One relgion

THis post is a responce to my post below, above this I have placed my reply to the reply

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Originally posted by Patrick:
I really must say that this entire discussion assumes several thing. firstly that God is OK with their being different religions. secondly that truth (a) changes and (b) therefore truth can not be know absolutely.

Firstly, there aren't different Christian religions. There is one Christian religion which happens to be made up of several different ways of approaching God.Secondly, there is Absolute Truth. My contention is simply that we will never know what it is while we see through a glass darkly. Thus it is indeed true that our perception of Truth changes and therefore truth can not be known absolutely by us.

I must ask who, an obvious question, started Christianity? I think you all would agree that Jesus Christ founded Christianity.If he founded Christianity then to whom did he give authority to teach that faith. Again I think that all would agree that he gave that authority to the Apostles.

None of the Apostles are still alive now, it being 2000 years later and all.

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If (and i am not sure you will all agree with this) Christ is God the second person of the trinity (or lets just say or arguments purpose the Son of God for those of you who disagree with my first statement) and he founded only one church why are there so many different Christian Churches today.

Because we're human, we all have limited perceptions of what the Holy Spirit is saying to us, and when we disagree on things we can't ever seem to be civil about it and not let those disagreements get in the way of our basic unity.

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Everyday you rely on truth not change in your everyday life, 2+2 must always equal 4, objects fall to the ground, the laws of physics must always apply ETC. For some reason this does not, in peoples mind, equate to Religion, morality, or Theology.

That may have something to do with the fact that religion, unlike those other things, cannot be proved (or at least demonstrated with falsifiable evidence). It's faith, and anyone who says their personal faith is 100% Truth and Certainty is, in my opinion, wrong.It follows that if there can be no certainty about faith, then there can be no judgement about who has or hasn't got it right.

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I hear people say well that is what i believe and is therefor true to me. That is some crazy thinking there. Think what would happen if you applied that when you balanced your check book. If you and the bank did not agree on what to believe when it came to mathematics. I think you all would say that person was crazy.

Again, levels of proof.

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There is also another reason truth can not change. That is due to the nature of God. God can not change. Why is that? Because for something to change it implies either an improvement or a decline. But God is perfection. Therefor for him to change would mean that he either was not perfect before or is no longer perfect now. I think we all would agree this is not the case.

Indeed. I'm not arguing that Absolute Truth cannot change, only that we cannot clearly percieve it.

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Now God is the origin of all things. Therefor he is the origin of truth. If God is perfect truth then Truth can not change as its origin can not.If then you know that Christ was God ( or the son of God if you prefer) then he spoke the word of God. Now what does that mean today. Well there are hundreds of Christian Denominations. They all disagree what it is Christ asked us to do.

It's more like they disagree over what He meant when He said [whatever].

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They all have different theology. But Christ only spoke one truth therefor since all Christian religions disagree then either all must contain at least some error or only one contains all of the truth.

All contain error. That's my position.

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If all are in error then Christ was not speaking the truth when he said he would be with his Church always.

I don't see how that follows. "Christ is with us" does not translate to "we have no error" - look at all the times the disciples got things wrong in the Gospels! And they had Christ actually physically there, rather than the Spiritual Prescence we have now!

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But if if you know that Christ spoke the word of God then you know that, God being perfection, He is not in error. Therefor there must be only one religion that contains all Truth that God wishes us to know. Of course assuming that you believe that God truly wishes us to be happy with him in Heaven and would therefor give us the means to go there.

There is only one religion which contains all the truth we need to know about God - Christianity! It's just that some of that truth is in the Orthodox church, some in the RCC, some in the Anglican Communion, some in the Baptists, some in the... ah, you get the point

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Now if all this is true then the only way for there to be but one religion is for all men to join the church that contains all truth necessary to reach heaven.

Indeed - I would love to see the whole world believing in Christ. That's not the same as saying I'd love to see the whole world become members of one specific Christian denomination, of course!