to, and I don’t serve their interest of his past religious matters. Let me tell you he is tiring to serve the interest of the Nation of the United States, which are Jews, christen, Moslems, and ect. Do you have government how value your freedom choice of beliefs? I would like to live or have government how respects my beliefs, not discriminates, persecutes, and oppress my ideas. I know it is not perfect, but it has laws and it fights for those good values and has improved its civil rights. Since 9/11 terrorists are show the world that are willing to use a nuclear bomb destroy the free world. Remember the building they destroyed it was like small city. Terrorists and Muslims don’t understand that they are not facing peaceful religion of christen, but a secular government that it serves ideas of many and has the right do defend it self even christen have the right. See our country is facing the possibility of a nuclear attack form people that are evil and crazy. What would you do if some one bomb you family or your country with a nuclear bomb in the name of religion and you had a nuclear bomb what would you do? As a catholic I am not going to prove that Islam is a false religion. Any other Christian or clams to be christen who does not believe in one God and Jesus Christ same God as the Father and the Holy Sprite is not a Christian. Go to http://www.catholic.com for more information what we think about Islam. I know that all Islam are our brothers because they believe in the God of Abraham. Let me tell one other thing that may help you understand my faith is to read about way of the cross. This is the last time, I will write on this topic “Bomb Meca”Â. I must move on. I will try to write on another top about religion. If you want to talk about Islam and Christian faith go to http://www.catholic.com on forum or http://forums.catholic.com you also different topics. I invite any one wants to know about real truth about Christianity go on that sit. Some of you asking answers has different topics on religion and getting to new grounds which need to be answer on a different sit. They have been answered in http://www.catholic.com in the search or http://forums.catholic.com . See you AbuAmir in http://forums.catholic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48 on topic “original sin, Islam, and being made in God’s image and likeness”Â. I know you are good man have a lot of questions (and become different topics) about Christianity be patient that the God of Abraham help you know the truth and Christianity itself.
David,
My only response to you is excatly what the Bible and Jesus himself states:
Numbers 23:19 – God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
Mark 12:29 – And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord
Luke 18:19 – And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.
Mathew 23:8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.
Mathew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Revelation 3:11 Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. 12 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God:
I can go on David but I don’t beieve you will be back anyway.
AbuAmir
Jesus is not the One God. You don’t believe he is, I don’t believe he is, so why even get into that. The early Christians did not believe Jesus was God, and none of the Scriptures you cite even begin to address the Holy Spirit.
The Catholic Church strayed from the teachings of Christ through corruption and apostasy early in the 2nd century AD. It finally became so obvious that they had become a false religion that vast numbers of Christians left the Catholic Church (and the Eastern Orthodox Church), to become Protestant. In my opinion, most of the Protestant religions are also apostate. I could spend hours discussing the Trinity, and completely disprove the support for it you cite above, but as I said, neither of us believe that Jesus is God anyway, so what is the point? Its a misinterpretation and a misunderstanding of the Bible. The Bible teaches that Jesus is the SON of God. I believe Islam objects even to calling Jesus the Son of God, but that is just a way of saying that he was the first angel created, he lived in heaven long before being born on earth, and he was sent to earth to redeem mankind.
As others have pointed out, we have gotten off the topic of Tancredo’s comments, but Mark gave us permission to discuss Islam and Mohammed, so lets not get off on another topic and debate the Trinity.
The question of authenticity:
There are many beautiful passages in the Quran, especially those dealing with God’s attributes, and no doubt its exalted message in rhymed prose had the greatest attraction for the Arabs at a time when anything that could be strictly called a book may not even have existed in their own language. Yet it cannot be denied that its various parts are of very unequal value. Great literature is not repetitious, but in the Quran time and again the stories of Adam, Moses, Christ Jesus and others are rehearsed, and ever to the same purpose. In Sura 55 the expression “Then which of the favours of your Lord will ye deny?” occurs no less than 31 times in a total of 78 verses. Three out of every four suras warn of hell-fire and punishment after death, and two out of three bring up the subject of its authenticity. Even more serious is the lack of coherence in the Quran. There is little coherence between the suras, they being placed in order of length, beginning with the longest ones, although these were written last and compare unfavorably with the first ones. The suras themselves often seem to be a conglomeration of verses, a factor which makes the Quran extremely difficult to understand correctly, for as one authority, A.-Q. H.T. Muhammad, expresses it: “Whoever will give his opinion respecting the [Quran] must be able to discover which Meccan verses are mixed up with Medina Suras and which Medina verses are confounded with Meccan Suras.” Bible history is accurate and can be relied upon. For example, what it says about the fall of Babylon to the Medes and Persians cannot be successfully contradicted (Jer 51:11, 12, 28; Da 5:28), neither can what it says about people like Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar (Jer 27:20; Da 1:1); Egyptian King Shishak (1Ki 14:25; 2Ch 12:2); Assyrians Tiglath-pileser III and Sennacherib (2Ki 15:29; 16:7; 18:13); the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius (Lu 2:1; 3:1; Ac 18:2); Romans such as Pontius Pilate, Felix, and Festus (Ac 4:27; 23:26; 24:27); nor what it says about the temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Areopagus at Athens (Ac 19:35; 17:19-34). What the Bible says about these or any other places, people, or events is historically accurate in every detail. Even when archeology has initially contradicted the Bible, leading some to conclude prematurely that the Bible was in error, subsequent archeological findings proved the Bible correct. This was true, for example, with the Babylonian king Belshazzar mentioned in the book of Daniel, and with Pontius Pilate himself.
The Quran does demand high moral standards for its adherents. Like the Bible, the righteous principles and high moral standards contained in this book would, if followed, do much to raise the physical and mental health of earth’s population. The Bible lays down principles of right and wrong that serve as a straightedge for just business dealings (Mt 7:12; Le 19:35, 36; Pr 20:10; 22:22, 23), industriousness (Eph 4:28; Col 3:23; 1Th 4:11, 12; 2Th 3:10-12), clean moral conduct (Ga 5:19-23; 1Th 4:3-8; Ex 20:14-17; Le 20:10-16), upbuilding associations (1Co 15:33; Heb 10:24, 25; Pr 5:3-11; 13:20), good family relationships (Eph 5:21-33; 6:1-4; Col 3:18-21; De 6:4-9; Pr 13:24). The Bible provides meaningfull answers to life’s most important questions, including “What happens to us when we die?”, and “Why does God permit suffering?” Again, at the risk of repeating myself, the false religions of Christendom have watered down this message, polluted it with their hypocrisy, or obscured the plain truth of the Bible with their false doctrines. Most of the churches of Christendom are not Christian, nor do they teach accurate Bible truth.
When it comes to scientific accuracy the Bible is not lacking. Whether describing the progressive order of earth’s preparation for human habitation (Ge 1:1-31), speaking of the earth as being spherical and hung on “nothing” (Job 26:7; Isa 40:22), classifying the hare (rabbit) as a cud chewer (Le 11:6), or declaring, “the soul of the flesh is in the blood” (Le 17:11-14), the Bible is scientifically sound. The Bible’s guidelines for personal hygiene were written thousands of years before men understood the role of germs in disease. As an aside, the Bible DOES NOT teach that the earth was created in 6 literal days. Its reference to a creative “Day” doesn’t mean 24 hours, those days could have lasted thousands and thousands of years.
In political matters, the Bible always speaks of a ruler by the proper title that he bore at the time of the writing. For example, Herod Antipas and Lysanias are referred to as district rulers (tetrarchs), Herod Agrippa (II) as king, and Gallio as proconsul. (Lu 3:1; Ac 25:13; 18:12) Triumphal marches of victorious armies, together with their captives, were common during Roman times. (2Co 2:14) The hospitality shown to strangers, the Oriental way of life, the manner of purchasing property, legal procedures in making contracts, and the practice of circumcision among the Hebrews and other peoples are referred to in the Bible, and in all these details the Bible is accurate.–Ge 18:1-8; 23:7-18; 17:10-14; Jer 9:25, 26.
The Quran was produced in Arabia. Its appeal is to the preferences and prejudices of the Arabs. Repeatedly it emphasizes the fact that it was sent in pure Arabic and to Arabs. “A book whose verses (signs) are MADE PLAIN–an Arabic Quran, for men of knowledge.” (Sura 41:2; 12:2; 13:37; 16:105; 42:5) In contrast, the Bible states “At this Peter opened his mouth and said: ‘For a certainty I perceive that God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.’” (Acts 10: 34,35) While the ONE GOD showed particular favor initially to the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the teachings of Jesus were meant for all men equally.
An unpleasant rumor involved Muhammad’s favorite wife, Ayesha, in an affair with a young Muslim warrior. Sura 24 deals with this incident and condemns the scandalmongers. Muhammad was perplexed about marrying the divorced wife of his adopted son Zaid. Sura 33 grants him an exception so that he can marry her even though among the Arabs an adopted son was considered the same as one’s natural son and the Quran had forbidden the wife of one ever to become the wife of another. In another instance one of Muhammad’s wives had discovered him in her apartment with his Coptic concubine. This caused such a furor among his wives that Muhammad voluntarily denied himself having any relations with this concubine. Sura 66 assures him that he need not consider the objections of his wives in regard to his relations with the dusky Coptic concubine. As for the Bible, Moses frankly reported his own sins as well as the sins and errors of his people, a policy followed by the other Hebrew writers. (Ex 14:11, 12; 32:1-6; Nu 14:1-9; 20:9-12; 27:12-14; De 4:21) The sins of great ones such as David and Solomon were hidden were reported in detail. (2Sa 11:2-27; 1Ki 11:1-13) Jonah told of his own disobedience. (Jon 1:1-3; 4:1) The other prophets likewise displayed this same straightforward, candid quality. The apostle Paul tells of his former sinful course in life; Mark’s failure to stick to the missionary work; and also the apostle Peter’s errors are related. (Ac 22:19, 20; 15:37-39; Ga 2:11-14) Such frank, open reporting builds confidence in the Bible’s claim to honesty and truthfulness. It is interesting to note that the sins of the Bible writers always met with disapproval and/or punishment, while Mohammed’s sins are excused or rationalized. Meanwhile, Mohammed’s listeners repeatedly accuse him of imposture and forgery. See Sura 2:118; 10:38; 11:13; 17:89-93; 21:5, 6. Moses, Jesus, and other prophets performed many signs and miracles to establish their divine commission, so did his listeners not have a right to ask: “Why is not a sign sent down to him from his Lord”Â? (Sura 6:37; 13:7) But they were told: ‘Certainly signs are in the power of God: but what will make you realize that if Signs came, they will not believe?’ “We refrain from sending the Signs, only because the men of former generations treated them as false.”–Sura 6:109; 17:59. Repeatedly his listeners were told that Muhammad was merely a warner; but that was only begging the question; they wanted proof that Muhammad was indeed God’s warner by the performance of signs. True, some in former times did not believe in spite of signs, but that did not keep God from sending signs by his prophets. And neither was that fact used by Christ Jesus as an excuse for not giving proof of his divine commission by the performance of signs.
Then there is the matter of prophecy. The foremost one to which Muslim theologians refer is that found at Sura 30:1-3: “The [Roman Empire has been] defeated by a land hard by. But after their defeat they shall defeat their foes in a few years.” This is said to foretell the defeat the Romans administered to the Persians some ten years after having been defeated by them. However, any shrewd observer could have hazarded the guess that the Roman Empire would eventually win out. Besides, when the Quran was originally written, no vowel points were used and so the passage could just as well have been translated “they shall be defeated” as “they shall defeat”Â. And this is generally quoted as the foremost example of prophecy in the Quran! On the other hand, a Quranic prophecy that has signally failed is that Islam will be “victorious over every other religion”Â. (Sura 9:33) Islam has engaged in one holy war, Jihad, after another, in obedience to the command: “Fight therefore against them until . . . the only worship be that of God.” (Sura 2:189) Yet, even then, Islam has not triumphed, has not been victorious over all other religions. Her armies were stopped in France A.D. 732 by Charles Martel, and at the gates of Vienna for the last time in 1683. Western nations defeated Muslim armies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Jewish military forces defeated Muslim military forces repeatedly over the last 50 or 60 years. Jihadists have been reduced to suicide bombings of civilians, and have lost tens of thousands of lives to kill a mere 1800 American soldiers in Iraq. While Islam has had some small appeal to non-Arabs, it remains to be seen if it will be “victorious over every other religion”. On the other hand, if there is a single point that alone proves the Bible to be the inspired Word of The ONE GOD, it is the matter of prophecy. There are scores of long-range prophecies in the Bible that have been fulfilled. Even a partial listing could go on and on, including: Israel to come out of Egypt with much property when God judges the Egyptians, Ishmael to produce 12 chieftains and become a great nation, Kingly leadership to come from Judah, Overthrow of ten-tribe northern kingdom of Israel, Destruction of Babylon when gates are left open and Cyrus leader of the Persians takes city in a single night, the rise of Greece, the death of Alexander the Great, the division of Alexander’s empire among his four generals, the rise of the Roman Empire, and many, many more. Even more impressive are the prophecies about the Messiah, or Christ: Born of the tribe of Judah, From the family of David the son of Jesse, Born in Bethlehem, Born of a virgin, Other children killed after his birth, Called out of Egypt, Way prepared before (John the Baptist), Appearance as Messiah and presentation for baptism on schedule in 29 C.E., his entry into Jerusalem, betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver, the manner of his death, the disposition of his garments, and literally dozens and dozens more all fulfilled in the life of Jesus, including many that he had no control over himself.
“Let there be no compulsion in religion.” “Thy duty is only preaching.” “We have not made thee keeper over [the Unbelievers].” “What! wilt thou compel men to become believers? No soul can believe but by the permission of God.” “Thy duty is to make (The Message) reach them: It is our part to call them to account.” “Obey not the Infidels and Hypocrites–yet abstain from injuring them.” “Summon thou to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and with kindly warning: dispute with them in the kindest manner.” (Sura 2:256; 13:40; Sura 3:19; 6:106, 107; 10:99, 100; 16:126; 33:44, 47) Surely the foregoing verses of the Quran are unequivocal and in harmony with the principles of justice. But how can we harmonize them with the following texts commanding the use of force in religion? “Fight for the cause of God against those who fight against you: Kill them wherever ye find them . . . Fight therefore against them until there be no more civil discord, and the only worship be that of God.” “I will cast a dread into the hearts of the infidels. Strike off their heads then, and strike off from them every finger-tip.” “Believers, wage war against such of the infidels as are your neighbors, and let them find you rigorous.” “And when the sacred months are passed, kill those that join other gods with God wherever ye find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay in wait for them with every kind of ambush: but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God is Gracious.”–Sura 2:186-190, 212, 213; 8:12; 9:5, 124; 47:4. Obviously, this is the dispute between Muslim extremists and Muslim moderates. I could also go into detail about contradictions regarding predestination and the direction one should face when praying.
The Bible was written over a period of more than 1,600 years by about 40 writers, with no disharmony. It never, ever contradicts itself. Its inspiration by God is shown by the thorough consistency with which it emphasizes the theme of sanctification of God’s name (Jehovah) by his Kingdom under Christ.
Is it reasonable to conclude that after the ONE GOD used Christ Jesus to bring in a system of things far superior to the law arrangement under Moses, seven centuries later he would use Muhammad to go back to Moses and ever farther with ceremonial cleansings, fasts, prohibition of certain foods, not to say anything about the worship of the Kaaba? It doesn’t advance God’s purpose, it seems to be a reversal.
Wow, this got a lot longer than I intended. I’ll stop and let you respond.
Rose,
In that post I was only responding to David because he stated certain things. i was not responding to you. Those quotes were not supporting the trinity. I will respond shortly to your most recent post.
AbuAmir
Because there is a lot of information you have packed in your post, I am just going to concentrate on whether the Bible has contradictions in it since you state “It never, ever contradicts itself”. I will try answering the other topics later. I am taking these from other websites so as to save time. I do have my own bible where I have highlighted such things.
Years of famine
II SAMUEL 24:13: So God came to David, and told him, and said unto him, shall SEVEN YEARS OF FAMINE come unto thee in thy land? or will thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue. thee?
I CHRONICLES 21:11: SO God came to David, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Choose thee. Either THREE YEARS OF FAMINE or three months to be destryed before thy foes, while that the sword of thine enemies overtaketh thee;
How many stalls and horsemen?
KI1 4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.
CH2 9:25 And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.
Who was at the Empty Tomb? Is it:
MAT 28:1 In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
MAR 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.
JOH 20:1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
Jesus’ last words
Matt.27:46,50: “And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?” that is to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” …Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.”
Luke23:46: “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, “Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit:” and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.”
John19:30: “When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished:” and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”
God be seen?
Exod. 24:9,10; Amos 9:1; Gen. 26:2; and John 14:9
God CAN be seen:
“And I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my backparts.” (Ex. 33:23)
“And the Lord spake to Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.” (Ex. 33:11)
“For I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” (Gen. 32:30)
God CANNOT be seen:
“No man hath seen God at any time.” (John 1:18)
“And he said, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me and live.” (Ex. 33:20)
“Whom no man hath seen nor can see.” (1 Tim. 6:16)
Judas died how?
“And he cast down the pieces of silver into the temple and departed, and went out and hanged himself.” (Matt. 27:5)
“And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all of his bowels gushed out.” (Acts 1:18)
How old was Jehoiachin when he began to reign?
KI2 24:8 Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem three months. And his mother’s name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem.
CH2 36:9 Jehoiachin was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months and ten days in Jerusalem: and he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD.
Did those with Saul/Paul at his conversion hear a voice?
ACT 9:7 And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.
ACT 22:9 And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.
When did Baasha die?
26th year of the reign of Asa I Kings 16:6-8
36th year of the reign of Asa I 2 Chron 16:1
How old was Ahaziah when he began to reign?
22 in 2 Kings 8:26
42 in 2 Chron 22:2
Who was Josiah’s successor?
Jehoahaz – 2 Chron 36:1
Shallum – Jeremiah 22:11
Destruction of cities (what said was jeremiah was actually zechariah)
MAT 27:9 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value;
zechariah 11:11-13
(nothing in Jeremiah remotely like)
Jesus Genealogy
Matthew 1
1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2 Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren; 3 And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram; 4 And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon; 5 And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; 6 And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias; 7 And Solomon begat Roboam; and Roboam begat Abia; and Abia begat Asa; 8 And Asa begat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat Ozias; 9 And Ozias begat Joatham; and Joatham begat Achaz; and Achaz begat Ezekias; 10 And Ezekias begat Manasses; and Manasses begat Amon; and Amon begat Josias; 11 And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon: 12 And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel; 13 And Zorobabel begat Abiud; and Abiud begat Eliakim; and Eliakim begat Azor; 14 And Azor begat Sadoc; and Sadoc begat Achim; and Achim begat Eliud; 15 And Eliud begat Eleazar; and Eleazar begat Matthan; and Matthan begat Jacob; 16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.
Luke 3
23 And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli, 24 Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph, 25 Which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Amos, which was the son of Naum, which was the son of Esli, which was the son of Nagge, 26 Which was the son of Maath, which was the son of Mattathias, which was the son of Semei, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Juda, 27 Which was the son of Joanna, which was the son of Rhesa, which was the son of Zorobabel, which was the son of Salathiel, which was the son of Neri, 28 Which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Addi, which was the son of Cosam, which was the son of Elmodam, which was the son of Er, 29 Which was the son of Jose, which was the son of Eliezer, which was the son of Jorim, which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, 30 Which was the son of Simeon, which was the son of Juda, which was the son of Joseph, which was the son of Jonan, which was the son of Eliakim, 31 Which was the son of Melea, which was the son of Menan, which was the son of Mattatha, which was the son of Nathan, which was the son of David, 32 Which was the son of Jesse, which was the son of Obed, which was the son of Booz, which was the son of Salmon, which was the son of Naasson, 33 Which was the son of Aminadab, which was the son of Aram, which was the son of Esrom, which was the son of Phares, which was the son of Juda, 34 Which was the son of Jacob, which was the son of Isaac, which was the son of Abraham, which was the son of Thara, which was the son of Nachor, 35 Which was the son of Saruch, which was the son of Ragau, which was the son of Phalec, which was the son of Heber, which was the son of Sala, 36 Which was the son of Cainan, which was the son of Arphaxad, which was the son of Sem, which was the son of Noe, which was the son of Lamech, 37 Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel, which was the son of Cainan, 38 Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God (Interesting that Adam was the son of God as well).
I think this is enough for now.
AbuAmir
AbuAmir
Let me correct you
On Numbers 23:19 is on the old testament so Jesus has not been born at until later. Plus, it saying, “God is not like man how does not lie and repent”Â. It means back on his word like a sinner. God is talking about behavior. 1S 15:29, Jb 9:32, and Ml 3:6. Jesus is born without original sin as Mary the mother of Jesus Christ.
Mark 12:29 “Which is the first of all the commandments? Jesus replied, “This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one, only Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” I will explain the trinity. You showed or wrote that Lord our God is the one, only Lord and you did not complete it. You must take into account that you must love Lord your God … and on, to understand the trinity.
Luke 18:19 also read Mt 19:16-22 “and now a man came to him and asked, “Master, what good deed must I do to possess eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “why do you ask me about what is good? There is one alone who is good”Â. … Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life? To the young man who asked this question, Jesus answers first by invoking the necessity to recognize God as the “One there is who is good,” as the supreme Good and the source of all good. This does not says that Jesus is not good.
