Chris­t­ian Doctrines

A spe­cial ​“gift” for the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies on occa­sion of Good Fri­day. I wish to show by an analy­sis of Wis­dom Chris­tol­ogy in Matthew’s gospel chap­ter 23, that the evan­ge­list took the dra­mat­ic step of chang­ing Jesus’ meta­phys­i­cal sta­tus from crea­ture to Cre­ator by alter­ing the Q tra­di­tion, and to reflect on the the­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this meta­mor­pho­sis for Chris­tian­i­ty, and where we go from here.

One of the big ques­tions nobody has asked about Mel Gib­son’s The Pas­sion Of The Christ is this : If the cru­ci­fix­ion was a his­toric event and so cen­tral to the Chris­t­ian Gospel, why is it that there is no evi­dence what­ev­er of a man on a cross in Chris­t­ian art and mon­u­ments for almost sev­en cen­turies ? Not until 692 CE, in the reign of Emper­or Jus­tin­ian II, was it decreed that hence­forth instead of a lamb (the zodi­a­cal sign of Aries) fixed on the cross, the fig­ure of Jesus be placed there instead. Anoth­er ques­tion : How is it that the ear­li­est known fig­ure of any man on a cross comes from about 300 BCE and that ​“per­son” is not Jesus but Orpheus, a myth­i­cal Greek sun-god ?

Accord­ing to most Chris­tians, Jesus was God-incar­nate, ful­ly man and ful­ly God. Can the finite and the infi­nite be one ? ​“To be ful­ly God” means free­dom from finite forms and from help­less­ness, and to be ​“full man” means the absence of divin­i­ty. Chris­tians assert that Jesus claimed to be God when they quote him in John 14:9 : ​“He that has seen me has seen the Father”. Didn’t Jesus clear­ly say that peo­ple have nev­er seen God, as it says in John 5:37 : ​“And the father him­self which Has sent me, has borne wit­ness of me. You have nei­ther heard His voice at any time nor seen His shape”?

Few peo­ple real­ize that the ori­gins of a form of Christ­mas was pagan and cel­e­brat­ed in Europe long before any­one there had heard of Jesus (P). No one knows what day Jesus (P) was born on. From the bib­li­cal descrip­tion, most his­to­ri­ans believe that his birth prob­a­bly occurred in Sep­tem­ber, approx­i­mate­ly six months after Passover. One thing they agree on is that it is very unlike­ly that Jesus was born in Decem­ber, since the Bible records shep­herds tend­ing their sheep in the fields on that night. This is quite unlike­ly to have hap­pened dur­ing a cold Judean win­ter. So why do we cel­e­brate Christ’s birth­day as Christ­mas, on Decem­ber 25th ?

Philo­soph­i­cal the­ism, in con­tem­po­rary times, has been dom­i­nat­ed by philoso­phers who are Chris­tians. These the­is­tic philoso­phers have pub­lished a great amount of lit­er­a­ture defend­ing the ratio­nal­i­ty of belief in God, and any par­tic­i­pant in the great debate will sure­ly be famil­iar with the names of intel­lec­tu­al giants like Alvin Planti­nga, Richard Swin­burne, William Lane Craig, among many oth­ers. Swin­burne, for exam­ple, gives the­is­tic belief, and in par­tic­u­lar Chris­t­ian belief, philo­soph­i­cal treat­ment in toto. I have noticed the fol­low­ing pro­gres­sion in his case for Chris­tian­i­ty. First, he argues that the notion of ​‘God-talk’ is per­fect­ly coher­ent, and there are no a pri­ori rea­sons to reject the­is­tic belief. Next, he argues on cumu­la­tive grounds that nat­ur­al the­ol­o­gy ren­ders the exis­tence of God more prob­a­ble than not. Final­ly, Swin­burne artic­u­lates var­i­ous argu­ments for Chris­t­ian par­tic­u­lar­ism, e.g. rea­sons to believe in the Chris­t­ian Rev­e­la­tion, the Res­ur­rec­tion of Christ, etc. He there­fore epit­o­mizes the clas­sic Lock­ean evi­den­tial­ist, who is pre­pared to give ratio­nal rea­sons for all his beliefs.

