Is Islam really the sams religion as Judaism ans Christianity?

[Sir Adrian]

OK, so Jesus's death saved the future converts from being punished for their sins. Why does this mean that Christians may disregard the law to begin with?

Both statements are false. Christ gifted everybody a place in heaven however one must still enter it. You can enter heaven by freeing yourself from your earthly passions and devoting your soul to God though faith AND acts. The more you devote yourself to God the more He will help you keep His law and carry the burden of preparing your soul to enter heaven.

Christians are not freed from sin, as various protestants will lie to you. It is the duty of every Christian to strive to emulate Christ and approach deification on a daily basis. Failure to emulate and behave like Christ is the only sin a Christian can commit, and it is a sin because it pushes you away from God and from your rightful place in heaven.

The idea that anybody is "saved" while still alive is the fastest way to hell.

If God is with those who always forgive, he is with everything and with everyone and thus dissolves into trivial sophistry.

God is always with everyone and loves everyone unconditionally. You just have to turn to Him with a sincere heart.

[pacifism]

See, this is why I find this question difficult to even approach. All three religions have a wide range of theologies, even Judaism with its few practitioners. I think that the reformed tradition is a genuinely unique belief system, which is partly why I (basically) believe it. But here you are describing salvation as some kind of mystic self-denial that people initiate and do, leaving God to do nothing more than ... assist as needed? Ultimately forgive a repentant person of their faults? There's a lot of Christians who don't believe that. I mean, come on, that just sounds a lot like how Muslims believe they are saved.

We are simply forced to "forgive" our "sinners" eventually. Jesus or not. It is only easy to forgive, because it is so much harder to retaliate in a way that pacifies things in ones' own interests. If you look deep down inside yourself, you will find it very easy to retaliate.

If God is with those who always forgive, he is with everything and with everyone and thus dissolves into trivial sophistry.

Until someone discovers the Babel fish, I guess that's the best we're going to get.

[Sir Adrian]

Actually God does most of the work since it is impossible for humans to stick to God's law alone.

I don't know what Islam believes, I simply described the beliefs of early Christianity (anybody who does not believe me is free to read the teachings of the apostles and the church fathers on the matter). Islam have been heavily influenced by early Christianity, some Islamic scholars even going so far as to claim that Islam started out as a Nestorian heresy.

[pacifism]

The questions of whether the early church was closer to the reformed tradition or not is something of a quibble. For example, I think that Augustine (who is somehow something of the darling to almost all of Christianity) was pretty firmly opposed to the Pelagianism of his day. Whether or not he had the beliefs of a modern, reformed Christian will only have a vague answer because the ingredients weren't there at the time. Obviously, like any good Protestant, I will only care about what "the" early church believed up to a certain point. When you said:

"Christ gifted everybody a place in heaven however one must still enter it. You can enter heaven by freeing yourself from your earthly passions and devoting your soul to God though faith AND acts."
and
"The idea that anybody is 'saved' while still alive is the fastest way to hell."

I have a hard time squaring that with what I believe, which is that God saves sinners. We don't, and can't, do anything meaningful to change being in the human condition. I think that Elendil's first statement was correct. I would've said that Christians don't disregard the law. The purpose of the law was to set Israel apart from the other nations in anticipation for one of its descendants to fulfill it perfectly and then act as an ultimate sacrifice to save people from all nations. The law is used to measure people who do not accept grace.

[basics]

pacifism,

The answer to any question regarding salvation lies in the very word of God which of course is the Bible. Scripture clearly states that God is that source through Jesus Christ's one action at the cross for all them that God the Father gave to Him to be saved by His blood on that day. All those people from Abel on to all them as yet to be born and them only are saved. These are the people who are called the elect of God, no others. Every action in the salvation process is directed by God's Three Persons which begins with condemnation by the Spirit working on the hardened heart. Then comes the cry for repentance which again is a gift from God followed by the broken and contrite heart which God seeks before regeneration. Once regeneration takes place Christ bestows the gift of faith from Him to them plus the indwelling by the Holy Spirit thus securing their justification. That is how God's word relates how Christians are made. It is all of God just as the Reformers preached coming from what the Bible tells us. Any man or woman who thinks that they play any part in their own salvation are quite wrong.

[Sir Adrian]

The questions of whether the early church was closer to the reformed tradition or not is something of a quibble. For example, I think that Augustine (who is somehow something of the darling to almost all of Christianity) was pretty firmly opposed to the Pelagianism of his day.

I'm not sure I'd use Augustine as a base as he is kind of seen as an unofficial heretic in half the Christian world. Catholics like to drone on about him, true, but Protestants dislike him and the Orthodox openly repudiate him for his borderline Arian and Manichean writings.