You added words to this passage Mathew 23:8 my bible says different: “You, however, must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, since you have only one Master, and you are all brothers. You must call no one earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heave. Nor must you allow yourselves to be called teachers, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ.” Christ the only one truly Teacher. This can become another topic “why do Catholic call their priest fathers” go to http://www.catholic.com or http://forums.catholic.com look up father.
Mathew 27:46 “And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” A cry of real distress but not of despair: this lament which Jesus takes from the scriptures is a prayer to God and is followed in the Psalm (Ps 22:1) by an expression of joyful confidence in final victory.
Revelation 3:11 I am coming soon: hold firmly to what you already have, and let no one take your victor’s crown away from you. Anyone who proves victorious I will make into a pillar in the sanctuary of my God, and it wills stay there for ever; I will inscribe on it the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem which is coming down from my God in heaven, and my own new name as well. Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the Sprit it is saying to the churches.” This is talking to about the end of times to keep commitments and more. If you read little more above you will find Revelation 3: 7-8 “Write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia and say, “here is the message of the holy and true one who has the key of David, so that when he opens, no one will close, and when he closes, no one will open.” Jesus comes from line of David and High priest like Melchizesek. The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”Â; “holy, blameless, unstained. Peter the first Pope of holy church and Jesus setting up his church which will start in Pentecostal. Matthew 16:16-19 you will see the key again “Then Simon Peter spoken up and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus replied, Simon son of Johah you are a blessed man! Because it was no human agency that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock. I will build my community. And the gates of the underworld can never overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. This also tell that underworld can never overpower it that mean the Catholic Church always be holy. This is another topic “Catholic church only true apostolic Christian Church”Â(search for true church). Another topic is “rock means small rock or large rock”Â(search for rock). Again go to http://www.catholic or http://forums.catholic.com search for those topics Let’s get into topic “the trinity”Â.
AbuAmir
Let me correct you
On Numbers 23:19 is on the old testament so Jesus has not been born at until later. Plus, it saying, “God is not like man how does not lie and repent”Â. It means back on his word like a sinner. God is talking about behavior. 1S 15:29, Jb 9:32, and Ml 3:6. Jesus is born without original sin as Mary the mother of Jesus Christ.
Mark 12:29 “Which is the first of all the commandments? Jesus replied, “This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one, only Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” I will explain the trinity. You showed or wrote that Lord our God is the one, only Lord and you did not complete it. You must take into account that you must love Lord your God … and on, to understand the trinity.
Luke 18:19 also read Mt 19:16-22 “and now a man came to him and asked, “Master, what good deed must I do to possess eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “why do you ask me about what is good? There is one alone who is good”Â. … Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life? To the young man who asked this question, Jesus answers first by invoking the necessity to recognize God as the “One there is who is good,” as the supreme Good and the source of all good. This does not says that Jesus is not good.
You added words to this passage Mathew 23:8 my bible says different: “You, however, must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, since you have only one Master, and you are all brothers. You must call no one earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heave. Nor must you allow yourselves to be called teachers, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ.” Christ the only one truly Teacher. This can become another topic “why do Catholic call their priest fathers” go to http://www.catholic.com or http://forums.catholic.com look up father.
Mathew 27:46 “And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”” A cry of real distress but not of despair: this lament which Jesus takes from the scriptures is a prayer to God and is followed in the Psalm (Ps 22:1) by an expression of joyful confidence in final victory.
Revelation 3:11 I am coming soon: hold firmly to what you already have, and let no one take your victor’s crown away from you. Anyone who proves victorious I will make into a pillar in the sanctuary of my God, and it wills stay there for ever; I will inscribe on it the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem which is coming down from my God in heaven, and my own new name as well. Let anyone who can hear, listen to what the Sprit it is saying to the churches.” This is talking to about the end of times to keep commitments and more. If you read little more above you will find Revelation 3: 7-8 “Write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia and say, “here is the message of the holy and true one who has the key of David, so that when he opens, no one will close, and when he closes, no one will open.” Jesus comes from line of David and High priest like Melchizesek. The Christian tradition considers Melchizedek, “priest of God Most High,” as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Christ, the unique “high priest after the order of Melchizedek”Â; “holy, blameless, unstained. Peter the first Pope of holy church and Jesus setting up his church which will start in Pentecostal. Matthew 16:16-19 you will see the key again “Then Simon Peter spoken up and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus replied, Simon son of Johah you are a blessed man! Because it was no human agency that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say to you: You are Peter and on this rock. I will build my community. And the gates of the underworld can never overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of Heaven: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. This also tell that underworld can never overpower it that mean the Catholic Church always be holy. This is another topic “Catholic church only true apostolic Christian Church”Â(search for true church). Another topic is “rock means small rock or large rock”Â(search for rock). Again go to http://www.catholic or http://forums.catholic.com search for those topics Let’s get into topic “the trinity”Â.
Rose Noble
Let me show you have not done a lot of research on the trinity. You wrote the Catholic Church strayed from the teachings of Christ through corruption and apostasy early in the 2nd century AD. I will prove you wrong by showing small evidences on the topic trinity. You are wrong about the 2nd century AD on the teachings on the trinity. You will also find other teaching that church has kept since the beginning, but that is another topic. You will find in history a lot of greatest leaders of protestant movement become Catholics. Among the famous converts whose stories are told are Elizabeth Ann Seton, John Henry Newman, Edith Stein, Ronald Knox, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Day, Malcolm Muggeridge, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene. While each of the lives warrants an entire book (and readers may want to explore some of the 85 books from which Fr. Connor gleaned information), the sketches in Classic Catholic Converts are more than just glimpses of the individuals. I did not say that protestant are not christens. Protestant are apostate base mainly on Martian Luther and later others in the interpretations of Jesus Christ, Around the 15 century. The eastern Orthodox Church are in communion with Catholic Church are also truly apostolic, but don’t lesion to our Pope (Peter).
The Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity is encapsulated in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs the apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
The parallelism of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is not unique to Matthew’s Gospel, but appears elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g., 2 Cor. 13:14, Heb. 9:14), as well as in the writings of the earliest Christians, who clearly understood them in the sense that we do today–that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three divine persons who are one divine being (God).
The Didache
“After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water. . . . If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Didache 7:1 [A.D. 70]).
Ignatius of Antioch
“[T]o the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God” (Letter to the Ephesians 1 [A.D. 110]).
“For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit” (ibid., 18:2).
Justin Martyr
“We will prove that we worship him reasonably; for we have learned that he is the Son of the true God himself, that he holds a second place, and the Spirit of prophecy a third. For this they accuse us of madness, saying that we attribute to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all things; but they are ignorant of the mystery which lies therein” (First Apology 13:5—6 [A.D. 151]).
Theophilus of Antioch
“It is the attribute of God, of the most high and almighty and of the living God, not only to be everywhere, but also to see and hear all; for he can in no way be contained in a place. . . . The three days before the luminaries were created are types of the Trinity: God, his Word, and his Wisdom” (To Autolycus 2:15 [A.D. 181]).
Irenaeus
“For the Church, although dispersed throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and from their disciples the faith in one God, the Father Almighty . . . and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit” (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
For more go to http://www.catholic.com look for (holy Trinity)
One of many explanations on the trinity:
By Jim Burnham
Mike: Sorry, I’m late, man. Traffic’s brutal.
Dan: No problem. I already got you a cappuccino.
Mike: Excellent.
Dan: Anyway, thanks for coming. I gotta tell you, ever since I read this booklet on the Trinity, I’ve been really confused.
Mike: Ah, yes. Should You Believe in the Trinity? Subtitle: Is Jesus Christ the Almighty God? I figured this was the one you called about. It’s a deceitful attack on the Trinity by the JWs.
Dan: “JWs”?
Mike: Short for Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Dan: How do you know it’s from the JWs?
Mike: Because it says it’s published by the “Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.” That’s JW world headquarters.
Dan: Well, the booklet’s pretty convincing.
Mike: That’s what makes it dangerous: full-color pictures, nice layout, lots of quotes and citations. It’s packed with distortions and falsehoods but cleverly written. This booklet is one of the JWs’ most effective weapons against Catholics.
Dan: How come they focus on the Trinity?
Mike: Because it’s a complicated issue–they know most Catholics can’t explain or defend the Trinity. Plus, it’s a two-for-one deal: If JWs get rid of the Trinity, they automatically get rid of Christ’s divinity as well. This little booklet could mislead Catholics who aren’t solid on Church history, the Bible, or logic.
Dan: Well, help me out here.
Mike: First, let’s shorten this JW title.
Dan: How about SYBT–Should You Believe in the Trinity?
Mike: Okay. Then let’s tackle some logical errors in SYBT. Look at the pictures on the inside cover and on page ten. What do you see?
Dan: Images of pagan gods along with images of the Christian Trinity.
Mike: Right. How many faces or bodies are in each pagan image?
Dan: Three.
Mike: And how many faces or bodies in each Christian image?
Dan: Three. You know, a lot of these images do look alike.
Mike: And from this likeness JWs conclude Christians borrowed their belief in the Trinity from pagan “trinities.” This is a compelling visual argument. Only problem is that it’s totally wrong.
Dan: Why?
Mike: It assumes that if two beliefs are similar, one comes from the other.
Dan: Well, that seems plausible.
Mike: Plausible maybe, but not necessary. Consider this: JWs and Muslims reject the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, and the ordained priesthood. So they have some similar beliefs. But should we conclude that JWs simply borrowed Muslim beliefs?
Dan: I think JWs would say it’s just coincidence. With all the beliefs in the world, some are gonna overlap. But that wouldn’t necessarily prove one came from another.
Mike: Right. In 1350 B.C., around the time Moses was born in Egypt, the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton got rid of multiple gods and promoted belief in only one god. Anyway, Moses is responsible for the Bible’s first five books, which also teach there is only one God. Does this mean the JW (and Jewish and Christian and Muslim) belief in one God comes from the pagan Akhenaton?
Dan: No, of course not.
Mike: And what about this? Both JWs and Catholics believe in some sort of resurrection. The ancient Egyptians (2400 B.C.) believed in the resurrection of the god Osiris. Does this mean our resurrection beliefs come from paganism?
Dan: If so, then JWs are as pagan as Catholics.
Mike: With so many different pagan religions, we almost always can find some ancient belief that is superficially similar to any present belief.
Dan: But that doesn’t prove present religions come from paganism.
Mike: Exactly. The key is “superficially” similar. The artwork may look alike, but the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is fundamentally different from anything found in paganism.
Dan: So what were the pagans portraying?
Mike: Three different gods–never three persons who were each totally and completely the one God, which is what Christians believe. The art may be similar, but the beliefs are worlds apart.
Dan: Okay. How about other logical errors?
Mike: SYBT claims the Trinity is confusing and unreasonable. Therefore, it cannot come from God because he isn’t a God of confusion (cf. 1 Cor. 14:33) nor does he do anything contrary to reason.
Dan: But isn’t the Trinity confusing to most people? I mean, the Church does call it a “mystery of faith.”
Mike: If by confusing you mean nobody totally gets it, I agree. But if by confusing you mean irrational or absurd, then, no. A “mystery of faith” isn’t something totally unknowable. It simply means that it’s too deep for us to know totally.
Dan: What? You lost me there.
Mike: God is infinite, right?
Dan: Yes.
Mike: And we are finite?
Dan: Of course.
Mike: Then we would expect many of his revelations to be bigger than us, bigger than our tiny minds can grasp completely.
Dan: So you’re saying that we can know some of what God reveals but not all?
Mike: Yes. Non-Christians find many Christian beliefs confusing. Consider creation out of nothing. They say, “How can anything (much less everything) be created out of absolutely nothing?” We certainly can’t wrap our minds around that. And yet JWs accept this without a flicker of doubt. They say, correctly, creation out of nothing is true, even though it is far beyond our understanding.
Dan: So that’s what we should say about the Trinity: It’s beyond our reason but not against our reason.
Mike: Exactly.
Dan: But what about the claim that the Trinity is a contradiction because three can’t equal one?
Mike: If I say there are five people in a family, am I saying five equal one?
Dan: No, no . . . because five refers to people and one refers to family.
Mike: Same for the Trinity. Three refers to persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One refers to the Godhead. No contradiction.
Dan: Okay, let’s grant that the Trinity isn’t unreasonable. But JWs make a huge deal about it being unbiblical. Where does the Bible teach the Trinity?
Mike: It doesn’t use the word Trinity, nor does it explicitly use the formula “one God in three Persons.”
Dan: So they’re right: The Trinity isn’t explicitly taught in the Bible?
Mike: Yeah, but so what? Where does the Bible say that everything must be taught explicitly in the Bible? If that were true, the Bible would have to explicitly say so. But it doesn’t.
Dan: Yeah, that’s the whole problem with the “Bible alone” idea: It’s not found in the Bible alone.
Mike: Lots of Christian beliefs aren’t explicitly in the Bible: the list of inspired books that make up the Bible, for instance; that Jesus had both a human and divine will; that public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Besides that, JWs don’t even practice what they preach.
Dan: How so?
Mike: Lots of JW beliefs aren’t explicitly in the Bible. The Bible doesn’t explicitly teach that only 144,000 people can go to heaven–and anyone who becomes a JW after 1935 can only live on earth forever. The Bible doesn’t explicitly prohibit blood transfusions. The Bible doesn’t explicitly say Jesus was really Michael the archangel before he came to earth and that he is now Michael again after he died. These aren’t taught explicitly (nor implicitly for that matter), but they’re still core JW beliefs.
Dan: Well then, does the Bible teach the Trinity implicitly?
Mike: Yes. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is God (cf. John 8:58, 10:38, 14:10; Col. 2:9). It also clearly teaches that the Holy Spirit is God (cf. Acts 5:3—4, 28:25—28; 1 Cor. 2:10—13). Everyone agrees the Father is God. Yet there is only one God (Mark 12:29, 1 Cor. 8:4—6, Jas. 2:19). How can we hold all four truths except by saying all three are somehow the one God?
Dan: Any verses mention all three divine persons together?
Mike: Sure. Jesus tells his apostles to baptize “in the name [notice, singular, not plural] of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). This is a proof-text: three distinct Persons united in the one divine name. In 2 Corinthians 13:14, Paul writes, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” We see this same unity of divine Persons in 1 Corinthians 12:4—11, Ephesians 4:4—6, and 1 Peter 1:2—3.
Dan: Okay. But what about SYBT’s claim on page seven that “the Trinity was unknown throughout biblical times and several centuries thereafter.” JWs say it was invented in the fourth century at the Councils of Nicea in A.D. 325 and Constantinople in 381.
Mike: Totally false. We’ve seen already that the elements of the Trinity are biblical. The language of the Trinity was developed by the Church Fathers. Around the year 181, Theophilus of Antioch expressly used the Greek word trias (trinitas in Latin, trinity in English): “the Trinity: God [the Father], his Word, and his Wisdom” [To Autolycus 2:15]. About twenty years later, Tertullian used the Latin trinitas: “The Unity is distributed in a Trinity. Placed in order, the three are Father, Son, and Spirit” [Against Praxes 2:4].
Dan: So the word Trinity was used explicitly in the late second century. This is what–about 140 years before the Council of Nicea?
Mike: Yes. The word trinitas became common in the third century (Nicea was in the fourth). Origen (185—253) used it frequently, and his pupil, Gregory the Miracle Worker, put it in a creed written before 270: “Wherefore there is nothing either created or subservient in the Trinity, nor anything caused to be brought about, as if formerly it did not exist and was afterward introduced. Wherefore, neither was the Son ever lacking to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son; but without variation and without change, the same Trinity forever.”
Dan: So this guy’s using Trinity in a Christian creed at least fifty-five years before Nicea supposedly invents it? Wow.
Mike: Ever watch Mythbusters?
Dan: That show’s hilarious.
Mike: I’d say the JW myth that the Trinity was unknown for “several centuries” until it was invented by Nicea and Constantinople is totally “busted.”
Dan: But on page seven, SYBT quotes a bunch of Church Fathers, claiming they didn’t believe Jesus was equal to the Father.
Mike: This page proves JWs are masters of misquotation. They don’t care what authors actually say but just what they can make them appear to say. The way they misquote the early Church Fathers is indefensible.
Dan: Don’t hold back; tell me what you really think.
Mike: Hey, dishonest scholarship ticks me off. Look. They quote Justin Martyr (A.D. 100—165) as calling Jesus a “created angel who is ‘other than the God who made all things.’” In his First Apology, Justin writes this of Jesus: “We will prove that we worship him reasonably; for we have learned that he is the Son of the true God himself.” He goes on to say that “the Father of all has a Son, who is both the first-born Word of God and is God” (13 and 63). Jesus ain’t no angel for Justin Martyr.
Dan: Then how can they say stuff like that?
Mike: Because when they quote the Fathers they give no references. Zip. Zero. Nada. They claim whatever they please. But we can’t look ‘em up and prove ‘em wrong.
Dan: Couldn’t this be an isolated case?
Mike: Nope. JWs claim Irenaeus (140—202) said Jesus is separate from God and inferior to him. Again, they give no references, so we can’t verify the quotes. But here’s a quote from Irenaeus about Jesus that we can verify: “Nevertheless, what cannot be said of anyone else who ever lived, that he is himself in his own right God and Lord and eternal King, and only begotten and Incarnate Word, proclaimed as such by all the prophets and apostles and the Spirit himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth. The Scriptures would not have born witness to these things concerning him, if, like everyone else, he were a mere man” [Against Heresies 3, 19, 2]. Anyway, SYBT trots out six early Church Fathers and misrepresents every single one of them.
Dan: That’s pretty devious.
Mike: The amazing thing is that, when you read their writings, all six of these Fathers–who supposedly deny Christ’s divinity–clearly and unmistakably affirm Christ’s divinity.
Dan: Okay, the Bible teaches the basics of the Trinity, which become more developed by the Church Fathers. So why did the Church come up with a precise formula at Nicea?
Mike: Because in 318, a renegade priest name Arius began denying the divinity of Christ and thus the Trinity. His heresy, known as Arianism, began to spread like wildfire throughout the Church.
Dan: So JWs are just modern-day Arians?
Mike: In many ways, yes. The Church responded to the Arian threat by defining Christ’s divinity and the Trinity in a creed, known today as the Nicene Creed. That way, Christians could distinguish between true Christian teaching on the Trinity and heretical distortions like Arianism.
Dan: So the Church wasn’t inventing the Trinity at Nicea.
Mike: More like protecting it from being hijacked by the Arians.
Dan: Any other errors?
Mike: One glaring error is SYBT’s use of the JW Bible–the New World Translation. This translation differs wildly from all other Bibles.
Dan: How?
Mike: They changed “the Word was God” in John 1:1 to “the Word was a god.” They inserted the word Jehovah 237 times in the New Testament even though the Greek has Kurios (“Lord”) instead. They added the word other four times to Colossians 1:16—17 to make it seem like Jesus is part of creation instead of the source of creation.
Dan: So what if the JWs mistranslate a few words?
Mike: It’s more than a few words. They mangle the Bible to prop up their beliefs. Of all major Bibles, only the JW Bible has these mistranslations. On top of that, JWs refuse to name their translators.
Dan: Why’s that a problem?
Mike: They’re asking us to reject all standard Bible translations made by respected scholars who aren’t afraid to subject their work to peer review. Instead, JWs want us to accept a defective translation made by an anonymous committee.
Dan: But SYBT spends eighteen of its thirty pages claiming Jesus isn’t divine, that he’s just a man. How do we disprove that?
Mike: You’re right. This is the booklet’s biggest error. And it’s the issue to discuss with JWs. If we can prove that Jesus is truly God, we’ve proved two-thirds of the Trinity. More than that, if we can prove JWs are wrong in thinking Jesus is just a creature, their whole religion collapses.
Dan: So let’s prove Jesus is God.
Mike: Unfortunately, that’s gonna have to wait. I gotta run.
Dan: Nah, dude, c’mon.
Mike: We’ll prove the divinity of Christ next time, I promise.
Dan: All right, I’m holding you to it.
Mike: It’s a deal.
More info on the trinity go to http://www.catholic.com and religious topics.
Little more info on the
The Trinity
The doctrine of the Trinity is encapsulated in Matthew 28:19, where Jesus instructs the apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
The parallelism of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is not unique to Matthew’s Gospel, but appears elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g., 2 Cor. 13:14, Heb. 9:14), as well as in the writings of the earliest Christians, who clearly understood them in the sense that we do today–that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three divine persons who are one divine being (God).
The Didache
“After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water. . . . If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Didache 7:1 [A.D. 70]).
Ignatius of Antioch
“[T]o the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God” (Letter to the Ephesians 1 [A.D. 110]).
“For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit” (ibid., 18:2).
Justin Martyr
“We will prove that we worship him reasonably; for we have learned that he is the Son of the true God himself, that he holds a second place, and the Spirit of prophecy a third. For this they accuse us of madness, saying that we attribute to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all things; but they are ignorant of the mystery which lies therein” (First Apology 13:5—6 [A.D. 151]).
