aunt_becca ([info]aunt_becca) wrote,
@ 2009-06-16 17:56:00
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philosophical type question
I was going to post this in a weirdjew community or two, but I didn;t want to be called an idiot. Instead, I'll let you, my friends, call me an idiot :)

A recent discussion about religion, and if course Gd came up a few times :)  Then I got thinking: Are Jews and Christians worshipping the same Gd (just done in different ways), or are we talking about different Gds here? My Christian friends beleive that Jesus isn't Gd, and they're pretty adamant about that. "Jesus is Jesus and Gd is Gd" is what we've aften spoken about.

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[info]sethg_prime
2009-06-16 11:48 pm UTC (link)
You're not an idiot. Well, you may be an idiot, but not for asking this particular question. :-)

I think it's a good question. I would say that the Christian conception of divinity is so radically different from the Jewish one that at least one of us has to be very very wrong. But does that mean we're worshipping different gods? If you write a letter to "President Barack Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC" and I write a letter to "Prime Minister Barack Obama, 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC", one of us is very misinformed about our audience, but does that mean we're writing letters to two different Barack Obamas?

By the way, not that I have a dog in the fight, but the Nicene Creed says that Jesus is "begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made". If your Christian friends get too severe about the distinction between Jesus and God-the-Father, then they might go over the line into Arianism or some other classic heresy.

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[info]lucretia_borgia
2009-06-18 03:44 am UTC (link)
I think the xian view goes well beyond title and address: if the "prime minister" was described as a White Republican we'd be a lot further along toward saying, yeah, these are two different dudes.

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[info]autotruezone
2009-06-17 02:48 pm UTC (link)
Tosafos said yes, Rambam said no.

I'm inclined to go along with Tosafos, since they likely had more day-to-day exposure to Xians than Rambam did.

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[info]lucretia_borgia
2009-06-18 03:41 am UTC (link)
Actually, I've had plenty of discussions of religion where G-d didn't come up at all. Sadly.

My understanding of the matter is that the halacha treats xians as not ovdei avodah zara because the xians have successfully convinced the relevant Jewish authorities that their "God the Father" is the same as our G-d, and our understanding of Jesus is that he is worshipped alongside God the Father. This creates the situation of 'shituf' -- worshipping a secondary god or even a full partner-god along with God -- which is forbidden to Jews but not to Noachides.

That said, I think your xian friends are wrong. Well, they're heretics, see what Seth said. What I was taught in Catholic school was that Jesus (and the Holy Spirit) is identical with, one in substance and being with, God the Father. This is the Mystery of the Trinity: three Persons, one God. To say otherwise creates for xians a theological issue: if Jesus is a created being, subsidiary to God the Father, then his sacrifice on the cross is less than absolutely perfect and cannot be reliably salvational under the Pauline theory of salvation. If Jesus is also a god nonidentical with God the Father, then they run afoul of the "one god" thing in the Old Testament, which is a problem because their whole claim of Jesus' necessity and existence etc. is based on (mis)readings of O.T. prophecy. So they're stuck: he has to be coequal, cosubstantial, coeternal with God the Father.

With all due respect to actual halachic authorities, and acknowledging that I'm not even good enough to play one on TV, I think that the buy-one-god-get-two-free system is sufficient to make the Xian trinitarian God-the-Father necessarily nonidentical with our G-d. Other characteristics of the Xian god are also, I think, evidence that we're talking about a different construct. I say this without going so far as to say, like the Wahabi Muslims (this is the predominant sect in Saudi Arabia, iirc), that any positive statement about God will fall short of the mark and therefore idolatrous.

So yeah, I think the "oh, we're all worshipping the same God" line is just wrong.

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[info]aunt_becca
2009-06-18 12:14 pm UTC (link)
next time I'm talking with our Very Catholic Friend, I'll ask him to elaborate. He gets into a lot of detail on things of which I know very little, so i could have gotten his p.o.v. incorrect.
Thnak you for your answer, it clarifies things a bit.

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[info]lucretia_borgia
2009-06-18 12:29 pm UTC (link)
OK, well if he's Catholic that puts a little bit of a different spin on things.

Catholic theology is that Jesus and God the Father (and the Holy Spirit) are three Persons one God etc. etc.

Catholic liturgical practice would, however, give the impression that Jesus and God were in fact two completely different entities. Two gods, in fact. The primary focus of the Mass lauds Jesus, and God the Father is given a little bit of short shrift, if my memories of impressions are correct.

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