AjaJoy responds to me:
quote:
I thought the Jews didn't believe that Christ was the son of God.
So? Jesus was Jewish. You don't think he believed in himself?
quote:
So how can they have invented Christianity.
Because Jesus was claimed to be the Messiah that was promised from Jewish tradition. Therefore, of course it would be Jews who would be the ones to come forward and say, "Behold, the Messiah has come!"
You will recall, of course, that Jesus insisted that the Law (and by that, he meant Jewish law) was supposed to be kept until the very end of time. The message of Jesus was not that there was some new religion but that Judaism was about to be fulfilled. It was only after Paul started wandering around trying to convert people who didn't take kindly to things like circumcision and dietary restrictions that the burgeoning Jesus cult started to deviate from the Law and become what we recognize today as Christianity.
quote:
Anyway, I was reffering primarily to the religion after the NT was added. Am I still incorrect?
In a naive sense, no. That is, the canon that determined which books would go into the New Testament was decided over time culminating in the Nicene Creed in 325 CE.
And while the Great Schism where the Eastern Church and Western Church both excommunicated each other happened 700 years later in 1054 CE and many people seem to have fallen for the claim that the Roman Catholics are the "true line", the Greek Orthodox would disagree (for example, in 1439, there was an attempt to reunite the Eastern and Western churches. The Orthodox agreed to the filioque clause if the Romans would agree that the Pope is merely "first among equals." The Romans don't, the Orthodox withdraw, and no reconciliation is achieved. In recent years, Pope John Paul II has only made things worse by insisting, directly to the Eastern church, that while other Christian faiths have value, they are all of lesser status than the Roman Catholic Church.) The Orthodox, too, consider themselves "Catholic" (since "catholic" means "universal" and the Orthodox think their version of Christianity is, indeed, universal and similarly, the Roman Catholics believe they, too, are "Othodox" since "orthodox" means "correct") but go by "Orthodox" in order to make the distinction between the
Roman Catholics and them. There are other "Catholic" churches, too, such as the Polish National Catholic Church. They split with the Roman Catholic church over papal infallibility.
For some interesting information about the various "catholic" churches out there, try here:
"Property of Rome"?
It seems that the Archdiocese of Atlanta is claiming that the Mision Catolica: Capilla de la Fe is, essentially, violating the trademark of the Roman Catholics. The lawsuit doesn't claim that "Catholic" is trademarked by the Roman Catholic church, merely that the Mision Catolica is making it seem like they have the sanction of the Roman Catholic church when they don't.
So if you buy the Roman Catholic's version of history, then yes, Christianity was invented by the Roman Catholics since they seem to think they are the only "orthodox" church out there, the only rightful heir's to the throne of Christianity. The Greek Orthodox, on the other hand, disagrees. The reason why so many people (in this country, at least) tend to agree with the Catholics is because there are so many more of them and we have heard only their side of the story.
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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!
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