To: CMKELLER–[sorry, still don’t know how to make letters bold]
Since I started this thread, I get to define what a ‘sect’ is, and I’ll use Webster’s Deluxe Colour Edition of the New World Dictionary of the American Language, Collegiate Edition [whew!] to do it:
See, I knew I was right all along. Christians are just ‘closet’ Jews. No offense to either denomination intended or implied.
**
Put {b} {/b} around the bolded text. Replace the curly brackets ( {} ) with square ones ( ).
Well, I don’t really think you can call the Christian religion a “small group.”
In any event, neither Jewish law nor Christian tradition regards them as Jewish. Saying Christians are Jews simply because the religion had its roots in Judaism is like saying that Protestants are really Catholics, since Luther broke away from the Catholic church. In truth, Protestants are a lot closer to Catholics than either are to Jews in terms of religious beliefs.
Zev Steinhardt
It does neither.
Well, except Christianity is neither small, nor is it a denomination. Christianity is an entirely seperate religion from Judaism, with different theological and ethical principles. It may have started out as a sect of Judaism, but it split off.
Then why bring it up as if it were some profound teaching? It seems like a pretty simple request. A teacher does not spend time with his students in hopes they do not retain all his teachings and not ace the final exam. He may be disappointed that his expectations were not reached, but to teach and not expect perfection is self defeating.
Here’s hoping that God is grading on a curve! 
They borrowed ideas from another religion and built a new faith from there. I would think that to break away from an established church you would have to keep their core beliefs. We can see by the end of the NT that this is not the case.
[…flummoxed…]
Well… This is Great Debates. I was responding to an assertion. The assertion was that there might be a “severe problem considering non-Trinitarians to be Christian in any real sense”. I explained what Jesus considered a Christian (or disciple of Christ) to be, namely, someone who loves others.
There ensued a witty quip: “Oh, sure. Set an unattainable standard, why don’t you?”
I rejoined the repartee with another quip:“You think that’s something…”
And here we are — you are asking me what the punchline is to a joke that requires a common frame of reference that is lacking, and I am explaining the joke to you, and you are saying “Why is that funny”. I am the eggman and you are the walrus.
Thunderbug,
I’m just checking, but, you do know Libertarian and I were joking, don’t you?
In case you did know that, I’d like to point out that I knew it all along and I’m just being cooly ironic and amusing now. 
Oh! That was a joke! I mean I got the first part, but I thought you were changing the tone to something more serious. A joke!
Bwaa haa…nope, still don’t get it. But then again, I always HAVE had trouble understanding you Lib.
Sorry, my bad. Carry on. Coo coo ca choo…
[sub]::mumbles:: I can’t believe he made me use a stinking Beatles song reference too. Damn that Libertarian guy and his Jesus hippie love talk![/sub]
I didn’t say it was funny, just that it was joke. For me, anyway. (I’ve been on the executive board of a christian church for nigh on ten years and the gap between what Jesus taught and what we actually achieve is oten… how shall I put it… “noticable”.)
Ummmm. After that last post, though, I have to ask: Are you the walrus?
Libertarian,
Since you sound fairly knowledgeable let me ask your opinion on something: Recently it was asserted to me (by a minister) that the variation of beliefs among members of a church is often far wider than the variation of beliefs among denominations. I have to admit that that jibes with my personal experience - that a single congregation will span the entire spectrum from literalists to “let’s rewrite the prayer book to be gender and sexuality neutral”.
Have you had similar experiences or no?
Actually, Thunderbug - let me ask you, too. How does it look from the Saturday side of the Sabbath?
I wouldn’t know, I’m not Jewish. My Saturdays are spent mowing the lawn or out on the Harley. Actually, I was a fundamentalist Christian for many a years, including leadership positions. And in that role, I questioned many of the teachings of Christianity after a while (specifically the pentecostal type churches). I decided to look into the “roots” of Christianity, after all, I couldn’t teach something to others without answering my own personal questions. After studying for quite a while I could no longer truly believe in Christian theology, one reason being because it differed so much from Judaism. For myself, the Judaic theology speaks more to me. I also find that it presents a better arguement against Jesus being the Messiah than Christianity does for him being the Messiah. Hence my lurking and occassional involvement in these discussions.
