God is love
The Pope said that ‘the final word’ on the biblical concept of God is that the logos is God. But he failed to remind his hearers that the logos became flesh and dwelt among us. God is love and He manifested His love among us by sending Jesus Christ into the world, to lay down His life that we might live.
Oh how glorious and wonderful the love of God, that He should look down upon us wretched sinners and rescue us from our destruction in hell, and forgive us our sins and reconcile us to Himself through the blood of the cross. Oh what a wonderful salvation and what a shame that the Pope did not proclaim it last Tuesday to the assembled teachers of the University of Regensburg, for they too must repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ if they are to be saved on the day of judgement.
There is a portion of J. Pelikan’s second volume in his church history series (this colume dealing with the eastern church) were the debates Christians had to do with Jews, then dualists, and finally Moslems is examined quite well in not too great a space. Good reading. I refer to this because, in debating Islam, it was freqently necessary to *first deal with the matter of the Trinity. Perhaps that is what he was doing there. Truly ONLY a Christ who is God can save. So, he was saying that the Logos and Spirit — both of whom Islam believe in…but not as God — ARE GOD. Btw, on part of one debate was that while Moslems believe in the Koran that came down from heaven the ALSO belive that there are book-copies of the Koran too. Images of the first. This is obviously a pretty good arguement for One God in Three Persons — The Logos not being an “associate deity” as Moslems accused Christians of believing in.
fwiw.
Comment by swede — 31 December 2006 @ 1:14 pm
I read the fifth chapter of Pelikan’s book which you recommended and was pleased to learn that the Koran teaches that Jesus is to be called Logos and Spirit. The Christian apologists argued that if Jesus were not eternal then God would have had neither Logos nor Spirit before he created them. I can see that this could be effective in debating with Islam. Your idea that he was elevating the Logos in order to elevate Christ as God is plausible to me, although without it being made explicit, it is hard to know.
The burden of my post was for the assembled professors of the University of Regensburg many of whom need a Saviour to save them from damnation. Every opportunity must be taken to save the lost and this seems to me to have been an opportunity missed.
Comment by Andrew Chapman — 7 January 2007 @ 2:40 am
Simply outstanding ^_^! I like posts like that. Your blog is added to my favorites ;-). Continue writing.
Comment by dusakabin — 11 April 2008 @ 6:24 am