Calvinism's Similarities to Islam

http://www.freewill-predestination.com/islam.html ^ | David Bennett

[muawiyah]

Even the Pope himself signed the Treaties of the Peace of Westphalia.

Get over it.

[rzman21]

I’m over it. You were the one who chose to waive the bloody shirt. :)

[muawiyah]

Jean de Brébeuf was far more important ~ he was actually tortured to death, his heart removed and eaten.

AND he didn't even speak English!

[muawiyah]

I didn't chose anything. You and others had mentioned burning people at the stake earlier. That's why I just posted the Jean de Brébeuf reference.

He actually suffered far more than the folks in Europe who were up against other Europeans who actually treated them kindly in comparison to what you could expect in America.

Notice the dates ~ Brebeuf is about a century later than the guys you're naming. By that time the Europeans had given up religious wars.

The Iroquois were not yet ready to abandoned their most ancient and sacred customs of torturing people.

[netmilsmom]

You’ve been here since September.
Stop being a troublemaker.

God knows we don’t need any more here.

[rzman21]

My nature is trying to get people to think outside the box. I do it for a living.

People need to have their assumptions challenged.

[rzman21]

The essence of my post is the role of faith and reason.

[D-fendr]

Hoss:

"Re-try those blazing reading skills that you profess to have and note that the quote came from justforcatholics.org

If you would try reading there, you'd note that there was NO heading listed as "the Church and non-Christians" -- instead, and oddly, it was under the grouping of paragraph called, The Catholic Position.

If you would read there yourself you'd know that this is not any attempt at the "Catholic Position'; but the website's anti-spin and that 'justforcatholics.org says it is an "evangelical ministry" and is as Catholic as you are.

You did know this before you posted it, right?

We've seen this drive by slam many times and corrected it many times. How about you do it this time, as I suggested before:

Hoss, what is the title for the section of the Catechism you posted?

How about posting the whole section?

Then perhaps look at what the section you posted actually says.

I think that would make an honest post out it.

How about it?

[CynicalBear]

And yet it’s the CC that claims to serve the same god as the Muslims.

# 841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “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.”[330] http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p3.htm#841

[D-fendr]

I'm sorry, my #108 was also a reply to you and meant to ping you..

[rzman21]

Have a good night.

[rzman21]

Pope Benedict XVI on Islam in the Regensburg Address. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question. I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.[1] It was presumably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than those of his Persian interlocutor.[2] The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship between - as they were called - three "Laws" or "rules of life": the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an. It is not my intention to discuss this question in the present lecture; here I would like to discuss only one point - itself rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole - which, in the context of the issue of "faith and reason", I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue. In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".[4] The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.[7] At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry. You have far more in common with Islam than I do.

[CynicalBear]

>> Why are you highlighting something out of context to make a point to the ignorant?<<

ROFL Got that one in cut n paste or something? She posted that one to me to Hoss. Not a deep thinker that one.

[CynicalBear]

Catholics are the ones who are going to become gods also right?

[D-fendr]

Goodness, who would have guessed there were so many Calvinists here, eh?

:)

[D-fendr]

It’s indicative of someone who is insecure in their beliefs when they have to be dishonest about others’.

[CynicalBear]

>> It’s indicative of someone who is insecure in their beliefs when they have to be dishonest about others’.<<

Oh really?

CCC 460 The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature":78 "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."79 "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."80 "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."81

Saint Irenaeus
- “Do we cast blame on him [God] because we were not made gods at our beginning, but first we were made men, then, in the end, gods?’ (Against Heresies 4, 38)

- How then will any be a god, if he has not first been made a man? (Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Clement of Rome to St. Athanasius (London: Oxford University Press, 1956)

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria - “The Word was made flesh in order that we might be enabled to be made gods. . . . Just as the Lord, putting on the body, became a man, so also we men are both deified through his flesh, and henceforth inherit everlasting life.” Athanasius, Against the Arians, 1.39, 3.39.

[WPaCon]

lol best post of the thread.

[D-fendr]

You know how to snippet, what’s not know is if you know how to learn.

Study the councils on the nature of Christ. Constantinople and Nicea declared the divinity of Christ and the Most Holy Trinity. Concepts you may have heard of, but may be only in the same manner of snippets.

The next question before the Church was what happened when the humanity and divinity were united in Christ. This is the topic leading up to the Council of Chalcedon. No one had yet clearly explained what it means to say that the union of God in humanity brings immortality and glory to human nature.

We have then Cyrils Twelve Anathemas against Nestorius (whose teaching we see alive on these threads).

We have a great deal of discussion on the interchange of properties or communicatio idiomatum, we have the Antiochenes and the Alexandrians, Eutyches, the definition of Chalcedon and much much more.

To say of this “Catholics are the ones who are going to become gods also right?” is an embarrassment of ignorance.

You can either be honest and learn what it is you think you are talking about or remain ignorant. Past this point it can only be surmised that it is a willful ignorance.

To use willful ignorance as a point in debate is dishonest. And dishonesty about the other side’s position or beliefs is... yes, indicative of a weakness and insecurity about one’s beliefs.

In this context we have Iranaeus’ maxim in the second century and Athanasius reiteration in the fourth.

[WPaCon]

Stirring the pot with that post.