re: Islam once again being a scourge on humanity

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You’re setting arbitrary qualifiers for what is considered Christianity. Islam is a branch of Christianity in the same sense Christianity is a branch of Judaism.

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There's nothing arbitrary about what I said. If you're trying to say that Islam is an offshoot of Christianity like Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism (it's actually a fulfillment of it, but that doesn't matter), then you need to show some sort of natural progression where the branch retains the trunk. Christianity doesn't deny any aspect of Old Testament Judaism, but claims to be the fulfillment of it. At no point did Jesus or His disciples look at something the OT taught and said, "nope, that's been corrupted and is not true" like Islam does.

So no, it's not arbitrary to ask that a branch retain the core elements of the trunk. In Christianity, there are many branches. There are many differences between Methodists and Lutherans and Baptists and Presbyterians, but all of them have the core beliefs about Christianity embedded within, which are typically defined by the ancient creeds of the faith. Islam looks nothing like Christianity, which is why no one says Islam is just a branch of Christianity. You are redefining the terms again.

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Am I am not saying that, you straw-man fallacy-generating piece of dog shite.

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You sound frustrated. I would be, too, if I got my rear end kicked up and down the forum so often.

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I’ve already stated the fact that Muslims believed Jesus was a regular guy, human, and not divine. The Quran specifically says Jesus was the Jewish messiah. You are my son, this day I have adopted you… which is what God says to his messiah.

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You aren't responding to what I said. I called you out for your false claim about the first Muslims claiming Jesus was "God's son". There is no evidence that that is true, and the Qur'an specifically says otherwise, as I mentioned already.

Instead of rebutting me or recanting your false claim, you are now pivoting to another claim, namely that Muslims believe that Jesus was just a normal, non-divine man, but also the Jewish messiah. If you want to talk about another claim, that's fine, but you are changing course without even mentioning the oopsie you made with your previous claim. It's factually not true that Muslims (even the first ones) believed that Jesus was God's son. Now that that's cleared up (I don't expect you to actually own up to that), I'll engage with your new claim.

First, Muslims absolutely believe that Jesus was just a man, and not divine. I have never claimed otherwise, and that's a core tenant of Islam that differentiates it from Christianity.

Second, the Qur'an's description of Jesus as the messiah is not the same as the Jewish messiah that was/is anticipated, nor the Christian messiah. The Jewish and Christian messiah have particular descriptors, such as him being from the kingly line of David. The Qur'an doesn't teach that Jesus came through David's line. The view of Jesus as messiah is substantively different from the Jews and Christians.

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That’s just more of you being obtuse. You hate that Muslims consider Jesus one of the greatest of God’s prophets.

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Keep moving those goal posts

You initially said, "[Jesus is] the most important prophet (besides Mohammed)", and now you're watering down your statement to be "one of the greatest of God's prophets". No doubt that Jesus is one of the greatest. I already said that they regard Jesus up there with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad. But, that's different from being "the most important (besides Mohammed)".

I guess when you keep tripping over yourself, you need to deflect somehow. Keep calling me "obtuse". You're doing a great job.

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You are saying Matthew 5 is a prophecy

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No, bitch. Stop fricking straw manning me. I have already corrected you 5 times on this one matter in this one thread. You can’t help yourself but troll.

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Oh, I get it. You think Jesus was talking to or about the Ebionites because He said "poor in spirit", because "poor" in Aramaic is the root of the name Ebionite? Perhaps you should do better at communicating rather than responding with ad hominems over and over again.

The text doesn't lend itself to your interpretation, then. The beatitudes were talking about qualities of God's people: the poor in spirit, the meek, the hungry and thirsty for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted for righteousness' sake.

Are you saying that all of these are referring to the Ebionites, or just the first one (poor in spirit)?

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I didn’t correct anything.

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Sounded like you did.

You initially said, "He was talking about the ancestors of what became Islam. They believed Jesus was the second greatest prophet who paved the way for Mohammed"

The grammar here indicates that "they" was referring to the Ebionites, as "believed" was past-tense. Since the Ebionites no longer exist and Muslims do, the past-tense form of the verb makes more sense to the Ebionites than Muslims. If you wanted to indicate that you were talking about Muslims rather than the Ebionites, you could have used the present-tense of the word ("believe"), since their view of the prophets hasn't changed much since the beginning of their religion.

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But I will correct my earlier statement and Jesus being the second most important prophet. How about this. Jesus was one of the 5 elite prophets in Islam, without rank, but was the second to last prophet before the final prophet. Point being Jesus is very fricking important to Muslims, a-hole.

