Christian Beliefs

No one likes my question

Pladio said:

No one likes my question

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Was that this one:

Pladio said:

Even if Jesus is God, how did the Holy Spirit become a separate entity all of a sudden ?
Where, why and how was the Trinity born?

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Quite simple: It always existed.

Likewise it was always three entities in one.

uhm reading a 'holy book' of either wich believe has to be done with a lot of care

the mentioning of JemyM is wrong. In those days women didn't had the rights they do have now so saying that Christian belief or islam is bad because of that is so beside the picture. This was already a good step forward maybe in those times.

JM, Paul was also a Jew. Anti-semitism is not a Christian teaching and never will/should be. The Jews are still God's chosen people and have a definite place in His plan of salvation. Yes, there have been some anti-semitic 'christians', but they don't or shouldn't represent mainstream Christian belief. Any form of racism is not a part of my belief system.

kalniel said:

Was that this one:


Quite simple: It always existed.

Likewise it was always three entities in one.

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It couldn't always have existed. Jesus wasn't there before ...

Corwin said:

JM, Paul was also a Jew. Anti-semitism is not a Christian teaching and never will/should be. The Jews are still God's chosen people and have a definite place in His plan of salvation. Yes, there have been some anti-semitic 'christians', but they don't or shouldn't represent mainstream Christian belief. Any form of racism is not a part of my belief system.

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Not only Paul, Jesus, and his apostles too I believe.

But until the 19th or 20th century, antisemitism was mostly Christian, from the belief of making food with Christian childrens' blood, to the inquisitions, to the Crusades, to the many pogroms ... Most of it happened from the belief that Jews were the wrongdoers of something, even the Plague was blamed on Jews...

It's true though that Christians of today have changed dramatically since then. But saying there have been 'some' is an understatement.

Corwin said:

Yeah, Church of England!!

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Christian and Easter! And the Catholics have them too!

JemyM said:

To understand why one must know about the conflict in the early church. On one side you have the first Christians, the Jewish Christians, the Ebionites of Jerusalem that looked up to James, Jesus Brother. They used a version of Matthew. The gospel of Matthew was aimed at the Jews, it's the most Jewish gospel of the four and it goes to great length to establish Jesus as the messiah. It's also in Matthew say that the old testament law still apply, he do not do this in the other gospels. The Ebionites saw Paul as a heretic who turned a Jewish prophet into a Gentile prophet and claimed against Jesus that the old laws no longer applied.

Then there were Pauline Christians who rejected the Torah and James and took the connection with the Torah as a mistake. They used Luke as their gospel and mixed it with Greek philosophy and gnostic Christianity (trails of this can still be found in NT). This conflict between Jewish Christianity and Pauline Christianity initiated the Christian antisemitism that is still with us today.

It was later, with Constantine and Eusebius, that both Pauls letters and the Torah was accepted into canon and they still disagree.

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While the conflict you speak of is quite true, and the gentile Christians did try to shed the label of Jew, no where did the Paulines ever claim Jesus was not a Jew. They claimed that the Laws of Moses did not apply because of the New Covenant.

According to Matt 5:31-32 a man can divorce a woman if she commits adultery.
According to Mark 10:2-12 a man can not divorce a woman who committed adultery.

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Matthew: 5:31-32-It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.'[a] 32But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

That doesn't say that you can divorce, or even give any explicit endorsement of it, it makes a point about happens if you DO divorce in the case of adultery.

And yes, Mark is more to the point about divorce not being right with God.

A slight distinction, but an important one since divorce was allowed in Jewish custom.

(Not to mention how horribly discriminating Matt 5:31-32 is against women... and they say Islam is bad...)

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Islam is much, much worse in the treatment of women from a doctrine stand point. I'm not familiar with anything in the NT that says you should beat your wife for disobeying you.

titus said:

the mentioning of JemyM is wrong. In those days women didn't had the rights they do have now so saying that Christian belief or islam is bad because of that is so beside the picture. This was already a good step forward maybe in those times.

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The French Revolution was also a good step forward in those times but you do not find people preaching it like it's important for young kids to read about it. In other words, the Bible might have some merit during history class, but definitely not as a claimed "good book" or a "moral guide".