Let me just say that changing faiths is not easy, especially having to tell your very Christian mother that you no longer believe in Jesus and having her start crying. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and thus avoid discussions of this sort with my family. My search for knowledge continues, and I’ve learned a lot here which is why I’m still here (I lurked for about a year before registering). At present, I would say I’m closest to a Noahide, the Gentile version of Judaism, although I’ve never gone through any specific conversion process. In part because you don’t find many synagogues/churches for that brand of faith. That and I’m not keen on jumping into any faith system again.
But in my experiences from my time in the Christain church, there is a huge spectrum of beliefs, especially in the charasmatic churches I was invovled in. I would say it ranged from new age type beliefs to strict literalism to a combination of the two. You had people who proudly declared it was great not to have to be legalistic but wouldn’t go to a rated R movie or listen to Rock and Roll. Quite a mix. One thing that was constant though was the hypocracy that ran wild through the church. Oh the stories I could tell! But much of this I discovered after leaving the church and reflecting back on my years there.
So there you have brief look into my experiences. And looking down at my slight beer belly, I’d say I’m not quite the walrus but I’m not too far away either.
By the way, welcome to the boards. Can I just say it’s difficult to have a theological discussion with someone named porkchop_d_clown. I’ll get used to it I suppose, although I still can’t post to any OP started by Anal Scurvy.
Thank You ** zev_steinhardt** It’s a tad tedious for my taste, but it works! You know, the time we get to spend among the living is so short that there is no way I could experience all the different lifelines that I would like to, and one lifepath I wish I could have walked would be yours. The ambience, the tradition, the location, the culture involved in being Jewish and living in Brooklyn. How lucky you are. The only improvement would be if you were a diamond cutter…or am I putting you in the wrong ‘sect’?
Speaking of sects, [just call me, ‘Segue Samuel’] while I suppose you are technically correct, in that the small sect of ‘Christians’ has now outgrown its ‘sect’ status, I prefer to return to the root of the matter. Do not let ‘tradition’ obscure the facts. And yes, Protestants are closer to Catholics than they are to Jews. In fact, Catholics say that most Protestants honor them, in that the Protestants have retained the Catholic change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. So, by Aristotlean Logic, I conclude that modern Protestants are a ‘sect’ of Catholicism, Catholicism a ‘sect’ of the early Christians, who were a ‘sect’ of Judaism.
Sects, sects sects. Is that all anybody ever thinks about?
Thanks again for your BOLD tip. Now maybe you can tell me how to reduce the size of the letters so that only we young people can read them without glasses.
With all due respect, I think you’re missing the point of what everyone is telling you, which is that Christianity is a distinct religion from Judaism, and that calling it a sect is an abuse of the term.
It would be appropriate to call Modern Orthodox Judaism a sect of Judaism, or Reform Judaism, or Satmar Chasidim, because, while all of these groups have different beliefs, they all fit into the general framework of Judaism. Christianity does not fit into this general framework. For a Jew to become Christian, or a Christian to become Jewish requires a fundimental shift in attitudes about G-d, humanity’s place in the universe, ethics, the responsibilities of believers, etc., that dwarfs the amount of change in attitudes it would take for a Reform Jew to become Orthodox, for example.
I have encountered as many interpretations as I have people. Each of us acts out our moral play entirely alone.
}Captain Amazing
OK, let’s say Christianity IS a distinct religion from Judaism, or at least has become so through the years. The definition of ‘sect’ makes no mention of HOW different a denomination has become, only that it has ‘…broken away from an established church.’ Or, do you maintain that Christians were NEVER a sect, even at the beginning? If you have a good answer, I’m prepared to throw in the prayer towel–it’s almost Sabbath here in the West, and maybe we all have better fish to fry.
I think that Christianity became a distinct religion at the time of the Council of Jerusalem (49 CE?), which ruled that Christians didn’t have to be Jews. It was around the same time that Christians got kicked out of the synagogues. Before that, it was a sect of Judaism, but after that, you have Christians saying “We’re not Jewish” and Jews saying, “You’re right, you’re not.”
Oakalie Doakalie. Perhaps I was painting with too large a brush. I hope you didn’t think I was saying that Judaism and Christianity were the same. In my mind, saying that one was a ‘sect’ of the other automatically made them different, even entirely different, but as per the definition, still a sect. I was looking at the core; save for the Jews, there would be no Christians. So, can we cut this ‘silver cord’ and move on?