| New Pope wants dialogue with Islam |
The highest ranking official of the Roman Catholic Church has asked for more intense dialogue with Islam.
Quote:
"... it is important to intensify dialogue among the various religions, and I am thinking particularly of dialogue with Islam."
Jesus did not dialogue with the religious tyrants of his day. He in fact did the exact opposite, directly clashing with them. For example, he called the religious leaders of his day white washed sepulcres (meaning clean looking on the outside, rotten on the inside) and hypocrites.
And he said 'I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but through me.' How could any dialogue with another religion be possible under these rigorous terms? A dialogue implies common ground and give and take: I will accept some of your teachings if you accept some of mine.
The main and insurmountable obstacle to 'dialogue' with Islam is that Muslims believe (and Mohammed taught) that, while the Judeo-Christian scriptures were correct, some wicked scribes seriously distorted them to mislead people and in their present form, the scriptures no longer represent what was originally written.
There are several problems with this assertion, including , but not limited to, the following:
1--The scriptures would have had to be seriously distorted on more than one occasion because both the OT and the NT were allegedly distorted.
2--The Hebrew scribes were in fact so fastidious and meticulous in their copying of the ancient texts that little change is noted between the OT (Tanakh) as handed down to us from the Masoretes as early as the 7th century (say, the King James version, which is a translation of the Masoretic OT) and the versions found in the Dead Sea scrolls, which predate the time of Christ.
Nor are there major discrepancies between the different translations (not counting radical modern ‘translations’ deliberately distorted to accommodate certain interest groups). The Hebrews started a trend to use Greek in their scriptures before the time of Christ. The Greek versions that have been handed down do not differ significantly from the Hebrew, which can be roughly said to reflect the original, and also Hebrew-to-Aramaic versions, all of which match incredibly well with each other. So Mohammed was accusing a class of people--scribes--well known for their diligence and meticulousness, of a fault they were never known to have, namely, inaccuracy.
3--Both the OT and the NT are so internally consistent that the alleged “wicked scribes” would have had to make absolutely certain that they had carefully changed all the interrelated parts in such a way that their distortions matched. A daunting task. Further, Christ quoted OT scriptures on different occasions to support his teachings. His quotes match the original, or what is accepted as the original by both Jews and Christians.
4--I have debated with Muslims on line (and will probably continue to do so) and none of them is able to answer a simple question, namely, at what period in history was the OT distorted and at what period in history was the NT distorted?
5--If there were distortions, why doesn't Mohammed tell us the correct versions of the distorted passages? We know that Mohammed was illiterate, and Muslims admit this. But if he had supernatural ability to know that scripture was distorted, then he should also have had the ability to rectify the parts that were incorrectly copied or deliberately distorted. He made no attempt to do this, and his writings (as dictated to another person) bear little resemblance to the OT and NT. Most of what he says that contradicts the OT and NT sounds more like a rebuttal than a rewrite of the scriptures. But since he admits that the original scriptures were important, why is it that he made no attempt to rectify or edit the texts to their original form, instead of just presenting a rebuttal (for example, stating that God cannot have a son)?
6--The oral tradition among the Hebrews was very strong. If someone had actually tried to distort the scriptures at any time during Hebrew history, enough scholars would have noticed to challenge these distortions. The wayward scribes would have probably been stoned to death. It is inconceivably that scribes could have gotten away with this wholesale distortion that Mohammed speaks of. The same holds true for the NT.
It is hard to imagine how any Christian could dialogue with people who have been taught not only a different set of scriptures but have in fact been told specifically to reject Judeo-Christianity and to treat Jews and Christians as inferiors or worse, as blasphemers and heretics.
It is quite possible that, in such a dialogue process, Muslims may try to convert Christians, but it is hard to imagine them acquiescing to non-Muslim teachings.
The only route open to Christians is apologetics, which does not admit of a dialogue but rather encourages proof of the scriptures and the superiority of the Christian faith and culture.
This was the route embarked upon by St. Thomas of Aquinus and St. Augustine. How odd that the highest ranking man in the Roman Catholic hierarchy would depart so radically from a route that was so successful that it acculturated an entire continent and then crossed the Atlantic and forged the New World's culture and others, creating the most powerful and dynamic cultures and economies the world had ever known.
DH
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