Theophilus of Antioch
“It is the attribute of God, of the most high and almighty and of the living God, not only to be everywhere, but also to see and hear all; for he can in no way be contained in a place. . . . The three days before the luminaries were created are types of the Trinity: God, his Word, and his Wisdom” (To Autolycus 2:15 [A.D. 181]).
Irenaeus
“For the Church, although dispersed throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and from their disciples the faith in one God, the Father Almighty . . . and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit” (Against Heresies 1:10:1 [A.D. 189]).
Tertullian
“We do indeed believe that there is only one God, but we believe that under this dispensation, or, as we say, oikonomia, there is also a Son of this one only God, his Word, who proceeded from him and through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. . . . We believe he was sent down by the Father, in accord with his own promise, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. . . . This rule of faith has been present since the beginning of the gospel, before even the earlier heretics” (Against Praxeas 2 [A.D. 216]).
“And at the same time the mystery of the oikonomia is safeguarded, for the unity is distributed in a Trinity. Placed in order, the three are the Father, Son, and Spirit. They are three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in being, but in form; not in power, but in kind; of one being, however, and one condition and one power, because he is one God of whom degrees and forms and kinds are taken into account in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (ibid.).
“Keep always in mind the rule of faith which I profess and by which I bear witness that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and then you will understand what is meant by it. Observe now that I say the Father is other [distinct], the Son is other, and the Spirit is other. This statement is wrongly understood by every uneducated or perversely disposed individual, as if it meant diversity and implied by that diversity a separation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (ibid., 9).
“Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent persons, who are yet distinct one from another. These three are, one essence, not one person, as it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’ [John 10:30], in respect of unity of being not singularity of number” (ibid., 25).
Origen
“For we do not hold that which the heretics imagine: that some part of the being of God was converted into the Son, or that the Son was procreated by the Father from non-existent substances, that is, from a being outside himself, so that there was a time when he [the Son] did not exist” (The Fundamental Doctrines 4:4:1 [A.D. 225]).
“No, rejecting every suggestion of corporeality, we hold that the Word and the Wisdom was begotten out of the invisible and incorporeal God, without anything corporal being acted upon . . . the expression which we employ, however that there was never a time when he did not exist is to be taken with a certain allowance. For these very words ‘when’ and ‘never’ are terms of temporal significance, while whatever is said of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is to be understood as transcending all time, all ages” (ibid.).
“For it is the Trinity alone which exceeds every sense in which not only temporal but even eternal may be understood. It is all other things, indeed, which are outside the Trinity, which are to be measured by time and ages” (ibid.).
Hippolytus
“The Word alone of this God is from God himself, wherefore also the Word is God, being the being of God. Now the world was made from nothing, wherefore it is not God” (Refutation of All Heresies 10:29 [A.D. 228]).
Novatian
“For Scripture as much announces Christ as also God, as it announces God himself as man. It has as much described Jesus Christ to be man, as moreover it has also described Christ the Lord to be God. Because it does not set forth him to be the Son of God only, but also the son of man; nor does it only say, the son of man, but it has also been accustomed to speak of him as the Son of God. So that being of both, he is both, lest if he should be one only, he could not be the other. For as nature itself has prescribed that he must be believed to be a man who is of man, so the same nature prescribes also that he must be believed to be God who is of God. . . . Let them, therefore, who read that Jesus Christ the son of man is man, read also that this same Jesus is called also God and the Son of God” (Treatise on the Trinity 11 [A.D. 235]).
Pope Dionysius
“Next, then, I may properly turn to those who divide and cut apart and destroy the most sacred proclamation of the Church of God, making of it [the Trinity], as it were, three powers, distinct substances, and three godheads. . . . [Some heretics] proclaim that there are in some way three gods, when they divide the sacred unity into three substances foreign to each other and completely separate” (Letter to Dionysius of Alexandria 1 [A.D. 262]).
“Therefore, the divine Trinity must be gathered up and brought together in one, a summit, as it were, I mean the omnipotent God of the universe. . . . It is blasphemy, then, and not a common one but the worst, to say that the Son is in any way a handiwork [creature]. . . . But if the Son came into being [was created], there was a time when these attributes did not exist; and, consequently, there was a time when God was without them, which is utterly absurd” (ibid., 1—2).
“Neither, then, may we divide into three godheads the wonderful and divine unity. . . . Rather, we must believe in God, the Father Almighty; and in Christ Jesus, his Son; and in the Holy Spirit; and that the Word is united to the God of the universe. ‘For,’ he says, ‘The Father and I are one,’ and ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in me’” (ibid., 3).
Gregory the Wonderworker
“There is one God. . . . There is a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty, neither divided nor estranged. Wherefore there is nothing either created or in servitude in the Trinity; nor anything superinduced, as if at some former period it was non-existent, and at some later period it was introduced. And thus neither was the Son ever wanting to the Father, nor the Spirit to the Son; but without variation and without change, the same Trinity abides ever” (Declaration of Faith [A.D. 265]).
Sechnall of Ireland
“Hymns, with Revelation and the Psalms of God [Patrick] sings, and does expound the same for the edifying of God’s people. This law he holds in the Trinity of the sacred Name and teaches one being in three persons” (Hymn in Praise of St. Patrick 22 [A.D. 444]).
Patrick of Ireland
“I bind to myself today the strong power of an invocation of the Trinity–the faith of the Trinity in unity, the Creator of the universe” (The Breastplate of St. Patrick 1 [A.D. 447]).
“[T]here is no other God, nor has there been heretofore, nor will there be hereafter, except God the Father unbegotten, without beginning, from whom is all beginning, upholding all things, as we say, and his Son Jesus Christ, whom we likewise to confess to have always been with the Father–before the world’s beginning. . . . Jesus Christ is the Lord and God in whom we believe . . . and who has poured out on us abundantly the Holy Spirit . . . whom we confess and adore as one God in the Trinity of the sacred Name” (Confession of St. Patrick 4 [A.D. 452]).
Augustine
“All the Catholic interpreters of the divine books of the Old and New Testaments whom I have been able to read, who wrote before me about the Trinity, which is God, intended to teach in accord with the Scriptures that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one and the same substance constituting a divine unity with an inseparable equality; and therefore there are not three gods but one God, although the Father begot the Son, and therefore he who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself, too, coequal to the Father and to the Son and belonging to the unity of the Trinity” (The Trinity 1:4:7 [A.D. 408]).
Fulgence of Ruspe
“See, in short you have it that the Father is one, the Son another, and the Holy Spirit another; in Person, each is other, but in nature they are not other. In this regard he says: ‘The Father and I, we are one’ (John 10:30). He teaches us that one refers to their nature, and we are to their Persons. In like manner it is said: ‘There are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit; and these three are one’ (1 John 5:7). Let Sabellius hear we are, let him hear three; and let him believe that there are three Persons. Let him not blaspheme in his sacrilegious heart by saying that the Father is the same in himself as the Son is the same in himself and as the Holy Sprit is the same in himself, as if in some way he could beget himself, or in some way proceed from himself. Even in created natures it is never able to be found that something is able to beget itself. Let also Arius hear one; and let him not say that the Son is of a different nature, if one cannot be said of that, the nature of which is different” (The Trinity 4:1—2 ).
“But in the one true God and Trinity it is naturally true not only that God is one but also that he is a Trinity, for the reason that the true God himself is a Trinity of Persons and one in nature. Through this natural unity the whole Father is in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, and the whole Holy Spirit, too, is in the Father and in the Son. None of these is outside any of the others; because no one of them precedes any other of them in eternity or exceeds any other in greatness, or is superior to any other in power” (The Rule of Faith 4 [c. A.D. 523).
NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials
presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004
IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827
permission to publish this work is hereby granted.
+Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004
web sit http://www.catholic.com in hopes that other my us it for good use to infor and learn.
To Rose Noble
Rose Noble before you write back let me ask you what faith are you? What is your group is called?
To Rose Noble
AbuAmir what branch do you belong in Islam?
Rose Noble
What are group have you being before? What did you do know and before in this groups?
To Rose
What other group have you being before? Why did you left them?
I have always been Catholic and have done research good source and others. The reason I do is understand their back ground. I have never being misled by catholic resource and historical evidence
to back up my some of my claims look below
title “Offshoots of Offshoots”
By Karl Keating
This Rock
Volume 11, Number 12
December 2000
——————————————————————————–
Frontispiece
By Karl Keating
Letters
Apologist’s Eye
Scientific Faith
By Nicanor Austriaco, Jr., O.P.
Thought That Will Not Go Away
By Rev. Thomas M. Santa, CSSR
Why Miracles Can Happen
By Mark Brumley
A Fundamentalist Objection
An Abomination to the Lord
By Fr. Mitch Pacwa
Of Water and the Spirit
By Alex Jones
Step by Step
Can Infants Be Born Again?
By Jason Evert
Fathers Know Best
Where The Field Is Eager to Destroy the Fruit
Brass Tacks
Big-Picture Apologetics
By James Akin
Classic Apologetics
The Divine and the Human
By The Catholic Evidence Guild
Quick Questions
Sound Bites
The Spirit of the Liturgy
By Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
——————————————————————————–
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I never have tried to tally the official output of the 21 ecumenical councils, but my sense is that Vatican II produced more words than the previous councils combined. At least it seems that way. I hope it is not taken as a slight to the council fathers if I say that the sixteen documents they gave us would have been more effective (and less abused) if only one-third the length. Concision has its virtues. The verbosity of the conciliar documents has allowed Catholic dissidents and non-Catholics to select from the text what they want to see and to ignore what they don’t want to see.
This was evident in the reaction to Dominus Jesus, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on September 5. When I read the document, I was surprised that there was no surprise. Most of the words are lifted from Vatican II or the Bible. There is little connecting tissue, which means there is little not already known by any informed reader. Dominus Jesus broke no new ground, but you wouldn’t know it from those who said the CDF contradicted Vatican II.
The leader of the Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury George L. Carey, sighed that the CDF had put a roadblock on the path to unity. He was miffed that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger noted that all Christian groups other than the Catholic Church are “defective,” which is to say they are missing something (sometimes many things) the Catholic Church has.
This should not be news to anyone who has studied Christian history. Every Protestant church is either a direct offshoot of the Catholic Church (as is the case with the Lutheran Church) or is an offshoot of an offshoot (Pentecostal churches are offshoots of Holiness churches, which are offshoots of the Methodist Church, which is an offshoot of the Anglican Church, which is an offshoot of the Catholic Church).
The chief defects of the Protestant churches are that they are missing five sacraments. They have valid baptism and matrimony, but they do not have the other sacraments. This means that the “Lord’s Supper,” as celebrated by them, is a memorial meal of bread and wine–but nothing more. Christ’s body and blood are not present.
That particular defect arises from another: the absence of true priests. Some of the Protestant churches call their ministers priests or bishops, but we know that those are terms of courtesy, not reality. Archbishop Carey is addressed as “Archbishop,” but only because he claims to be in apostolic succession, not because he really is. In fact, he is a Christian layman, not even a priest–a consequence of the defects his church has.
I use “church” in a colloquial sense when referring to the Anglican or other Protestant bodies. Official Catholic documents, including those of Vatican II and Dominus Jesus, reserve the word “church” for bodies that maintain all seven sacraments, which means, as a practical matter, that the word is used for the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Protestant “churches” are termed “ecclesial communities” or “ecclesial communions,” which means that they are “church-like” but are not true churches.
I found Dominus Jesus refreshing precisely because it reiterates what Vatican II said nearly four decades ago: There is one true Church, and there are many faux churches.
past correction
to back up my some of my claims look below
title “Offshoots of Offshoots”Â
Offshoots of Offshoots
By Karl Keating
I never have tried to tally the official output of the 21 ecumenical councils, but my sense is that Vatican II produced more words than the previous councils combined. At least it seems that way. I hope it is not taken as a slight to the council fathers if I say that the sixteen documents they gave us would have been more effective (and less abused) if only one-third the length. Concision has its virtues. The verbosity of the conciliar documents has allowed Catholic dissidents and non-Catholics to select from the text what they want to see and to ignore what they don’t want to see.
This was evident in the reaction to Dominus Jesus, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on September 5. When I read the document, I was surprised that there was no surprise. Most of the words are lifted from Vatican II or the Bible. There is little connecting tissue, which means there is little not already known by any informed reader. Dominus Jesus broke no new ground, but you wouldn’t know it from those who said the CDF contradicted Vatican II.
The leader of the Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury George L. Carey, sighed that the CDF had put a roadblock on the path to unity. He was miffed that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger noted that all Christian groups other than the Catholic Church are “defective,” which is to say they are missing something (sometimes many things) the Catholic Church has.
This should not be news to anyone who has studied Christian history. Every Protestant church is either a direct offshoot of the Catholic Church (as is the case with the Lutheran Church) or is an offshoot of an offshoot (Pentecostal churches are offshoots of Holiness churches, which are offshoots of the Methodist Church, which is an offshoot of the Anglican Church, which is an offshoot of the Catholic Church).
The chief defects of the Protestant churches are that they are missing five sacraments. They have valid baptism and matrimony, but they do not have the other sacraments. This means that the “Lord’s Supper,” as celebrated by them, is a memorial meal of bread and wine–but nothing more. Christ’s body and blood are not present.
That particular defect arises from another: the absence of true priests. Some of the Protestant churches call their ministers priests or bishops, but we know that those are terms of courtesy, not reality. Archbishop Carey is addressed as “Archbishop,” but only because he claims to be in apostolic succession, not because he really is. In fact, he is a Christian layman, not even a priest–a consequence of the defects his church has.
I use “church” in a colloquial sense when referring to the Anglican or other Protestant bodies. Official Catholic documents, including those of Vatican II and Dominus Jesus, reserve the word “church” for bodies that maintain all seven sacraments, which means, as a practical matter, that the word is used for the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches. Protestant “churches” are termed “ecclesial communities” or “ecclesial communions,” which means that they are “church-like” but are not true churches.
I found Dominus Jesus refreshing precisely because it reiterates what Vatican II said nearly four decades ago: There is one true Church, and there are many faux churches.
Info got from Islam through the Catechism
The Catechism on Islam
By Jimmy Akin
In the wake of 9/11 it has become more important than ever that Catholics have an accurate view of Islam. A starting point, though not the ending point, is reading what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say. It states, “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day” (CCC 841).
To understand this, one both has to look at the original context of the quote. The Catechism is not a freshly drafted document. It is in large measure a synthesis of other documents, and one has to look up quotations in the original sources to understand them fully. This is the case for the Catechism’s statement about Muslims, which is taken wholly from Vatican II.
Many find the first part of the quote perplexing: “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims.” To many this sounds like Muslims can be saved by adhering to Islam. That isn’t what it means, as shown by the original context.
If you look at Lumen Gentium (LG), the Vatican II document from which the quote is drawn, it becomes clear that the phrase is not meant to say that Islam is a method of salvation parallel to Christianity. The quote comes from LG 16, but it is part of a larger context in the document. To appreciate how it fits into the picture, one needs to go back at least as far as LG 13, which starts by proclaiming, “All men are called to belong to the new people of God”–i.e., to the Church. Section 13 concludes by stating, “All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God. . . . And in different ways to it belong, or are related: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.”
All mankind is called to the “Catholic unity of the people of God”–in other words, to become Catholics. Some have done so, and so LG states that some “belong to” the Catholic Church while others are related to it “in different ways.” Those who belong to it are “the Catholic faithful,” while those who are related in various ways include “others who believe in Christ” (who are related to the Church in one way) and “all mankind” (who are related to the Church in a different way).
The next three sections of LG (14—16) are taken up with elaborating on these three groups.
LG 14 concerns itself with Catholics. It begins by stating: “This sacred council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. . . . Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.”
This of itself repudiates the idea that Islam or any other religions are as good as the Catholic Church. LG 15 turns to non-Catholic Christians and states, “The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety [e.g., Protestants] or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter [e.g., Orthodox].”
Note that it does not say that these Christians are part of the Church, only that they are “linked” to it many ways, some of which it then goes on to name (Scripture, faith in Christ, baptism). While noting that God works among them, LG does not say that it is okay for them to remain where they are: “In all of Christ’s disciples the Spirit arouses the desire to be peacefully united, in the manner determined by Christ, as one flock under one shepherd, and he prompts them to pursue this end.” In other words, God’s grace leads them toward becoming Catholics too.
After this, the attentive reader will scarcely find it plausible that LG is going to present non-Christian religions as on a par with the Church, and it doesn’t.
LG 16 turns to the case of non-Christians, stating, “Finally, those who have not yet received the gospel are related in various ways to the people of God.” The section speaks of the Jewish people in the first place, for they are more closely related to the Church than any other non-Christian religion. It is only after this that the text states, “But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims.” Note that the subject under discussion is not everyone who is saved. The overarching theme of the passage is how various people are related to the Catholic Church, not how many paths to salvation there are. The Council has been describing people who are progressively more distant from the Church. The Council has already stated that the Church is necessary for salvation. And since it expressly places non-Jewish theists in a distant position from the Church, when we encounter the statement that “the plan of salvation also includes,” we should not understand it as saying that non-Jewish theists are saved.
It means that God desires their salvation and has made plans for their salvation–plans that include giving them graces that lead in the direction of salvation and the Church. But that doesn’t mean that they can be saved by being nothing more than non-Jewish theists.
Within the category of non-Jewish theists, Muslims today hold the first place in that they are the largest such group and have a number of commonalities with Judaism and Christianity, several of which the council goes on to note:
(1) They “profess to hold the faith of Abraham.” The operative word here is “profess”–they claim to hold the faith of Abraham. In reality, their faith is an imperfect version of the faith that comes from Abraham, but they are trying to follow in the footsteps of Abraham, and the Council gives them credit for that.
(2) “Together with us they adore the one, merciful God.” For many, this statement is perplexing. However, as we saw in last issue’s “Brass Tacks” column, God is aware of and acknowledges all that is good and true in the worship offered to him, however imperfect an understanding of him a worshiper may have. While Muslims, like Jews, do not accept the Trinity, they do acknowledge that God is the only true God and that he is merciful. This means that they honor things that are true about God but have a limited understanding of him.
Christians have a fuller understanding of God because he has revealed more to us about himself: specifically, that he is a Trinity. This doctrine cannot be deduced by human reason; it can only be known by revelation.
Failure to accept this revelation of the Christian age does not stop Muslims from worshiping God any more than it stops Jews. It means only that they know less about God and that they have erroneous corollary ideas (for instance, that Jesus is not the Son of God).
To make clear how this works, allow me to take an example from pop culture: Suppose that you and I both knew millionaire Bruce Wayne. I might know, because he revealed it to me, that he is also Batman. You may hear this claim and reject it, in which case you adopt the false corollary belief “Batman is not Bruce Wayne.” That does not mean that you don’t know and relate to either Bruce or Batman, it means only that you misunderstand the relationship between them.
In the same way, one may worship God and honor Jesus as a prophet (which he was) without understanding that Jesus is God. Indeed, many people in his own day did that: They knew the historical Jesus but had a false understanding of his identity.
(3) Muslims recognize that God is “mankind’s judge on the last day.” This is another link they have to biblical faith. Muslims may have erroneous ideas about some of the things that will occur before, after, or around this event, but that much they have right.
Additional elements of truth that Muslims have are listed in another conciliar document (Nostra Aetate 3), but in no place does the Council indicate that Islam–or Judaism or any non-Christian religion–is a path of salvation. There may be elements of truth in these religions, and God may give his grace to whomever he wants, non-Christian religions aren’t vehicles of salvation.
Some in these religions can be saved, but not because of their religions. This is underlined in the document Dominus Jesus that was released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2000.
According to the document, “It would be contrary to the faith to consider the Church as one way of salvation alongside those constituted by the other religions, seen as complementary to the Church or substantially equivalent to her” (DJ 21).
Further, “If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation” (DJ 22).
There should be no doubt that the Church recognizes that followers of Islam have elements of truth. But while it is possible for them–as for all men–to be saved if they live up to the light God has given them, it cannot be said that Islam is a path of salvation or that Muslims do not need to become Christians.
In Defense of Apologetics
By Steve Graves
The wife of a friend tells the story of being at the wedding reception of a non-Catholic friend. During small talk, someone asked her, “And what does your husband do?” “He works for a Catholic apologetics organization,” she replied. There was a brief silence. “Well, he must keep busy,” said one of the other guests, a doctor, with a smile he thought was disarming. “The Catholic Church certainly has a lot to apologize for.”
“Apologetics” doesn’t meaning apologizing for our faith. The word is taken from the Greek word apologia, itself derived from apo-, meaning “from,” and lego, meaning “I speak.” Apologists “speak from” or defend a particular position.
Some Catholics and other Christians are uncomfortable with apologetics. They consider it contrary to the spirit of ecumenism and adopt a “go along to get along” attitude. Shouldn’t we just live and let live?
This discomfort results from a misunderstanding of ecumenism. Ecumenism isn’t a policy of intellectual appeasement, nor does it demand that we overlook real differences. Most of us would agree that repressing disagreement isn’t healthy in our personal relationships. Neither is it healthy in our relationships with other faiths. Recognizing and addressing disagreement is a necessary precursor to understanding.
Ecumenism is about sharing our religion and respecting other individuals even when they don’t hold the same faith. Ecumenism promotes understanding, tolerance, and cooperation among religions in general and Christians in particular. Ecumenism isn’t about ignoring the chasms that separate us or pretending differences don’t exist.
