There are massive theological differences between those belief systems so it would be contradictory to attempt to synchronise them, not that this doesn't stop people attempting to do so.
However, there's no reason why mutual respect can't be shown between the *people* of those groups. That could be achievable if tolerance was practiced between them in equal measure.
Came here to say exactly this. I mean even concepts of Sin, Forgiveness, Belief, Religiousness, Conversion, Relationship to g’d, Monotheism, iconography, etc are all fundamentally different and often actually counter and opposite to eachother.
You could certainly publish a very large book that contains the texts of the Tanakh, New Testament, and Koran together, though it would seem like a mess, I reckon. As others already mentioned, these texts are from different time periods, have different authors, and contain their own separate theologies and worldviews.
At least two religions attempt to harmonize Judaism, Xitanity, and Islam, however: Baha'i Faith and Unitarian Universalism. These religions also have their own point of view that is not specifically Jewish, Xtian, or Islamic, however.
Books on perennialism also juxtapose selections from many holy texts together, sometimes by theme or within an essay. Rami Shapiro's *Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent* does this, for example.
It’s like saying, “isn’t there a recipe that unites all my favourite desserts in one?”. I mean I guess you can combine brownies, apple pie, and chocolate cake into one recipe. The result will be unlike any of those 3.
Have you looked in to Baha’i? They believe that all three are true worship of the same God, each with their own prophet to lead them. They study all three religious books, but also have their own prophet.
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/927/)
This has been tried before, more than once, and the result is a new religion that takes elements from the others.
No. Judaism is not meant to be a universal religion. It is meant as an ethno religion. Others can join it but it requires a rather lengthy process to join in such a way.
Christianity entirely changed many aspects of the religion in ways that are simply not reconcilable. Especially their changes to the concept of the afterlife. Judaism believes everyone can make it to Paradise eventually even after death. Their concept is that the wicked go to Gehenna to be punished and once they are purified they may enter Paradise. Utterly different from the rather oddly arbitrary salvation through Jesus or wind up in torment forever.
And then Islam looks at the texts of both Judaism and Christianity and believes they have become corrupted. Therefore the Quran takes precedence over both the Tanakh and the New Testament. Which of course both religions take a dim view of.
And then there is the issue of dogma. Dogma does not negotiate. Each religion has their own dogmatic takes on issues and as that means they each have truths that cannot be questioned there can be no negotiation. Add into this hte complications of having different locations of holy land within the same vicinities and you have the makings regular conflict with each other. Especially when one of the religions believes that the destruction of the other will set of their end times where their saviour will return. It does not make for a good collab.
Yes. It will require a great deal of evolution to make all three abrahamic faiths into one spiritual kingdom. I totally get what you mention about Dogma. You're totally on point. Dogma is a wall that must be teared down.
The simple and unpopular truth is... The similarities between the three are superfluous at best while the differences are fundamental.
You can't mix them without changing what is written.
The part many people do not like to hear is... Either one is true or they're all false, both can't be true unless one same God decides to give several ways for different faiths to make it, but the data we have does not support that.
The problem we still face today is that many people do not respect other people's right to believe whatever it is they want to believe (granted they do not deliberately hurt others), many want to force others to their own beliefs (or lack of) and so they get angry or mock if you are not like them, religion is not the issue, we are.
This is an interesting take. From a Baha’i perspective, it is the difference that are superfluous (or superficial) and the similarities that are fundamental.
There has litterally been thousands of years of discourse training our minds to see the various religions as fundamentally different and incompatible, it is so hard to let go of that framework.
I used to be a religion researcher, and even academically it was always the distinction and divergences that were valued in research (be it between groups or within).
Now that I study religions without that pressure, I find it amazing that my mind has shifted towards seeing the shared aspirations of every religions. In engaging in interfaith environments, there are also so many similarities that start to emerge and we (or at least I) started to see our differences as less and less important with time.
It’s not just a beliefs that Baha’is have, but an intuition shared by so many ready movements and individuals… One day we should get off the high horse of our egos and contemplate that our understanding of reality is fragmentary at best and through the prism of various faith we can gain greater spiritual insight!
All good but that remains your opinion, intuition, conviction, doesn't make it the truth. This has nothing to do with high horses... For me the opposite happened, I grew up convinced it doesnt matter what religion or philosophy it all lead to one same God, till I actually studied, I wish it could be a unity in the scriptures but there are none, because these differences cannot match...
