If God created Jews for any reason at all, it was to kick-start His project of making humanity observe the Noahide laws. Once all nations of the world became Noahide, Jews would become obsolete because their mission would be complete. In order to Noahidise the world, Jews must first see to it that Israel is at least Noahide. Once Israel adopts sharia - and Secular Koranism is a New School of Sharia - Western nations and non-Western nations not already Muslim would follow suit. Once that is done, the populations inhabiting the territory of Greater Israel would in time agree to pool their sovereignty and to be under the administration of a State of Israel implementing Secular Koranism as a one party theocracy, particularly if they see such an economic and political union as conferring real benefits to them in this life.
THE RADICALISED RABBI is a blog on Judaism and its very useful ideas and the blogger a Secular Koranist and a revolutionary. You don't have to be Jewish to find Jewish ideas very useful in tidying up your thinking and turbo-charging your powers of reasoning to the extent that you can even predict most events and disasters. The West is heading for disaster with its insane policy of Transnational Progressivism, turning our global village into Sodom and Gomorrah attracting the same punishment.
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You seek an overall solution, which is an understandable desire when confronted by an uncertain and messy world. The Christian perspective is that God is able to enter into that messy world. It is very different from legalism.
ReplyDeleteJews and Muslims also believe God answers prayers.
ReplyDeleteYes Jews recognised the divine energy could manifest in the material world - the burning bush, the Angel of the Lord, the Three Visitors to Abraham, the Son of Man appearing in the fire with the youths.
ReplyDeleteI think this goes to the heart of the problem for Muslims, in their determination to deny the incarnation they have built up a theology that makes divine intervention impossible. An absolutely simple God has no attributes distinct from his essence and therefore it does not seem to be possible for such a god to be able to act in the world of creation. This is also why Muslims cannot grasp the meaning of icons and how icons differ fundamentally from idols - whereas to me an icon seems the very opposite of an idol.
Muslims consider icons idolatrous.
ReplyDelete"Muslims, in their determination to deny the incarnation they have built up a theology that makes divine intervention impossible." This is nonsensical.
The important Jewish thinker, Philo, gave a primary role to the Logos, the Word of God. The Logos referred to in John's Gospel has a Jewish precedent in both the Old Testament and Jewish thinking. For Muslims though, it is not possible to accept this inheritance if they insist upon the absolute simplicity of God. Once you accept God has attributes then the main objection to the Trinity evaporates. The alternative is reducing God to the impersonal and unreachable monad of the pagan philosophers.
ReplyDeleteWhat "Jewish precedent" of what are you referring to?
ReplyDeleteWhat "inheritance" are you referring to is not possible for Muslims to accept?
Why would they want to accept it, whatever it is?
Are you really doing no more than saying Muslims should accept the absurdity of the Trinity for some reason you have not explained?
All can agree that God if He exists has attributes.
What attributes of God are you referring to?
Jews and Muslims don't think the Abrahamic God is impersonal, they just don't pretend they are praying to either Jesus or Mary when they pray to God because they know doing so would be idolatrous.
I do not intend to sound disrespectful. Coming from a Christian tradition I am aware of the theological problems caused when certain theological schools have emphasised the divine simplicity of God. It seems such problems must also face Islam and from the outside it looks as though Islam has not confronted this problem. Divine simplicity turns God into a monad because energy, as distinct from essence, is how the personality is manifested. With a belief in the Trinity Christianity has recognised not just a personal, but an inter-personal God. God is dynamic and loving eve within Himself, rather than a simple and unknowable monad that does not seem able to act in the temporal realm (as with the Platonic idea). This is complicated, but theology deals with highly complicated matters. I do not understand how Muslims avoid reducing God to nothing more than a Platonic Monad. I accept my knowledge of Islam is limited, but to me the interpersonal nature of the Trinity seems vital to a belief in a personal God as does the distinction between essence and energy. If God is absolutely simple then there is no distinction in God, making Him into a reduced and impersonal monad.
ReplyDeleteJews were already debating distinctions in God before Christianity, unlike Islam. Philo the Jew placed great emphasis on the Logos, which Christians recognised as Christ. Therefore distinctions in the Godhead are long established within the Jewish tradition. The burning bush and the angel of the Lord are divine manifestations in the Old Testament, demonstrating how divine energies were recognised as being manifested in the world, unlike the unknowable essence of God.
What is the nature of the "theological problems" you mention?
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean by "an inter-personal God"?
What is a "Platonic Monad"?
Are you really saying you have to pray to Mary or Jesus to have a personal God?
There is nothing that could be called "logos" about the belief that an executed revolutionary is the co-equal of the supreme an eternal Abrahamic God, which is patently absurd.
On what basis are you claiming that Philo the Jew affirmed the Trinity?
I am not claiming he affirmed the Trinity, but by affirming the Logos he affirmed distinction in God.
ReplyDeleteWhat on earth does that mean?
ReplyDeleteMy claim is that if Muslims insist on absolute simplicity without distinction then God ceases to be a person and ceases to interact with His creation.
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to hear in one of your youtube debates what the Muslim scholar says about this.
My understanding, which might be wrong is that the Muslim idea of God is that He is entirely identified with His essence (absolute simplicity).
The Islamic view is the same as the Jewish view of God, mutatis mutandis.