But apologetics can help bridge those chasms. Often the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism aren’t as vast as they appear. Many criticisms of Catholicism are based on misinformation or, in some cases, disinformation.
So, yes, the Church is calling us to unite with fellow Christians whenever possible. But she is also calling us to evangelize as well. This requires prayerful preparation, study, and mature faith. We can’t help others understand our faith if we ourselves don’t understand it. Unless we are able to discuss our faith rationally, we will be severely limited in our ability to share that faith with others, be they fellow Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, or agnostics.
In addition, unprepared Catholics are susceptible to the arguments of well-meaning Protestant evangelists or even New Agers. In the United States, ex-Catholics account for a large percentage of many Fundamentalist congregations, while the number of Catholic converts from Fundamentalism is small by comparison. Why the disparity?
It’s because Fundamentalists in this country recognize that many Catholics are uninformed about their faith and are therefore ripe for the picking. Fundamentalists are generally much more familiar with Scripture than their Catholic counterparts. They are trained to deconstruct the faith of casual or wavering Catholics. Their knowledge of the Bible may appear impressive at first to the casual listener, but a little probing usually reveals that their grasp of Scripture lacks depth and their understanding of biblical themes won’t withstand even a cursory challenge.
The problem is that Catholics on average know even less about Scripture than our Fundamentalist brethren. Catholics need to know that their faith more than any other is grounded in Scripture. With a little training and the application of common sense, Catholics can not only hold their own against Protestant evangelists, they may be able to raise questions in the sincere Protestant’s mind about the tenets of his own religion.
This brings up one of the often-overlooked benefits of apologetics. The value of apologetics is not restricted to evangelizing the unchurched or even defending our faith. The study of apologetics deepens and enriches our personal faith in Christ and the Catholic Church as the depository of God’s truth.
Cradle Catholics are prone to accept dogma, doctrines, and Tradition not because we understand them but out of habit ingrained in us as children. We vaguely recall discussing the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth in our catechism classes, but the precise, literal meaning of the terms is lost in the past. We became familiar with the phrases, and, since we were raised in the faith, we accepted the Church’s teaching at face value.
This is entirely natural. It is the way children learn, Fundamentalist children included. But at some point we must appropriate our faith intellectually, and this is what many Catholics in the current generation have failed to do. But if we don’t understand our faith, how can we live it, let alone share it with others in need? If we starve our souls through neglect and sin, we may find that our strength is lacking when, as is inevitable, the time comes to face the dark night of the soul.
Like the body, the soul needs to be nourished and exercised lest we become weak. We need to feed our soul with prayer, the sacraments, worship, and scriptural study. We need to exercise our souls with devotion and penance.
The study of apologetics helps us become informed and conversant about our faith. We become familiar with Scripture, history, theology, and philosophy. We grow to understand our Catholic roots, and our culture comes alive. As we gain knowledge, our doubts and reservations are replaced by a confident understanding. Our devotion becomes grounded in both knowledge and faith. The depth of our examinations will occasionally challenge us, but the process will also strengthen us.
Another criticism of apologetics is that it emphasizes rationality at the expense of faith led by the Spirit. It is true that apologetics, like social activism, can lead to an overemphasis of the mind if it is not tempered with prayer. It is also true that, without a strong prayer life, apologists can become moral legalists. An overemphasis on intellectual comprehension leads to a barren spiritual life. Universities are home to many agnostic or atheistic theology and Scripture professors. Faith in Christ Jesus cannot be achieved without the gift of grace.
The contrary is also true. Faith based solely on subjective religious experience can lead to unconstrained emotionalism and eventually even heresy. Practitioners of this approach are prone to confusing emotional experiences with divine inspiration, and their faith becomes ever more subjective.
The key is to balance apologetic study with prayer and the sacraments. Reason and faith need not conflict–indeed, cannot, according to Aquinas: “The truth that the human reason is naturally endowed to know cannot be opposed to the truth of the Christian faith” (Summa Contra Gentiles I:7). Rational inquiry reinforces our faith rather than weakens it.
Some rebellious souls are adverse to apologetics because they know the truth that the Church defends conflicts with the worldly values and ideas that they have adopted. They lack the courage or the intellectual honesty to examine their modern cultural and political assumptions against their faith. In short, it is more important to them that they be politically correct than doctrinally correct. This is as true of conservatives as of liberals, of traditionalists as of progressives.
It isn’t unusual to hear cultural Catholics make statements that are, well–heretical. That’s a strong word, but what other adjective is accurate when a “Catholic” disavows the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the infallibility of the pope and the Magisterium on matters of faith and morals, or the truth of original sin? As Catholics, we mustn’t forsake our pursuit of God’s truth nor compromise our faith for the sake of inclusiveness, ecumenism, liberalism, conservatism, socialism, feminism, or any other “ism” or political polemic.
But the breadth and depth of apologetics can be overwhelming. Raising our families and working to put food on the table leaves us little spare time, but most of us can, if we want, find an hour or two a week to refresh ourselves on the teachings of the Church. It might mean turning off the television one night a week or planning to read for 20 minutes before bed. Look at the time expended as faith insurance–or, better yet, eternal life insurance.
Where should you start? Start with your own questions and difficulties. Of course you have questions. Of course you have difficulties. If you aren’t questioning some aspect of your faith, chances are you aren’t thinking about your faith. But since you are reading this page, you are obviously thinking about your beliefs.
So what are your concerns? What unanswered questions do you have about your faith? What are the gray areas that trouble you? Face your questions head-on, and you’ll grow stronger for the effort.
A final word, one of caution, can be prefaced by the New Testament’s great clarion call to apologists: “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Ptr. 3:15). Too often, this verse is quoted without the rest of the sentence: “Yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame” (3:15—16).
Apologetics and evangelism must be practiced with love and sensitivity. An aggressive approach is counterproductive and can easily drive souls away from Christ and his Church. We need to produce good fruits. Pray before sharing, pray before studying, and pray for God’s will. Then give God the glory.
“When, therefore, since we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek among others the truth which is easily obtained from the Church. For the apostles, like a rich man in a bank, deposited with her most copiously everything which pertains to the truth; and everyone who wishes draws from her the drink of life” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 213).
to Rose Noble since you said the catholic is corrupt.
The History of Anti-Catholicism
By Jimmy Akin
One of the most tenacious problems a Catholic apologist encounters is anti-Catholicism. In order to effectively counter it, we need to have some appreciation of its history.
In a sense, anti-Catholicism can only exist if there is some other group of Christians to contrast Catholics with. Hostility toward Christians in the earliest years would not be anti-Catholic since at that time there were no non-Catholic churches. Soon, however, some local churches did acquire unorthodox beliefs and practices that resulted in their separating themselves from the worldwide Christian Church. The resulting groups were commonly named after their founders, the locations where they arose, or their most distinctive doctrines, practices, or traits. The Montanists were named after their founder Montanus. The Cataphrygians were named after the land of Phrygia. The Docetists were named after their claim that Christ only seemed (Greek, dokein) to be human, and the Quartodecimians were named after their insistence on celebrating Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan even if it did not fall on a Sunday.
By the second half of the first century there were enough separate, particular groups in existence that there needed to be a way to refer to the universal body of Christians constituting the original Church that Christ founded. The term that came into use for designating this all-embracing body was kataholos, which is brought over into English as “Catholic.” Though it is often somewhat loosely translated as “universal,” it means “according [kata-] to the whole [holos].”
By the early second century, the term “Catholic” was in common use as a designation for Christ’s Church. A belief or practice was said to be Catholic if it if it was in accord with what Christians as a whole believed or practiced, not just what was taught or done by some particular group that had split off from the Church. Christians who preferred their own views to those of the whole Church were known as heretics (roughly, “opinionated ones”) and those who separated from Catholic unity for non-doctrinal reasons were known as schismatics (roughly, “divisive ones”).
In the early Church, anti-Catholicism per se was essentially confined to the heretical or schismatic bodies that split off from the Catholic Church. Naturally, they tended to be hostile to Catholicism on some level, or they would not have left. However, on the whole non-Christians were not aware of the divisions within the Christian community, and so they tended to think favorably or unfavorably of Christians as a group.
This changed with the advent of Protestantism, which, as its name suggests, arose as a protest against Catholic beliefs and practices. A new explosion of sects occurred, and again they tended to be named after their founder, place of origin, or their distinctive belief, practice, or trait. (Lutherans are named after their founder, Anglicans are named after their country of origin, and Episcopalians and Presbyterians are named after their forms of government.)
Before the Protestant Reformation, when sects split off from the Church it was normally over only one or two points, and the sects remained largely faithful to historic Christian belief and practice. However, the leaders of the Protestant sects largely took an approach that discarded everything and reformulated the Christian faith from scratch using Scripture alone. The result was that the new sects diverged more widely from historic Christian belief and practices than almost any that had appeared since the first two centuries (Gnosticism would be the exception).
Despite their level of divergence, the new sects grew quickly because they encouraged regional and national governments to break with the Catholic Church and in its place embrace their sect. To obtain more political and financial autonomy, many governments did this and as the state church the new faith was imposed on the populace, who were now told that they were no longer Catholics and must now worship at the new, Protestant services.
To justify breaking away from what was, to almost everyone, the Christian Church, and to justify the social and political convulsions that followed, Protestant preachers had to paint the Catholic Church as something evil, repressive, and abominable–something that wasn’t a Christian Church at all. Only by believing this could one believe that one was not, in fact, leaving Christ’s Church. Thus anti-Catholicism experienced a rebirth.
Ironically, this rebirth was strongest among those most similar to the Catholic Church. The Church of England changed very little doctrine (having been due to Henry VIII’s ambition in getting a divorce), so what differences there were had to be magnified as much as possible to justify the breakaway. As a result, England became perhaps the most anti-Catholic country in Europe, though doctrinally the Anglican church retained the most Catholic beliefs and practices since the split was not prompted by concerns over these issues.
Because Anglicans were so similar to Catholics, they often wished to keep the name “Catholic” for themselves and so coined a host of terms to distinguish themselves from the “other” Catholics. Because the Catholic Church is led by the pope, the bishop of Rome, they began to refer to Catholicism as Popery, Romanism, and Roman Catholicism and to Catholic doctrines and practices as popish, papish, papist, Romish, and Roman.
When the United States was founded, it inherited the anti-Catholic animus of its original Protestant settlers, many of whom were Anglican until the American Revolution, when they were renamed “Episcopalians” since they severed ties with England and thus with the king of England as the head of their church.
Anti-Catholic sentiments in America reached a peak in the nineteenth century when the Protestant population became alarmed by the number of Catholics immigrating to America. This was due in part to the standard tensions that arise between native citizens and foreign immigrants, and the resulting “nativist” movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, the burning of Catholic property, and the killing of Catholics. There were Catholics who were martyred in America by the Protestant community. The nativist movement found expression in a national political movement called the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, which (unsuccessfully) ran former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in 1856.
Eventually tensions eased, and the Protestant population discovered that Catholics were not trying to seize control of the American government. Still, there were fears even into the twentieth century that there was undue “Catholic influence” on the government, and presidents who met with the pope were criticized. Tensions did not subside enough to allow a Catholic to be elected president until 1960, and even now Catholics who run for president find their religious beliefs subjected to extra scrutiny in the press.
By this point, a new form of anti-Catholicism had emerged. For the first time, part of the non-Christian world became aware of and hostile toward Catholics as a distinct group of Christians. As the cultural and political fabric of Europe and America disintegrated, large numbers of people began to leave both Catholicism and Protestantism, at first still saying they believed in God or were still Christians in some sense. Later, more began to profess agnosticism or atheism or to experiment with other religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and the various New Age sects that Americanized Eastern ideas. This group either had, disgruntled, left the Catholic Church or had come from the already anti-Catholic Protestant community. As a result, they tended to hold anti-Catholic attitudes.
Because the recent cultural and political disintegration in large part stemmed from the actions of those in upper political, economic, and especially academic and media circles, many people in those fields are especially hostile to Catholicism. Consequently, things concerning Catholics are said in classrooms, books, broadcasts, speeches, and movies that would never be tolerated if said about other religious or social groups.
It has been suggested that anti-Catholicism is the last socially respectable prejudice in America. Toleration has been extended to other groups, and they cannot be subjected to verbal abuse in public. This is not quite true (conservative Protestants and Moslems come in for similar attacks, often under the labeled of being “Fundamentalist”). However, it does illustrate the irony of those who profess to be the most open of different viewpoints being so closed to the Catholic one.
Because of the strength of secularism in Western society, secular anti-Catholism is now a more serious worry in the long term than Protestant anti-Catholicism. Fortunately, Catholic advocacy groups such as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights have begun to provide a Catholic counterpart to the organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League that advocate the rights of other groups.
In Protestant circles, there has been a general decline in anti-Catholicism over the past hundred years. Liberal Protestants have gone a long way to ending old hostilities, though they are still nervous about the firmness with which the Catholic Church teaches historic Christian doctrines. In conservative Protestant communities, there has also been a lessening of anti-Catholicism.
However, in the 1990s there was a significant anti-Catholic resurgence among some Protestants. This chiefly was due to two things: (1) the number of ecumenical gestures Protestants, including many conservatives, made toward Catholics and (2) a renaissance in Catholic apologetics that began to win large numbers of devout, conservative Protestant converts to Catholicism. These two factors alarmed the anti-Catholic elements in conservative Protestantism, and a large number of new anti-Catholic books, tracts, tapes, and videos began to appear. Among the most significant of the current wave of anti-Catholic Protestants are Jack T. Chick, Dave Hunt, John MacArthur, John Ankerberg, and James McCarthy.
As the forgoing has indicated, anti-Catholicism is not static but changes over time. Even the arguments that are used against Catholics change over time. A hundred years ago, many Protestants charged that Catholics were unpatriotic because they resisted placing their children in American public schools. With the secularization of the American schoolroom, this argument has disappeared. With increasing secularism but also increasing ecumenism, it remains to be seen what shape anti-Catholicism will take in the future. It may happen that we will return to a situation like that of the first century, where Christians are persecuted indiscriminately of their denomination by a hostile, anti-Christian world.
David,
I only consider myself a Muslim.
Qur’an 6:159
As for those who divide their religion and break up into sects, thou hast no part in them in the least: their affair is with Allah: He will in the end tell them the truth of all that they did.
21:93
And they have broken their religion (into fragments) among them, (yet) all are returning unto Us.
23:53
But they (mankind) have broken their religion among them into sects, each group rejoicing in its tenets.
30:32
Of those who split up their religion and became schismatics, each sect exulting in its tenets.
2:127,128
And remember Abraham and Isma’il raised the foundations of the House (With this prayer): “Our Lord! Accept (this service) from us: For Thou art the All-Hearing, the All-knowing.
“Our Lord! make of us Muslims, bowing to Thy (Will), and of our progeny a people Muslim, bowing to Thy (will); and show us our place for the celebration of (due) rites; and turn unto us (in Mercy); for Thou art the Oft-Returning, Most Merciful.
This day have those who reject faith given up all hope of your religion: yet fear them not but fear Me. This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion.
Romans 10:3 – For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
Psalms 18:44 – As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me.
Psalms 66:3 – Say unto God, How terrible art thou in thy works! through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies submit themselves unto thee.
Psalms 81:15 – The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever.
to AbuAmir
Since you started it and you gave good questions about bible I will met you on http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=64360&highlight=bible+contradicts lets get in this topic. It needs another place be organized. I will be respectful to this forum and get into another topic which you see below.
Dear Muslims, you think is the bible corrupted?
——————————————————————————–
if you think so , then i invite you to respond to the following questions with logical and consistent answers:
Were the torah (Jewish sacred scriptures) and the gospel (Christian sacred scriptures) ever considered as being from the one true God by muhhamad/quoran/islam?
Yes, and the Koran says so, though I do not remember the exact verses in the Koran.
Did God promise to keep His scriptures intact, corruption-free?
Yes, and this is again clearly written in the Koran.
Then, if the muslims claim that the bible and torah are corrupted, then allah/god must be a very weak being, as he somehow could not keep his very own scriptures free from errors and corruption !!
I’d love to hear the comments from muslims here !!
On the other hand, if muslims say that when allah/god promised to keep his scriptures free from error/corruption he was making reference to the Koran , and the Koran only, then this raises more difficult theological questions that the muslims have to clearly answer:
What kind of god is this one who deceives men by allowing them to corrupt his scriptures?
What kind of god would intentionally allow men to corrupt his own scriptures so a large part of his creation is totally mislead?
Finally, if god/allah has allowed his very own scriptures to be corrupted by men, then on what basis can anyone be assured that this god/allah did/will not allow the Koran to be corrupted by men???
This show put to rest the nonsensical arguments that the muslims everywhere are putting against the one true word of God, which is of course the Christian bible.
Were the torah (Jewish sacred scriptures) and the gospel (Christian sacred scriptures) ever considered as being from the one true God by muhhamad/quoran/islam?
Yes
3:3 It is He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (of judgment between right and wrong).
3:48 “And Allah will teach him the Book and Wisdom, the Law and the gospel,
3:65 Ye People of the Book! Why dispute ye about Abraham, when the Law and the gospel Were not revealed Till after him? Have ye no understanding?
5:46 And in their footsteps We sent Jesus the son of Mary, confirming the Law that had come before him: We sent him the gospel: therein was guidance and light, and confirmation of the Law that had come before him: a guidance and an admonition to those who fear Allah.
5:47 Let the people of the gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) those who rebel.
5:66 If only they had stood fast by the Law, the gospel, and all the revelation that was sent to them from their Lord, they would have enjoyed happiness from every side. There is from among them a party on the right course: but many of them follow a course that is evil.
5:68 Say: “O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord.” It is the revelation that cometh to thee from thy Lord, that increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion and blasphemy. But sorrow thou not over (these) people without Faith.
5:110 Then will Allah say: “O Jesus the son of Mary! Recount My favour to thee and to thy mother. Behold! I strengthened thee with the holy spirit, so that thou didst speak to the people in childhood and in maturity. Behold! I taught thee the Book and Wisdom, the Law and the gospel and behold! thou makest out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, by My leave, and thou breathest into it and it becometh a bird by My leave, and thou healest those born blind, and the lepers, by My leave. And behold! thou bringest forth the dead by My leave. And behold! I did restrain the Children of Israel from (violence to) thee when thou didst show them the clear Signs, and the unbelievers among them said: ‘This is nothing but evident magic.’
9:111 Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the gospel, and the Qur’an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah. then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme.
48:29 Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. and those who are with him are strong against Unbelievers, (but) compassionate amongst each other. Thou wilt see them bow and prostrate themselves (in prayer), seeking Grace from Allah and (His) Good Pleasure. On their faces are their marks, (being) the traces of their prostration. This is their similitude in the Taurat; and their similitude in the gospel is: like a seed which sends forth its blade, then makes it strong; it then becomes thick, and it stands on its own stem, (filling) the sowers with wonder and delight. As a result, it fills the Unbelievers with rage at them. Allah has promised those among them who believe and do righteous deeds forgiveness, and a great Reward.
57:27 Then, in their wake, We followed them up with (others of) Our apostles: We sent after them Jesus the son of Mary, and bestowed on him the gospel; and We ordained in the hearts of those who followed him Compassion and Mercy. But the Monasticism which they invented for themselves, We did not prescribe for them: (We commanded) only the seeking for the Good Pleasure of Allah. but that they did not foster as they should have done. Yet We bestowed, on those among them who believed, their (due) reward, but many of them are rebellious transgressors.
7:157 “Those who follow the apostle, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find mentioned in their own (scriptures),- in the law and the gospel;- for he commands them what is just and forbids them what is evil; he allows them as lawful what is good (and pure) and prohibits them from what is bad (and impure); He releases them from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are upon them. So it is those who believe in him, honour him, help him, and follow the light which is sent down with him,- it is they who will prosper.”
As for the deception you describe one could question why God in Christianity would allow false prophets to arise and lead men astray. Is not God the creator of everything, good and evil?
David, you are passionate about what you believe but your arguments are weak. I don’t see how you, almighty you have come along and settled 1400 years of debate summing it up in “This show put to rest the nonsensical arguments that the muslims everywhere are putting against the one true word of God, which is of course the Christian bible.”
You are also sidetracking me from my discussion with Rose who definitely seems much more knowledgeable than you and has maintained better ettiquette.
16:125 Invite (all) to the Way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious: for thy Lord knoweth best, who have strayed from His Path, and who receive guidance.
