I'll check those out. Thanks.
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No true Christian?
- Thread starter Harel13
- Start date
PureX
Veteran Member
Group unity is more easily obtained in opposition to an "other" group. This isn't a religious phenomenon, it's a human phenomenon.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
So, is it "the prophetic veracity" or is it "a prophetic veracity"? IOW, iyo, is it possible that there could be "prophetic veracity" within other religions as well?
The Devil is making me do this, btw.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Thanks so much for spending the time for the above as I do very much appreciate it.
Even though I did attend mass as a non-Catholic prior to Vatican II, I would not have converted into Catholicism back then because it simply was way too parochial for me. I did look into it, but I had WAY too many questions. I still do, btw, but I can live with that, thus committing myself to do the best that I can. And as a scientist, not knowing some answers is where we expect to be on so many things, especially since one answer tends to lead to even more questions.
As you know, I have a real problem with the "my way or the highway" approach in theology. When one studies other denominations and religions in some depth, they pretty much all are logical if one buys into their basic premise, as they've had centuries to evolve and make cogent arguments.
Thus, the "bottom line" imo, is are we gonna take the position that only my religion has the Truth? I can't do that.
Terry Sampson
Well-Known Member
Looks like you'd make a poor candidate for membership in the LDSofJC, JW Kingdom, and a good number of Lutheran Synods, right off the top of my head, eh?
- Strange Creeds of Christendom
- Sunday morning session, October 8, 1972; Strange Creeds of Christendom, Elder LeGrand Richards, Of the Council of the Twelve
- Pearl of Great Price - Joseph Smith: "19 I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”
- Richards: "We would not want any of our nonmembers to be offended at this statement, but if Jesus did visit the Prophet Joseph Smith, and we know that he did, then his statement ought to be more authoritative than the statement of any other person in all the world, and yet right along with that come similar testimonies of leaders in other churches in the nation."
- Richards: "We have that of which Peter spoke when he said, following the day of Pentecost, that the heavens must receive the Christ “until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:21.) We are the only church in the world that claims such a restitution, and there is a great difference between a restitution and a reformation. We are not Catholics. We are not Protestants. We believe in a recommitment to this earth of God’s eternal truth."
- Sunday morning session, October 8, 1972; Strange Creeds of Christendom, Elder LeGrand Richards, Of the Council of the Twelve
- https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/wp20100601/How-Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-View-Interfaith/
- How Do Jehovah’s Witnesses View Interfaith?
- "According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, there are some “10,000 distinct religions worldwide.” Because conflicts between them have led to untold hurt, the concept of interfaith brings hope to many worshippers. They believe that it can engender peace and unity in a divided world."
- "The early Christians lived in a multicultural and multireligious world. Yet, when writing about the mingling of different religions, Paul asked: “What portion does a faithful person have with an unbeliever?” Then he warned Christians to “get out from among them.” (2 Corinthians 6:15, 17) Clearly, Paul was speaking against interfaith. Why did he do so?"
- "The apostle explained that spiritual fellowship between one who is a true Christian and one who is not would be an uneven yoke, a misfit. (2 Corinthians 6:14) It could result only in harm to the Christian’s faith."
- "What about today? Is the Bible’s warning against interfaith still valid? Yes, it is. This is because differing religious beliefs cannot bond through interfaith any more than oil and water can mix simply by putting them together in a pot. For instance, when people of different religions come together to pray for peace, which god is being petitioned? Christendom’s Trinitarian God? Hinduism’s Brahma? The Buddha? Or someone else?"
- How Do Jehovah’s Witnesses View Interfaith?
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LOL... I don't want an 80% possibility and find myself thinking that the false 20% was true. I like the 100% security.So, is it "the prophetic veracity" or is it "a prophetic veracity"? IOW, iyo, is it possible that there could be "prophetic veracity" within other religions as well?
The Devil is making me do this, btw.
I remember when a friend said, "Ken, I set the alarm for 2 in the morning and write down what was in my thought... and it comes true. The other day I woke up wrote down, 'fender bender in the front' and it came to pass".
I thought for a minute and then asked... "what side". He smiled, well it was on the left side in the dream but it happened on the right side of the car". The devil is a liar from the beginning and the best lie is the one that looks the most like the truth. He was being led down a wrong path as he was seeking dreams instead of God.
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metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
You got dat right!
BTW, the church I left back in my mid 20's was a fundamentalist Lutheran church, but the irony is that they are quite liberal today-- ELCA.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
I'm not certain there much of anything within a religious context that's 100% certain. "Belief", yes; "certainty", not much with me.I don't want an 80% possibility and find myself thinking that the false 20% was true. I like the 100% security.
