Original Sin

31 January 2010 14:28
Blogger Johnny Rottenborough said...

@ Maturecheese (13:26)—this kind of denigration...will only stop when Christianity stands up and fights back with actions and not just words.

Christopher Caldwell, in Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, considers the differences between Islam and Christianity regarding ‘action’:

❛To others, there is a difference in the ethical style of Islam that makes its adherents quicker to resort to violence than the adherents of traditional Christianity. One often-adduced difference is Islam’s lack of a concept of original sin. In sura 14:22 of the Koran, for instance, Satan allows he has no real power over man. The novelist Salman Rushdie has been a forceful proponent of this view: “The Western-Christian worldview deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a conception that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no saviour. Instead, great importance is given to ‘honour’. I consider that to be problematic.”❜

Caldwell also quotes an article by Mordechay Lewy, The West Cannot Act Freely. Lewy labels Christianity a guilt culture, Islam a blame culture.

❛In the open or undeclared conflict between the two cultures, the West cannot act freely, by reason of its self-imposed moral constraints. This self-restraint is not honoured by the blame-attributing culture of the East, but is instead taken for weakness.❜

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/01/should-richard-dawkins-be-arrested-for.html