So I am not talking feelings or intuitions, I'm talking about what the scriptures clearly say, up to anyone to believe the scriptures or not, but these differences are unmovable.
When Jesus says he is the only way and no one comes to the father but through him, it means there is no Mohamed in sight, he is the only begotten son of God, where Muslims only see him as one of the prophets and not divine, while Buddhist, witches, and spiritualist see him as one of the ascended masters... He simply can't be all this, either he is one or he is none.
Jesus being the word of God made flesh, and dying for us, fulfilling the prophecies of the Messiah, resurrecting on the 3rd day is unique, the zeitgeist movement tried to claim the Jesus story is copied from ancient myths and texts but thats not true and has been debunked at length.
People are free to believe what they want... But let's not lie to ourselves... The differences between the data for different religions, philosophies and denominations like Mormons and Jehovah witnesses can't be changed nor merged.
The differences are what's important...
We share most of our DNA with chimpanzees, they say 98% which is actually less, but let's go with that... We are so different between species, that 2% difference is where the magic happens and that is the important part, the fact we all have two feet, arms, eyes and ears but all that DNA we share for our similarities is not what makes us human, the 2% is Pandora's box.
I do not think so since the essentials of all three faiths are mutually contradictory.
Consider that as a Christian I reject the divine authorship of the Quran and the jewish understanding of Torah which are essential to Islam and Judaism.
Similarly muslims and jews reject the divinity of Jesus, which is essential to Christianity.
That does not mean we cannot coexist peacefully of course. But I think any attempt to syncretise these faiths will only lead to the formation of another religion like the Bahai.
I did not mean to cause any offense. While our interpretation of the Pentateuch is different and I do disagree (sometimes strongly ) with Rashi's interpretation, what I meant in my previous reply is specifically the jewish belief in the Torah as the perfect unmediated revelation from God, an understanding which we as Christians reject.
That's my impression when reading the Coran. It unifies all the narratives in one big book. That's why I think it is possible to evolve the approach to the sacred books in a way all three books can offer a single faith.
Would be interesting but a complete contradiction haha. You’d end revelations and then open up the Quran and get hit with “God has no son” right after reading “Jesus, son of God”.
Yes, it's called Islam. From the perspective of Islam, Jesus and all of the others were Prophets, and the Gospels and Torah are considered revealed texts in Islam, although they have been imperfectly interpreted by humans. Muhammad (PBUH) is the final Prophet, and the Qur'an is the final revelation. Culturally Islam carried on the cultures of both Judaism and Christianity, especially the Syriac, Greek and Coptic Christianities that were dominant in the East.
I'd say the Baha'i faith is probably the most explicit, clear cut attempt to do this. It's worth noting there are more than three abrahamic faiths, as well.
Perhaps the United Pentecostals and Latter Day Saints will be on board… or perhaps they will argue with each other about the correct way to describe God. All I know is the vast majority of Christian see the Trinity as the most important defining feature of their faith. It’s a non-starter. The non-Trinitarians have had nearly 2 millennia to try to change that.
non-Trinitarian Christians were brutally persecuted once the Church became the official religion of the Roman Empire. It has only been post-reformation that they have finally been able to express themselves openly. Unitarians were pretty big in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries though.
True. I have nothing to disagree with in this. They were very important to American culture. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say the various non-trinitarians groups threaten Trinitarianism’s hegemony. They did actually during the Arian controversy, but nothing yet. But who knows. The Internet makes anything possible. What if a Jehovah’s Witnesses will start a popular TikTok channel…
That doesn’t mean we can’t live in peace and love each other. I think the idea that we all got to read from the same book to be nice is just not true. I have Muslim and Jewish friends who disagree with me but respect me.
As insisting on an esoteric approach to unite people is really just forcing Neoplatonist views on everyone. It isn’t tolerance. It’s intolerance to people who don’t want to take a mystical approach and prefer the orthodoxy of their ancestors.
I don’t really see that they are designed to hate each other so much as we have added cultural layers to the faiths that allow us to justify hating each other.
I personally find it very easy to understand that people are seeking God from their own cultural context and that God can have a relationship that is somewhat different with each group, the same way a parent connects differently with each of their kids. We don’t all need to be exactly the same to be children of God.
>Why not one hypostases in one essence?
That would be modalism, an ancient heresy.
Through the Holy Bible and Apostolic Tradition we know that: The Father is not the Son and is not the Holy Spirit. The Son is not the Father and is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father and is not the Son.
The three are one God, they share the same essence and divine nature.