The questions of whether the early church was closer to the reformed tradition or not is something of a quibble

I disagree. The reformation (and Catholicism) took the original message of love one another and God with all your being, and turned into a blind checklist of things to mindlessly follow. That is not trivial

I have a hard time squaring that with what I believe, which is that God saves sinners. We don't, and can't, do anything meaningful to change being in the human condition. I think that Elendil's first statement was correct. I would've said that Christians don't disregard the law. The purpose of the law was to set Israel apart from the other nations in anticipation for one of its descendants to fulfill it perfectly and then act as an ultimate sacrifice to save people from all nations. The law is used to measure people who do not accept grace.

Yes you can. You can strive to be better, and of course you will fail by yourself, but this is where God comes in. As you do God's work, God will work though you and help you keep his law. As an example you can take the many monks and nuns who live alone in the desert yet literately soar in a spiritual sense of the world.

As Christ himself said "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The whole point is that faith demands a life that corresponds to that faith. You have to crucify your flesh with your passions and lust, as saint Paul puts it, in order to submit yourself to the Kingdom of God, and the more you struggle in this the more you will take on "the yoke of Christ" and the more he will help you carry it up Golgotha to the Kingdom of God.


Christ had a thing to say about people who claim that simply beliving or being born is enough: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’"


Anyway this guy explains it better than I ever will

[pacifism]

pacifism,

The answer to any question regarding salvation lies in the very word of God which of course is the Bible. Scripture clearly states that God is that source through Jesus Christ's one action at the cross for all them that God the Father gave to Him to be saved by His blood on that day. All those people from Abel on to all them as yet to be born and them only are saved. These are the people who are called the elect of God, no others. Every action in the salvation process is directed by God's Three Persons which begins with condemnation by the Spirit working on the hardened heart. Then comes the cry for repentance which again is a gift from God followed by the broken and contrite heart which God seeks before regeneration. Once regeneration takes place Christ bestows the gift of faith from Him to them plus the indwelling by the Holy Spirit thus securing their justification. That is how God's word relates how Christians are made. It is all of God just as the Reformers preached coming from what the Bible tells us. Any man or woman who thinks that they play any part in their own salvation are quite wrong.

I agree.

The reformation (and Catholicism) took the original message of love one another and God with all your being, and turned into a blind checklist of things to mindlessly follow. That is not trivial

I won't touch that jab just because I find it vague. What the early church did and taught isn't necessarily trivial, but it's not essential either. By early church, I mean before Constantine and Nicaea. Even in those earliest centuries of Christianity, there were Christian thinkers going overboard with the Greek-style allegorization of the Bible, non-Trinitarian views of God, ransom theory of atonement, and so on.

The point is that the early church is not the same thing as the biblical church. Being able to read the writings of someone only a few generations removed from the apostles is valuable and helpful, but not authoritative. If we turned this into an argument about theology into an argument about what the early church believed, I think that would be a bit of a red herring. That's all I'm saying.

Yes you can. You can strive to be better, and of course you will fail by yourself, but this is where God comes in. As you do God's work, God will work though you and help you keep his law. As an example you can take the many monks and nuns who live alone in the desert yet literately soar in a spiritual sense of the world.

As Christ himself said "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The whole point is that faith demands a life that corresponds to that faith. You have to crucify your flesh with your passions and lust, as saint Paul puts it, in order to submit yourself to the Kingdom of God, and the more you struggle in this the more you will take on "the yoke of Christ" and the more he will help you carry it up Golgotha to the Kingdom of God.

Christ had a thing to say about people who claim that simply beliving or being born is enough: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’"

Anyway this guy explains it better than I ever will

I don't really disagree with what Father Trenham said. I wasn't being terrible scrutinous, but I think he only neglected to mention where a Christian's love of God ultimately comes from. I mean, read the two verses before the ones you quoted from Matthew 11. I'm not really arguing about sanctification. Anyone who reads James and 1 John knows that the Bible is clear that our beliefs call us to action. Good works are the fruit of salvation, not the root. I'm talking about salvation. To portray salvation -- which is what Elendil was talking about -- as something we do with God's help is disingenuous. I believe the Bible is clear that no one seeks after God. God doesn't do most of the work, but all of it.

[basics]

For many years the book of James was controversial because many believed that works went alongside of salvation but from reading his book one can see that the works he talks of are to be the result ol salvation not the cause of it. On reading carefully one can see he is talking to saved people about their conduct now that they are saved. When the Bible was being brought together there were some that did not want James' book included because they thought wrongly that he was saying works and salvation went together.

[wanderwegger]

All three broadly defined religions are heirs to a mass on Near Eastern beliefs, stories, attitudes and texts, influenced by Hellenism and now modern thought, as well as echoing around between one another, with a jumble of other influences. They share the figure of Abraham as the dealmaker with God, retconned as a montheist.

They are not the "same religion" but within each stream there are subsets that deny (for example) that other Christians are actually christian etc.

As the nominally "oldest" brother Judaism gets to bully the others as deviant from the true path, but modern Rabbinic Judaism might not be recognisable to say Nehemiah let alone David.

Christianity claims to complete Judaism and Islam claims to complete the other two, but these too deviate in shades of thesis and praxis from historical antecedents and the texts they claim as fundamental.

