Post by pim on Oct 9, 2012 11:19:46 GMT 10
More than just "traces" of polytheism, Buzz! Early Christianity was convulsed by Christological debates about the nature of Christ. Blood flowed! What is/was Christ? God? Man? Bit of both? If so which was the "God" part and which part was "man"? Or is it seamless? Arians, Monophysites, Gnostics, Manicheans, Nestorians ... they all had a different view. No wonder that Eastern Rite Christianity, which came out of the Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean where these debates took place (somehow "debates" is too mild a word for the slaughter that took place over these questions) calls itself "orthodox". And the Trinitarian Christianity we've been brought up with is the "orthodoxy" imposed on the point of swords and javelins after various "Councils" such as Nicea and Chalcedon which were gabfests at which the participants were basically ordered to reach a consensus position. Not the "truth" but a consensus.
My argument has always been that doctrinally the principal factor that inspired the growth of Islam was this "Greek" Trinitarianism model of Christianity which had been imposed on the largely Aramaic and Coptic-speaking Monophysite Christian populations of the Levant and Egypt. Islam has always denounced the Christian idea of the Trinity as a relapse into polytheism and therefore the grossest blasphemy. The Jews also utterly reject the Trinity. What's the classic prayer of the Jews? Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD One, not Three!
My argument has always been that doctrinally the principal factor that inspired the growth of Islam was this "Greek" Trinitarianism model of Christianity which had been imposed on the largely Aramaic and Coptic-speaking Monophysite Christian populations of the Levant and Egypt. Islam has always denounced the Christian idea of the Trinity as a relapse into polytheism and therefore the grossest blasphemy. The Jews also utterly reject the Trinity. What's the classic prayer of the Jews? Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD One, not Three!