To Rose Noble and AbuAmir
Rose Noble and AbuAmir started that all christen believe more then one God. I proved you through bible and history (given you historical names) you and Rose are wrong on the trinity. Sorry that you are misinforming about Christianity, it is not my fault. Don’t get mad because I am given you information, and you are finding yourself wrong. I think you are not ready to learn the truth. (Open your heart to the real truth because the God of Abraham is leading you to the truth) Since in your religion has heresies, and is heresies to. Plus, Islam is the biggest sect that came from Christianity. Muhammad and the founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Charles Taze Russell). Calvinism (christens sect) resembles Islam that is another proof that your faith is a heresies http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/1003616/posts?page=2 . How can you say you only consider yourself a Muslim? If you look at the terrorist are preaching valiance and other Muslims are preaching a merciful God and piece. To make it more extreme religious terrorists are killing innocent Muslims (Iraqis). Even history leaders of the Islamic world have killed innocent Muslims and have become corrupted and then you blame the christen world instead of fixing your problems http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26509 . You religion have fail to invade the world. Your larders and the Quran have prevented christens to practice our faith. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/1003616/posts?page=2 If some one visits Iraq or other Islamic countries, they will find different beliefs on Islam. You yourself show, your ideas are disorganized because you find yourself think yourself as a Muslim. The Quran after Muhammad leaves, it was burn down many times and rewritten over again and written again by same person who burn it and written his new ideas about Muhammad cording to his interests. Half of the Islamic book is disorganized one need to use another book or help to learn the sequence of it. I wanted to start an argument that give good information and not discomfort you. Sorry, I did not started with anger and dispute argument and misleading. How can you believe a disorganized religion? My faith is not disorganized like yours. See any religious leader can enter a musk and preach. I bet you, that one can’t find a solid answer about particular question regarding your faith (like meaning behind jihad), you are like the Protestants. Since, you said that my argument was weak. On the concept of Trinity you can not even prove me that it is not in the Holy bible after showing were. I showed you where in bible talks about the concept of the trinity, and you don’t get it. Not let your feeling bluer your judgment. Sorry, if I am proving you are wrong.
This shows you he is the Messiah: Mt 17: 1-8 and parallels; 2 pet 1:16-18 http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/matthew/matthew17.htm
More info about your last question about foretaste of the kingdom
From 547 -560
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p122a3p3.htm#brief
More Proof, Sorry it so clear on the Trinity look below or the previous above discussions
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p2.htm#III
249-267
Please do more research about Christianity and ask questions to catholic (christen) so when you talk we have pleasant talk not a misleading one.
Muhammad fail the devil temptations but Jesus did not.
Luke
Chapter 4
1
1 Filled with the holy Spirit, 2 Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert
2
for forty days, 3 to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry.
3
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”
4
Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
5
Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.
6
The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish.
7
All this will be yours, if you worship me.”
8
Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’”
So if Jesus is God, the same god who created the devil, how could he be tempted by him? That would be illogical. How could the creator of all be tempte by “All this will be yours, if you worship me.” It is already his. The confusion, and surely satan is the sower of confusion is the fact that as Christians you have elevated Christ to the level of God and the reason why is because you do not read his words in the language he spoke, being aramaic. If you did read them and understand them in aramaic you would know that son of God in reality means servant of God and if you read various translations of Bibles it is interpreted exactly that way. You would also understand that Messiah means annointed and many were called Messiah including David, Solomon and even Darius king of Persia.
5:116 And behold! Allah will say: “O jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah.?” He will say: “Glory to Thee! never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart, Thou I know not what is in Thine. For Thou knowest in full all that is hidden.
4:171 O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an apostle of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His apostles. Say not “Trinity” : desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah. Glory be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs.
2:87 We gave Moses the Book and followed him up with a succession of apostles; We gave jesus the son of Mary Clear (Signs) and strengthened him with the holy spirit. Is it that whenever there comes to you an apostle with what ye yourselves desire not, ye are puffed up with pride?- Some ye called impostors, and others ye slay!
2:136 Say ye: “We believe in Allah, and the revelation given to us, and to Abraham, Isma’il, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and jesus, and that given to (all) prophets from their Lord: We make no difference between one and another of them: And we bow to Allah (in Islam).”
2:253 Those apostles We endowed with gifts, some above others: To one of them Allah spoke; others He raised to degrees (of honour); to jesus the son of Mary We gave clear (Signs), and strengthened him with the holy spirit. If Allah had so willed, succeeding generations would not have fought among each other, after clear (Signs) had come to them, but they (chose) to wrangle, some believing and others rejecting. If Allah had so willed, they would not have fought each other; but Allah Fulfilleth His plan.
3:3 It is He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (of judgment between right and wrong).
3:45 Behold! the angels said: “O Mary! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ jesus, the son of Mary, held in honour in this world and the Hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to Allah.
3:55 Behold! Allah said: “O jesus! I will take thee and raise thee to Myself and clear thee (of the falsehoods) of those who blaspheme; I will make those who follow thee superior to those who reject faith, to the Day of Resurrection: Then shall ye all return unto me, and I will judge between you of the matters wherein ye dispute.
I bear witness that there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah and that Jesus is the Messenger of Allah.
I will bring more proof from your own Bible shortly.
Rose Noble
mostly AbuAmir
Rose Noble and AbuAmir started that all christen believe more then one God. I proved you through bible and history (given you historical names) you and Rose are wrong on the trinity. Justin Martyr one many to be know in Christianity to use the concept of the trinity Apology 13:5—6 [A.D. 151. Not as you claim 200 years or 400 AD. I can give more. Sorry that you are misinforming about Christianity, it is not my fault. Don’t get mad because I am given you information, and you are finding yourself wrong. I think you are not ready to learn the truth. (Open your heart to the real truth because the God of Abraham is leading you to the truth) Since in your religion has heresies, and is heresies to. Plus, Islam is the biggest sect that came from Christianity. Muhammad and the founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Charles Taze Russell) are a like in their history, go to for more info http://answering-islam.org.uk/Responses/Al-Kadhi/r06.11.html . Calvinism (christens sect) resembles Islam that is another proof that your faith is a heresies, go to more infohttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/1003616/posts?page=2 . How can you say you only consider yourself a Muslim? If you look at the terrorist are preaching valiance and other Muslims are preaching a merciful God and piece. To make it more extreme religious terrorists are killing innocent Muslims (Iraqis). Even history leaders of the Islamic world have killed innocent Muslims and have become corrupted and then you blame the christen world instead of fixing your problems http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26509 . You religion have fail to invade the world. Your larders and the Quran have prevented christens to practice our faith. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/1003616/posts?page=2 If some one visits Iraq or other Islamic countries, they will find different beliefs on Islam. You yourself show, your ideas are disorganized because you find yourself think yourself as a Muslim. The Quran after Muhammad leaves, it was burn down many times and rewritten over again and written again by same person who burn it and written his new ideas about Muhammad cording to his interests. Half of the Islamic book is disorganized one need to use another book or help to learn the sequence of it. I wanted to start an argument that give good information and not discomfort you. Sorry, I did not started with anger and dispute argument and misleading. How can you believe a disorganized religion? My faith is not disorganized like yours. See any religious leader can enter a musk and preach. I bet you, that one can’t find a solid answer about particular question regarding your faith (like meaning behind jihad), you are like the Protestants. Since, you said that my argument was weak. On the concept of Trinity you can not even prove me that it is not in the Holy bible after showing were. I showed you where in bible talks about the concept of the trinity, and you don’t get it. Not let your feeling bluer your judgment. Sorry, if I am proving you are wrong.
This shows you he is the Messiah: Mt 17: 1-8 and parallels; 2 pet 1:16-18 http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/matthew/matthew17.htm
More info about your last question about foretaste of the kingdom
From 547 -560
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p122a3p3.htm#brief
More Proof, Sorry it so clear on the Trinity look below or the previous above discussions
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p1s2c1p2.htm#III
249-267
Please do more research about Christianity and ask questions to catholic (christen) so when you talk we have pleasant talk not a misleading one.
Muhammad fail the devil temptations but Jesus did not.
Luke
Chapter 4
1
1 Filled with the holy Spirit, 2 Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert
2
for forty days, 3 to be tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over he was hungry.
3
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.”
4
Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
5
Then he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant.
6
The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish.
7
All this will be yours, if you worship me.”
8
Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’”
I can see that you are not reading my links. Let me put some prospective about the bible. The Holy Bible, on the other hand, was written not in a few years by one person but over many centuries by many different people (Catholic Church). In it God often speaks directly, but sometimes through the thoughts and words of holy people (inspiration by Holy Spirit). He also speaks through history, and most importantly, in the Person of Jesus Christ. God became man and word of God become flesh. That why Jesus being person could be temped by the devil. See, the Jews leader and priest thought the messiah was coming as a king to rule, they were wrong. Devil wanted trick him to leave astray his purposes to die in the cross for our salvation as it was professed in the old testament. In doing to he fulfills the Torah.
The first thing to explain about the Bible is that it is quite different in its form from the Qur’an. The Qur’an Shareef is presented as the direct speech of God. Of course it came through Muhammad, but he is thought of as the channel through which water flows without affecting the taste in any way.
When reading the Bible we need to understand this difference if we are to receive anything from God’s Word. If we are expecting the Bible to be like the Qur’an we will be disappointed. However, if we read the Bible with an open heart and mind, we may be surprised to find God speaking to us in a new and very powerful way.
The main subject of the Bible, unlike the Qur’an, is not God’s Laws. Of course many passages do speak of the greatness and power of God. The Bible begins (Genesis chapter 1) by showing us God as the great Creator of the world. Soon we see His holiness and purity, as Adam and Eve sin and lose their close relationship with Him. We read in the “historical books” how the people of Israel felt His judgements both on themselves and on their enemies. We see how He gave them laws of conduct and especially the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20).
Still, these are not the most important parts of God’s character revealed in the Bible. No, it is His faithful love to men; a love that was so patient with the sinful people of Israel. A love that chose certain men like Noah, Abraham, Moses, Job, David and others to know Him in special ways.
In the Old Agreement we see how often God came to His chosen people and how often they turned away from Him and failed to obey. So God finally brought in a New Agreement to fulfill and extend the old one men had broken. This time He established it not on the obedience of sinful, weak human beings, but on the Saviour from Heaven, the Messiah. This Messiah had been mentioned many times in prophecy. Now He arrived, in the form of a carpenter born in a poor home in a backward part of the great Roman Empire. Yes, God is glorious and powerful, but sometimes He hides His power and glory so that we can recognise Him without being consumed.
In reading the New Testament, we need to be careful not to have wrong ideas in our minds If we say, “Jesus was a human being and a Prophet only”, we shall misunderstand Him completely. He is shown in the Bible as more than a Prophet and more than a human. Do not make up your mind what you think of Him until you have read all that the New Testament says about Him. Pay attention especially to what He said about salvation, and what His appointed representatives said about Him. For the purpose of the Bible is not just to give us teaching about God’s laws, but to introduce us to a Person Who can do for us what we can never do for ourselves.
This Person, Jesus Christ, is the main subject not only of the New Testament, but in a way, of the Old Testament too. Though the Old Testament was written many centuries before He appeared on earth, it contains many references to Him. We can see pictures of Him in the life of Joseph, for example. The sacrificial system of Israel showed the need for a substitute to take the punishment of our sins. The prophets also spoke of the coming one who would suffer for men, but would lead His people to final victory and give them a part in His eternal and spiritual Kingdom.
All this is fulfilled in the New Testament. It has a four-fold account of His life, (the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Then there is the story of the first followers (Acts of the Apostles), followed by their teachings (the rest of the New Testament).
Yes, the Bible is different from the Qur’an. Its history is different, its purpose is different. Its main subject is different. But this library of books from different ages is one Book, for it speaks with one voice, the voice of God. May it speak to you! Pray to Him as you read, “O God, show Yourself to me.” He will answer this prayer if you are sincere.
I hope this will help you understand that
JESUS CHRIST IS GOD ALMIGHTY
Compiled by William Kilgore
That Jesus Christ is Himself YHWH (1), God Almighty come in the flesh, is so obviously taught in Scripture that it is baffling to hear some who claim adherence to the Bible deny it. Yet many sects such as the Jehovah’s Witnessess, Armstrongism, the Christadelphians, the Way International, etc., etc. not only make this denial but teach their followers that it is Biblical to do so!
What follows is a presentation of what Scripture teaches concerning Christ’s Deity. The basic text of this article is made up primarily of Scripture passages. The King James Version is basically followed, though some ultra-archaic wording may be updated. I have italicized words necessarily inserted by the KJV translators, just as they did. Clarifications are inserted in parenthesis, and key words are emphasized for the reader using bold type. All Scripture references are in red type.
Explanatory remarks are made occasionally, but have been kept to a minimum. Any quotes or sources are contained in the endnotes.
THE WORSHIP ISSUE
God’s Word is explicit in teaching that YHWH alone is to be “worshipped” (Ex. 34:14; Ps. 81:9; 97:7; Matt. 4:10/Luke 4:8; Rev. 19:10). We are given examples in God’s Word of people who were rebuked, chastised, or judged for worshipping the creation (Zeph. 1:5; Acts 7:42; Romans 1:25), “gods” (Joshua 24; 2 Kings 17; 1 Cor. 8:5), idols (Lev. 19:4; 26:1; 1 Chr. 16:26; 2 Chron. 34:7; 1 Cor. 10:14; 1 Jn. 5:21), images (Ex. 20:4; Isa. 42:8, 17; 44:15; Jer. 8:19; Rom. 1:23; Rev. 16:2; 19:20), “relics” (2 Kings 18:4), material things (Matt. 16:26; Luke 12:20; Acts 17:29; Col. 3:5), “saints” (Matt. 17:4; Acts 10:25-26), and even angels (Col. 2:18; Rev. 19:10).
God says, “I am YHWH: that is My Name: and My glory I will not give to another … For My own sake, even for My own sake, will I do it: for how should My Name be polluted? and I will not give My glory to another.” – Isaiah 42:8 and 48:11.
With the above in mind, now read the following passages of Scripture concerning none other than Jesus Christ :
1. ” … (the wise men) saw the young child (newborn Jesus) with Mary His mother, and fell down, and worshipped Him (JESUS- not His mother!) … ” MATTHEW 2:11
2. “And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him …” MATTHEW 8:2
3. “Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped Him, saying, ‘It is true You are the Son of God.’” MATTHEW 14:33
4. “And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, ‘All hail.’ And they came and held Him by the feet, and worshipped Him.” MATTHEW 28:9
5. “And when they saw Him (JESUS), they worshipped Him; but some doubted.” MATTHEW 28:17
6. “But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped Him.” MARK 5:6
7. “And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven, and they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy …” LUKE 24:52
8. “And he (a ’sinner’) said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshipped Him.” JOHN 9:38
9. “And again, when (The Father) brings in the First-begotten into the world, He says, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him (JESUS- Psalm 148:2).’” HEBREWS 1:6
10. “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb (JESUS) that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing, And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard, I saying, ‘Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sits on the throne, and unto the Lamb (JESUS) forever and ever. And the four beasts said, ‘Amen.’ And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped Him that lives forever and ever.” REVELATION 5:12-14
There is no way around this fact of Scripture : Jesus Christ is worshipped. God says that He will not share His glory with “another.” Yet those who deny Christ’s Deity must insist that He do just this, because if Jesus is worshipped but is not God Himself, then God has given His glory to “another.” Next time you speak with one who denies that Jesus is God show them the above words penned by Isaiah the prophet. As he/she reads the passage say : “You’ve got a serious problem there, friend!”
Reader, this is the crux of all debates concerning the Deity of Christ : He is worshipped, and that with His Own approval and the approval of the Father. He is often worshipped by Jews in the above passages – Jews who would never deny their monotheistic faith! How much clearer can it get? If this fact alone were all the proof I had for Christ’s Deity, I would be on solid ground.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
Although most often speaking proleptically of Christ in His humanity, the Old Testament contains some very clear passages that set forth His Deity :
1. “(Job speaking) For I know that my Redeemer lives (present tense), and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth (obviously Christ at His second coming- Rev. 21-22): And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God (obviously Christ- John 1:18; 14:9; Rev. 22): Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another (Christ is truly God) … ” JOB 19:25-27
2. “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God (YHWH Himself- cf. Isa. 10:21; 49:26; Jer. 32:18), The Everlasting Father (John 14:9-10; Heb. 3:6), the Prince of Peace (cf. Eph. 2:14) … ” ISAIAH 9:6
3. “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall He come forth (JESUS- cf. Matt. 2:1, 5-6; Luke 2:4; John 7:42) unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel; Whose goings forth (Heb. ‘mowtsa’ah’= a family descent) have been from of old, from everlasting (Heb. ‘olam’= eternity; cf. Ps. 90:2; Jer. 10:10) … ” MICAH 5:2
4. “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me (YHWH): and the Lord, Whom you seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, Whom you delight in: behold, He shall come, says YHWH of Hosts. But who may abide the day of His coming? and who shall stand when He appears? for He is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap (cf. Matt. 3:11) …” MALACHI 3:1-2
PARALLEL PASSAGES
It is a simple matter to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is God Himself by carefully reading certain parallel passages of Scripture:
1. “(YHWH speaking to Moses – v. 5) Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.” EXODUS 17:6
WITH
“(Israel) did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ (cf. Psalm 18:2).” 1 CORINTHIANS 10:4
2. ” … the seventh day is the sabbath of YHWH your God … For in six days YHWH
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them: therefore YHWH blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it (Gen. 2:2-3).” EXODUS 20:10-11
WITH
“For the Son of Man (JESUS) is Lord even of the sabbath day.” MATTHEW 12:8
3. “And YHWH sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people … ” NUMBERS 21:6
WITH
“Neither let us tempt Christ as some of them (Israel) also tempted (cf. Exodus 17:2), and were destroyed of serpents.” 1 CORINTHIANS 10:9
4. “And Manoah said to the Angel of YHWH, ‘What is Your Name, that when Your
sayings come to pass we may do you honour?’ And the Angel of YHWH (God Himself – see vv. 16,22) said to him, ‘Why do you ask My Name, seeing it is secret (or, wonderful – Isa. 9:6)?’” JUDGES 13:17-18
WITH
” … He (JESUS) had a Name written that no man knew, but He Himself.”
REVELATION 19:12
5. “YHWH killeth and maketh alive: He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.” 1 SAMUEL 2:6
WITH
“For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.” JOHN 5:21
6. “But will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? Behold, heaven and the
heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee; how much less this house (the temple) which I (David) have built (Mal. 3:1)!” 2 CHRONICLES 6:18
WITH
“But I (JESUS) say to you, That in this place is one greater than the temple (meaning Himself).” MATTHEW 12:6
7. “But Thou (God – v. 24) are the same, and Thy years shall have no end.” PSALM 102:27
WITH
“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” HEBREWS 13:8
8. “Then (Isaiah) said, ‘Woe is me! for I am undone: because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, YHWH of Hosts.’” ISAIAH 6:5
WITH
“These things (Isaiah) said when he saw His (JESUS) glory, and spoke of Him.”
JOHN 12:41
9. “Sanctify YHWH of Hosts Himself … and He shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel … ”
ISAIAH 8:13-14
WITH
“To you therefore which believe He (JESUS) is precious; but to them which be
disobedient the same is made … a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence (Psalm 118:22; Luke 2:34; Rom. 9:33) … ” 1 PETER 2:7-8
10. “The voice of him who cries in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of YHWH, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’ … And the Glory of YHWH shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together (John 1:14) … ” ISAIAH 40:3,5
WITH
“For (John the Baptist) is he that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord (that is, JESUS- Mal. 3:1; Mark 1:3; Luke 1:16-17; 3:4; John 1:23) … ” MATTHEW 3:3
11. “For I am YHWH your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour …” ISAIAH 43:3
WITH
“But ye denied the Holy One and the Just (i.e., they rejected JESUS) … ” ACTS 3:14
12. “I, even I, am YHWH; and beside Me there is no Saviour (Psalm 3:8; Isa. 45:21-22; Hosea 13:4; John 4:42).” ISAIAH 43:11
WITH
“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is no other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (2 Pe. 3:18).” ACTS 4:12
13. “Thus says YHWH the King of Israel, and his Redeemer YHWH of Hosts; I am the First, and I am the Last; and beside Me there is no God (Isa. 41:4; 48:12).”
ISAIAH 44:6
WITH
” … I (JESUS) am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last …” REVELATION 1:11
14. “For thus says YHWH … unto Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” ISAIAH 45:18, 23
WITH
“That at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow … And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (used in the Gr. OT for Heb. ‘YHWH’) to the glory of God the Father.” PHILIPPIANS 2:10-11
15. “In YHWH shall all the seed of Israel (Rom. 11) be justified, and shall glory.”
ISAIAH 45:25
WITH
“But of (God) are you in Christ Jesus, Who of God is made to us wisdom, and
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; That according as it is written, ‘He that glories, let him glory in the Lord’ (Jer. 9:23).” 1 CORINTHIANS 1:29-30
16. “In His (JESUS – see v. 5) days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is His Name whereby He shall be called, YHWH our Righteousness.” JEREMIAH 23:6
WITH
” … to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness
of God and our Saviour (Grk. = ‘of our God and Saviour’) Jesus Christ (cf. Ro. 10:4; 1 Cor. 1:30).” 2 PETER 1:1
17. “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the Name of YHWH shall be delivered (i.e., ’saved’) … ” JOEL 2:32
WITH
“For whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord (JESUS – v. 9) shall be saved
(cf. Acts 2:21).” ROMANS 10:13
18. “(YHWH speaking) And it shall come to pass in that day … they shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him (note the use of pronouns here) … ” ZECHARIAH 12:9-10
WITH
“(Referring to Christ) And again another scripture says, ‘They shall look on Him
(changed from ‘Me’) Whom they pierced (cf. Rev. 1:7).’” JOHN 19:37
19. ” … YHWH my God shall come, and all the saints with Thee.” ZECHARIAH 14:5
WITH
” … at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints (cf. 4:14; Jude 14).”
