It's the fact that you're a heretic from the perspective of the Catholic Church...which is what we're talking about. And if you're a heretic from the perspective of the Catholic Church (which you are) then you're no longer a Catholic in good standing (which you're not).

You say this an awful lot, but it doesn't mean anything.

What else is he going to say? "Death to all the followers of Mohammed"?

Give me a break, people are killed because they draw cartoons with the prophet Mohammed in then. How would anyone expect the pope to say anything except to respect Islam?

thekid: the 1st commandment isn't really an argument against trinitarianism. Trinitarians do not consider themselves to be worshippers of three Gods. In other words, to argue that trinitarianism conflicts with an injunction to have only a single God is really only to have already decided that the trinitarian description is not tenable, that it must necessarily amount to tri-theism, but that's now how it's understood by those who formulated it nor those who accept it as a doctrine now.

As an example, both the western mass and the eastern divine liturgy begin with: "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Name is singular for a reason. Or from the common prayers used in the catholic liturgy, they often end with "...through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen."

It's certainly plausible to argue that it's contradictory to refer to a trinitarian understanding of God as being a belief in One God, lots of people argue that, but nevertheless that's how the Trinity is understood by trinitarian Christians. Referring to the 1st commandment doesn't really settle the issue.

edit: I guess I'll nit myself. The Divine Liturgy begins slightly differently, but the same formulation with "in the name (singular)..." is also used in it.

Not meaning to be nitty but are they

You are right, I mixed up events

I meant to say people are threatened with death (and violent actions have occurred as a result) for drawing cartoons of Mohammed.

At least 1 person has been killed for making a short film about Islam.

That was my mixup film incident -vs- comic incident.

Yeah I thought as much. I just think it's better to not provide certain elements an opportunity to divert attention from the topic of discussion again.

Well named,

I don't (although it may seem like it at times) have the view that for instance, Modern day Christians view the Father, Son and HS in a polytheistic way. Your points about modern western mass and Divine Liturgy starting out with "in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirt" is of no contention to me, I agree with these points

Assuming you were talking about this --->http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_...Byzantine_Rite ?


I did want to ask you well named,

In what year would you argue that Christians started using prayers of the likes of, in the name of the Father, Son, HS, or the view that the Holy Spirit, God, and Jesus are one. In other words when did Christians include Jesus as being part of God? The last point is something I have been on the fence with for the past year or so.

I'm not sure why you said

if you didn't mean to imply by including "(singular)" that trinitarianism entailed belief in more than one God. If you just meant that the 1st commandment was more important than the Trinity as a "core tenet of Christianity", then I'm fine with that.

There is almost certainly no way to give a definitive answer to this. You might also give different answers depending on whether or not you were interested only in the specific expression "Christ Our God" or just Christian expressions of the Divinity of Christ in some form. That said, the answer would seem to be sometime in the first century. The epistle to the Phlippians is supposed to have been written in about 60 AD and says: "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men."

The gospel of John is generally believed to be older, like end of the 1st century, and certainly refers to Christ as God, specifically as the Word or Logos of God. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

I didn't say that the trinity was the most important belief although it is extremely important, I said believing in the divinity of Jesus and that Jesus is God is the most important belief. You probably want to think that the parts of christianity that you pick and choose to believe in are more important, but they aren't


I'm not a Catholic, but I'm pretty sure he also encourages us to believe in the divinity of Christ.

The question is not whether he is a Christian, the question is whether he is a Catholic. And is generally understood that a Catholic means an adherent of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Nicene Creed is one of the absolute cornerstone of the Catholic Church's doctrine, and it affirms both the trinity and that Jesus is divine. I'm sure it is possible to disagree with some aspects of Catholic teaching and still be a Catholic, but I doubt you can disagree with what is pretty much the absolute cornerstone of its teachings.

There are other Catholic churches (or claimants to that title), but I have not gotten the impression that these are the ones thekid is referring to. Regardless, most of these also adhere to the Nicene Creed.

my wife is Roman Catholic so I have at least second hand experience. She was raised in a catholic family and never really understood the Trinity at all. Not that it wasn't taught to her as a kid, it just didn't really stick. Considering how abstract the official doctrine is, I can't imagine this is an isolated occurrence. I have heard quite a few homilies from catholic masses and never heard one on the doctrine of the Trinity specifically, I don't think.

