soteriology hey!

Submitted by Abdul Rahman Reijerink (Australia), Jun 6, 2006 at 08:12

You must be a protestant with hangups.

catholics and lutherans have finally bridged the gap on that old nut. faith vs works. see joint declaration signed 1999.

It was never a problem for Islam.

you don't know much about Islam if you claim that Allah is unreachable/remote etc... read some contemporary christian and muslim scholarship on this. Allah is absolutley different from us not inaccessible. Even as a very new convert several years back I knew this basic fact that any cursory research would tell you... ex: theory in relation to answering prayers etc, see also 50:16 on just how "near" to us Allah truly is. Be proud of your faith by all means but don't go running down that of others especially when you really know a lot less than you claim.

As a christian do you deny that sin leads to judgement if we don't ask for forgiveness? Last I heard faith is not enough without repentance. Do you deny that nothing we do will earn us Paradise, it is soley the grace of god that grants it? If you accept that it is by grace alone, does that mean you should not strive to be the best person that you can be (ie strive to fulfil human potential as creation in God's "image").

Yes we have differences but learn what they really are. Islam is a path between Christianity and Judaism, orthodoxy and orthoproxy. Our biggest difference is that we view monotheism in a widely divergent manner, a lot of the other details are suprisingly similar despite many of the assertions Dr. Pipes makes in his article.

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