• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

The idolatry of Christianity

Muffled

Jesus in me
There is nothing in the Tanakh that necessitates a belief in a messianic figure in order to be "saved". Yes, messiahs are predicted but that's not the same.

Nor do I interpret the Bible in a literalistic manner, because doing as such would make no sense, imo. Plus, if one took that perspective, Jesus could not be the messiah because all the prophecies haven't been fulfilled as even Aquinas noted.

Also, it makes not one iota of sense to view the scriptures as being inerrant as the Church never believed as such. It was only a reaction to "modernism" that some Protestant denominations began to teach that the scriptures are as such, and that didn't occur until the 19th century.

Finally, why would it take millions of years to pass before a messianic figure could emerge? Didn't God care for anyone before then? And what about people even today who couldn't even tell you who Jesus was? Are they somehow condemned for not even knowing?

I believe that was because God was not saving people by grace in the Tanakh.

I don't believe you can consider it all fantasy or symbolic. That would be highly unreasonable.

I believe for me that does not mean that there are no errors only that it is all that God wished it to be and God doesn't make mistakes.

I believe Jesus came in the fullness of time ie He came when it mattered the most. I believe God cared enough to provide the ten commandments.

I believe there is no such person. The Gospel has gone out to everyone.
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
All scripture was written by sinful men.

I believe the New Testament was written by spirit filled men and certainly some of the old testament was written by men hearing directly from God and the rest wrote by the inspiration of God.
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
Nice try, but John 3:16 is for all people, including Jews.

I believe the old covenant is everlasting but the new covenant also includes Jews who wish to be saved. So then a Jew will have both the old and new covenant. Needless to say though that there are some aspects of the new covenant that supersede the old one.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
I believe the New Testament was written by spirit filled men and certainly some of the old testament was written by men hearing directly from God and the rest wrote by the inspiration of God.

The OT was written after the Babylonian Exile and constantly redacted and amended. I'm afraid you are oblivious to the politics involved. Judah hated Israel for most of their history.

Gross exaggeration takes its toll on credibility.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
I believe the old covenant is everlasting but the new covenant also includes Jews who wish to be saved. So then a Jew will have both the old and new covenant. Needless to say though that there are some aspects of the new covenant that supersede the old one.

The problem with the covenant is that Abraham and Moses are fiction as is the Exodus, Joshua's wars, the Flood and Adam and Eve. They borrowed those myths from other cultures to give themselves an identity and history. They were unaffiliated Canaanites.. Does killing people and stealing their land sound like God to you?
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
Yes, I liked the book but I had a problem with the fact that he so often just kept repeating himself to the point whereas it was getting quite boring. I stuck through it nevertheless

I was turned on to his book because if was so often quoted in Benedict's 'Jesus of Nazareth.'

By chance did you read the book "The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600)" by Jaroslav Pelikan? It's 400+ pages of fine print and tedious reading, but what I really like about this book is that he heavily documents his points through the early writings, and the only book that I liked better dealing with the early Church is Dr. Hanson's (Anglican) "Tradition In the Early Church", which is worth it's weight in gold, imo, as it also is heavily documented. .

I have been through many heavily documented books, Kung, Rahner, Brown, Ratzinger etc., and for me they served the purpose of reconciling faiith and knowledge,but now at this age I find I prefer feeding for the soul.
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
The problem with the covenant is that Abraham and Moses are fiction as is the Exodus, Joshua's wars, the Flood and Adam and Eve. They borrowed those myths from other cultures to give themselves an identity and history.

What is important here is the intent the author wished to convey using myth as the vehicle.
 

Spartan

Well-Known Member
Does killing people (i.e. the Canaanites) and stealing their land sound like God to you?

Absolutely, when the Canaanites were killing their own babies and engaging in idolatry, incest, bestiality, etc., etc.