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Thank you for the correction.

When you keep going on and on about how you are only spitting "facts", it's important for you to actually be factual.

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I'm not the one confusing them.

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Perhaps I'm not understanding you, then, because it seems to me that you are. You are confusing the general authority to put people to death for appropriate crimes with the autonomy to use the death penalty as they see fit without exception.

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So then this:

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Governments can decide which laws require the death penalty.

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is pretty much a meaningless statement, then. Notice that the statement is NOT about the general authority of the state to impose the death penalty for something (as you are attempting to pivot to), it's literally a statement that, paraphrased, says, "The state has the Divine appointed moral authority to apply the death penalty at will, as it sees fit."

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If you interpreted it this way, then I apologize for my poor communication, but I think I've gone out of my way to clarify myself on this point, so I'm wondering why you aren't accepting it.

Here is what I have stated to clarify my position:

1. Governments have divine authority to execute criminals for the good of society and to restrain evil in society
2. All governments are under the authority of Jesus Christ, who provides guidance through the Bible on what the limitations of their actions are, including what is morally just.

My general statement of "Governments can decide which laws require the death penalty" wasn't intended to be taken as absolute without any qualification (as wordy as I am, I tend to keep my shorter statements without detail on purpose). I then went on to mention abuse of power and partiality as a different matter, which I would hope provides some context clues that I don't think abuse isn't possible even with the use of the death penalty.

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Now the pivot turns it into an obvious descriptive statement that carries no claim of moral authority, not a prescriptive one. Now it's just, "Governments have the might to force the citizenry to comply with their application of the death penalty. The application might be just or unjust, but they can make it stick regardless." We didn't need you to tell us that...that part is self evident.

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God provides governments with the moral authority to execute criminals for just reasons. That authority is not a blanket permission to oppress its people through unjust use of the death penalty, according to biblical principles.

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So back to my question about citizen's duties to comply with government authority. Now that you have been specific about the limited authority that governments have (namely, that it is not forbidden for them to use the death penalty generally...and no, that is not consistent with what you have argued in the past, nor is it consistent with the statement, "Governments can decide which laws require the death penalty," in the context of that post), if I determine that my government requires something of me that goes against what God wants, am I to comply with it anyway in order to obey God's command to not resist government authority, or am I to resist it?

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You are to resist unlawful commands by the government, with "unlawful" meaning a command that causes one to sin against God, who is the greater authority. Just like children are to obey parents except when parents command them to sin, all inferiors must obey superiors with lawful commands.

And I've been absolutely consistent on this. If you disagree, please show me how you think I've been inconsistent. Either it's been a miscommunication on my part or a misunderstanding on yours.

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If the latter, again, you've pretty much rendered the entire concept as you have posted about it in the past and in the current statement quoted twice above meaningless.

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I have not. All I've said is that governments may impose the death penalty and decide how to do so. I further clarified that I meant they may do so within the boundaries of justice, according to God's word, in order to keep a moral authority in doing so. God sets the boundaries, and civil governments may choose how to act within those boundaries. They can choose to put someone to death for rape or not, or they can choose to put someone to death for murder or not. They can choose to put someone to death for treason or not. Putting limitations on what they are allowed to do does not invalidate my prior statement. You just took it as an absolute position due to my lack of clarification, but I have clarified myself since.

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Because at this point all we've got is, "Make your own individual determination as to whether you think your government is making the correct decision on any given issue according to God's will and feel free to resist it if you think it's the wrong one."

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If it can be supported by a reasonable understanding of the Scriptures, then yes. Liberty of conscience is a Christian doctrine that teaches that only God can bind the conscience of man, and if the government forces a person to sin against their conscience (guided by the Scriptures), then that is sinful and should be resisted.

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That's a long way from your posts in the past about Jesus not disputing the authority or Rome to execute Him (even though the Bible is clear that His trials were illegal and violated the procedures of the very institutions who conducted them.)

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No, it's not. Again, perhaps I was unclear in the past (doubtful, since I put many words into clarifying my belief on this) or you misunderstood, but what Rome did was not unlawful. It was morally wrong due to cowardice, but it was not unlawful to put a man to death. Jesus never denied the right of Rome to put men to death, which was my point previously. What was wrong was the particular application in that instance. I've been consistent about this.

This bitch is weird-looking

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Hopefully Trump saves this bimbo

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Why?

