Re: Tolerance (was: THE WORLD OF THE JINN)

On Tuesday, October 21, 2003, at 10:41 , Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>> I apparently fell in the common trap of assuming what's true in my neck
>> of the
>> woods is true everywhere. The Protestant churches in Sweden that I am
>> familiar
>> with, or at least their more traditionally minded members, would hold
>> that only
>> those who have never heard the Gospel have a chance of entering Heaven
>> without
>> having accepted Jesus Christ as their personal saviour. That would
>> exclude most
>> Jews and at least a big chunk of all Muslims.
>
> The protestants I know would agree with that. (The ones I know best are in
> some sort of denominationy thingy of the Presbyterian Church common in SE
> Asia, and some of them would rather die than use a bible other than the
> KJV.)
Despite the known errors in translation - strange.

> My Christian education, however, has been Catholic (Mum's side) and
> Baptist (Dad's side).
>
>> May I ask, tho, how long-standing these parts of the Catholic Catechism
>> are? It
>> strikes me as, well, a bit 20th century.
>
> Yes, you may. Go ahead :)
This is the post-Vatican II Catechism.

I don't have the Tridentine Catechism. But that was drawn up at the time of
the Counter-Reformation so probably more euro-centric and inward looking.

I suspect during the Crusades remarks about Muslims were not so charitable.

But I don't want to engage in a "mine church is more charitable than yours"
or "my church is more faithful to the Bible" type of debate.  Attitudes
have
simply changed over the ages; there was a time, e.g. when suicides would
not
be buried in consecrated ground because they had committed a "mortal sin"
by
killing themselves.  But in these more enlightened times we realize suicide
is not as simple as that - it ain't black and white - and judgment is God'
s alone.

"He [God] wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth,
" wrote
Paul to Timothy [1 Tim. 2:4].  If that's what God wants (and I believe
Paul is right),
then that is my wish & hope.

Ray.
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