The Sins of the Canaanites

https://www.equip.org/article/killing-the-canaanites/

But hey - let the baby-butchering Canaanites live and thrive to butcher some more! That's the liberal way! Screw God and save the butchers! Go Sooda!!
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
and for me they served the purpose of reconciling faiith and knowledge,but now at this age I find I prefer feeding for the soul.
I hear ya because that's more where I'm at as well, especially ever since my conversion back into the Church. I'm now more into Catholic magazines (America, Commonweal, and Catholic Digest) than with the books. However, I still do enjoy the theology, especially dealing with the early Church that had led to my studies in historical Judaism a few decades ago that led me to conversion to Judaism (not messianic) for over 20 years.

BTW, I'm restarting my involvement with the RCIA program this fall, so I'm looking forward to that.
 

sooda

Veteran Member
Absolutely, when the Canaanites were killing their own babies and engaging in idolatry, incest, bestiality, etc., etc.

The Sins of the Canaanites

https://www.equip.org/article/killing-the-canaanites/

But hey - let the baby-butchering Canaanites live and thrive to butcher some more! That's the liberal way! Screw God and save the butchers! Go Sooda!!

The Jews were just another Canaanite tribe that had no land or affiliations.
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
BTW, I'm restarting my involvement with the RCIA program this fall, so I'm looking forward to that.

Glad to hear that. That's quite a commitment, I know how involved that program is, but so worth the effort. And very rewarding knowing it dates back to the early 3rd cent preparation for baptism. The catechumenate lasted for three years. The sacrament of Baptism was administered during the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Glad to hear that. That's quite a commitment, I know how involved that program is, but so worth the effort. And very rewarding knowing it dates back to the early 3rd cent preparation for baptism. The catechumenate lasted for three years. The sacrament of Baptism was administered during the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.
Yep, and they had to leave the service at "halftime" because they could not participate in the Eucharist, plus they used to have to present a public confession, which eventually got discontinued and went to private confession, and I think we can figure out why that change was made. Then, before they could be admitted, they had to sit near the back wearing clothes with their hair in an unkempt manner, plus they had to have a sponsor who knew them to vouch for their sincerity to come into the Church. We have to remember that the Church was often being persecuted prior to Constantine.

BTW, I was involved with the beginning application of the RCIA here in the Midwest as I represented my church down in Dayton, Ohio that involved several days of how it was to be implemented. At that same conference I ran into a guy who was the priest for the two lay missionaries and two nuns raped in murdered in El Salvador, and we got so involved into discussing this that we skipped the next meeting. He invited me to volunteer working at the mission down there for the following summer but I couldn't because I had a job teaching summer school then. He was a truly interesting man, let me tell ya.
 

pearl

Well-Known Member
Yep, and they had to leave the service at "halftime" because they could not participate in the Eucharist,

Do they not still do that?

BTW, I was involved with the beginning application of the RCIA here in the Midwest as I represented my church down in Dayton, Ohio that involved several days of how it was to be implemented.

By any chance was the conference held at the University of Dayton? Only reason I am familiar with the university I took several on line courses which my parish paid half the tuition.

. At that same conference I ran into a guy who was the priest for the two lay missionaries and two nuns raped in murdered in El Salvador,

Wasn't that the reason John Paul II lifted the ban on birth control for nuns going to that area?
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Do they not still do that?
Our parish did for the 14 years I was there before. We have a meeting next Sunday to try and determine what the procedure will be for this upcoming class.

By any chance was the conference held at the University of Dayton? Only reason I am familiar with the university I took several on line courses which my parish paid half the tuition.
No, it was at Bergamo (or something like that), which is a Catholic retreat area.

Wasn't that the reason John Paul II lifted the ban on birth control for nuns going to that area?
That I don't know, but I could see that as a possibility because of "the lesser of two evils" Catch-22 they could be in. They did much the same in areas of sub-Sahara Africa in the past whereas HIV was running rampant, whereas condoms were reluctantly allowed.
 

IndigoChild5559

Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
The Church in the diasporah were not all Gentiles, maybe not even a majority of them until later in the century, as many Jews had already dispersed into cities in the Mediterranean region over time.
You are mistaken. Paul began quite early on deliberately targeting the God-fearers (righteous Gentiles) in the synogogues out in the Empire.

On top of that, Paul met with Peter and the others three times in Acts, all of them being Jews, so one simply cannot in any way dismiss this as just an appeal to Gentiles.
Paul couldn't do just anything he wanted to. He was under James and Peter for example. That doesn't mean Paul's primary mission wasn't to Gentiles.