Hey, once in a while I tell the truth!
The irony is that dreams used to be considered within many religious contexts to be a "window" ("visions") for us from God. I don't really believe that, especially with some of the dreams I've had.
However, I never much believed in "premonitions" until...Terry Sampson
Well-Known Member
Ha! "fundamentalist"??? they were liberal heretics when they "rebelled against" the one true church (Missouri Synod) around 1970.
My father was a pastor in Missouri Synod and remained in it during the MS-ELCA split. He was opposed to the split and was deemed an "ELCA sympathizer" by his MS brethren and a "lukewarm MS proponent" by his former brethren among the ELCA rebels.
My brothers and I were in our late teens-early 20s when the split between the original ELCA and MS occurred. I well remember my father's grief over it.
This is the big issue that all Faiths in God suffer from.
God gives the means for man to turn to God in a unity and peaceful worship, thereby bringing balance and security to this world and this requires sacrafice of selfish motives for the good of all.
Many men desire such power over their fellow men and their desires become their God, where they see they have a better way.
God's Word becomes a plaything for the ignorant and who wants to find out they have become ignorant? Thus the cycle continues.
Regards Tony
Arguably, not all faiths in the same way that I described in my OP.
I have heard Christians use the same argument, that they are One even though they are now divided under different Names.
So when is the One God divided?
Regards Tony
Yeah, I was corrected on the matter by previous posters.
What are you talking about and what does it have to do with the thread's subject?
What is a true Christian? what is a true Jew? What is a true Muslim?
Would it be the Love of One God and living the laws given by God?
Is there a true Christian, Jew or Muslim without seeing God through all the Prophets?
Regards Tony
ManSinha
Well-Known Member
Other than - as you know - the very embodiment of the Universe - Lord Krishna - speaking to Arjun on the Kurukshetra battlefield - revealing the Gita -
What do you mean? Each religion determines who is and who isn't a part of their religion.
Honestly, that's the best attitude in my opinion.
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, a 15th century theologian and in his day the most powerful office-holder in the church after Pope Pius II himself, wrote a book that made a big impression on me at a young age called: "The Catholic Concordance". Its at the root of the tag under my username "In varietate concordia". In this rather dense tome and his later volume De Docta Ignorantia, he forwards an idea that really appealed to me - philosophically speaking - to the effect that God (or ultimate reality, or the the physical laws of the universe, or mathematical forms or whatever one personally substitutes for this) should be understood as: "the coincidence of opposites" and that owing to this, the height of wisdom was a certain "learned ignorance" i.e.
Nicholas of Cusa on the Diversity of Religions
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-61), a fascinating figure in the Christian intellectual tradition. A native of Kues on the Mosel river, Cusa received his education at Heidelberg, Padua, and Cologne. Absorbing diverse intellectual influences, he owed a special debt to Neo-Platonic thought and to theologians such as Augustine, Bonaventure, and Meister Eckhart. At Padua and Cologne, he became familiar with the writings of Llull and studied the Catalonian’s corpus assiduously. Ordained a priest in 1426, Cusa experienced a meteoric career within the Church, becoming a Cardinal in 1448/49 as well as being appointed Bishop of Brixen in the Tyrolian Alps and a papal legate to German lands in 1450...
To Segovia, he once wrote that the solution to religious conflict should not be settled on the battlefield but through some sort of “dialogue” (colloquia).
Making sense of the diversity of human opinions, religious or otherwise, informs most of his later works, not least his famous Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia), completed in 1440. In it, he defended his two most celebrated principles, “docta ignorantia” and “conincidentia oppositorum.” The former—an awareness of human beings’ fundamental ignorance that, paradoxically, can only come from extensive learning–was the highest stage of wisdom accessible to the intellect, since truth is infinite and, for human minds, perpetually unknowable in its fullness. The road to truth therefore leads beyond reason and beyond Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction; it is only in intuition that we can hope to glimpse God, in whom all contradictions meet. Such ideas were meant to chasten human pride and foster intellectual humility among people with diverse outlooks.