>>that would be modalism, an ancient heresy
Says who? Is it not heresy to say god NEEDS to be in three different forms to forgive mankind for the original sin? A sin that we are at no fault of btw which makes this whole thing even more confusing but that’s a whole different conversation.
Like God constantly says he’s one in the bible, but then goes ahead and manifest two more forms or whatever they’re called, in doing so he’s either contradicting himself or expects too much from our mental capacity or Christianity went wrong at some point.
>Says who?
The Church.
>Is it not heresy to say god NEEDS to be in three different forms to forgive mankind for the original sin?
It depends on what you mean by that, in the Church we use the same formulas and terms exactly to know that we are professing the same faith.
>A sin that we are at no fault of btw which makes this whole thing even more confusing but that’s a whole different conversation.
One of the ways to understand sin is as a disease, perhaps the concept of Ancestral Sin makes more sense to you than the concept of Original Sin.
>Like God constantly says he’s one in the bible, but then goes ahead and manifest two more forms or whatever they’re called, in doing so he’s either contradicting himself or expects too much from our mental capacity or Christianity went wrong at some point.
We will never be able to fully understand God, that would be similar to putting Him in a box. God is a mystery, we first believe so that later we can understand him. Christians have a trinitarian reading of the Old Testament.
Most Christians do claim monotheism, and Christianity is considered one of the major monotheist religions of the world. Zoroastrianism and Baha'iism are also monotheist. But Trinitarian Christians just understand their deity as having three persons in one essence, not being three different deities altogether.
There are massive theological differences between those belief systems so it would be contradictory to attempt to synchronise them, not that this doesn't stop people attempting to do so. However, there's no reason why mutual respect can't be shown between the *people* of those groups. That could be achievable if tolerance was practiced between them in equal measure.
Came here to say exactly this. I mean even concepts of Sin, Forgiveness, Belief, Religiousness, Conversion, Relationship to g’d, Monotheism, iconography, etc are all fundamentally different and often actually counter and opposite to eachother.
Exactly!! Totally agree!! Thanks for sharing your thoughts
Oh great another religion to persecute us because we won't follow it.
In most and for sure in christianity It's not the religion that persecutes, it's people while convinced they're doing the will of God.
Seeing as all three view the others as heretics, it won't work. mutual respect and learning about each other is the best though.
Jews don't view Muslims as "heretics" and the opinion on Christianity is divided
You could certainly publish a very large book that contains the texts of the Tanakh, New Testament, and Koran together, though it would seem like a mess, I reckon. As others already mentioned, these texts are from different time periods, have different authors, and contain their own separate theologies and worldviews. At least two religions attempt to harmonize Judaism, Xitanity, and Islam, however: Baha'i Faith and Unitarian Universalism. These religions also have their own point of view that is not specifically Jewish, Xtian, or Islamic, however. Books on perennialism also juxtapose selections from many holy texts together, sometimes by theme or within an essay. Rami Shapiro's *Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent* does this, for example.
Cool! I will look into Perennialism. Thanks!!
It’s like saying, “isn’t there a recipe that unites all my favourite desserts in one?”. I mean I guess you can combine brownies, apple pie, and chocolate cake into one recipe. The result will be unlike any of those 3.
That actually sounds delicious
Have you looked in to Baha’i? They believe that all three are true worship of the same God, each with their own prophet to lead them. They study all three religious books, but also have their own prophet.
Thanks!! I'll look into.
[Relevant XKCD](https://xkcd.com/927/) This has been tried before, more than once, and the result is a new religion that takes elements from the others.
There are more than three Abrahamic religions.
No. Judaism is not meant to be a universal religion. It is meant as an ethno religion. Others can join it but it requires a rather lengthy process to join in such a way. Christianity entirely changed many aspects of the religion in ways that are simply not reconcilable. Especially their changes to the concept of the afterlife. Judaism believes everyone can make it to Paradise eventually even after death. Their concept is that the wicked go to Gehenna to be punished and once they are purified they may enter Paradise. Utterly different from the rather oddly arbitrary salvation through Jesus or wind up in torment forever. And then Islam looks at the texts of both Judaism and Christianity and believes they have become corrupted. Therefore the Quran takes precedence over both the Tanakh and the New Testament. Which of course both religions take a dim view of. And then there is the issue of dogma. Dogma does not negotiate. Each religion has their own dogmatic takes on issues and as that means they each have truths that cannot be questioned there can be no negotiation. Add into this hte complications of having different locations of holy land within the same vicinities and you have the makings regular conflict with each other. Especially when one of the religions believes that the destruction of the other will set of their end times where their saviour will return. It does not make for a good collab.
