Replies

First, to get it out of the way, the verse that was originally cited is the following (no doubt you are familiar, just repeating for the sake of my post) -

1 John 2:22 Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

Adding the articles "an" or "the" (as was done in previous posts) before antichrist distorts the point, imo. The word antichrist simply means against the messiah. Are Jews against the Christian messiah? Absolutely. They of course do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah; therefore, according to John, they are anti-----Christ. But they are of course not THE antichrist, the prophetic extrapolation of the word taken in a modern sense to mean the end times villian worshiped by the world. One additional note - as Jael pointed out, Jews do not deny the Father, so it can maybe be argued that they do not fit the specific criteria of antichrist as in the verse. And of course, you and I disagree as to whether Muslims do.

That said, back to Allah vs Jehovah - how different do two things have to be before they are defined as different? I see no valid means to call Allah the same as the God of Christians. If one acts differently than the other, if one teaches differently than the other, how are they at all the same? In fact, that's a good question - based on the Koran and the Bible, I'd be interested to see references from each that indicate that Allah and God are at all the same.

It is not about Islamic perception vs Christian perception, and a comparison between Calvinists and Muslims is a poor one. First of all, the issues dividing Calvinists from say, Arminians, are that of interpretation of the same text. Not so with Islam. The Koran and the Bible are two different texts with widely divergent teachings.

To further explain, answer this question - do you, despite your disagreement with some of what John Calvin taught, believe that both he and you are bound for heaven based on your shared views of the gospel and the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ?

If your answer is yes, can you say the same for Muslims?

I think you have a misunderstanding of the discussion at hand as it now stands. Jael cited 1 John 4:3 and 2 John 1:7 as "proof texts" for her contentions that Islam is a satanic religion (there is, at least IMO, a very strict difference between a satanic religion and simply a misguided one) and should be regarded as evil and as such destroyed, presumably through a military means.

She also said:

"They say that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God come in the flesh."

While Muslims do not believe that Jesus is God's son anymore than anyone else is, they most assuredly and explicitly do believe that He came in the flesh. Of course, she also believes that modern Jews believe that God has a son because of a verse in Proverbs that seems to imply that, something that I can guarantee with 99% certainty is not the case.

"They of course do not believe that Jesus is the Messiah; therefore, according to John, they are anti-----Christ."

Without turning this into a discussion about Judaism, my contention was simply that Muslims believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah (though not a Deity) and did come in the flesh, which is a good deal more than most Jews are willing to concede. This tends to lead me to believe that Islam is further along in its conception of the Messiah and Judaism (i.e. closer to the truth) and thus more open to receive the gospel than Judaism, which explicitly denies that Jesus was the Messiah.

"That said, back to Allah vs Jehovah - how different do two things have to be before they are defined as different?"

This is a rather tough question, which is one of the reasons why I defer to the Pope's judgement on the matter. While I recognize that this may not be applicable to you if you are not Catholic, the way I have always viewed is that Muslims, regardless of whatever nutty ideas they may have about God, claim to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This, speaking quite simply, is Yahweh.

More to the point, I would say that there is a great deal of difference between say the Calvinist conception of God, that of the liberal antinomian Christians like Episcopal Bishop Spong, and my own. While I think that Spong is a first-rate heretic and would love to see the man regarded as such run out of the Episcopal Church on a rail, I still believe that he worships the same God that I do, just as when the Pharisees and Sadducees worshipped at the Temple, they unknowningly were worshipping the same God that they conspired to crucify.

"In fact, that's a good question - based on the Koran and the Bible, I'd be interested to see references from each that indicate that Allah and God are at all the same."

Any chance we can take a rain check on this? I'm going to see the midnight viewing of LOTR and hence do not have the time to compile such a list.

"It is not about Islamic perception vs Christian perception, and a comparison between Calvinists and Muslims is a poor one. First of all, the issues dividing Calvinists from say, Arminians, are that of interpretation of the same text. Not so with Islam. The Koran and the Bible are two different texts with widely divergent teachings."

I still think it's a fair one because even within Islam there are quite a few differences over the perception of God, some closer to the Christian perception, others further away. Failure to acknowledge multiple interpretations of the same text within Islam is one of the biggest fallacies that numerous Freepers have made when it comes to understanding the religion.

As far as the issue of differences of opinion over the same text versus that of two separate texts, I imagine that adherents of the Hanafiyyah sect would argue that several of the verses from the Qur'an need not be taken literally, anymore than Christians take Jesus's "if your eye causes you to sin ..." literally. And if one sect comes up with a method of exegesis that allows them to frame a perception of God similar to that of our own and claim that they are worshipping our God, why should we fail to acknowledge them on this fact?

More to the point, how "similar" do the beliefs have to be before you would acknowledge them as worshipping the same God?

Take the Calvinist-Arminian differences which you brought up. The classical Calvinist perception of God, as codified in TULIP (ask if you need an explanation), is extremely different from that of Arminians. Yet Arminians acknowledge the Calvinists as worshipping the same God because the two schools share the same Bible? That's fine, except when you get into the fact that say ... the Ethiopian Orthodox Church comes to the same conclusion as the Arminians and the Jehovah's Witnesses come to a conclusion similar to that of the Calvinists (we're talking about perceptions of God, not the Trinity here). This is part of the dilemma and if you start defining whether or not someone worships Yahweh based on whether or not they use the Bible you run into a huge divide because you're ultimately setting an arbitrary standard based on how "similar" the two perceptions are.

Also, Judaism is not just the Torah but also the Talmud and some Jews take their canon quite a bit further than that.

"To further explain, answer this question - do you, despite your disagreement with some of what John Calvin taught, believe that both he and you are bound for heaven based on your shared views of the gospel and the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ?"

Whether or not Calvin ended up in heaven is between him and God, not me. The man did a great deal of evil in his life, IMO, and I am in no position to judge the state of his soul.

"If your answer is yes, can you say the same for Muslims?"

I am somewhat hesitant to answer this question because it would lead to a potential flame-filled discussion of my orthodox (Catholic) views on soteriology, which is quite a different topic altogether from that which I desired to convey in this thread: i.e. that _all_ Muslims are not the enemy and that some are indeed our active allies in the War on Terror. The question of their salvation doesn't factor into this equation, IMO, and here again I am in no real position to judge any of them because I view their salvation as being between them and God. However, if you want I can explain Catholic doctrine concerning soteriology and you can feel free to draw your own conclusions from that.