www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Does the Byzantine Forum contribute to global terrorism?

Dear Diak,

My take on Daniel's post is not any claim that Muslims worship a Triune God, but, as Judaism, and Christianity, Islam is a monotheistic religion.

You are correct in every way that Christians worship a Triune God. Thanks be to God and the Church Fathers, who fought the battles of orthodoxy for us.

Frankly, the tone of this thread has turned nasty. With all repect to the First Amendment, I think it's time to give this a rest.

Paul

Paul,

It did not turn nasty until Iconophile started the thread. That was his intention.

Apparently Canadian women don't find Muslim sharia all that benign.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,131715,00.html

Dan L

My brother Paul, I agree with your parting conclusion. Both the initiation of this thread and many of the responses have not been forwarded in a Christian sense of charity and brotherly dialogue. But to say all three worship "a" montheistic God is most definitely not the same as claiming one worships THE triune God, one God in three divine persons.

With that I will also like Paul recuse myself from any further discussion here.

Dear Friends,

What I find interesting is how our own press up here is starting to go out against "Islam" in general (even in a veiled manner, no pun intended).

We had a case of some Muslim children that were taken away from their Muslim parents by the children's aid (for reasons unknown but it looks like they were abused).

A Muslim association began to demonstrate against the Christian foster home the kids were placed in.

But then the Christian parents began buying Hallal food for the children and started taking them to Mosque etc.

The newspaper, Canada's national one, basically told the association to "get a life" and that this is a multicultural society etc.

I've never seen that kind of commentary before.

Perhaps this kind of thing is unavoidable, I mean connecting people's behaviour to their religion and imputing negative motives to a religious community etc.

We'll see how that develops.

Alex

"The tragic experience of recent generations has brought to humanity an intense thirst for peace. Peace is now considered a good higher that many ideals for which people formerly gladly shed their blood. Contributing very much to this is the fact that war is not what it often was in the past, that is,a conflict between injustice and justice, but has become a conflict without meaning between injustice and injustice.The experience of falsehood and hypocricy,which the injustice of various parties has used to appear just in the eyes of its followers, has caused people to lose faith in the existence of justice and to fail to see anything before them that is worthy of defending. Thus war, in any form, seems to be something completely absurd.
This reluctance on the part of humanity for any kind of conflict would have been something admirable if it were the offspring of spiritual health.But today when everyone is speaking of peace and unity,self-love and hatred,injustice and falsehood, ambition and greed, are at their zenith." Kalomiros

I thought this would be insightful chad

It is.

Dan L

I like that and it is insightful. I think one of our problems today is a lack of understanding of charity. Charity is love, yes, but it is also charity to uphold the right teachings of our faith handed to us from the Holy Spirit through the apostles. Charity also involves having the discernment to distinguish between good and evil, along with the ability to label either for what it is. Much of the use of the word "charity" that I encounter among Christians today is utter foolishness. Charity is not an empty-headed acceptance of everything that comes along without comment. So the next time someone says you are being uncharitable, examine their words and discern if they even have an idea of what the word means.

Dear Friends,

The quote from Kalomiros is interesting, but really only applicable to the West.

The religiously-based terrorists really DO understand their war as based on the paradigm of justice vs injustice, even if the West doesn't.

The West has no stomach for "good vs evil" and doesn't get excited by such issues that its moral relativism has long sinced expunged from its soul.

What's left of it, anyway . . .

Alex

Then you agree with the Kalomiros quote.

I think the underlying issue of this thread has merit. I wish that it had been presented in a straightforward manner but it was doomed from the start by the polemical way it was presented.

By and large the West has developed into an anti-culture. Nothing but money really matters. It is a shame. The response by some who claim Muslim heritage (is that a safe way to say it) is horrendous and evil. Furthermore, the desire to either take over or be at war with, which is basic Muslim operating principles, has to be the major reason the radicals find solace in Islam when they do such things.

I'm greatly encouraged by some peace loving Muslims who finally seem to be speaking out. They are a small voice but they are at least a voice. How might Christians regain a voice in our own land which would speak against the culture of death? I think one starting point is the defrocking of priests and bishops who sustain a culture of death by protecting pedophiles and homosexualists, but that is only one starting point.

Dan L

My only point in starting this thread was to prompt some reflection among those who post messages that could be perceived as anti-Islamic. Remember that this is an open forum, that anyone can read our messages. I don't think my theoretical Muslim is so far-fetched. I was trying to promote a little more responsible approach to posting.
And Steve- my point was not that the terrorists are harmless civilians but that they live surrounded by harmless civilians and thus any act of war that uses weapons of mass destruction -which are supposed to be bad, right? Oh yeah, unless WE are the ones using them - would be inherently genocidal.
And Dan- I see no need to respond to your silliness and namecalling, reminiscent of my four year old. You are doing a fine job of making a fool of yourself without me.
And Diak- of course Christians worship a Triune God, but we also worship One God, remember? As monotheists, we are united in this with Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and others.
And finally I agree that there is a great struggle between good and evil in this age. I do not, however, agree with those who see the USA and the rest of the modern West as the obvious
good guy in the struggle; the line is drawn through all of our hearts, not by religious and political boundaries.
-peace and good, Daniel

Dear Iconophile,

Of course, you are correct in saying that we share a belief in a single Divinity with other faiths.

This is clearly affirmed by the Catholic Church and Vatican II.

And if one wanted to push this further, one could even make the argument that the Christian East has a liturgical focus on all Three Divine Persons of the Trinity, whereas the Catholic West focuses primarily on the Father - as Fr. Karl Jungmann said.

Ironically, what led to the division between East and West was actually a different understanding of the Trinity Itself.

It was almost as if the two sides accused each other of worshipping a different God than what the Fathers and Councils defined . . .

Alex

Alex, perhaps you are referring to Fr. Josef Jungmann, the eminent Jesuit liturgist?

His book The Place of Christ in Liturgical Prayer is one of my all-time favorites in comparative liturgy. He looks at both East and West and the anaphoral focus of various traditions. Very enlightening reading.

Daniel,

You write as if you are the first to discover these truths. I see you are still whining about my accurate description of you. Sigh...

Dan L

Dear Diak,

Yes, you are right . . .sorry!

Could you do something about the two Daniels here?

We need them to stop going at each other in order to better focus on the REAL enemy!

Alex

Alex,

As you know the real enemy is Satan. Two expressions of this enemy are Western Materialims and radical violent Islam. That helps clarify the situation I should think.

Dan L