Decepto-Meter

Satanic Quote: Christianity Trasher

Trashes whole of Christianity

What Anti-Trinitarians quote:

The Origins of Pagan and Christian Beliefs Edward Carpenter 1920 1996 "And when at the Council of Nicea (325 AD) it [the early church] endeavored to establish an official creed, the strife and bitterness only increased." "-the Nicean creed had nothing to propound except some extremely futile speculations about the relation to each other of the Father and the Son, and the relation of both to the Holy Ghost," (The Origins of Pagan and Christian Beliefs, Edward Carpenter, quoted by anti-Trinitarians)

What they fail to tell you

Carpenter trashes the whole of Christianity, arguing that all of Christian faith was borrowed from the pagans!

Muslims also use Carpenter's book, but they are honest in the use of it, because they use Carpenter's work as evidence that the whole of Christianity is borrowed from the pagans!

"Those doctrines which we have described in the preceding chapters-doctrines of Sin and Sacrifice, a Saviour, the Eucharist, the Trinity, the Virgin-birth, and so forth-were in their various forms seething, so to speak, all around. It was impossible for any new religious synthesis to escape them; all it could do would be to appropriate them, and to give them perhaps a colour of its own. Thus it is into the midst of this germinating mass that we must imagine the various pagan cults, like fertilising streams, descending. To trace all these streams would of course be an impossible task; but it may be of use, as an example of the process, to take the case of some particular belief. Let us take the belief in the coming of a Saviour-god ; and this will be the more suitable as it is a belief which has in the past been commonly held to be distinctive of Christianity. Of course we know now that it is not in any sense distinctive, but, that the long tradition of the Saviour comes down from the remotest times, and perhaps from every country of the world. In The Book of Enoch, written not later than B.C. 170, the Christ is spoken of as already existing in heaven, Even to-day the Arabian lands are always vibrating with prophecies of a coming Mahdi. and about to come as judge of all men, and is definitely called "the Son of Man." The Book of Revelations is full of passages from Enoch; so are the Epistles of Paul; so too the Gospels. The Book of Enoch believes in a Golden Age that is to come; it has Dantesque visions of Heaven and Hell, and of Angels good and evil, and it speaks of a " garden of Righteousness " with the " Tree of ' Wisdom " in its midst. Everywhere, says Prof. Drews, In the first century B.C., there was the longing for a coming Saviour. But the Saviour-god, as we also know, was a familiar figure in Egypt. The great Osiris was the Saviour of the world, both in his life and death: in his life through the noble works he wrought for the benefit of mankind, and in his death through his betrayal by the powers of darkness and his resurrection from the tomb and ascent into heaven. The Egyptian doctrines descended through Alexandria into Christianity-and though they did not influence the latter deeply until about 300 A.D., yet they then succeeded in reaching the Christian Churches, giving a colour to their teachings with regard to the Saviour, and persuading them to accept and honour the Egyptian worship of Isis in the Christian form of the Virgin Mary." (Edward Carpenter, Pagan And Christian Creeds , p202, quoted by Muslims)

Deception Exposed:

1. First, we want to say that the Muslims have used no deception or misrepresentation in their use of Carpenter's book. We deny that Carpenter's conclusions are valid, for it is preposterous to suggest that the source of Christianity is Pagan, given that Islamic faith is 600 years younger. At the very worst, Carpenters book proves both Christianity and Islam are both of Pagan origin! However, the flaw in Carpenter's logic is simple: The fact that there was similarity of ideas between major world religions does not mean one borrowed from another
2. But for Anti-Trinitarians to quote Carpenter's book as proof Trinity is of pagan origin, is dishonest, unless they are willing to tell you that he also trashes the whole of Christianity as of pagan origin.