In this paper I attempt to present an argu­ment dis­put­ing and refut­ing the Chris­t­ian Belief in the Trin­i­ty of God. We believe this ill con­cept was insert­ed into Chris­t­ian belief by the dev­il at a time of absence of mind and a state of pow­er­less­ness on the part of true uni­tar­i­ans and sin­cere believ­ers in the One God. To this day, fol­low­ers of this belief are faith­ful to the evil that found­ed it and we are aware that there is lit­tle or no ben­e­fit in attempt­ing to argue them out of this line of thought. How­ev­er, we are like that who is describ­ing the sor­ry state of a lost and mis­guid­ed per­son to peo­ple so that oth­ers may take exam­ple and les­son from it. And Allah shall guide whom He choos­es to the right path.

TRINITY Basic claim is that the Father, Son (Jesus) and Holy Ghost are equal­ly one — and are all GOD There­fore, Jesus IS God. CRUCIFIXION Chris­tians believe that…

Immanuel Kant (1724−1804) as a philoso­pher not only sought his own answers to philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions but was also an expert on the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy. Hav­ing a thor­ough ground­ing in the philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tion of the past, he was keen­ly aware of the stand­points of ratio­nal­ists and empiri­cists. He believed that both were part­ly right and part­ly wrong in that the ratio­nal­ists laid too much empha­sis on con­tri­bu­tion of rea­son and empiri­cists on sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence. It has been the­o­rized that Kant want­ed to pre­serve the basis for Chris­t­ian faith. He was a Protes­tant and since the days of Ref­or­ma­tion, Protes­tantism has been char­ac­ter­ized by its empha­sis on faith.

1) ARGUMENT FROM DISAGREEMENT I believe that the Bible is the word of God. The Qur’an dis­agrees with the Bible. There­fore, Islam is false. 2) ARGUMENT FROM…

Intro­duc­tion T. S. Elliot was quot­ed to have once said that ​“Chris­tian­i­ty is always adapt­ing itself into some­thing which can be believed.“John Hick, ed., The…

It is agreed upon among intel­li­gent peo­ple that results fol­low the rea­sons that caused them in cor­rect­ness and error ; if the rea­sons are valid, the results are there­fore cor­rect — if the rea­sons are not, then the results are there­fore erro­neous. This rule has noth­ing to do with Islam, Chris­tian­i­ty or any­thing else because it is pure­ly an intel­lec­tu­al rule that is gen­er­al­ly agreed upon by all.

The Hun­gar­i­an Islam­ic Stud­ies schol­ar of Jew­ish descent Ignaz Goldz­i­her (1850−−1921) is wide­ly rec­og­nized as the founder (along with only two or three oth­er schol­ars) of the sci­en­tif­ic study of Islam in Europe. Goldz­i­her undoubt­ed­ly has an enor­mous influ­ence in the field of Islam­ic stud­ies and prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing he wrote between rough­ly 1870 and 1920 is still stud­ied assid­u­ous­ly in uni­ver­si­ties through­out the world. Along with a tremen­dous­ly busy sched­ule com­pris­ing of lec­tur­ing and com­pos­ing schol­ar­ly works, Goldz­i­her also kept a rel­a­tive­ly per­son­al record of his reflec­tions, trav­el records and dai­ly records. This jour­nal was lat­er pub­lished in Ger­man as ​“Tage­buch” ed. Alexan­der Scheiber (Lei­den : Brill, 1978).

Con­clu­sion Regard­ing Chris­t­ian Doc­trinesTom Harpur, For Christ’s Sake, pp. 124 – 125 I am well aware that in ques­tion­ing ortho­dox teach­ing — the dog­mas of the Trinity…

Michael Serve­tus was born in Vil­la­neue­va in Spain in 1511. He was the son of the local judge. He lived at a time when there was unrest in the estab­lished Church, and in a peri­od when every­one was ques­tion­ing the nature of Chris­tian­i­ty. As he grew old­er and more informed, the young Serve­tus was appalled by the shed­ding of blood by the Chris­tians towards the Mus­lims and Jews.

John Bid­dle, the Father of Uni­tar­i­an­ism in Eng­land, was born in 1615. He was a bril­liant stu­dent and was described as a man who ​“out­ran his instruc­tors and became tutor to him­self”. He went to the Uni­ver­si­ty at Oxford n 1634, was made a B.A. in 1638 and an M.A. in 1641. After leav­ing Oxford, he was appoint­ed as a teacher in Glouces­ter. It was here that he began to re-exam­ine his reli­gious views and began to doubt the valid­i­ty of the doc­trine of Trinity.