Also, as you should know, if a male Gentile were to convert into any Jewish branch, he was to be circumcised-- period! The fact that Paul said that doing this would actually be an affront to "the Way" says tons.
Judaism does NOT teach that Gentiles need to become Jews. We teach that Gentiles need only be righteous Gentiles. You guys do not for any reason need to become circumcised and take on the covenant. The early Church agreed with this. Paul agreed with this. It's what the emphasis of every one of his epistles is.


And we know that Jews and Gentiles began to intermarry,
We do? Where in your scriptures does it say this?

Also, if Jesus was just preaching conventional Law then why so many questions addressed to him that includes the hostility we read?
I have addressed this over and over and over in my writings here in this forum. The back and forth between Jesus (of bet Hillel) and the Pharisees of bet Shammai was typical. It was quite normal for the two schools to have these sorts of question and answers sessions, to argue, to have sincere disputes. It was the rage at this time in Jewish history. We have plenty of examples of this in the Talmud. There is nothing exceptional about what happened between Jesus and the other Pharisees.

I would like to recommend the following book by Orthodox Rabbi Harvey Falk: Jesus the Pharisee--A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus


Actually most scholars I've read believe there were more than two schools.
I don't know about this, and I certainly don't know about "most scholars". Perhaps you are referring to groups beyond the Pharisees such as the Essenes. But the Pharisees themselves, there were only two groups that historically matters: bet Hillel and bet Shammai.

Also, Jesus did not line up with Hillel because Hillel still taught that the letter of the Law was still important to follow, although he did allow more flexibility than the Shammai school did. Obviously, there were other areas of disagreements between them as well.
What makes you think Jesus was against keeping the letter of the law? You have to keep the letter of the law if you are going to keep its spirit.

Finally, in order for Jesus to have even been a footnote in Jewish history,
Jesus is not even a minor footnote in Jewish history. None of his ideas about Torah were original. In a word, he simply didn't contribute anything of not to Judaism. What's worse, his followers took what he said, and perverted it away from an obedience centered thing to a whole theology centered thing to start a new religion that was hostile to his own Judaism.

Put simply, the Twelve gradually walked away from the Law
You never were able to prove this.
 

Desert Snake

Veteran Member
You are mistaken. Paul began quite early on deliberately targeting the God-fearers (righteous Gentiles) in the synogogues out in the Empire.

Paul couldn't do just anything he wanted to. He was under James and Peter for example. That doesn't mean Paul's primary mission wasn't to Gentiles.

Judaism does NOT teach that Gentiles need to become Jews. We teach that Gentiles need only be righteous Gentiles. You guys do not for any reason need to become circumcised and take on the covenant. The early Church agreed with this. Paul agreed with this. It's what the emphasis of every one of his epistles is.


We do? Where in your scriptures does it say this?

I have addressed this over and over and over in my writings here in this forum. The back and forth between Jesus (of bet Hillel) and the Pharisees of bet Shammai was typical. It was quite normal for the two schools to have these sorts of question and answers sessions, to argue, to have sincere disputes. It was the rage at this time in Jewish history. We have plenty of examples of this in the Talmud. There is nothing exceptional about what happened between Jesus and the other Pharisees.

I would like to recommend the following book by Orthodox Rabbi Harvey Falk: Jesus the Pharisee--A New Look at the Jewishness of Jesus


I don't know about this, and I certainly don't know about "most scholars". Perhaps you are referring to groups beyond the Pharisees such as the Essenes. But the Pharisees themselves, there were only two groups that historically matters: bet Hillel and bet Shammai.

What makes you think Jesus was against keeping the letter of the law? You have to keep the letter of the law if you are going to keep its spirit.

Jesus is not even a minor footnote in Jewish history. None of his ideas about Torah were original. In a word, he simply didn't contribute anything of not to Judaism. What's worse, his followers took what he said, and perverted it away from an obedience centered thing to a whole theology centered thing to start a new religion that was hostile to his own Judaism.

You never were able to prove this.
That is some hilarious stuff.:D
 
Top