Sunday is coming...Crossing teh Red Sea

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GordW said:
from the beginning one of the complaints about Christianity has been that it is not truly monotheistic. Because of the the Trinity.
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I think it depends on how one views the Trinity. If one over-emphasizes the three, it can appear polytheistic (or at least tri-theistic) and some Christian language can make it appear so. "I bless you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" does make it sound like three different beings are being invoked, even if Christians know that there is an implicit "God the" in front of each title.

When I was still identifying as a Unitarian Christian, I still valued the imagery of the Trinity but didn't take it literally. God was God and the Three represented "faces" that God presented to humanity as He interacted with us in various ways.
 
Pr. Jae said:
Who were those complaints coming from?
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PRimarily over history they would have come from followers of Judaism and Islam because both of these are radically monotheistic. But I am sure there were some polytheists who mocked the supposed monotheism of Christianity as well. Beacuse to an outsider (and even to some insiders since the Trinity makes not logical sense, even if it makes theological sense) the Trinity looks pretty much non-monotheistic.
 
GordW said:
PRimarily over history they would have come from followers of Judaism and Islam because both of these are radically monotheistic. But I am sure there were some polytheists who mocked the supposed monotheism of Christianity as well. Beacuse to an outsider (and even to some insiders since the Trinity makes not logical sense, even if it makes theological sense) the Trinity looks pretty much non-monotheistic.
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Things are not always as they appear to be ;)
 
Perhaps. But it doesn't help when we collectively embrace fiction like "The Shack".

(And when I'm thinking of some orthodox Christianity, the figure of Satan also becomes distinctly god like, even if anti. I'm sure that also contributes to the perceived problem by strictly monotheistic faiths.)
 
BetteTheRed said:
Perhaps. But it doesn't help when we collectively embrace fiction like "The Shack".
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Who's this "we" Bette? We North Americans? We Canadians? We Christians? The book and such things as it certainly have their critics.

BetteTheRed said:
(And when I'm thinking of some orthodox Christianity, the figure of Satan also becomes distinctly god like, even if anti. I'm sure that also contributes to the perceived problem by strictly monotheistic faiths.)
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Christianity is a monotheistic faith.
 
BetteTheRed said:
Perhaps. But it doesn't help when we collectively embrace fiction like "The Shack".

(And when I'm thinking of some orthodox Christianity, the figure of Satan also becomes distinctly god like, even if anti. I'm sure that also contributes to the perceived problem by strictly monotheistic faiths.)
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but being Like God and God are 2 different things , Surly even Judaism understands that it in the Tora

thou shall have No other Gods before me

how would this commandment affect Monotheism? , same as satan, it dosnt
 
Well, maybe they are from the inside, but from the outside?

This is nicely taking us back to GordW's original discussion. The commandment you quote is clearly from a tribal time, when each tribe had their own God, and the Jewish people were warned not to put another tribe's God before their own.
 
BetteTheRed said:
Well, maybe they are from the inside, but from the outside?

This is nicely taking us back to GordW's original discussion. The commandment you quote is clearly from a tribal time, when each tribe had their own God, and the Jewish people were warned not to put another tribe's God before their own.
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but its still no different today , there are many gods today,

the god of this world
gods of other religions
money can be your god
power can be your god
idols can be a god
 
BetteTheRed said:
But culturally, their Jewish relatives are prone to rejecting them. And it doesn't have to do with abiding by another religion, specifically, because there are groups of Jewish buddhists and atheists who fit in just fine. Judaism doesn't have a huge problem with Jesus of Nazareth as a prophet, or of that prophetic tradition; it's the whole trinity concept that causes a conflict with Jewish monotheistic beliefs.
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I don't think that Jesus is considered a prophet in the Jewish religion. Islam yes.
 
blackbelt1961 said:
but its still no different today , there are many gods today,

the god of this world
gods of other religions
money can be your god
power can be your god
idols can be a god
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This is only true if we see those things through a glass darkly. There is only One.
 
There are many things that somedays I
Waterfall said:
I don't think that Jesus is considered a prophet in the Jewish religion. Islam yes.
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I believe they regard Malachi as the last prophet and that's when the age of prophecy ceased. They consider Jesus to be a false prophet and that his prophecies werent fulfilled and they say that's why Christianity had to invent the second coming, even though its always been stated in the OT that the true messiah would fulfil prophecy the first time.

Anybody have a good explanation why Jesus didnt finish the job the first time he came?
 
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