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A WORLD OF RELIGION: ARE THEY ALL PORTRAYING THE SAME MESSAGE
Chakuana Upshaw- Student
Axia College- University of Phoenix
Mark Guberman- Instructor/COM220
Every religion lays down certain articles of faith as its basic principles, demanding from its adherents an implicit faith therein. These basic principles may or may not appeal to our intelligence, or serve any useful purpose for us in this life, but it is nevertheless claimed for them that they possess unique merits in securing salvation and happiness in the life beyond the grave for those who hold them.
As to that life, almost every religion strikes the same note. Faith in tenets diametrically opposed to each other in teachings have by different religions been invested with similar merits that are to accrue to the believer in his life after death. If a faith in the divinity of A and B, for instance, brings salvation to the believer according to one religion, it dooms him to everlasting punishment in the life to come, according to the other. No religion, on the other hand, has any decisively logical support for its assertions. No one as yet has returned from behind the veil to bear witness to the truth of his faith. Even “seance-phenomena”, apart from all considerations of their futility or otherwise, are not reliable evidence that such a thing has occurred. The French spiritualist, for example, accepts the transmigration of the soul as a truth on the strength of phenomenal testimony, while his colleague in England will disbelieve in the doctrine on evidence precisely similar. Under these circumstances I am forced to conclude that a religion’s claim for belief in its doctrines should never be heeded, unless those doctrines satisfy our intelligence and have been tested in the crucible of utility as regards our present life.
There are many religions in America, however, the three most practice are Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Judaism is the number one religion in the world followed by Christianity and then Islam. Upon my research, I believe that Judaism was indeed the first religion. In my paper, I plan on disclosing the beliefs of each religion and how they all curtain tail back to the bible. Christianity is a monotheistic faith. It believes in one God and one God only. This is rather complicated by the doctrines of the Holy Trinity. Many ask how can there be one God and still possess three different at the same time? The answer was revealed in the fourth century, at the Council of Nicaea, stating that one God is revealed in three persons: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in which are united- but yet they are separate. None the less, this is still not accepted by some branches of Christianity: or by some theologians, who may also have difficulty with the incarnation of Jesus as a man. Yet, part of the doctrine such as this is that it should be difficult and ungraspable- for as God himself is also. For the best interpretation of the Trinity, look in the Nicene Creed. The Christian Creeds are the bedrock of Christian theology for being the earliest attempts by Christians to grasp and understand the events in which transformed their very lives. The beliefs of the Christian Church are that Jesus is completely divine, but was made into a man to come down upon the earth to carry out the very will of God. He is believed to be part of the Three in One whose death leads to salvation, which depended on the grace and divine favour of God. This was the atonement for man’s sins in which he died upon the cross.
The Church was the Mystical Body of Christ, meaning supernatural and mysterious, however, not unreal. The mystical physical body was birthed in the “upper room” in Jerusalem at Pentecost. In 313 A.D. Emperor Constantine declared Christianity tolerable. By 380 A.D. it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. In 1054 the Latin and Byzantine Churches divided into The Eastern Orthodox Church and The Roman Catholic Church. In the teachings with in the Roman Catholic Church, the church is declared as the “supreme court”. This idea leads in the end to doctrines of papal infallibility. The doctrine asserts that whenever the Pope speaks officially on matters of faith and morals, God protects him from error. However, this does not mean that Catholics have to accept the views of the Pope on politics. The second central idea is that of the Church as Sacramental Agent. These come into play with the second obligation. Since the twelfth century, the seven sacraments of the Roman Church which also shares along with the Eastern Church is that of baptism (ritual cleansing with water is a rite so old its origin can not even be traced), confirmation (described to show the acceptance of the Christian ethics and the community), marriage, ordination, penance, anointing of the sick and, most importantly Mass or Communion, which is considered vital in the Body of Christ. The Catholic Church teaches that when the Eucharistic elements are concentrated, they in which becomes Christ’s body and blood. The other six signify the grace in the way the body conveys the soul, in order to be among the living, one must have the breath of life.
By 476 A.D, the Eastern Church was formed. It was also known as the Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and Holy Orthodox. This church developed its own proper way of life in which stemmed directly from the early days. Eastern Christianity spread from Greece and the Asia Minor, and proceeded northern throughout the Eastern globe. This is where the very first of the three great schisms within Christianity itself derived. The Oriental Church separated in the fifth century due to the latter not recognizing Christ as being equal to God himself, nor did they see him as being a man perfected by God in any way. The Eastern Church believes in a federation of bodies. They also believe the Christian Church to be a community in which there was individualism. The main cause of the division is illustrated as the culture and psyche of those early practitioners. As of today, the Church in Russia can best lay the claim to being the true heirs of the early Byzantine church. The primary cause of Reformation was the desire not to be controlled by Rome. The German Reformation was started by Martin Luther (1483- 1546) p.31. The Eastern Church holds that God’s truth is disclosed through the conscience of the Church, while the Catholic Church holds that the final outcome is delivered through the Pope. Another belief of the Eastern Church is that not only obtaining their very own salvation, but also to