1 THESSALONIANS 3:13
20. “I am YHWH, I change not (cf. James 1:17) … ” MALACHI 3:6
WITH
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.” HEBREWS 13:8
21. ” … it is written (in Deut. 32:35), ‘Vengeance is Mine: I will repay, says the Lord
(YHWH) … ‘” ROMANS 12:19
WITH
” … the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels; In flaming
fire taking vengeance … ” 2 THESSALONIANS 1:7-8
22. “Which in His (JESUS) times He shall show Who is (referring to God) the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords … ” 1 TIMOTHY 6:15
WITH
“And He (JESUS) has on His vesture and on His thigh a Name written: KING OF
KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS (cf. 17:14) … ” REVELATION 19:16
The above comparisons (by no means exhaustive) are obvious, clearly revealing that the Lord Jesus Christ is none other than God Himself. Note that in many cases the writers of the New Testament applied Old Testament references to YHWH (God Almighty) to Jesus, showing that Jesus is indeed YHWH Himself.
THE NEW TESTAMENT
1. “And (Mary) shall bring forth a son, and you shall call His Name JESUS (YHWH
Saviour): for He shall save His people from their sins. Now all this was done that
it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet (Isa. 7:14), saying, ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His Name Emmanuel,’ which being interpreted is, God with us.” MATTHEW 1:21-23
2. “You have heard … but I (JESUS) say … ” (2) MATTHEW 5:21-22, 27-28
3. “And, behold, one came and said to (JESUS), ‘Good Master … ‘ … But (JESUS)
said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? there is none good but One, that is, God.”
MATTHEW 19:16-17 (Mark 10:18/Luke 19:19) (3)
4. “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, ‘What do you think of Christ? Whose son is He?’ They said to Him, ‘The son of David.’ (true – see Matt. 1:1) He said to them, ‘How then does David in spirit call Him Lord, saying, YHWH said to my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy footstool (Psalm 110:1)? If David called Him Lord, then how is He (merely) His Son?’ And no man was able to answer Him a word, neither did any man from that day forward ask Him any more questions.” MATTHEW 22:41-45 (Mark 12:35-37/Luke 20:41-44)
5. ” … baptizing (disciples) in the Name (4) (singular) of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit.” MATTHEW 28:19
6. “When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the sick of the palsy, ‘Son, your sins be
forgiven you.’ But there were certain of the sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak blasphemies in this way? Who can forgive sins but God only?’” MARK 2:5-7
7. “Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion on you.’ And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis what great things Jesus (God – Lu. 8:39) had done for him … ” MARK 5:19-20
8. ” … whoever shall receive Me (JESUS), receives not Me, but Him that sent Me.”
MARK 9:37 (Matt. 10:40; Luke 9:48)
9. “And then shall they see the Son of Man (JESUS) coming in the clouds with great
power and glory. And then shall He (JESUS) send His angels (cf. Matt. 13:41 and
24:30-31), and shall gather together His elect (cf. Luke 18:7; John 15:16; Romans
8:33; Col. 3:12; Titus 1:1) … ” MARK 13:26-27
10. “And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud
voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks; and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, ‘Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, except this stranger.’” LUKE 17:15-18
11. “In the beginning (Gen. 1:1) was the Word (JESUS – cf. v. 14; 1 John 5:7 KJV;
Rev. 19:13), and the Word was with God (Gen. 1:26; Isa. 48:16; John 17:5; 1 John 1:1-3), and the Word was God (1 John 5:20). The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made (1 Cor. 8:6; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:15-19). In Him was life (itself – Jn. 5:26); and the life (John 14:6) was the light of men (Jn. 8:12) … That was the True Light (Jn. 3:19; 1 Jn. 1:5), which lights every man that comes into the world (Psalm 36:9; Jn. 8:12; 9:5). He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not (1 Jn. 3:1) … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (Matt. 1:23; 1 Tim. 3:16), [and we beheld His glory (Isa. 40:5; Lu. 9:32), the glory as of the only begotten of the Father (Jn. 17:5)], full of grace and truth (cf. v. 17). John (the Baptist) bore witness of Him, and cried, saying, ‘This was He of Whom I spoke, He that comes after me is preferred before me: for He was before me (John 8:58).’ And of His fulness (Col. 1:19 and 2:9 cp. with 2 Peter 1:3-4) (5) have we all received … No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father (John 3:13 and 8:41), He has declared Him (2 Cor. 4:6). (6) JOHN 1:1-4,9-10,14-16,18
12. “Jesus answered and said to (His disciples), ‘Destroy this temple (i.e., God in flesh!), and in three days I will raise it up (cf. John 10:18 – proves Divinity – see Acts 3:26 and Romans 8:11) … (JESUS) spoke of the temple of His body (Col. 2:9; Heb. 10:20).” JOHN 2:19,21
13. “Verily, verily, I (JESUS) say to you (Nicodemus), ‘We (i.e., the Father and the Son – v. 34) speak (of) that We do know, and testify (to) that We have seen; and you receive not Our witness (1 John 5:7 KJV). If I have told you earthly things, and you believe not, how will you believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man has ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven (see ref.s on #14- Jn. 3:31- below), even the Son of Man which is (present tense – i.e., Christ here claims to be simultaneously present both on earth and in heaven) in heaven.” JOHN 3:11-13
14. “He (JESUS) that comes from above is above all; he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaks of the earth; He that comes from heaven (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 3:13; 6:38,51; Eph. 4:9) is above all (Romans 9:5).” JOHN 3:31
15. “But Jesus answered (the Jews), ‘My Father works hitherto, and I work.’ Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.” (7) JOHN 5:17-18
16. “For as the Father raises up the dead, and quickens them; even so, the Son
quickens whom He will. For the Father judges no man, but has commited all judgment to the Son; that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father (i.e., recognize His Deity). He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father Who sent Him.” JOHN 5:21-23
17. “(Jesus speaking) What and if you shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before?” JOHN 6:62
18. “Then they said to Him, ‘Where is your father?’ Jesus answered, ‘You neither know me, nor My Father: if you had known Me, you should have known My Father also.” JOHN 8:19
19. “And He said to them, ‘You are from beneath; I am from above: you are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore, I said to you that you shall die in your sins: for if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sins.’ Then they said to Him, ‘Who are you?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Even the same that I said to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge of you: but He that sent Me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of Him.’ They understood not that He spoke to them of the Father.” JOHN 8:23-27
20. “Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love Me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of Myself, but He sent Me.” JOHN 8:42
21. “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day (Heb. 11:16): and he saw it, and was glad.’ Then the Jews said to (JESUS), ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Verily, verily, I say to you, Before Abraham was, I am (God’s title – Exodus 3:14).’ Then they took up stones to cast at Him … ” JOHN 8:56-59
22. “‘My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give to them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck out of My hand. My Father, which gave them (to) Me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand. I and My Father are one.’ (8) Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, ‘Many good works have I showed you from My Father; for which of those works do you stone Me?’ The Jews answered Him, saying, ‘For a good work we stone you not; but for blasphemy (cf. Lev. 24:16); and because that You, being a man, make Yourself God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your law: (God) said, You are gods? (Psalm 82:6) If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken; Say you of Him Whom the Father has sanctified, and sent into the world, You blaspheme; because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not. But if I do, though you believe not Me, believe the works; that you may know, and believe, that the Father is in Me, and I in Him. Therefore, they sought again to take Him …” JOHN 10:28-39
23. “When Jesus heard that, He said, ‘This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory
of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” JOHN 11:4
24. “Jesus cried and said, ‘He who believes on Me, believes not on Me, but on Him that sent Me (i.e., God); and he who sees Me sees Him that sent Me.’” JOHN 12:44-45
25. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God, and went to God … ” JOHN 13:3
26. “You call Me ‘Master’ and ‘Lord’; and you say well; for so I am.” JOHN 13:13
27. “Now I tell you before it comes, that, when it is come to pass, you may believe that I am He. Verily, verily, I say to you, he that receives whoever I send receives Me; and he that receives Me, receives Him that sent Me.” JOHN 13:19-20
28. “Do not let your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.”
JOHN 14:1
29. “Jesus says to (Thomas), ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father, but by Me. If you had known Me, you should have known My Father also: and from henceforth you know Him, and have seen Him.’ Philip says to (JESUS), ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.’ Jesus says to (Philip), ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He that has seen Me has seen the Father; how then do you say, Show us the Father?
Believe you not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you, I speak not of Myself: but the Father Who dwells in Me, He does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me … ‘” JOHN 14:7-11
30. “‘And I will pray (to) the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever; even the Spirit of truth; Whom the world cannot receive, because it sees Him not, neither knows Him: but you know Him; for He dwells with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world sees Me no more; but you see Me: because I live, you shall live also. At that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He that has My commandments, and keeps them, it is he that loves Me: and he that loves Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.’ Judas, not Iscariot, says to (JESUS), ‘Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him.’” JOHN 14:16-23
31. “He that hates Me (JESUS) hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they had not had sin; but now they have both
seen and hated both Me and My Father.” JOHN 15:23-24
32. “‘These things have I (JESUS) spoken to you in proverbs: but the time comes, when I shall no longer speak to you in proverbs, but I shall show you plainly of the Father. At that day you shall ask in My Name: and I say not to you, that I will pray (to) the Father for you: for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go (back) to the Father.’ His disciples said to Him, ‘Lo, now You speak plainly, and speak no proverb. Now we are sure that You know all things, and need not that any Man should ask You: by this we believe that You came forth from God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Do you now believe? Behold, the hour comes, yea, and is now come, that you shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone,because the Father is with Me.’” JOHN 16:25-32
33. “And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine Own Self with the glory that I
had with Thee (9) before the world was (John 1:1-2).” JOHN 17:5
34. “And all Mine (JESUS) are Thine (the Father), and Thine are Mine; and I am
glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep through Thine Own Name those whom Thou has given Me, that they may be one, as We are.” JOHN 17:10-11
35. “And Thomas (a monotheistic Jew) answered and said to (JESUS), ‘My Lord and My God!’” JOHN 20:28
36. “And (Jews from the synagogue – 6:9) stoned Stephen, (who was) calling upon God, and saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’” ACTS 7:59
37. “Then Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he has done to Thy saints at Jerusalem: and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all that call upon Thy Name.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Go your way: for he is a chosen vessel to Me, to bear My Name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel; for I will show him what great things he must suffer for My Name’s sake.’ And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared to you in the way as you came, has sent me … ‘” ACTS 9:13-17
38. “The word which God sent to the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus
Christ; [He is Lord of all] … ” ACTS 10:36
39. “And they said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved … ‘ … And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.” ACTS 16:31,34
40. ” … the church of God, which He has purchased with His Own blood.” ACTS 20:28b
41. “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God … For God is my witness, Whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of His Son … ” ROMANS 1:1,9
42. “But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” ROMANS 8:9
43. ” … of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, Who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” ROMANS 9:5
44. ” … For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written (in
Isaiah 45:23), ‘As I live, says the Lord (YHWH), every knee shall bow to Me, and every tongue shall confess to God.’ So then, every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” ROMANS 14:10-12
45. “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which
God ordained before the world, to our glory; which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory (i.e., YHWH Himself – see Psalm 24:7-10; (10) also James 2:1).” 1 CORINTHIANS 2:7-8
46. ” … we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no other God,
but one. For though there be (those) that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth (as there are gods many, and lords many), but to us there is but one God, the Father, of Whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by
Whom are all things, and we by Him.” (11) 1 CORINTHIANS 8:4-6
47. “The first man (Adam) is of the earth, earthy; the Second Man (JESUS) is the Lord from heaven.” 1 CORINTHIANS 15:47
48. “In whom the god of this world (Satan) has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, Who is the image of God, should shine to them.” (12) 2 CORINTHIANS 4:4
49. “And all things are of God, Who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them; and has
committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be reconciled to God.” 2 CORINTHIANS 5:18-20
50. “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship has
righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has he that believes with an infidel? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God; as God has said (in Lev. 26:12 and Isa. 52:11), ‘I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Wherefore, come out from among them, and be separate,’ says the Lord (YHWH), ‘and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters,’ says the Lord Almighty.” 2 CORINTHIANS 6:14-18
51. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich (i.e.,
as Deity – cf. Phil’p. 2:5-11), yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty (i.e., becoming man) might be rich.” 2 CORINTHIANS 8:9
52. “And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the
beginning of the world has been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ (John 1:1-3) … ” EPHESIANS 3:9
53. “He that descended (i.e., from heaven to earth) is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He (JESUS) might fill all things (cf. Eph. 1:23).” EPHESIANS 4:10
54. ” … Christ Jesus, Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be
equal with God (John 1:1); but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, (13) and was made in the likeness of men (John 1:14): and being found in fashion (14) as a man, He humbled Himself (type: John 13:3-5; also see 2 Cor. 8:9), and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God (the Father) has also highly exalted Him (i.e., a reclaiming), and given Him a Name which is above every name: that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11
55. “(JESUS) is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of every creature
(cf. Proverbs 8:22-31): For by Him (JESUS) were all things created that are in
heaven, or in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions,
or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him and for Him (cf. Jn.
1:1-2), (14) and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist (i.e., Jesus
is literally the One Who ‘holds together’ reality! – see Neh. 9:6 and Acts 17:28). And He is the Head of the body, the church; Who is the beginning (Grk. ‘arche,’ signifying His rank, power, and authority), the Firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in (JESUS) should all (the) fulness dwell (i.e., Deity – Col. 2:9) … ”
COLOSSIANS 1:15-19
56. “That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement (Grk. ‘epignosis’ – discern, recognize, become fully acquainted with) of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ (1 Timothy 3:16); In Whom (singular) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” COLOSSIANS 2:2-3
57. “For in (JESUS) dwells all the fulness of the Godhead (Grk. ‘theotes’ – literally, Deity) bodily (cf. John 1:16 and 17 (16) ).” COLOSSIANS 2:9
58. “Now God Himself, and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ (note the grammatical structure), direct our way to you.” 1 THESSALONIANS 3:11
59. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in
Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord (Rev. 21:3; 22:3-4).” 1 THESSALONIANS 4:14-16
60. “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and
Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope.” 1 TIMOTHY 1:1
61. “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, (God was) justified in the Spirit, (God was) seen of angels, (God was)
preached to the Gentiles, (God was) believed on in the world, (God was) received
up into glory (all referring to JESUS!).” 1 TIMOTHY 3:16
62. ” … God and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who (singular) shall judge the quick and the
dead at His (singular) appearing and His (singular) kingdom … ” 2 TIMOTHY 4:1
63. “(God) has in due times manifested His word through preaching, which is commited to me (Paul) according to the commandment of God our Saviour; to Titus, mine own son after the common faith: grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour (cf. 3:4-6).” TITUS 1:3-4
64. “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and
our Saviour Jesus Christ …” TITUS 2:13
65. “God, Who at various times and in different manners spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, Whom He has appointed Heir of all things, by Whom also He made the worlds; Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express (Grk. ‘charakter’ – an exact copy or
representation) Image of (God’s) Person, and upholding all things by the word of His (JESUS) power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; being made so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance (because He is God’s “fellow” – His family relation – see Zech. 13:7) obtained a more excellent Name than they.” HEBREWS 1:1-4
66. “But to the Son (the Father) says (in Psalm 45:6-7), ‘Thy throne, O God, is
forever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom. Thou has loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even Thy God, has anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.’ And (17) (in Psalm 102:25-27), ‘Thou, Lord (YHWH), in the beginning has laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of Thine hands … ‘” HEBREWS 1:8-10
67. ” … consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; Who was faithful to Him that appointed Him (the Father), as also Moses was faithful in all
his house. For this Man (JESUS) was counted worthy of more glory than Moses,
inasmuch as He Who has built the house has more honor than the house. For
every house is built by some man, but He that built all things is God. And Moses
truly was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a Son over His Own house … ” HEBREWS 3:1b-6a
68. “(Melchizedek) without father, without mother, without descent, having neither
beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God … ” HEBREWS 7:3
69. “By a new and living way, which He (JESUS) has consecrated for us, through the
veil, that is to say, His flesh … ” (18) HEBREWS 10:20
70. “Searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them (the OT prophets, proving Christ’s preexistence and equating Him with the Holy
Spirit) did signify … ” 1 PETER 1:11
71. ” … to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the
righteousness of God and our Saviour (Grk. ‘of our God and Saviour’) Jesus
Christ.” 2 PETER 1:1
72. “That which was from the beginning (John 1:1) which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life (JESUS – John 1:1,14) [for the Life was manifested (John 1:14; 1 Tim. 3:16) and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show to you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father (John 1:1-2), and was manifested to us … ” 1 JOHN 1:1-2
73. “Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knows us not, because it knew Him not (John 1:10). Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is … And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins …” 1 JOHN 3:1-2,5
74. “Hereby we perceive the love of God, because He laid down His life for us … ”
1 JOHN 3:16
75. “For there are Three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word (JESUS),
and the Holy Spirit: and these Three are One.” 1 JOHN 5:7 (KJV) (19)
76. “And we know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son
Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life (1 John 1:2).” 1 JOHN 5:20
77. ” … the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.” JUDE 4
78. “To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
both now and forever. Amen.” JUDE 25
79. “‘I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending,’ says the Lord, ‘which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty’ (this is JESUS! – see Rev. 1:11,16-18; 2:8; 21:6; 22:13 – this proves His Deity – Gen. 17:1; Isa. 44:6).” REVELATION 1:8
80. “These shall make war with the Lamb (JESUS), and the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is Lord of lords, and King of kings (see 1 Tim. 6:15!) … ” REVELATION 17:14
81. “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out
of the throne (singular – not ‘thrones’!) of God and of the Lamb … And there shall be no more curse; but the throne (singular) of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His (singular – not ‘their’!) servants shall serve Him (singular – not ‘them’!); and they shall see His face (not ‘their faces’!); and His Name (not ‘their names’! – cf. Zech. 14:9) shall be in their foreheads.” REVELATION 22:1,3-4 (see also 11:15, which uses the same type of grammer)
82. ” … the Lord God of the holy prophets sent His angel … ‘I, Jesus, have sent My angel … ” REVELATION 22:6,16
The above 82 New Testament passages, along with the rest of the evidence submitted, cannot be explained away. Surely all of the passages are not “mistranslations”! I in no way claim to understand everything about “the mystery of Godliness,” for it is truly a mystery to our finite minds. The historic creeds of the Church perhaps go too far in attempting to explain the “mechanism” of the Incarnation. But what is clear from Scripture is that the Father and the Son are distinct, yet both are actually “one” God (the same of course is true of the Holy Spirit as well). Further, Jesus Christ is truly “God manifest in the flesh.” This gets very complex when we are forced by the same inspired scriptures to acknowledge that Jesus Christ was (and is) truly human – He was conceived, born, ate, breathed, slept, wept, and died. But how can One Who is the Immortal God die? I must confess that I have no idea, but I believe it in faith … leaving the “secret things” to the Lord my God (Deut. 29:29).
“A man who can read the New Testament and not see
that Christ claims to be more than a man, can look all
over the sky at high noon on a cloudless day and not
see the sun.” (20)
END NOTES
(1) This is the name of God, as revealed in the Old Testament. Called the tetragrammaton, the Jews left it unpronounced and unwritten, even in transcribed copies of the Scriptures. It has often been translated into English as Yahweh or (I believe incorrectly) as the Germanized “Jehovah.”
(2) A very significant fact often ignored is that while many in the Old Testament spoke on behalf of God, using phrases such as “Thus says YHWH,” Jesus Christ never did this. Instead, Jesus spoke on His Own authority, even when interpreting Divine Law!
(3) Although often used as a proof that Christ was not Deity, such an interpretation will not stand up to close scrutiny for several reasons. First, most sects and teachers using this passage to disprove Christ’s Deity prove too much, as the same sects and teachers would no doubt maintain along with the rich young man that He is indeed “good”. Second, this particular word (Grk. agathos) is used of many things, even by Jesus Himself as a generic term for people who are “good” (Matt. 5:45; 12:35; 13:38; 22:10; 25:21, 23). Third, other words are clearly used of Jesus that would be inappropriate if such an interpretation is correct: hagios (“holy” – Acts 3:14) and dikaios (“just” – Acts 3:14; 7:52; 22:14; and “righteous” – 1 John 2:1) are both used of Jesus, and that with the article (creating a title in each case – i.e., “the Holy One”; “the Just One”; “the Righteous” – this suggests intrinsic qualities). Considering these facts, and also that the passage in question (as well as the parallels in Mark and Luke) contains no direct denial from Jesus but only the question itself, it is more reasonable to regard this as an invitation to recognize Who He really was cast in a teaching style used often by Jesus (cf. Matt. 22:20; 22:42-45 for example). Further support for such an interpretation is to be found in the abundance of Scripture cited in this article as clearly setting forth His true Deity.
(4) The one “Name” has reference to Deity, as is clear from Zechariah 14:9; Acts 10:48; and Revealtion 14:1 compared with 22:4.
(5) A comparison of John 1:12 with 2 Peter 1:3-4 also makes it clear that Jesus Christ is God by nature. To be given the “power to become children of God” is to be made “partakers of the Divine nature” – i.e., Christ’s very nature is Divine – a fact amplified by the above suggested comparison. Also see Ephesians 1:23; 1 Peter 5:1; and Hebrews 6:4.