My impression is that it's one of those things where if you approached your parish priest and told him you didn't believe in the Divinity of Christ, or rejected the Trinity, they would certainly tell you it (obviously) isn't "optional" as far as catholic dogma is concerned, but I'm also willing to bet that most priests wouldn't immediately excommunicate you either.

Anyway, it sounds like thekid is also someone who was raised catholic and whose views have wandered, but being "catholic" is still part of his identity. I feel like in general OrP's approach to deciding the validity of claims to a religious identity is probably for the best, at least up until thekid starts claiming that roman catholicism is not trinitarian

Well, OrP in a former thread held that any belief can be Christian so by that standard there obviously can't exist a border between Islam and Christianity.

Other than that there are many Christian denominations that don't view Jesus as God and reject the trinity. The most well known these days are probably Jehovas' Witnesses.

It's not that there can't exist a border between Islam and Christianity as ideologies, or as systems of belief, it's more like that as far as how people identify themselves, the ideologies don't tell the whole story. That's sort of why I said "up until he starts claiming catholicism is not trinitarian".

Islam is not Christianity, and it may even be somewhat contradictory for a (hypothetical) person to identify as both Muslim and Christian, but I bet someone could do it anyway :P

I did not claim this,maybe your thinking of the point I made about the many similarities between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,

OrP, i.e. Original Position.

If you can move freely between them I don't know, but conversion shouldn't be that difficult. Nor should agreement on specific issues be that hard to find. The religions are after all mostly similar. They contain the same laws and prophets, and they both arose in the semitic culture so they carry much of the same cultural and normative baggage.

As for the issue at hand it basically boils down to if you can find recognized directions within the two religions who agree on the theology regarding Jesus.
We know that mainstream Islam and mainstream Christianity is not compatible. Almost universally the former holds that Jesus is the son of God and the latter does not. A bit less universally but still pretty much the norm is that the former holds that Jesus is divine and the latter does not.

So at the minimum you have to find an Islamic direction that holds that Jesus is the son of God or a Christian direction that does not, and it would also help if these directions were similar in regards to the nature of Jesus.

Some might argue that you need only find individuals who agree and not directions that coincide. I don't agree with that view - Religion is not merely belief. Religion is something social, shared and organized.

This isn't an accurate statement of my view, or at least the implication you're drawing from it isn't valid (I do think there are borders between Islam and Christians). I'll readily acknowledge that some beliefs are characteristic of Christian theology and some are not, and similarly for Islam. What I've denied is that we should regard acceptance of those characteristic beliefs as a necessary requirement for being a member of a particular religion.

When people on this forum talk about religion they typically focus on the intellectual aspect of the religion, such that being a Christian seems primarily a matter of whether you accept a particular worldview. That is the view I reject. I don't think acceptance of any particular piece of Christian (or Muslim) theology is required for someone to be a member of those religions. But that isn't to say that there aren't beliefs that are typical of the theology of particular religions.

So I do think you can draw borders between Christian and Muslim thought, but I don't think these borders map directly onto the borders between Christians and Muslims.

The thread was long ago, so my apologies for wrongly stating your position.

Let's (potentially) rephrase then, via a question: A hypothetical person has beliefs that very few would dispute are Islamic. If he identifies as a Christian then you would accept that he is a member of the Christian religion?

On an internet forum I would probably give her the benefit of the doubt and accept it. However, in real life I would want to see if she had any of the other markers of being a Christian, e.g. baptism, church attendance or membership, prayer, etc. before making that judgement. If she had none of those things, but I thought she still sincerely identified as a Christian, I would just point out that she has an impoverished notion of what it means to be a Christian as it seems to have had no impact on her life at all and classify her as a borderline case.

There are three different, although related points that I generally try to make in these conversations. One is that the actual variety of Christian thought is much greater than most American evangelical Christians (or those coming out of that tradition) are aware of. Thus, when they say that, e.g. accepting the Trinity is a requirement for being a Christian, then I think it worth pointing out the many Christian groups throughout history that have rejected this doctrine. This is more a matter of American evangelicals being ignorant of their own religion's history than anything else.

