Religion...

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@Iago

The main difference between the roman catholic and orthodox doctrines is about the holy spirit not Jesus. The roman catholic church believes that the holy spirit proceeds from the father and the son, while the orthodox church believes that the holy spirit proceeds from the father through the son. Don't ask me to explain this, many years have passed since I have been taught this in the religious classes in school and I don't remember the explanation.

 

"Jesus was not a Jew" -> "the Jews murdered the son of God" -> fertile ground for antisemitism, especially in the Middle Ages

 

@HB - Yes, all Christians believe that Christ was the Son of God. With Roman Catholics, they believe that God exists in the form of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (formerly Holy Ghost prior to circa 1970). So for RC, the Son is God. It's not like they're all 1/3 God or anything. They're all equally divine. It's difficult to explain, and chev, if anyone could do a better job than I could. So, you're right in what you're saying, but it's more of a semantic thing than anything.

@Sus - I don't see why people would conclude that Jesus was murdered by the Jews even if you don't think he's a Jew - that's quite the leap. I mean, wasn't Pilate a Roman?

 

I certainly can not speak in the name of Christianity, but so you can not either. All I can say, though, is that I know no single Orthodox person who views Jesus as a jew. Being God Himself, he could not had been a jew, despite being incarnated in human flesh.
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Nakia,

Not touching the particular case of Jehova Witness, I hear they are over 2 thousand "Christian" sects in the US alone. Sorry if real Christians, attached to a millenar and tried tradition, don't take anyone who starts his own "church", and claim to be a "Christian", very seriously. Everyone is free to believe whatever he wants, just as much we also have the right to ignore and despise 99% of these branches sprouting from nowhere. Just to emphatize, I am not speaking about the Jehova Witness specifically.
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Oh yeah, I was eagerly waiting for someone to pull the anti-semitic "argument". Maybe that's the case when truth starts to hurt.
Dude, maybe jews have some sort of special status in the west, but they sure as hell don't enjoy it in Russia. Anyone in Russia is free to criticise them and to claim Jesus was not a jew. And that does not make anyone get labelled "anti-semitic".
Sure, you will say you did not claim I am anti-semitic - or rather that my claim 'Jesus was not a jew' is anti-semitic - but other than hinting at it, what would be the point of your post?

 

But by using that standard, we can even say that Orthodox Christians are not "true Christians" as Orthodoxy was an off branch of the original Christian church as well, as they are not under the Pope. By that standard, the only "true Christians" are Roman Catholic.

If you consider Jesus divine, then it really doesn't matter what he was in terms of ethnicity. However, you can't argue that he wasn't raised as a Jew and that he didn't live life as a Jew.

 

Svy and Aldeth, note the "Middle Ages" part. This is something that did happen, Jews were widely seen that way at the time in Europe. I wasn't talking about modern times at all.

The point was not to cuddle poor little Jews or anything like that. The point was that when people start interpreting old texts their own way, it can lead to pretty nasty things. Especially when uneducated masses are involved, like in the Middle Ages.

By the way, Svy, what is this "truth" that's starting to "hurt?"

 

Aldeth,

Orthodox Church is grounded on a long withstanding tradition! Plus, I could argue as much it was the Catholics who were responsable for the schism, rather than ourselves. There is absolutely no co-relation with those billions of US sects.
About Jesus, how He was brought up does not matter. What matters is what He was.

 

HB:
I think the Jehova's Witnesses believe that Jesus was a created being, just like angels, humans, cats, etc., and that He is not God per se, but rather a messenger of God, kinda like a better angel. That doesn't explain, however, John 1:1-3
"In the beginning there was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." NIV
This pretty clearly states that Jesus is God and has always been with God and was as much an agent in creation as the Father was. All I can say for the Jehova's Witnesses is that the name Jehova was a terrible bastardization of Yaweh, the name of God. Any group that names itself after a mistake is already in doubt, though not neccesarily wrong.

As for the trinity, the best way I've heard to explain it is like a triangle drawn on paper. Each line is an individual and unique line, with its own characteristics and nature. Put them together and they become something more than just three lines, they become a triangle, but they do not cease being lines, nor do they loose any part of their line nature. In the same way, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are all unique and distinct entities, but together they are something more than just three different Gods, they are the Holy Trinity, one Deity, Creator of All Things. By believing this, I believe that it was not just God the Father who created the world, but rather all three and that without any one, the Trinity and creation could not have been.
This is all developed in the new testament, so I don't know what a jew's view of this would be. The pharasies believed it was blasphamy for anyone to claim to be one with God and that even teh Messiah would be only a servant of God. I don't know how much of this was just their distorted view and how much of this is official jewish doctrine.

Now as for this whole anti-semitic arguement, the jews insisted on killing Jesus and even said that His blood would be on their hands, so I think its pretty safe to say that the jews killed Jesus, but murdered? You seem to have forgotten that His death was the whole point. Jesus said, "No man takes my life, I lay it down freely." Also, the entire point was to put the blood of Christ on the jews, spiritually speaking, to purify them once and for all. Is this anti-semitic? No, this is the plan of God in action.

Svyatoslav:
That may be the official Orthodox doctrine, I didn't know that, but 80% of the divisions of christian sects are over relatively minor beliefs, like how the Trinity works, once saved always saved, tithing, etc. There are a lot of wackos who claim themselves to be Christ, but I give them no more credence than the man on the street corner tha claims he's a choo-choo train. There will always be cults around the popular religions, they will usually distort the official texts of that religion, if they even address them at all.

 

@Syv: Thank you for pointing out the orthodox christian belief about Jesus' nature. I had been unaware of that before now.