(6) See the study by this author entitled God Made Visible for a detailed look at the Bible’s teaching on Jesus Christ as the eternal Revealer of God to man.
(7) A casual reading of this verse has led some to believe that the above emphasized statement was the mis-interpretation of Jesus’ words by the Jews. Not so – this is the inspired statement of the Apostle John writing as the Gospel’s author! This establishes once and for all that the title “Son of God” denotes not inferiority (as some have claimed), but equality – hence it is a title of Deity. Therefore, we can add all references to “the Son of God” to this compilation of passages proving Christ’s Deity!
(8) Winkie Pratney notes that the Greek word translated as “one” here is “Not heis, which is masculine, but hen, which is neuter; not one person, but one substance, one essence.” (The Nature and Character of God, Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1988, p. 354 – emphasis mine).
(9) This statement alone means that Christ is Himself Deity. God will not give His glory to “another” according to Isaiah 42:8 and 48:11. Therefore, whatever Christ “is,” He cannot be “another” alongside God.
(10) Psalm 24:10 reads: “Who is this King of Glory? YHWH of Hosts, He is the King of Glory. Selah (i.e., pause to contemplate).” 1 Corinthians 2:8 above, using the accepted principle of “comparing Scripture with Scripture,” clearly identifies Jesus Christ with YHWH Himself by revealing that the One “crucified” was, in fact, “the Lord of Glory.”
(11) Few have carefully considered what Paul here sets forth. Paul is contrasting polytheistic idolatry with monotheistic Christianity. Yet Paul’s monotheism includes one God and one Lord, including Jesus Christ in that identification. Clearly then, given the context of his argument, Paul is describing Jesus Christ as true Deity.
(12) The significance of this claim is that man in general is “in” God’s image and “after” His likeness. In contrast, Jesus Christ is that Divine image!
(13) Both “forms” are parallel. If “the form of a servant” refers to Jesus Christ becoming man (as it obviously does) then “the form of God” must refer to Him being God.
(14) The word here translated (KJV) “fashion” is the Greek word schema, which together with the wording chosen signifies a change in external circumstance.
(15) This fact in and of itself denotes Supreme Deity – cf. Romans 11:36.
(16) These are very important verses, though often neglected. Redemptive grace is our’s by Christ precisely because He accomplished our salvation as Deity. These verses provide the clue to Christ’s infinite worth in redemption, a concept often thought to have no basis in Scripture whatsoever. To receive “of His fulness” (Jn. 1:16) is to “obtain His glory” (2 Thes. 2:14), to be made a “partaker of the Divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The author hopes to soon make this the subject of another article.
(17) The word “and” here clearly identifies what follows as another statement from Father to Son, thereby identifying the Son as YHWH Himself.
(18) The veil concealed God (Lev. 16:2); in equating “the veil” with Christ’s flesh (humanity), the author of Hebrews is claiming that He is Deity in flesh.
(19) Although this verse is much disputed, this author is by no means convinced that it is not genuine. See Michael Maynard, A History of the Debate Over 1 John 5:7-8, Temple, AZ: Comma Publications, 1995.
(20) William E. Biederwolf, quoted by Frank Mead (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations, Westwood: Fleming H. Revell, no date, p. 50
A found good site for you, I like it is http://answering-islam.org.uk/index.html
It seem to me that you don’t understand the divine Claims of Jesus
look at this I hope that you like it answers your questions?
The Assertion of Godhood
J. P. Holding
http://www.tektonics.org/jesusclaims/jesusclaimshub.html
It’s alarmingly simple, and a common suggestion to make: That Jesus either a) never made any claims to deity; b) that His claims were altered by His biased followers; or, c) His claims were misunderstood by His ignorant followers. Do these ideas hold any water?
A related argument in this regard is that only John’s Gospel portrays Jesus as claiming to be God; and since it is later than the Synoptics, the claims are the result of an evolution in Christian theology. Now there is no a priori reason to reject John’s Gospel, or even to date it as the latest of the present quartet. Indeed, John A. T. Robinson in Redating the New Testament and in The Priority of John, presents a cogent argument for dating John in the same time period as the other Gospels, between 50-65 AD, with proto-gospel material and traditions dating into the two decades previous. Others have presented similar arguments for an earlier date for John than is often presumed (see particularly Chars.JDSS, 167-9). A full discussion of the date of the Johannine Gospel is beyond our scope in this essay, but we will, for the sake of argument, not consider most of the claims to divinity in John’s Gospel. For now, at the end of this section, we shall only address one piece of John which is a key to understanding the claims that it includes. (Furthermore, we may not simply reject the record of John’s Gospel because we find it incredible that Jesus should have made such direct claims to divinity – that, indeed, is the very point at issue!)
And what of the Synoptics? The fact is that there are ample recorded claims of divinity by Jesus in the Synoptics, which operate against the assumption that only John shows Jesus making such claims. The divinity claims in the Synoptics give a quite unambiguous statement of what Jesus meant when He made those claims. We do NOT, of course, find the direct claim: “I AM GOD.” That would have been a little too confusing to Jesus’ hearers, and at any rate, would not have been precisely correct, only generally correct. The claims, as we shall see, are more precisely fitting to the proclamation: “Jesus is God the Son; the Wisdom and Word of God” – i.e., the second person of the Trinity, which, ontologically, makes Jesus co-equal with God. Even the NT itself, though it refers to Jesus as God (cf. John 1:1, 20:28), shows a preference for expressing Jesus’ divinity through titles: Word, Savior, Son of God, Lord – and by using language to describe Jesus that is appropriated from OT attributions to Yahweh [OColl.Ch, 144-5]. There were reasons for this, as Brown [Brow.JesGM, 33-4] points out, regarding the hesitation in the NT to directly ascribe the title “God” to Jesus:
The most plausible explanation is that in the earliest stage of Christianity the Old Testament heritage dominated the use of the title ‘God’; hence ‘God’ was a title too narrow to be applied to Jesus. It referred strictly to the Father of Jesus, to the God whom he prayed. Gradually (in the 50s and 60s?), in the development of Christian thought, ‘God’ was understood to be a broader term. It was seen that God had revealed so much of Himself in Jesus that ‘God’ had to be able to include both Father and Son.
Harris [Harr.3Cruc, 99-103] agrees with the above in his own analysis, and adds that there would be a certain “linguistic ambiguity” in directly and always referring to Jesus as God – to wit: What would we make of the verse that said, “the Father was in God, reconciling the world to himself”? For the sake of clarity, the distinction had to be kept foremost in the text. (Harris notes other reasons for the distinction; among them, the need to avoid a misunderstanding of there being two Gods; a need to keep the emphasis upon the humanity of Jesus without expense to His Deity; and in our own time, the problem of our language making “Jesus is God” mean the same thing as “God is Jesus” – which suggests a numerical identity which is NOT part of the total package.)
The claims of Jesus, at any rate, can be understood and interpreted in light of the context and setting in which they were made: first-century Judea. But what of defending the authenticity of these claims as being the words of Jesus, rather than the invention of his followers? Generally, how valid is this idea that Jesus never claimed divinity? Broken down, it can never be more than a rhetorical and speculative argument; until some device is invented to pluck long-enunciated words from the air, we can not prove, or disprove, that any given historical personage prior to recording technology said anything – and even then there is the possible problem of tampering and doctored records. We can’t absolutely prove that Jesus said “Blessed are the meek”; we cannot demonstrate beyond doubt that Julius Caesar said “Et tu, brute”; we can’t even be sure that Henry the Eighth burped right after breakfast! Not all is thought of as this hopeless, of course; but there are those who think that they have solutions to determine “who said what” in hand. Specifically, the Jesus Seminar professes to use certain guidelines to determine what Jesus actually said: One, for example, is that any saying of Jesus that reflects a teaching of the early church is probably not authentic. This is indeed a dubious guideline. Is it not more probable, rather, that the early church based their teachings on the actual sayings of Jesus? Is this not the normal method whereby any person gains a following?
However, there is ample indication that the early church based its doctrine on things Jesus said and did, including His claims to divinity, rather than inventing what He said and did after formulating the doctrines. Craig [Craig.ApIn, 160] reports:
Studies by New Testament scholars such as Martin Hengel of Tubingen University, C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge, and others have proved that within twenty years of the crucifixion a full-blown Christology proclaiming Jesus as God incarnate existed. How does one explain this worship by monotheistic Jews of one of their countrymen as God incarnate, apart from the claims of Jesus himself?
The oldest liturgical prayer recorded, in 1 Corinthians 16:22, is dated at around 55 A.D. It refers to Jesus as Lord. So does the earliest sermon and the earliest account of martyrdom. The authors of the NT epistles, including and especially Paul, even in his undisputed letters, use the language of divine Wisdom with reference to Jesus. The earliest pagan report of the church’s activities indicates that Jesus was worshipped as Lord. Paul’s letters, written between 49 and 65 A.D., exhibit the same fully-evolved Christology; logically, he must have gotten it from sometime earlier than 49 A.D. Paul cites creeds, hymns and sayings of Jesus that must have come from earlier (Rom. 1:3-4; 1 Cor. 11:23; Col. 1:15-16; Phil. 2:6-11; 1 Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:8); these items translate easily into Aramaic and show features of Hebrew poetry and thought-forms, which allows us to trace their origins to Jesus’ first followers in Judea, between 33 and 48 A.D. [More.ScCy, 161-5] All of this leads to the inevitable conclusion that the concept of Jesus as divine quite definitely existed within, at the very least, a decade of the crucifixion, and therefore, was likely to have been asserted before His death by Jesus Himself, as is recorded in the Gospels. Similarly, O’Collins observes [OColl.Ch, 24-5]:
The oldest Christian document shows us Paul repeatedly calling Jesus ‘Christ’ in a way that suggests that, within twenty years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, this comprehensive title for Jesus’ identity and powers was simply taken for granted by Paul and his readers, had practically lost its original significance, and was almost his second (personal) name (1 Thess. 1:1, 3; 5:23, 28). In a notable pre-Pauline formulation, which also goes back to the earliest years of Christianity, ‘Christ’ seems already to have lost much of its titular significance (or messianic expectations) and to be functioning largely as an alternative name for Jesus (1 Cor. 15:3). In his letters Paul uses ‘Christ’ 270 times but never considers it necessary to argue explicitly that Jesus is ‘the Christ’ whom Israel expected.
Moreover, as Charlesworth notes, if the church had invented Jesus’ claims to divinity, they certainly “would have been more explicit” than they are in their present form. [Wilk.JUF, 26] Such a reaction begs a historical explanation, and thus we have every reason to believe that Jesus did claim something very unique about Himself and His relationship to God, to the point of identifying Himself with divinity, and no reason to doubt what is recorded in the Gospels is reliable and accurate – and it is to that issue that we now turn.
You Just Don’t Understand
And now to the next suggestion – that perhaps Jesus did say some or all of the things the Gospels attribute to Him, but that He was misunderstood by his followers. Regrettably, with this objection often comes either some outrageous Eastern/mystical interpretation of the claims of Jesus that would never have held water in Judaism – or nothing at all but the suggestion itself without alternative. (One must, of course, when making this suggestion, one should actually name some alternative interpretations of the claims of Jesus and show that these “alternative interpretations” would hold water within the socio-historical context of the Gospel records.) Nevertheless, this argument can be defeated by critically examining the claims attributed to Jesus by the Synoptics (again, for the sake of argument, ignoring John’s Gospel) and determine what meaning they did have in the context of first-century Judea and Judaism.
We now offer these mini-essays evaluating the claims of Jesus from the Synoptic Gospels. For a broader study, we recommend Glenn Miller’s trinity series also, from which we will also draw here.
Jesus as the Wisdom of God
The Son of Man Title
Use of “Abba”
Use of “I Say Unto You”
The “I Am” claims
Miscellaneous Claims
Creative Followers?
If Jesus never claimed to be divine, and never claimed it in the sense that is indicated in the Gospels, it is reasonable to expect that:
The enemies of Christianity and the early church would have declared that Jesus never made such claims, or was misunderstood. Some did indeed do this, but wrote quite some time after the fact. There is no record contemporary or closely contemporary with Jesus (first century AD) that indicates that He never made any special claims for Himself, or that the church invented the claims. Even after that time, however, the major skeptics of the first several centuries never argued this point. Celsus, for example, said that Jesus called Himself the Son of God, but wrongly. Porphyry, one of the most-feared skeptics in the early church, did not deny Jesus’ claims to divinity, but instead tried to ‘downgrade’ Jesus into a hero-type deity (a third-class deity in the Roman hierarchy!). This adds up to strong evidence that (a) the Jesus-never-claimed-divinity argument had not been advanced by skeptics of the time, and (b) if it was used, perhaps by some skeptic whose works we have totally lost, it was so easily dismissed or so lacked adequate credibility that it could not be used by the best anti-Christian skeptics.
A parallel movement, that acclaimed Jesus as merely a good teacher, would have emerged alongside Christianity. To be sure, there are those such as Burton L. Mack, author of The Lost Gospel, who would have us believe that a such a movement did exist; but conveniently enough, he tells us, it came and went too quickly to leave behind any concrete physical evidence for us to know what happened to them!
As it is, there are no extant texts from the first century, or even from the century thereafter, that represent Jesus as claiming to be only human or only a prophet–He is ALWAYS portrayed as making exalted claims to a super-human status. Later heresies of the church, such as Gnosticism, involved paganistic and/or mystical additions upon what Jesus meant in the Gospels when He claimed to be God; they never denied that He made any special claims about Himself. As we noted previously, the earliest known pagan critic of Christianity to address the issue, Celsus, argued that Jesus did apply the title “Son of God” to Himself, but wrongly [Wilk.ChrRom, 109]; only much later did those critics deny that Jesus made such claims. The argument that Jesus never claimed to be divine is in fact nothing more than an unsupportable conjecture, an argument from silence competing against the scream of the available data. Each of the above claims, and every known document of the church, even the heretical ones, acknowledge that Jesus claimed divinity. There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary that can be cited. Saying that there is no evidence that Jesus claimed divinity can only be managed by ignoring reams of evidence, or by facile dismissal.
And now the final point, which will lead into our essay on the trilemma. If we allow that Jesus’ claims were manufactured by His followers, or that His claims were misunderstood by them, we do nothing more than create a different sort of trilemma! Jesus’ followers were either:
A.Telling the truth, and they knew it;
B.Telling a lie, and they knew it; or,
C.Telling a lie, and they didn’t know it because they misunderstood.
If we choose B), we are left to wonder what motivated Jesus’ followers to begin lying and maintain that lie. They did not benefit at all by claiming that their Master was God incarnate: They were ostracized, criticized, rejected, persecuted, and in many cases martyred. Nor did they make loads of money by claiming what they did – no Jim Bakkers in this crowd! This being the case, we may ask why none of Jesus’ followers cracked under pressure, or got fed up with persecutions and inconveniences, and admitted that the divinity claims by Jesus were a fabrication. We may, of course, speculate that it is possible that Jesus’ followers lied, but there are no signed confessions, no counterclaims by the Pharisees trumpeting the recanting of a disciple of Jesus – nothing. To argue this, we must argue from silence. More than that, we must argue AGAINST the data of their lives and the witness of history. To raise it as a MERE possibility does not constitute advancing evidence for the speculation.
Choosing C) offers a slightly more hopeful refuge for the skeptic. It may be objected that Jesus spoke rather cryptically at times, so that perhaps He truly was misunderstood. But as we have shown in the linked essays, it is hardly plausible that Jesus’ claims were misunderstood; they are too clear-cut when understood in the context of the time and place they were made. Moreover, are there not also degrees of metaphorical difficulty? Some metaphors are easier to understand than others, and some people understand and interpret metaphor better than others! So, how can we be sure that Jesus’ followers didn’t at some point correctly grasp what He was saying? It is only in our modern-day arrogance that we say that they were incorrect, and we, looking down the tunnel of 2000 years, are better qualified to understand (and contrary to evidence!) what Jesus actually said!
Finally, we are told that Jesus DID explain things to His disciples privately after the crowds were gone: “He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.” (Mark 4:34 – this was standard practice for an inner circle of disciples. For a practical example of this, see the Parable of the Sower in Matt. 13.) These, of course, represent the people who wrote (Matthew, John) or else supplied information for (Mark, Luke) the Gospels. And at any rate, many of the claims to divinity are quite direct, and not in the least metaphorical.
Conclusion
Jesus claimed to be God the Son. No matter how hard we try to dissect it or explain it away, the evidence points directly to that most special claim made by Jesus. One must now answer His question: “Who do you say that I am?”
Sources for this Series
Brow.JesGM Brown, Raymond E. Jesus: God and Man. New York: Macmillan, 1967.
Bruc.JLS Bruce, F. F. Jesus, Lord and Savior. Downers Grove: IVP, 1986.
Case.SOM Casey, Maurice. Son of Man: The Interpretation and Influence of Daniel 7. London: SPCK, 1979.
Chars.DSS Charlesworth, James H. Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Doubleday, 1992.
Chars.JesJud Charlesworth, James H. Jesus Within Judaism. New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Chars.JDSS Charlesworth, James H. John and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Crossroad, 1991.
Crai.ApIn Craig, William Lane. Apologetics: An Introduction. Chicago: Moody Press, 1984.
Cross.MedP Crossan, John D. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. San Francisco: Harper, 1991.
Cross.RevB Crossan, John D. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: Harper, 1994.
Cull.CNT Cullmann, Oscar. The Christology of the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959.
deJ.CC de Jonge, Marinus. Christology in Context. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988.
Dunn.CM Dunn, James G. D. Christology in the Making. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
Fluss.JS Flusser, David. Jewish Sources in Early Christianity. New York: Adama, 1987.
Fred.GI Fredriksen, Paula. From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of New Testament Images of Jesus. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1988.
Full.FNC Fuller, Reginald. The Foundations of New Testament Christology. New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1965.
Hare.SOM Hare, Douglas R. A. The Son of Man Tradition. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990.
Harr.3Cruc Harris, Murray. 3 Crucial Questions About Jesus. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994.
Hick.MyG Hick, John, ed. The Myth of God Incarnate. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1977.
Jerem.NTT Jeremias, Joachim. New Testament Theology. New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1971.
Kasp.JC Kaspar, Walter. Jesus the Christ. New York: Paulist Press, 1976.
Lind.SOM Lindars, Barnabas. Jesus Son of Man. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.
Mack.Q Mack, Burton L. The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q. San Francisco: Harper, 1993.
JPM.ScCy Moreland, J. P. Scaling the Secular City. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.
Moul.OC Moule, C.F.D. The Origins of Christology. Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1977.
OColl.Ch O’Collins, Gerald. Christology. Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1995.
Oni.WhoD O’Neill, J. C. Who Did Jesus Think He Was? London: E. J. Brill, 1995.
Sand.HistF Sanders, E.P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. New York: Penguin Press, 1993.
San.JesJud Sanders, E.P. Jesus and Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985.
Schnack.BC Schnackenburg, Rudolf. Jesus in the Gospels: A Biblical Christology. Louisville: Westminster, 1995.
Schoe.PP Schonfield, Hugh. The Passover Plot. Shaftesbury: Element, 1965.
Todt.SOM Todt, H. E. The Son of Man in the Synoptic Tradition. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965.
Verm.JJ Vermes, Geza. Jesus the Jew. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973.
Rom Wilken, Robert. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1984.
Wilk.JUF Wilkins, Michael and J. P. Moreland, eds. Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995.
With.JQ Witherington, Ben. The Jesus Quest. Downers Grove: IVP, 1995.
Youn.JesJT Young, Brad H. Jesus the Jewish Theologian. Peabody, MA; Hendrickson Publishers, 199
CATHOLIC DEFINITION: MESSIAH
The Hebrew word for an anointed person. In Greek, it is christos (christ). The priests, especially the high priest, were anointed (Leviticus 8:12; Exodus 28:41; 30:30), expressing their consecration to God’s service with the responsibilities that came with it.
David,
You can use explanations from the past 2000 years of Christianity. I will only quote what your Bible says and what Jesus himself says:
John 20:17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. 24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: 27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Matthew 12:18 Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall shew judgment to the Gentiles.
Matthew 19:16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? 17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
Matthew 26:39 And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
Matthew 26:53 Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?
Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Mark 35:35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.
Mark 10:17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? 18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
Mark 13:32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Mark 14:36 And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.
Mark 15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Mark 16:19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.
Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
Luke 6:12 And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.
Luke 11:1 And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples. 2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. 3 Give us day by day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
John 1: 18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
John 4:34 Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.
John 6:30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. 36 But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me. 37 And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.
John 6:38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me
John 7:16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.28 Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. 29 But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me.
John 8:42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. 49 Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. 50 And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth.54 Jesus answered, If I honour myself, my honour is nothing: it is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God:
John 12:44 Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. 45 And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. 46 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. 47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. 49 For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.
John 13:3 Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God;16 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.20 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me.
John 14:28 Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
John 17:3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. 4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
John 20:17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
Acts 2:22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:
Acts 5:30 The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. 31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.
Acts 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.
Romans 15:6 That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Corinthians 1:3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;
2 Corinthians 11:31 The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.
Galatians 1:1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) 2 And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: 5 To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
Ephesians 1:17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, 20 Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places
Ephesians 3:14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
Ephesians 4:6 One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
Phillipians 4:19 But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. 20 Now unto God and our Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Colossians 1:3 We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,
1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus
Hebrews 2: 9 But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
Hebrews 3:1 Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; 2 Who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. 3 For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. 4 For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God.