Yes. It will require a great deal of evolution to make all three abrahamic faiths into one spiritual kingdom. I totally get what you mention about Dogma. You're totally on point. Dogma is a wall that must be teared down.
The simple and unpopular truth is... The similarities between the three are superfluous at best while the differences are fundamental. You can't mix them without changing what is written. The part many people do not like to hear is... Either one is true or they're all false, both can't be true unless one same God decides to give several ways for different faiths to make it, but the data we have does not support that. The problem we still face today is that many people do not respect other people's right to believe whatever it is they want to believe (granted they do not deliberately hurt others), many want to force others to their own beliefs (or lack of) and so they get angry or mock if you are not like them, religion is not the issue, we are.
This is an interesting take. From a Baha’i perspective, it is the difference that are superfluous (or superficial) and the similarities that are fundamental. There has litterally been thousands of years of discourse training our minds to see the various religions as fundamentally different and incompatible, it is so hard to let go of that framework. I used to be a religion researcher, and even academically it was always the distinction and divergences that were valued in research (be it between groups or within). Now that I study religions without that pressure, I find it amazing that my mind has shifted towards seeing the shared aspirations of every religions. In engaging in interfaith environments, there are also so many similarities that start to emerge and we (or at least I) started to see our differences as less and less important with time. It’s not just a beliefs that Baha’is have, but an intuition shared by so many ready movements and individuals… One day we should get off the high horse of our egos and contemplate that our understanding of reality is fragmentary at best and through the prism of various faith we can gain greater spiritual insight!
All good but that remains your opinion, intuition, conviction, doesn't make it the truth. This has nothing to do with high horses... For me the opposite happened, I grew up convinced it doesnt matter what religion or philosophy it all lead to one same God, till I actually studied, I wish it could be a unity in the scriptures but there are none, because these differences cannot match... So I am not talking feelings or intuitions, I'm talking about what the scriptures clearly say, up to anyone to believe the scriptures or not, but these differences are unmovable. When Jesus says he is the only way and no one comes to the father but through him, it means there is no Mohamed in sight, he is the only begotten son of God, where Muslims only see him as one of the prophets and not divine, while Buddhist, witches, and spiritualist see him as one of the ascended masters... He simply can't be all this, either he is one or he is none. Jesus being the word of God made flesh, and dying for us, fulfilling the prophecies of the Messiah, resurrecting on the 3rd day is unique, the zeitgeist movement tried to claim the Jesus story is copied from ancient myths and texts but thats not true and has been debunked at length. People are free to believe what they want... But let's not lie to ourselves... The differences between the data for different religions, philosophies and denominations like Mormons and Jehovah witnesses can't be changed nor merged. The differences are what's important... We share most of our DNA with chimpanzees, they say 98% which is actually less, but let's go with that... We are so different between species, that 2% difference is where the magic happens and that is the important part, the fact we all have two feet, arms, eyes and ears but all that DNA we share for our similarities is not what makes us human, the 2% is Pandora's box.
I do not think so since the essentials of all three faiths are mutually contradictory. Consider that as a Christian I reject the divine authorship of the Quran and the jewish understanding of Torah which are essential to Islam and Judaism. Similarly muslims and jews reject the divinity of Jesus, which is essential to Christianity. That does not mean we cannot coexist peacefully of course. But I think any attempt to syncretise these faiths will only lead to the formation of another religion like the Bahai.
>the jewish understanding of Torah You serious it's our own scripture?! LOL.
I did not mean to cause any offense. While our interpretation of the Pentateuch is different and I do disagree (sometimes strongly ) with Rashi's interpretation, what I meant in my previous reply is specifically the jewish belief in the Torah as the perfect unmediated revelation from God, an understanding which we as Christians reject.
Why is this being downvoted? The Christian view of the Torah is obviously in disagreement with the Jewish view.
> Why is this being downvoted? I guess some people are offended even by polite disagreement.
I see.
Islam.
Biased take here, but it is my belief that Islam, is in fact the universal, Abrahamic monotheism that synthesizes Judaism and Christianity.
That's my impression when reading the Coran. It unifies all the narratives in one big book. That's why I think it is possible to evolve the approach to the sacred books in a way all three books can offer a single faith.
Bahai Faith?
Would be interesting but a complete contradiction haha. You’d end revelations and then open up the Quran and get hit with “God has no son” right after reading “Jesus, son of God”.