ReplyDeleteThe Trinity means God is interpersonal and is in relationship of a dynamic kind without creation. The distinction with energies mean that God can do things in the temporal realm, such as make the world. If God is identical with His essence, is the creation eternal or is God continuously creating? The pagan Greeks got around this by saying creation was an emanation, but then you lose the personal God.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am saying is that if you rely on absolute simplicity to avoid accepting the Trinity, then you have to give up a lot of other things about God that I do not think Muslims would want to give up.
"If God is identical with His essence, is the creation eternal or is God continuously creating?"
ReplyDeleteHow the hell are we supposed to know? Are you really expecting anyone to explain to you how God actually operates and exists? You either choose to accept the non-Trinitarian narrative or you don't. The question can be best resolved by asking yourself why you choose to continue with a religion that has already failed in preference to one that makes sense and does not rely on an absurdity, blasphemy and idolatry. One might be forgiven for thinking that you are saying you prefer the absurdity, idolatry and blasphemy of the religion of your ancestors because you think it is superior to the truth, logic and reason of what you doubtless regard as the religion of low status immigrant culture of brown people that you have always despised and resented.
Because absolute simplicity also means God is not personal and that He cannot act in the temporal realm.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think Muslims have to give up about God that you don't think they would want to give up?
ReplyDeleteWhy does "absolute simplicity" mean God is not personal?
Because the personality is energy. It must be different from essence. Otherwise we cannot encounter God personally and He is prevented from acting upon His own creation.
ReplyDeleteThink of a human personality. We know that in essence they are at core an unknowable essence. We encounter them through their personal actions. We even recognise them in their creations. We recognise Mozart's music as distinctive, while obviously his essence does not reside in the music, but his personal energy does manifest there. We talk of theophanies, these are divine manifestations of the essentially unknowable God in creation. if you want to ignore Christian theophanies then think of the burning bush or the three divine persons that visit Abraham. Think of creation. We are not pantheists, but just as we identify Mozart's energy in its distinctive form in his music, so we can identify God from the way creation reflects His personal energy. If God is completely identical with His essence then there is an unbridgeable chasm, in which God as an impersonal simple essence cannot reach us and we cannot reach Him.
ReplyDeleteWhy must energy be different from essence and why can't we encounter God personally if energy is "different from essence"?
ReplyDeleteSounds like you are trying to confuse others with the words and concepts you have learned at university to dismiss for reasons of chauvinism the religion of the low status immigrants you have always despised and resented. At least they work and do not spend years of their lives at university learning nothing useful at all except masturbate to words and concept that are clearly pretentious, irrelevant and nonsensical like the towering pile of piffle that is Christian theology.
The reason we cannot encounter God as essence is because he is fundamentally of a different ontology form us, He is beyond being. Therefore we can only encounter Him through theophanies. What I am saying is serious and has been considered by thinkers over centuries, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. These are not just words, they have a great deal of meaning (which I cannot claim credit for). As Saint Gregory of Palamas said, if we deny the essence/energy distinction, we might as well all be atheists. It is of fundamental importance and not simply in the high-falutin world of theological speculation and we live our lives as though that distinction is real every day. The problem with Islam, is seems to me, is it has not given an account of this and is therefore in a theologically-contradictory position. It is too easy just to dismiss what I have said as mumbo jumbo and I suggest amounts to evasion of the question.
ReplyDeleteYou have just typed a word salad that was not a question. Why are you claiming that I have evaded your question when you have not even asked it?
ReplyDeleteAs for this idea this is about cultural superiority, the West failed to make the distinction and ended up atheist and in cultural decline.
ReplyDeleteThe West failed to make the distinction between what and what?
ReplyDeleteI admit it was not the exact question you were posing, but it was a question related to your question posed by me. Because I think you are mistaken in assuming Judaism holds to the same absolute simplicity as Islam does, but rather Christianity in recognising distinctions in God and theophanies is far closer to Judaism and its tradition.
ReplyDeleteFailed to distinguish between God's essence and energy and thereby lost touch with God.
The best way to understand God is through the wisdom of His laws.
ReplyDeleteHow did He deliver those laws? Did Moses encounter God's energies on the mountain? If God were just some abstract ultimate simplicity there would have been no engagement, no means of giving Moses the laws. The ontological chasm would not have been bridged.
ReplyDeleteIncredible! You are actually asking me how I know God actually handed the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. The answer is that I don't know and there is no requirement for any of us to know how God managed to achieve this. All that is required for us is to *decide* whether the Ten Commandments are fair enough. I suspect you are probably atheist at heart, more interested in wasting time to show off the words and ideas you learned studying theology at your Russell Group University than solving any problems in this life.
ReplyDeleteNot at all. Nonetheless I hope I have sown a seed of a thought. If God is absolutely simple and there is no differentiation in the Godhead it would be impossible for the Torah to be handed to Moses. The Torah is an example of a theophany. These things are important. I accept it is a mystery, but we have to acknowledge that God really did manifest to Moses and that He remained unknowable in His essence. Therefore God is not absolutely simple. If God is not absolutely simple your chief reason for disbelieving the Trinity falls away.
ReplyDeleteIslam cannot have the Torah and absolute simplicity. It is one or the other.
I claim no credit for the points I make. I am just reciting the Fathers. These are not my ideas, nor should they be. It is from Tradition.
Jews also talk about the Holy Spirit who is the Agent of God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Spirit_in_Judaism
ReplyDeleteThe Holy Spirit in Islam is cited at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C5%AB%E1%B8%A5