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If you're trying to say that Islam is an offshoot of Christianity like Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism (it's actually a fulfillment of it, but that doesn't matter), then you need to show some sort of natural progression where the branch retains the trunk

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Why do you have to be such an obtuse piece of shite, Foo? You already know that Islam is an “Abrahamic” faith descended from Christianity and it endorsed the Torah and the gospel as treats Jesus as an extremely important prophet of God. This isn’t rocket science. It’s the consensus of real scholars.

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Christianity doesn't deny any aspect of Old Testament Judaism, but claims to be the fulfillment of it. At no point did Jesus or His disciples look at something the OT taught and said, "nope, that's been corrupted and is not true" like Islam does.

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Again you are an obtuse piece of shite, knowing spouting lies left and right. You know damn good and well Christianity is a rejection of the law of Moses, a rejection of eye for an eye justice, a rejection of stoning adulterers, a rejection of circumcision, a rejection of celebration of the sabbath, a rejection of animal sacrifice, a rejection of kosher food law, and much more.

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So no, it's not arbitrary to ask that a branch retain the core elements of the trunk. In Christianity, there are many branches. There are many differences between Methodists and Lutherans and Baptists and Presbyterians, but all of them have the core beliefs about Christianity embedded within,

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Yeah all that nonsense is an offshoot of proper Christianity of the 4th century to the Middle Ages - the Roman Catholic Church.

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Lastly, the consensus of the scholars is not that Islam is a natural branch off of Christianity, but that Islam developed within a religiously-diverse area, being influenced by many different religions and belief systems. Just because Christianity was a partial influence on Islam doesn't mean it was a Christian offshoot, especially given the Qur'an's claims about Jesus that fly in the face of what Christians actually believed at the time (and continue to believe today).

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Ok let’s be fair and non hypocritical here. Christianity is not a natural branch of Judaism, but Christianity developed in a religiously diverse area with many belief systems, and was most effected by the sect of the Essenes and other first-temple sects who viewed the powers in Jerusalem as corrupting the true faith, but also Samaritanism, Philo of Alexandria, Greek philosophy (platonism, Epicureanism, stoicism, Aristotelianism), Zoroastrianism, and Mediterranean mystery cults (Dionysus, Osiris). Christianity as we know it, the version that “won” during to Roman imperialism, only adopted the scriptures of what became Judaism (post-war Phariseeism) as a response to Marcion of Sinope publishing the very first Christian Bible with his rejection of the Jewish god being the evil creator.

So if Islam isn’t a branch of Christianity, in the same sense Christianity is not a branch of Judaism (nor a fulfillment of it).

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I also believe in keeping the Sabbath, though the Christian Sabbath has changed to reflect the day of Christ's resurrection.

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He hallowed it. He commanded the Israelites to keep those commandments as a covenant forever. The Shabbat is Saturday, the last day of the week. When you forsake the Saturday and instead use Sunday, the first day of the week, you are slapping your deity in the face. You are basically tea-bagging God.

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Nope, not even comparable. The New Testament directly quotes, paraphrases, or alludes to the Old Testament over 4,000 times. The NT speaks of the OT as authoritative, not corrupted (like Islam teaches) or unnecessary (like Marcion did).

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Yes it’s comparable. The New Testament also quotes and references heavily from 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Ascension of Moses, Jannes and Jambres, Ascension of Isaiah, and of course other books that your boy Martin Luther ripped out of the canon - 2 Maccabees, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon. Christianity didn’t branch out of what was second temple Judaism nor of the later Phariseeism nor the later version of Rabbinic Judaism.

Interestingly, the “armor of God” lines that so many Protestants like to quote from Ephesians chapter 6 are directly from the Wisdom of Solomon chapter 5, a book Martin Luther dumped in the trash.

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You can't get around the fact that Christianity teaches a natural progression and continuation from the Old Testament (not rejecting it at all)

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Except they don’t have to keep the sabbath, nor cut off their dick skin, nor conform to kosher food laws, etc. It’s not a complete rejection but it directly rejects a large chunk of Old Testament law.

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Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. He has the prerogative to determine when He is to be worshipped, and what day of the week that is to be. The resurrection is a renewal of the Sabbath rest, which is why the New Testament calls it "the Lord's Day". The Sabbath remains. Only the day has changed.

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Go ahead and keep tea-bagging God. You will be in a bind on the day of the Lord, when he comes to judge you and cast you into the lake of fire.

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12And the LORD said to Moses, 13“You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the LORD, sanctify you. 14You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. 16Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. 17It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’”

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Not the first day of the week. The sabbath. The seventh day, when the Lord rested.