Vexed and saddened by religious divisions, he wrote and published in 1453 De Pace Fidei (“On the Peace of Faith”), based on a “vision” that he claimed to have experienced. In the vision, a number of angelic beings— “intellectual powers” –gathered before the throne of God lamenting violence done in the name of religion.” One figure, speaking for the others, addresses God as follows:
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-61), a fascinating figure in the Christian intellectual tradition. A native of Kues on the Mosel river, Cusa received his education at Heidelberg, Padua, and Cologne. Absorbing diverse intellectual influences, he owed a special debt to Neo-Platonic thought and to theologians such as Augustine, Bonaventure, and Meister Eckhart. At Padua and Cologne, he became familiar with the writings of Llull and studied the Catalonian’s corpus assiduously. Ordained a priest in 1426, Cusa experienced a meteoric career within the Church, becoming a Cardinal in 1448/49 as well as being appointed Bishop of Brixen in the Tyrolian Alps and a papal legate to German lands in 1450...
To Segovia, he once wrote that the solution to religious conflict should not be settled on the battlefield but through some sort of “dialogue” (colloquia).
Making sense of the diversity of human opinions, religious or otherwise, informs most of his later works, not least his famous Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia), completed in 1440. In it, he defended his two most celebrated principles, “docta ignorantia” and “conincidentia oppositorum.” The former—an awareness of human beings’ fundamental ignorance that, paradoxically, can only come from extensive learning–was the highest stage of wisdom accessible to the intellect, since truth is infinite and, for human minds, perpetually unknowable in its fullness. The road to truth therefore leads beyond reason and beyond Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction; it is only in intuition that we can hope to glimpse God, in whom all contradictions meet. Such ideas were meant to chasten human pride and foster intellectual humility among people with diverse outlooks.
Vexed and saddened by religious divisions, he wrote and published in 1453 De Pace Fidei (“On the Peace of Faith”), based on a “vision” that he claimed to have experienced. In the vision, a number of angelic beings— “intellectual powers” –gathered before the throne of God lamenting violence done in the name of religion.” One figure, speaking for the others, addresses God as follows:
"...In God, absolute unity is absolute multiplicity, absolute identity is absolute diversity; absolute actuality is absolute potentiality.
You [God] sent the different nations different prophets and teachers, some at one time and others at another. However, it is a characteristic of the earthly human condition that a longstanding custom which is taken as having become nature is defended as truth. Thus not insignificant dissensions occur when each community prefers its faith to [that of] another.
Therefore, come to our aid . . . For each one desires . . . only the good which you are; no one is seeking with all his intellectual inquiry for anything other than the truth. . . ..
O Lord, be merciful and show your face. . .. It is you, O God, who is being sought in various religions in various ways, and named with various names. For you remain as you are, to all incomprehensible and inexpressible. When you will graciously grant it, then the sword and the bilious spite of hatred and all evil sufferings will cease...
Even though you acknowledge diverse religions, you all presuppose in all of this diversity the one, which you call wisdom...There can only be one wisdom. For if it were possible that there be several wisdoms, then these would have to be from one. Namely, unity is prior to all plurality. None of us doubts that it is one wisdom which we all love and because of which we are called philosophers.
Through participation in it there are many wise men, although this wisdom remains in itself simple and undivided. See how you, the philosophers of the various religious traditions, agree in the religion of one God whom you all presuppose, in that which as lovers of wisdom you profess...."
You [God] sent the different nations different prophets and teachers, some at one time and others at another. However, it is a characteristic of the earthly human condition that a longstanding custom which is taken as having become nature is defended as truth. Thus not insignificant dissensions occur when each community prefers its faith to [that of] another.
Therefore, come to our aid . . . For each one desires . . . only the good which you are; no one is seeking with all his intellectual inquiry for anything other than the truth. . . ..
O Lord, be merciful and show your face. . .. It is you, O God, who is being sought in various religions in various ways, and named with various names. For you remain as you are, to all incomprehensible and inexpressible. When you will graciously grant it, then the sword and the bilious spite of hatred and all evil sufferings will cease...
Even though you acknowledge diverse religions, you all presuppose in all of this diversity the one, which you call wisdom...There can only be one wisdom. For if it were possible that there be several wisdoms, then these would have to be from one. Namely, unity is prior to all plurality. None of us doubts that it is one wisdom which we all love and because of which we are called philosophers.
Through participation in it there are many wise men, although this wisdom remains in itself simple and undivided. See how you, the philosophers of the various religious traditions, agree in the religion of one God whom you all presuppose, in that which as lovers of wisdom you profess...."
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Presumably invites all. But not necessarily in a manner this is for every individual's liking.
I see it is all inclusive, unless we make it exclusive, by the way we assume God wants it to be.
In the end, we can live our Faith, but it should never cause disunity or give rise to prejudices against other Faiths, no Faith, Race, Gender or culture. But that has to be practiced as a whole, or that unity in a diversity will also not work.
Regards Tony