Posted on 01/13/2013 5:50:21 PM PST by daniel1212
How could Mohammad have met any Christians other than Catholics since the Catholics claim that there have been no other Christians since Christ? They claim that until after the Reformation there were no others who would have considered themselves Christian.
You have to remember that the definition of a Catholic changes depending upon what is needed to defend Rome.
Often we have been chastened for using "Roman Catholic" or abbreviations because there is only one Catholic faith, while here i purposely simply said "Catholic" and that results in a protest as being too inclusive.
Normally I post the reference but people can look up this gobbledygook discussion. "Claiming to be wise they become fools" comes to mind. I'm not going to spread false doctrine.
PS-Before our dear Catholic friends respond, please let me know if you actually believe in Christ paying the price for your sins on the cross. You will be an exception.
How interesting. I hadnt known that. Thank you.
Interesting.
The old time religion in Egypt had a mother and child motif. Sounds familiar doesn’t it. Well, take it away Osiris
It sure does.
This is not unexpected, as the devil knows the Bible, and is an imitator (and all faiths hold to come commonalities), but which does not make the Bible the one that is doing the imitating:
http://www.tektonics.org/copycathub.html
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/copycat.html
You are using a more generous notion of “conquer” than the narrow this-worldly overcome by force of arms notion the article is using.
Whether you accept the Latin notion of catholicity (what most English speakers mean when they casually use the word “Catholic” and read it back through Church history) or the Orthodox notion (that we are the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and catholicity is sobornosty, not just universality), there were plenty of Christians in Mohammed’s time who were not in communion with either Rome or Constantinople (which at that time were still in communion, the Popes of Rome not yet having deviated from the Holy Orthodox Faith by accepting the heresy of the dual procession of the Holy Spirit): there were residual Arian and gnostic heretics (for example the Lombards were still Arians), the Assyrian “Church of the East” had broken communion with the rest of the Church by rejecting the condemnation of Nestorius in 431, the various Monophysite churches (the Copts, Ethiopians, and Syrian Jacobites) were out of communion since their rejection of the Council of Chalcedon (451), and the Armenians since their embrace of the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno.
No, the Latins don’t claim to have been the only Christians until the Reformation: they vainly accuse us Orthodox of being schismatics and are recognize all groups I just catalogues (whom the Latins and we Orthodox agree are heretical, but Christian).
Incidentally, Arab Christians I know uniformly hold the tradition that Mohammed was a missionary from the Assyrian Church who went rogue — a position supported by the fact some sections of the Qu’ran are nonsense as Arabic and perfectly good East Syriac, the liturgical language of the Assyrian Church to this day and in those days the main language in what is now Iraq.
Indeed, but force of arms or clever communications; the end is still to rule.
Do their descendants live on this street??
Doubtless some of them did back when the street was named.
Last I checked, quite a number of religions have no desire to rule: we Orthodox Christians were the first to invent a “separation of Church and State”, albeit a cooperative separation called by historians “the Byzantine symphony of powers”, and while we do think the world, mankind and each individual person would be better off were everyone to embrace the Holy Orthodox Faith, imposing it by ruling wouldn’t be all that helpful.
Neither Jews nor Hindus nor Buddhists, all of whom believe theirs to be the true faith seem much inclined to rule the world or impose their faith on others either by force or clever communications (leaving aside the Burmese military that wants to forcibly impose Buddhism on their populace and some Hindu ultranationalists who’d like to forcibly Hinduize all of India). Last I checked most animist sects in Africa have no ambition to spread their faith and practices either by force or proselytizing. The Druze hardly want to spread their creed: you have to be born Druze to be Druze and they have a command in their religion to side with the dominant religion in whatever country they live — hence Lebanese Druze siding with the Christians until the demographic balance shifted and now siding with the Shi’ites, while Israeli Druze actually fight in the IDF (and are the only Arab Israelis allowed to do so).
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