I'd say they are all the same religion in that they are heirs to the great near Eastern religious tradition and share key figures and have conversed down the centuries: each recognises some truth in the other to an extent, even as they try to deny it. Also they are not the same religion, but as I say, neither are they themselves the religion they claim to be.

2/3 riddled with Zoroastrianism to boot.

[basics]

As I said before and repeat, the promises of God to Abraham and importantly Sarah were that her child Isaac would be the forerunner of Christ Jesus. Ishmael and his mother had nothing to do with these promises. For sure God said that Ishmael would be the father of a great nation but that had nothing to do with the Divine lineage of Isaac to Jesus Christ. Judaism and Christianity were connected by the promise of a Messiah from God fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Islam rejects this and so how can it be said that it is an Abrahamic religion?

[wanderwegger]

They all worship the same God of Abraham. The Druze, Baha’i & Rastafari also Abrahamic.

[conon394]

As I said before and repeat, the promises of God to Abraham and importantly Sarah were that her child Isaac would be the forerunner of Christ Jesus. Ishmael and his mother had nothing to do with these promises. For sure God said that Ishmael would be the father of a great nation but that had nothing to do with the Divine lineage of Isaac to Jesus Christ. Judaism and Christianity were connected by the promise of a Messiah from God fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Islam rejects this and so how can it be said that it is an Abrahamic religion?

Gotta work to find JC in that story because I'm not seeing him in a a non biased translation.

[basics]

Gotta work to find JC in that story because I'm not seeing him in a a non biased translation.

conon394,

Then work harder.

[wanderwegger]

JC is everywhere. In the toilet after you’ve wiped. Watching refugee children starve in camps. He/It (maybe she) was in the room when Eichmann and co envisioned the final solution.

[conon394]

conon394,

Then work harder.

But not really in a direct not manipulated translation of the Hebrew without intent to support the post JC version of NT managed by Christians decades to centuries after his death..

[basics]

They all worship the same God of Abraham. The Druze, Baha’i & Rastafari also Abrahamic.

wanderwegger,

The point is that they worship a god whom they think is the One True God but isn't why? Because our God, the One True God, is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the Son Who makes up the Triune Godhead on Whose shoulders lie through his shed blood the only way to salvation and heaven. Paul writes that even some that think they are Christian are not and Jesus' parables of the sheepfold and wheat and tares confirm it. They worship what their imagination tells them and not by the Supernatural actions of God.

[Akar]

Again, all of this nonsense is reliant upon the words in the bible being true, the only evidence for which is the bible saying that they are true.

The point is that they worship a god whom they think is the One True God but isn't why? Because our God, the One True God, is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the Son Who makes up the Triune Godhead on Whose shoulders lie through his shed blood the only way to salvation and heaven. Paul writes that even some that think they are Christian are not and Jesus' parables of the sheepfold and wheat and tares confirm it. They worship what their imagination tells them and not by the Supernatural actions of God.

This is incoherent word salad.

[basics]

Again, all of this nonsense is reliant upon the words in the bible being true, the only evidence for which is the bible saying that they are true.

This is incoherent word salad.

Akar,

Of course it is to you but then I wouldn't expect you to understand. You wouldn't even get into the sheepfold never mind being a tare.

[wanderwegger]

Is this really an argument that Yahweh isn’t the one true god of Christians? Have they just abandoned the OT altogether? Jesus being a Jew fake news?

You know the Holy Spirit came later right. As did the Trinity the way you misinterpret it. Paul never even heard of the Trinity in his lifetime.

wanderwegger,

The point is that they worship a god whom they think is the One True God but isn't why? Because our God, the One True God, is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the Son Who makes up the Triune Godhead on Whose shoulders lie through his shed blood the only way to salvation and heaven. Paul writes that even some that think they are Christian are not and Jesus' parables of the sheepfold and wheat and tares confirm it. They worship what their imagination tells them and not by the Supernatural actions of God.

[basics]

Is this really an argument that Yahweh isn’t the one true god of Christians? Have they just abandoned the OT altogether? Jesus being a Jew fake news?
You know the Holy Spirit came later right. As did the Trinity the way you misinterpret it. Paul never even heard of the Trinity in his lifetime.

wanderwegger,

" In the beginning God, ( Elohim,) created the heaven and the earth." Elohim is a plural word. Hovering over the void was the Holy Spirit of God and the Light that followed was God until He made the sun, moon and stars. What is it about that that you cannot see or understand? And then there is the garden made to the East of Eden where God walked and talked with Adam but how so? The Father is a blinding Light upon Whom no man may look and live and yet He did that in the garden how? It is obvious that this was Jesus Christ the Creator Who did that so your argument is totally wrong. Strange that the first apostate religion on the planet was when Nimrod was deified and his symbol of the trinity just happened to be himself, Semiramis and a dove later changed to a child. Now where did that all come from if the Trinity was not known of? It came via Noah and his family who knew of it before the flood and so it was by Cush that his son Nimrod was deified as a Trinity.