In regards to the temptation of Jesus:
James 1:13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man
1 Peter 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
1 Peter 5:10 But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. 11 To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
1 John 4:12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Revelation 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: 2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. 3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand. 4 John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne; 5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, 6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
Revelation 3:12 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name
Qur’an 5:72,73 They do blaspheme who say: “(Allah) is Christ the son of Mary.” But said Christ: “O Children of Israel! worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.” Whoever joins other gods with Allah,- Allah will forbid him the garden, and the Fire will be his abode. There will for the wrong-doers be no one to help.
They do blaspheme who say: Allah is one of three in a Trinity: for there is no god except One Allah. If they desist not from their word (of blasphemy), verily a grievous penalty will befall the blasphemers among them.
Whom do men say that I am:
Mark 8:27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? 28 And they answered, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. 29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.
I don’t deny that throughout the New Testament that Jesus is called the Son of God, atleast depending on the way it is translated.Adam himself is called the son of God:
Luke 3:38 – Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.
The interesting thing is that different translations will render it as servant of God, Messiah, Christ, etc. The test will be to read it in Aramaic which was the language Jesus and the apostles spoke. My belief when I was a Christian and even now as a Muslim is that Jesus was telling people if you submit yourself fully to the will of God you will be as sons and daughters to Him since he is your Rabb (Lord, sustainer, etc.) and Jesus had fully submitted himself. I base my conclusion on the following verses from the Bible:
John 1:12 – But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Romans 8:14 – For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
Romans 8:19 – For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
Philippians 2:15 – That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;
1 John 3:1 – Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.
1 John 3:2 – Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
I believe Jesus was teaching us what we can achieve if we fully submit our will to God’s will and I see this in fulfillment in the hadith (saying of the Prophet):
Hadith Qudsi 25:
On the authority of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him), who said that the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said: Allah (mighty and sublime be He) said:
Whosoever shows enmity to someone devoted to Me, I shall be at war with him. My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the religious duties I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with supererogatory works so that I shall love him. When I love him I am his hearing with which he hears, his seeing with which he sees, his hand with which he strikes and his foot with which he walks. Were he to ask [something] of Me, I would surely give it to him, and were he to ask Me for refuge, I would surely grant him it. I do not hesitate about anything as much as I hesitate about [seizing] the soul of My faithful servant: he hates death and I hate hurting him.
It was related by al-Bukhari.
And there are other similar sayings:
God saith, “I fulfil the faith of whoso putteth his faith in Me; and I am with him, and near him, when remembereth Me.”
God saith, “Whoso doth one good act, for him are ten rewards; and I also give more to whomever I will; and whoso doth an ill, its punishment is equal to it, or I forgive him; and whoso seeketh to approach Me one span, I seek to approach one cubit; and whoso seeketh to approach Me one cubit, I seek to approach him two fathoms; and whoso walketh towards Me, I run towards him; and whoso cometh before Me with the earth full of sins, and believeth solely in Me, him I come before with a front of forgiveness as big as the earth.”
God saith, “The person I hold as a beloved, I am his hearing by which he heareth, and I am his sight by which he seeth, and I am his hands by which he holdeth, and I am his feet by which he walketh.”
God saith, “O Man! Only follow thou My laws, and thou shall become like unto Me, and then say, ‘Be’ and behold, It is.”
This does not mean we become God but we have fully submitted our wills to Him. I find this with Jesus as well. From everything Jesus says of himself, he is nothing more than a servant and can do nothing of his own will. If he can only do what God commands him, how can he be equal to God?
Rose, In regards to fighting I respond to “But how can we harmonize them with the following texts commanding the use of force in religion?” with the following from the Bible:
Deuteronomy 20
When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God is with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 2 And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, 3 And shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; 4 For the LORD your God is he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. 5 And the officers shall speak unto the people, saying, What man is there that hath built a new house, and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. 6 And what man is he that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not yet eaten of it? let him also go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man eat of it. 7 And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her. 8 And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren’s heart faint as well as his heart. 9 And it shall be, when the officers have made an end of speaking unto the people that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people. 10 When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. 11 And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto thee, then it shall be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. 12 And if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it: 13 And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword: 14 But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee. 15 Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. 16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: 17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: 18 That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God. 19 When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege: 20 Only the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down; and thou shalt build bulwarks against the city that maketh war with thee, until it be subdued.
Joshua 8:24 And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword. 25 And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai. 26 For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai. 27 Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the LORD which he commanded Joshua. 28 And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day. 29 And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until eventide: and as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his carcase down from the tree, and cast it at the entering of the gate of the city, and raise thereon a great heap of stones, that remaineth unto this day.
Joshua 10:20 And it came to pass, when Joshua and the children of Israel had made an end of slaying them with a very great slaughter, till they were consumed, that the rest which remained of them entered into fenced cities. 21 And all the people returned to the camp to Joshua at Makkedah in peace: none moved his tongue against any of the children of Israel. 22 Then said Joshua, Open the mouth of the cave, and bring out those five kings unto me out of the cave. 23 And they did so, and brought forth those five kings unto him out of the cave, the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. 24 And it came to pass, when they brought out those kings unto Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said unto the captains of the men of war which went with him, Come near, put your feet upon the necks of these kings. And they came near, and put their feet upon the necks of them. 25 And Joshua said unto them, Fear not, nor be dismayed, be strong and of good courage: for thus shall the LORD do to all your enemies against whom ye fight. 26 And afterward Joshua smote them, and slew them, and hanged them on five trees: and they were hanging upon the trees until the evening. 27 And it came to pass at the time of the going down of the sun, that Joshua commanded, and they took them down off the trees, and cast them into the cave wherein they had been hid, and laid great stones in the cave’s mouth, which remain until this very day. 28 And that day Joshua took Makkedah, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof he utterly destroyed, them, and all the souls that were therein; he let none remain: and he did to the king of Makkedah as he did unto the king of Jericho. 29 Then Joshua passed from Makkedah, and all Israel with him, unto Libnah, and fought against Libnah: 30 And the LORD delivered it also, and the king thereof, into the hand of Israel; and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein; he let none remain in it; but did unto the king thereof as he did unto the king of Jericho. 31 And Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him, unto Lachish, and encamped against it, and fought against it: 32 And the LORD delivered Lachish into the hand of Israel, which took it on the second day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein, according to all that he had done to Libnah. 33 Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua smote him and his people, until he had left him none remaining. 34 And from Lachish Joshua passed unto Eglon, and all Israel with him; and they encamped against it, and fought against it: 35 And they took it on that day, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed that day, according to all that he had done to Lachish. 36 And Joshua went up from Eglon, and all Israel with him, unto Hebron; and they fought against it: 37 And they took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof, and all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining, according to all that he had done to Eglon; but destroyed it utterly, and all the souls that were therein. 38 And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to Debir; and fought against it: 39 And he took it, and the king thereof, and all the cities thereof; and they smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein; he left none remaining: as he had done to Hebron, so he did to Debir, and to the king thereof; as he had done also to Libnah, and to her king. 40 So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded. 41 And Joshua smote them from Kadeshbarnea even unto Gaza, and all the country of Goshen, even unto Gibeon. 42 And all these kings and their land did Joshua take at one time, because the LORD God of Israel fought for Israel. 43 And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, unto the camp to Gilgal.
1 Samuel 15
1 Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. 2 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. 3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Ezekiel 26
1 And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 2 Son of man, because that Tyrus hath said against Jerusalem, Aha, she is broken that was the gates of the people: she is turned unto me: I shall be replenished, now she is laid waste: 3 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his waves to come up. 4 And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. 5 It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD: and it shall become a spoil to the nations. 6 And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the LORD. 7 For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, a king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, and with horsemen, and companies, and much people. 8 He shall slay with the sword thy daughters in the field: and he shall make a fort against thee, and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee. 9 And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he shall break down thy towers. 10 By reason of the abundance of his horses their dust shall cover thee: thy walls shall shake at the noise of the horsemen, and of the wheels, and of the chariots, when he shall enter into thy gates, as men enter into a city wherein is made a breach. 11 With the hoofs of his horses shall he tread down all thy streets: he shall slay thy people by the sword, and thy strong garrisons shall go down to the ground. 12 And they shall make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy merchandise: and they shall break down thy walls, and destroy thy pleasant houses: and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. 13 And I will cause the noise of thy songs to cease; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more heard. 14 And I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more: for I the LORD have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD. 15 Thus saith the Lord GOD to Tyrus; Shall not the isles shake at the sound of thy fall, when the wounded cry, when the slaughter is made in the midst of thee? 16 Then all the princes of the sea shall come down from their thrones, and lay away their robes, and put off their broidered garments: they shall clothe themselves with trembling; they shall sit upon the ground, and shall tremble at every moment, and be astonished at thee. 17 And they shall take up a lamentation for thee, and say to thee, How art thou destroyed, that wast inhabited of seafaring men, the renowned city, which wast strong in the sea, she and her inhabitants, which cause their terror to be on all that haunt it! 18 Now shall the isles tremble in the day of thy fall; yea, the isles that are in the sea shall be troubled at thy departure. 19 For thus saith the Lord GOD; When I shall make thee a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited; when I shall bring up the deep upon thee, and great waters shall cover thee; 20 When I shall bring thee down with them that descend into the pit, with the people of old time, and shall set thee in the low parts of the earth, in places desolate of old, with them that go down to the pit, that thou be not inhabited; and I shall set glory in the land of the living; 21 I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord GOD.
Leviticus 20
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. 3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. 4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not: 5 Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. 6 And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. 7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God. 8 And ye shall keep my statutes, and do them: I am the LORD which sanctify you. 9 For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him. 10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. 11 And the man that lieth with his father’s wife hath uncovered his father’s nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 12 And if a man lie with his daughter in law, both of them shall surely be put to death: they have wrought confusion; their blood shall be upon them. 13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 14 And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you. 15 And if a man lie with a beast, he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast. 16 And if a woman approach unto any beast, and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. 17 And if a man shall take his sister, his father’s daughter, or his mother’s daughter, and see her nakedness, and she see his nakedness; it is a wicked thing; and they shall be cut off in the sight of their people: he hath uncovered his sister’s nakedness; he shall bear his iniquity. 18 And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people. 19 And thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister, nor of thy father’s sister: for he uncovereth his near kin: they shall bear their iniquity. 20 And if a man shall lie with his uncle’s wife, he hath uncovered his uncle’s nakedness: they shall bear their sin; they shall die childless. 21 And if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless. 22 Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out. 23 And ye shall not walk in the manners of the nation, which I cast out before you: for they committed all these things, and therefore I abhorred them. 24 But I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land, and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and honey: I am the LORD your God, which have separated you from other people. 25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. 26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. 27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.
Numbers 31
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people. 3 And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the LORD of Midian. 4 Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war. 5 So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. 6 And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand. 7 And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. 8 And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. 9 And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. 10 And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. 11 And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. 12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho. 13 And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp. 14 And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. 15 And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? 16 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
I think that says enough. I will continue with what the Bible teaches about women shortly.
Something interesting to think about in regards to Ishmael and Isaac
Deuteronomy 21:15 If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: 16 Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: 17 But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.
What the Bible teaches us about women:
Deuteronomy 21:10 When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the LORD thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive, 11 And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her to thy wife; 12 Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house, and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails; 13 And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife. 14 And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her.
1 Corinthians 14:34 Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. 35 And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.
1 Timothy 2:9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; 10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. 11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. 12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
1 Peter 3
1 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; 2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. 3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; 4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. 5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands: 6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement. 7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
1 Corinthians 11
1 Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. 2 Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you. 3 But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. 4 Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. 5 But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. 6 For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered. 7 For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. 8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man. 9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man. 10 For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels. 11 Nevertheless neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. 12 For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God. 13 Judge in yourselves: is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered? 14 Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? 15 But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering.
I am going to use the Jerusalem Bible only to get my reading in hope that you do the same to keep up. Since you like Hebrew or Aramaic
http://www.innvista.com/culture/religion/bible/versions/tjb.htm
How could you say that Jesus is not God. Look up the world Jesus in Hebrew and you will find Jesus means “God saves”Â. At the annunciation, the angel Gabriel gave him the name Jesus as his proper name, which expresses both his identity and his mission. (Cf. lk 1:31) Since God alone can forgive sins, it is God who, in Jesus his eternal Son made man, “will save his people from their sins”.(Mt 1:21; cf. 2:7) In Jesus, God recapitulates all of his history of salvation on behalf of men.
By the Catechism of the Catholic Church the meaning of Anointing and Messiah
Anointing. The symbolism of anointing with oil also signifies the Holy Spirit, ( 1 Jn 2:20:27;2 Cor 1:21). to the point of becoming a synonym for the Holy Spirit. In Christian initiation, anointing is the sacramental sign of Confirmation, called “chrismation” in the Churches of the East. Its full force can be grasped only in relation to the primary anointing accomplished by the Holy Spirit, that of Jesus. Christ (in Hebrew “messiah”) means the one “anointed” by God’s Spirit. There were several anointed ones of the Lord in the Old Covenant, pre-eminently King David.(Ex 30:22-21; 1 Sam 16:13) But Jesus is God’s Anointed in a unique way: the humanity the Son assumed was entirely anointed by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit established him as “Christ.” (Lk 4:18-19; Isa 61:1) The Virgin Mary conceived Christ by the Holy Spirit who, through the angel, proclaimed him the Christ at his birth, and prompted Simeon to come to the temple to see the Christ of the Lord. (LK 2:11, 26-27) The Spirit filled Christ and the power of the Spirit went out from him in his acts of healing and of saving. (lK4:1;,6:19; 8:46) Finally, it was the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead. Now, fully established as “Christ” in his humanity victorious over death, Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit abundantly until “the saints” constitute – in their union with the humanity of the Son of God – that perfect man “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”: “the whole Christ,” in St. Augustine’s expression.
I am kind of puzzle why are you get confused on the meaning Messiah with the meaning God. I hope this below and above will clear up some miss understanding.
Jesus Christ, the Messiah:
436 The word “Christ” comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah, which means “anointed”. It became the name proper to Jesus only because he accomplished perfectly the divine mission that “Christ” signifies. In effect, in Israel those consecrated to God for a mission that he gave were anointed in his name. This was the case for kings, for priests and, in rare instances, for prophets.29 This had to be the case all the more so for the Messiah whom God would send to inaugurate his kingdom definitively.30 It was necessary that the Messiah be anointed by the Spirit of the Lord at once as king and priest, and also as prophet.31 Jesus fulfilled the messianic hope of Israel in his threefold office of priest, prophet and king.
437 To the shepherds, the angel announced the birth of Jesus as the Messiah promised to Israel: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”32 From the beginning he was “the one whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world”, conceived as “holy” in Mary’s virginal womb.33 God called Joseph to “take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit”, so that Jesus, “who is called Christ”, should be born of Joseph’s spouse into the messianic lineage of David.34
438 Jesus’ messianic consecration reveals his divine mission, “for the name ‘Christ’ implies ‘he who anointed’, ‘he who was anointed’ and ‘the very anointing with which he was anointed’. The one who anointed is the Father, the one who was anointed is the Son, and he was anointed with the Spirit who is the anointing.’”35 His eternal messianic consecration was revealed during the time of his earthly life at the moment of his baptism by John, when “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power”, “that he might be revealed to Israel”36 as its Messiah. His works and words will manifest him as “the Holy One of God”.37
439 Many Jews and even certain Gentiles who shared their hope recognized in Jesus the fundamental attributes of the messianic “Son of David”, promised by God to Israel.38 Jesus accepted his rightful title of Messiah, though with some reserve because it was understood by some of his contemporaries in too human a sense, as essentially political.39
29 Cf. Ex 29:7; Lev 8:12; 1 Sam 9:16; 10:1; 16:1,12-13; 1 Kings 1:39; 19:16.
30 Cf. Ps 2:2; Acts 4:26-27.
31 Cf. Isa 11:2; 61:1; Zech 4:14; 6:13; Lk 4:16-21.
32 Lk 2:11.
33 Jn 10:36; cf. Lk 1:35.
34 Mt 1:20; cf. 1:16; Rom 1:1; 2 Tim 2:8; Rev 22:16.
35 St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3,18,3:PG 7/1,934.
36 Acts 10:38; Jn 1:31.
37 Mk 1:24; Jn 6:69; Acts 3:14.
38 Cf Mt 2:2; 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30; 21:9,15.
39 Cf. Jn 4:25-26; 6:15; 11:27; Mt 22:41-46; Lk 24:21.
440 Jesus accepted Peter’s profession of faith, which acknowledged him to be the Messiah, by announcing the imminent Passion of the Son of Man.40 He unveiled the authentic content of his messianic kingship both in the transcendent identity of the Son of Man “who came down from heaven”, and in his redemptive mission as the suffering Servant: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”41 Hence the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross.42 Only after his Resurrection will Peter be able to proclaim Jesus’ messianic kingship to the People of God: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.”43
40 Cf. Mt 16:16-23.
41 Jn 3:13; Mt 20:28; cf. Jn 6:62; Dan 7:13; Isa 53:10-12.
42 Cf. Jn 19:19-22; Lk 23:39-43.
43 Acts 2:36.
528 The Epiphany is the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Savior of the world. The great feast of Epiphany celebrates the adoration of Jesus by the wise men (magi) from the East, together with his baptism in the Jordan and the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee.212 In the magi, representatives of the neighboring pagan religions, the Gospel sees the first-fruits of the nations, who welcome the good news of salvation through the Incarnation. The magi’s coming to Jerusalem in order to pay homage to the king of the Jews shows that they seek in Israel, in the messianic light of the star of David, the one who will be king of the nations.213 Their coming means that pagans can discover Jesus and worship him as Son of God and Savior of the world only by turning towards the Jews and receiving from them the messianic promise as contained in the Old Testament.214 The Epiphany shows that “the full number of the nations” now takes its “place in the family of the patriarchs”, and acquires Israelitica dignitas215 (is made “worthy of the heritage of Israel”).
212 Mt 2:1; cf. LH, Epiphany, Evening Prayer II, Antiphon at the Canticle of Mary.
213 Cf Mt 2:2; Num 24:17-19; Rev 22:16.
214 Cf Jn 4 22; Mt 2:4-6.
215 St. Leo the Great, Sermo 3 in epiphania Domini 1-3, 5: PL 54, 242; LH, Epiphany, OR; Roman Missal, Easter Vigil 26, Prayer after the third reading.
529 The presentation of Jesus in the temple shows him to be the firstborn Son who belongs to the Lord.216 With Simeon and Anna, all Israel awaits its encounter with the Savior-the name given to this event in the Byzantine tradition. Jesus is recognized as the long-expected Messiah, the “light to the nations” and the “glory of Israel”, but also “a sign that is spoken against”. The sword of sorrow predicted for Mary announces Christ’s perfect and unique oblation on the cross that will impart the salvation God had “prepared in the presence of all peoples”.
261 Cf. Mk 4:33-34.
535 Jesus’ public life begins with his baptism by John in the Jordan.228 John preaches “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”.229 A crowd of sinners230 – tax collectors and soldiers, Pharisees and Sadducees, and prostitutes- come to be baptized by him. “Then Jesus appears.” The Baptist hesitates, but Jesus insists and receives baptism. Then the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, comes upon Jesus and a voice from heaven proclaims, “This is my beloved Son.”231 This is the manifestation (“Epiphany”) of Jesus as Messiah of Israel and Son of God.
228 Cf. Lk 3:23; Acts 1:22.
229 Lk 3:3.
230 Cf. Lk 3:10-14; Mt 3:7; 21:32.
231 Mt 3:13-17.
540 Jesus’ temptation reveals the way in which the Son of God is Messiah, contrary to the way Satan proposes to him and the way men wish to attribute to him.244 This is why Christ vanquished the Tempter for us: “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sinning.”245 By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert.
244 Cf Mt 16:2 1-23.
245 Heb 4:15.
590 Only the divine identity of Jesus’ person can justify so absolute a claim as “He who is not with me is against me”; and his saying that there was in him “something greater than Jonah,. . . greater than Solomon”, something “greater than the Temple”; his reminder that David had called the Messiah his Lord,371 and his affirmations, “Before Abraham was, I AM”, and even “I and the Father are one.”372
371 Cf. Mt 12:6, 30, 36, 37, 41-42.
372 Jn 8:58; 10:30.
674 The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel”, for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus.569 St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.”570 St. Paul echoes him: “For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?”571 The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles”,572 will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, in which “God may be all in all”.573
569 Rom 11:20-26; cf. Mt 23:39.
570 Acts 3:19-21.
571 Rom 11:15.
572 Rom 11:12, 25; cf. Lk 21:24.
573 Eph 4:13; 1 Cor 15:28.
“Now, I’m not going to get into a pointless argument about whether or not this asinine statement is more or less irresponsible ”
The statement isn’t asinine at all. You are asinine. With the Kabba gone, Islam would be gone. No Kabba, no Islam. I’m not saying they should do it, but it is the clearest and esiest resolution of the entire problem of extremist Muslims. You can’t be an extremist Muslim if the Muslim temple is nothing but cinders.