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Yes it’s comparable.

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Absolutely not, and you didn't even attempt to engage with my reasoning. The best you could do is say, "yeah, but the Bible also references other writings". You aren't engaging with my actual argument, which is that the New Testament sees the Old Testament as foundational, not corrupted. You cannot say the same for the Qur'an, at least as the Muslims argue it (see the Islamic dilemma argument).

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The New Testament also quotes and references heavily from 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Ascension of Moses, Jannes and Jambres, Ascension of Isaiah

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While this point is irrelevant to the point I already made, there are a handful of possible allusions and only one direct quote or reference (1 Enoch). There were also references to secular writers in the New Testament.

You need to be more careful with your words. "heavily" is not a word that describes what you're trying to describe.

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and of course other books that your boy Martin Luther ripped out of the canon - 2 Maccabees, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon.

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Irrelevant, again. Also, Luther didn't rip out anything. In his translation of the Bible, he moved those books to a separate section to indicate their helpfulness but their lack of authority for the Bible. He wasn't alone in thinking that. Before the Council of Trent, there was still debate on if the deuterocanonical books belonged as authoritative Scripture. Cardinal Cajetan--who disputed with Luther--also rejected the deuterocanon as having the same authority as the rest of Scripture, and he remained a faithful Roman Catholic.

I know it's hard for you, but try to stay on topic.

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Interestingly, the “armor of God” lines that so many Protestants like to quote from Ephesians chapter 6 are directly from the Wisdom of Solomon chapter 5, a book Martin Luther dumped in the trash.

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Try gain

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Except they don’t have to keep the sabbath, nor cut off their dick skin, nor conform to kosher food laws, etc. It’s not a complete rejection but it directly rejects a large chunk of Old Testament law.

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Fulfillment is not rejection.

You're talking about what Christian theologians refer to as the civil and ceremonial laws. Those are applications of the 10 commandments with particular purposes in mind. The civil laws were for the nation of Israel, applying general equity to the people and punishing actions that disrupt the peace of the nation. The ceremonial laws were intended to separate Israel from the other nations, while looking forward to the coming Messiah. Those things were no longer necessary to be done by the people once Christ accomplished His mission.

In particular, I believe that the Sabbath ought to be kept, but it's called the Christian Sabbath now (aka, The Lord's Day), and kept on Sundays instead of Saturdays.

Circumcision was the covenant sign given to Abraham as a seal of the promise God made with him. That promise was expanded in the New Testament and made more inclusive, as it is transformed into water baptism as the sign of the entrance into the covenant community. So, what circumcision pictured (the shedding of blood for the remission of sins) is now continued on with baptism, which looks at the shed blood of Jesus for the washing away of sin.

The food laws were to separate the people of Israel from the surrounding nations and tribes. Since the gospel is being sent throughout the world, there is no longer such a distinction needed, and the promise of salvation is given to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. That wall of separation has been torn down due to the inclusion given by Christ. This was actually fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham when He said that through his offspring (Jesus), all the nations of the world would be blessed.

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Go ahead and keep tea-bagging God. You will be in a bind on the day of the Lord, when he comes to judge you and cast you into the lake of fire.

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1) You don't actually believe that, and 2) even if I were not worshipping God correctly, Jesus still paid for that sin. I'm worshipping God sincerely, and there is always sin and corruption in worship, because it's being performed by sinners. Jesus is the great High Priest and Mediator with the Father, who intercedes for sinners like me.

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Not the first day of the week. The sabbath. The seventh day, when the Lord rested.

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The Sabbath is a day of rest and worship and was dictated by God to be on the day when He rested from His acts of creation. With the resurrection of the God-man, Jesus Christ, we now celebrate and worship God on the day of re-creation, when Jesus was resurrected, so we have eternal rest in Him.

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The fact is that Islam is a branch of Christianity.

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WRONG!!!!!

To be Christian, you have to believe that Jesus is God. Muslims do not believe this.

In fact, there are verses in the Koran that command muslims to convert Christians and Jews by the sword if necessary. If Islam was a continuation of what Jesus taught, then muslims would be bound by the 10 commandments, and they would know Jesus is God. They are not and do not. The Koran explicitly states that it is OK to lie, cheat, steal or kill to advance Islam. That is NOTHING like Christianity.

Christianity is about peace - loving your neighbors, praying for your enemies, and trying to live as Jesus taught us to live.

Islam is none of that. Islamophobia is real and for good reason.