Corwin said:

JM, Paul was also a Jew.

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Who broke the Torah and sold out Jesus to the gentiles.

Corwin said:

Anti-semitism is not a Christian teaching and never will/should be. The Jews are still God's chosen people and have a definite place in His plan of salvation. Yes, there have been some anti-semitic 'christians', but they don't or shouldn't represent mainstream Christian belief. Any form of racism is not a part of my belief system.

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It's a sideeffect of reading the bible really. Not every Christian is antisemitic but I encounter such values among christians far more often than I would like and it's quite disturbing when I do.

blatantninja said:

While the conflict you speak of is quite true, and the gentile Christians did try to shed the label of Jew, no where did the Paulines ever claim Jesus was not a Jew. They claimed that the Laws of Moses did not apply because of the New Covenant.

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Yes, but the point is that judaism did not matter for Paul anymore, not even the parts of judaism supported by Jesus.

Jesus was a doomsday prophet that aimed at the jews and they need to follow him to get a good position once that day come.

Pauls theology meant that Jesus sacrifice gave an opportunity to eternal life and you only need to believe he did to be saved, you did not need to be a jew nor follow jewish tradition.

Paul and Jesus are two different religions which most christians believe are one.


I will get back to the rest later, I have to sleep.

Except for this question : - My question is from whence did the concept come from ?
According to Jewish beliefs, when it says Rouach Hakodesh in the OT it just means the Holy Spirit or the Holy Wind, but it is just another name of God, like Shaddai, Elohim, El, Elokim, Hashem, Yehovah...

Even if Jesus is God, how did the Holy Spirit become a separate entity all of a sudden ?
Where, why and how was the Trinity born?

All of my questions have been answered.

I have another one though. Something which is quite important too.
Christians of today believe in the OT, even if there is a New Covenant a lot of stuff, like prophecies and important things are referenced back to the OT.

My problem is, the OT has been translated over translations over translations which have then been translated or corrected again. The translations aren't the same as the original...

The Masoretic text of the Bible is very different to the one which is now used by Christians around the world. Things have been translated wrongly or differently a lot, how can you use a translation of a translation for references alluding to the Trinity, or prophecies or Jesus himself ?
Doesn't it bother you that you're following a translation instead of the real thing ?

Pladio said:

Not only Paul, Jesus, and his apostles too I believe.

But until the 19th or 20th century, antisemitism was mostly Christian, from the belief of making food with Christian childrens' blood, to the inquisitions, to the Crusades, to the many pogroms ... Most of it happened from the belief that Jews were the wrongdoers of something, even the Plague was blamed on Jews...

It's true though that Christians of today have changed dramatically since then. But saying there have been 'some' is an understatement.

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Most Christian antisemitism stemmed from the part of the Passion story where it's the Jewish temple priests leading the angry mob demanding that Christ be crucified. Even with that though, it's a mixed bag through out history. There were some that brutally oppressed Jews and others that did not (particularly religious scholars as they recognized that interpretation of the Hebrew texts was better done by people that had been speaking it most of their lives!)

I think it is in accurate to say that most antisemitism was Christian though. When the Muslim's conquered areas, they often allowed the Christians to continued to worship, though with very still financial penalties, but forced all Jews to convert.

JemyM said:

The French Revolution was also a good step forward in those times but you do not find people preaching it like it's important for young kids to read about it. In other words, the Bible might have some merit during history class, but definitely not as a claimed "good book" or a "moral guide".

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Yes again, you have no clue what you are talking about. It's pretty much the definition of both.

JemyM said:

Yes, but the point is that judaism did not matter for Paul anymore, not even the parts of judaism supported by Jesus.

Jesus was a doomsday prophet that aimed at the jews and they need to follow him to get a good position once that day come.

Pauls theology meant that Jesus sacrifice gave an opportunity to eternal life and you only need to believe he did to be saved, you did not need to be a jew nor follow jewish tradition.

Paul and Jesus are two different religions which most christians believe are one.


I will get back to the rest later, I have to sleep.

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I fail to see how you can think they are two different religions when Paul is teaching exactly what Jesus taught. Jesus never taught adherence to the Laws of Moses, though he followed the customs.