As I interpret Susipasti's post, he's not raising any sort of "anti-semitism" argument, he's merely pointing out a historical fact: the idea that "Jews murdered Jesus" really and truly WAS used as the justification for very, very much persecution of Jews throughout the Middle Ages, and even beyond. It wasn't until the 20th century, IIRC, that Rome changed their official position on this.

Jews have no special status in the west. We're criticized and lampooned as often as the next group, and generally nothing comes of it - certainly not labelling the criticizer as and anti-semite. That designation is reserved for those who take steps to keep Jews from participating fully in life and society for no other reason than that we're Jewish.

May I ask for a further bit of enlightenment?

What "truth" are you referring to, that supposed to be so painful?

 

Did anyone notice "these" thingies ("")? That "Jews murdered Christ" is not my point of view. It's the view that was pretty common in the Middle Ages.

Edit: Like Rallymama said. I'm slow today with my posting.

Also I find it strange that they'd use such a name, because using the actual name of God is frowned upon everywhere in the Bible, and that's why he's referred to as the Lord and so forth. Or this is how I recall.

 

Obsolutely. There are millions of Orthodox Christians around the world. In fact, there are millions of Russian Orthodox Christians alone. My only point is that Russian Orthodoxy officially started in 900-something AD (sorry I don't remember the exact year). However, Christianity started as a religion MUCH earlier. And it's not like Russians or the only Orthodox Christians, either. There are also millions of Greek Orthodox Christians for example.

So what standard do we apply to these Christians groups? How long does the tradition have to be? 1000 years? That would eliminate all of the major Protestant sects. Maybe something less stringent like 300 years? That way we get to include the Lutherans, Presbetyrians, Methodists, Baptists, etc. Just because something doesn't have a long standing tradition doesn't mean that we shouldn't take them seriously. Russian Orthodox has been around for over 1000 years at this point. In the year 3000, if these sects are still around, do they then jump to a higher status?

 

I wouldn't put that way. If one is the older church, it's the Orthodox ("correct believe", "true to the original christian traditions") church and not the Catholic (general) church. As the Orthodox church keeps up the old greek traditions. But before the break-up, they were one.

And actually should the patriarch of Istanbul be number one, not the bishop of rome. Istanbul is were christianity really took of.

But I think the patriarch of Moscow thinks he's number 1, the patriarch of Istanbul only 2 and the pope maybe number 23. It's Rome was the first Rome, Constantinople the second and Moscow the third Rome.

 

Part of it may be in the names. Seeing as how it is named "Russian Orthodox", it's widely assumed that this is the "original" Christian Church. However, the Orthodox Church split from the Catholic Church. Prior to Orthodoxy, and later all the Protestant sects, the only Christian Church is what we now refer to as the Catholic Church. However, I was speaking specifically of Russian Orthodoxy, which was adopted by Vladamir around 900 AD, (it was early 900s - like 90X) and modeled after Eastern Orthodoxy as set up in Constantinople. We may just be saying the same thing in a different way. But no matter how you look at it, Russian Orthodoxy got its start later than Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.

 

I'm sorry if anyone took my post on antisemitism as a criticism of anyone, I just didn't want that topic tumbling down a lengthy spiral of inaccuracies and misconceptions, so I figured I'd try to clear it up right there.

As for the validity of different divisions within Chrisianity, I'm pretty sure we all think we're right and how old a particular sect is is meaningless. Sects change over time and it is these changes that then provoke splits like Caholic vs Orthodox and Catholic vs Protestant. If anything, the oldest sect is the one that has changed the most from its original position and is thus the furthest from the true Word of God. How's that for "The first shall be last and the last shall be first."

And when did this become a purely Christian thread, anyway? Where are our atheists? Where are our Jews? Where are our Buddhists, our Hindus, our Muslims? Does anyone know what the Sunni - Shi'ite division is all about?

 

In recent years the Roman Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church have made significant strides toward reconcilliation, mostly due to the efforts of Pope John Paul 2 and the Primate of Constaninople. Just one of the many recent changes is recognition of the Holy Orders between each Church, allowing Orthodox Priests to serve in Roman Churces and vice-versa. This has created an interesting situation here in our local diocese, as we have an converted Orthodox Priest serving as pastor of a Roman Church...and since Orthodox Priests are allowed to marry, we have a Roman Catholic pastor who has a wife.

I don't think that we'll ever get to the point were Roman and Orthodox are the same Church, but I do see us getting to the point were we view each other as different Rites within the same faith...just as the Catholics are made up of Latin Rite and Byzantine Rite (is that the proper name, chev?)...both Rites proclaim the same faith, but just have different ways of celebrating it.

That would be a wonderful day.

 

I have a mixed stance on religion- Sure, it could be claimed that religion has been used as a justification for discrimination and violence, but the same could be said for any popular set of beliefs and ideals,such as Communism. " Violently overthrow the oppressive bourgousie! Revolution is the only way!"
However, religion can also help people find meaning and stability in their lives, and there are a lot of religious charity organisations throughout the world.
Personally (I think I use this word FAR too often), I'm a nihilist. If you don't know what that is, we basically believe that humanity is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. We are nothing more than a statistical inevitability in an infinite universe, and our actions are dictated by no being but ourselves.

 

Mediocre Man,

Do you have any children, or have you ever killed a man?

 

Um, no, and no.

 

Have you ever killed a man?? What a thing to ask!
Do you think this a forum of crazed axe-murderers or something?

 

Yeah, really!
/me hides bloody scimitar and Barmy's missing belly

I think they should rename this thread to Sparring over Jesus.