The second is my nominalist, non-essentialist view of religion. I view religions as historical entities that don't have an essential core set of doctrines or practices such that if the characteristic set of doctrines and practices change that the religion is no more. In this sense I think it is analogous to a country whose government can evolve (or devolve) over time into something very different from what it was like at the beginning while still being the same country. Thus, trying to identify the necessary characteristics of being a Christian is pointless--there are none. Instead, you can identify the contingent characteristics of being a Christian in a specific time and place, some of which are more universal than others, but none of which are essential.

The third is just that I think people specifically on this forum have an overly intellectualist understanding of religion. I think the practice and sociality of religion are typically more important than the associated beliefs.

Wikipedia to the rescue, or at least some historical meanderings.

First Council of Nicaea: Speaks to the divinity of Christ Jesus but of course the article morphs into speaking to the nomen Jesus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

Note is taken that the "Trinity" was considered by Origen and others in the previous century but in any case it is interesting reading.

The battle of Athanasius versus Arianism is presented and consequential to this synod is the Nicene Creed.

From the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm

Words have definitions. If we accept that someone is a Catholic who rejects the divinity of Jesus but thinks Mohammed was a true prophet then the word "Catholic" loses its meaning. If anyone can redefine any word they use then communication will become very cumbersome.

My claim is pretty clear: people like you who determine membership in a religion on the basis of what a person believes are wrong about the nature of religion. Instead, membership in a religion involves a variety of practices, including characteristic beliefs, but none of which taken on their own are necessary (see Wittgenstein's family resemblance idea for how this might go). Thus, I do have a definition of "Catholic," it is just different than yours.

However, I don't think talking in terms of definitions is the right way to go here. "Catholic" is a name that refers to the people and institutions we call Catholic. Thus, our discussion isn't really about what the name means, but rather to do whom or what it refers (i.e., who is a Catholic). The actual meaning of the word is something more like "universal."

I have no problems differentiating Christianity as a belief from Christianity as an institution, which I have done since RGT was on SMP. This was necessary when debating some posters who rejected historical events involving the different Christian churches as "non-Christian".

Whoever I think you are forgetting a 3rd understanding, which is Christianity as doctrine. When people debate Christianity as doctrine, you have schism, which is not a debate on what they believe but a debate on what people should believe.

In the history of catholic churches these terms are even formal, there were rules of how to proceed with them and it is the reason that there are many churches who claim they are the actual Catholic Church, because the original church split up many times due to schism.

Look at the wording of the OP for example:

This is not a question of "can I believe X" or "can I call myself a Christian and believe X" - it is a question on "why should a Christian believe X".

It seems clear that if one holds Holy Writ ( specifically, the New Testament literature ) in high regard, the concept of the Trinity doctrine fails upon scrutiny. On the other hand, rejecting the concept of the Trinity is not equivalent to rejecting the divinity of Yeshua the Messiah ( as the Divine Logos/Memra/Miltha ). The main point of developing such a doctrine was to fight against common heretical theological teachings such as Arianism, which still exist today.

The main thrust of the Messiah's teachings emphasizes that "the Way" is extremely narrow: righteousness is to be perfected as described in the Sermon on the Mount. Contrary to what most "believers" would like to think, Yeshua always challenged the crowds and knew that the vast majority of human beings that listened to his teachings were "bad soil"; most won't be able to accurately "count the cost".

Unfortunately, so many in the world have been innoculated with the watered-down ( and some would say, "paganized" ) version of Yeshua, often called "Jesus". Fortunately, there exist some serious "Christians" that know that the vast majority of so-called "Christians" are on the broad way that leads to destruction and make a point that teshuva/repentance is the first and necessary step and isn't a one-time event.

This is a pretty absurd viewpoint. We should take as the definition of Catholic the definition provided by the Catholic church. The doctrines of the Catholic church are very clear about who is Catholic and who is not Catholic. There are some ambiguities about whether or not a person is a Catholic in good standing, but in the case of the OP, the doctrines of the Catholic church are very clear in that he is not a Catholic in good standing.

For other varieties of Christianity where the actual definition of what it means to belong to those varieties is ambiguous or where belonging is self-proclaimed, your viewpoint is not so absurd. In the case of Catholicism, it is.