Pladio said:

Except for this question : - My question is from whence did the concept come from ?
According to Jewish beliefs, when it says Rouach Hakodesh in the OT it just means the Holy Spirit or the Holy Wind, but it is just another name of God, like Shaddai, Elohim, El, Elokim, Hashem, Yehovah...

Even if Jesus is God, how did the Holy Spirit become a separate entity all of a sudden ?
Where, why and how was the Trinity born?

All of my questions have been answered.

I have another one though. Something which is quite important too.
Christians of today believe in the OT, even if there is a New Covenant a lot of stuff, like prophecies and important things are referenced back to the OT.

My problem is, the OT has been translated over translations over translations which have then been translated or corrected again. The translations aren't the same as the original...

The Masoretic text of the Bible is very different to the one which is now used by Christians around the world. Things have been translated wrongly or differently a lot, how can you use a translation of a translation for references alluding to the Trinity, or prophecies or Jesus himself ?
Doesn't it bother you that you're following a translation instead of the real thing ?

Click to expand...

Not really because when Christians use the OT these days, it is really just as a point of reference. There are some stories that are important, and reinforce things passed on from Christ, things that reference Christ, etc, but we're not looking to it for all the answers.

blatantninja said:

Most Christian antisemitism stemmed from the part of the Passion story where it's the Jewish temple priests leading the angry mob demanding that Christ be crucified. Even with that though, it's a mixed bag through out history. There were some that brutally oppressed Jews and others that did not (particularly religious scholars as they recognized that interpretation of the Hebrew texts was better done by people that had been speaking it most of their lives!)

I think it is in accurate to say that most antisemitism was Christian though. When the Muslim's conquered areas, they often allowed the Christians to continued to worship, though with very still financial penalties, but forced all Jews to convert.

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No, Muslims were a lot better to Jews throughout history, up until the late 1800s ...

blatantninja said:

Not really because when Christians use the OT these days, it is really just as a point of reference. There are some stories that are important, and reinforce things passed on from Christ, things that reference Christ, etc, but we're not looking to it for all the answers.

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A lot of Christians I've talked to reference Isaiah pretty often, as well as Daniel and a few other books.

On a bit of a tangent I was reading around zoroastrianism a bit recently. I like the feature that their supreme being isn't omnipotent, which means that he's off the hook for all the pain and suffering rather than all this moving in mysterious ways shit. Never understood how you people can believe in a supreme being that's both omnipotent and benevolent with all of the shit that goes on, seems so contradictory to me.

blatantninja said:

I think it is in accurate to say that most antisemitism was Christian though. When the Muslim's conquered areas, they often allowed the Christians to continued to worship, though with very still financial penalties, but forced all Jews to convert.

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The three Abrahamic religions have one thing in common, you shall follow no other religion is part of it's core. In the 10 commandments this is the first commandment and in Islam it's the first pillar. Even Jesus say things like "Those who are not with me are against me" and threatens to exterminate whole cities who do not submit (Matt 11:21-23). Judaism ended up as the weakest one and thus they were exterminated first, among with pagans and Christian/Muslim perspectives that was not mainstream. The slaughter of pagans and non-orthodox Christianity around Europe went on for 900 years, only to resume with the Muslims, then Christianity turned on itself, orthodox against catholic and then protestant vs catholic. In most Christian countries you hear Christian referring to their whole country as "Christian" and they claim that it's built up by "Christian values" etc, even if the country are secular democracies. They just cannot accept any other belief system. That's nothing more than a tribe defending their dominion of a geographic location while gathering resources they need to expand.

In Hinduism and Buddhism this habit is almost non-existent. Around India and Asia there are several temples that have both Hindu and Buddhist idols, even some that harbor Christian and Muslim icons, just to show tolerance and religious diversity.

Antisemitism is inspired by the Quaran and the Bible just like the scripture inspires a conflict between Christianity and Islam. The Abrahamic religions just works as an artificial racism. Their scripture urges them to be exclusive will never be able to live next to eachother. They can barely live next to themselves (Catholic vs Protestant in Ireland, Shia vs Sunni in middle-east etc).