Yes, it's called Islam. From the perspective of Islam, Jesus and all of the others were Prophets, and the Gospels and Torah are considered revealed texts in Islam, although they have been imperfectly interpreted by humans. Muhammad (PBUH) is the final Prophet, and the Qur'an is the final revelation. Culturally Islam carried on the cultures of both Judaism and Christianity, especially the Syriac, Greek and Coptic Christianities that were dominant in the East.
Occultism.
The second coming will take care of it.
I'd say the Baha'i faith is probably the most explicit, clear cut attempt to do this. It's worth noting there are more than three abrahamic faiths, as well.
I think the Trinity is a barrier to this ever happening,
To be fair, the Trinity is unbiblical and not recognized in all forms of Christianity.
Perhaps the United Pentecostals and Latter Day Saints will be on board… or perhaps they will argue with each other about the correct way to describe God. All I know is the vast majority of Christian see the Trinity as the most important defining feature of their faith. It’s a non-starter. The non-Trinitarians have had nearly 2 millennia to try to change that.
non-Trinitarian Christians were brutally persecuted once the Church became the official religion of the Roman Empire. It has only been post-reformation that they have finally been able to express themselves openly. Unitarians were pretty big in the United States during the 18th and 19th centuries though.
True. I have nothing to disagree with in this. They were very important to American culture. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say the various non-trinitarians groups threaten Trinitarianism’s hegemony. They did actually during the Arian controversy, but nothing yet. But who knows. The Internet makes anything possible. What if a Jehovah’s Witnesses will start a popular TikTok channel…
That doesn’t mean we can’t live in peace and love each other. I think the idea that we all got to read from the same book to be nice is just not true. I have Muslim and Jewish friends who disagree with me but respect me.
As insisting on an esoteric approach to unite people is really just forcing Neoplatonist views on everyone. It isn’t tolerance. It’s intolerance to people who don’t want to take a mystical approach and prefer the orthodoxy of their ancestors.
No
Islam is an extension of the message of Judaism and Christianity.
No they seem designed to hate each other...
I don’t really see that they are designed to hate each other so much as we have added cultural layers to the faiths that allow us to justify hating each other. I personally find it very easy to understand that people are seeking God from their own cultural context and that God can have a relationship that is somewhat different with each group, the same way a parent connects differently with each of their kids. We don’t all need to be exactly the same to be children of God.
If only Christians can admit there’s only one god we’d all be basically the same religion with different flavors
We believe in only one God.
Sure you do. Both Muslims and Jews are wrong about and totally misunderstood you.
Yes. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are only one God: The Holy Trinity.
Idk man i count three
Three hypostases in one essence.
Why tho? Why not one hypostases in one essence? Why the gymnastics?
>Why not one hypostases in one essence? That would be modalism, an ancient heresy. Through the Holy Bible and Apostolic Tradition we know that: The Father is not the Son and is not the Holy Spirit. The Son is not the Father and is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father and is not the Son. The three are one God, they share the same essence and divine nature.
>>that would be modalism, an ancient heresy Says who? Is it not heresy to say god NEEDS to be in three different forms to forgive mankind for the original sin? A sin that we are at no fault of btw which makes this whole thing even more confusing but that’s a whole different conversation. Like God constantly says he’s one in the bible, but then goes ahead and manifest two more forms or whatever they’re called, in doing so he’s either contradicting himself or expects too much from our mental capacity or Christianity went wrong at some point.
>Says who? The Church. >Is it not heresy to say god NEEDS to be in three different forms to forgive mankind for the original sin? It depends on what you mean by that, in the Church we use the same formulas and terms exactly to know that we are professing the same faith. >A sin that we are at no fault of btw which makes this whole thing even more confusing but that’s a whole different conversation. One of the ways to understand sin is as a disease, perhaps the concept of Ancestral Sin makes more sense to you than the concept of Original Sin. >Like God constantly says he’s one in the bible, but then goes ahead and manifest two more forms or whatever they’re called, in doing so he’s either contradicting himself or expects too much from our mental capacity or Christianity went wrong at some point. We will never be able to fully understand God, that would be similar to putting Him in a box. God is a mystery, we first believe so that later we can understand him. Christians have a trinitarian reading of the Old Testament.
Most Christians do claim monotheism, and Christianity is considered one of the major monotheist religions of the world. Zoroastrianism and Baha'iism are also monotheist. But Trinitarian Christians just understand their deity as having three persons in one essence, not being three different deities altogether.