[TML] China Regulates Buddhist Reincarnation

[Jeff Zeitlin]

On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:35:05 -0400, "Richard Aiken"
<raikenclw at gmail.com>wrote:

>On 8/24/07, Jeff Zeitlin <jzeitlin at spamcop.net> wrote:

>> the first three Caliphates were not sources of
>> guidance in the faith, but merely historical events.

>> It is not in dispute among the various sects of Islam that Muhammad was
>> the final prophet, the 'seal' of prophesy.


>Ummm . . .

>Just out of curiousity: What's the difference between "sources of guidance
>in the faith" and "prophet?"  Sounds like a difference in degree, not in
>kind.  To me, anyway.

I'm assuming that you're not coming from a Moslem background, whether or
not you're particularly observant.  Let me put the question to you this
way:

If you're...               The question becomes, "Is the person listed
                           below a prophet, or a source of guidance in
                           the faith?"

Roman Catholic             The Pope, your local archbishop, bishop, or
                           priest?

Eastern Orthodox           The Patriarch of your particular national
                           denomination?  The Patriarch of
                           Constantinople?

"High Church" Protestant   Your bishop-equivalent, priest-equivalent or
                           Patriarch-equivalent?

Other Protestant           Your pastor-equivalent?

Jewish                     Your rabbi?

Tibetan Buddhist           Any of the various Named lamas?

Depending on how you want to look at it, prophecy either contains some
element of prediction - "This SHALL happen, if you do/do not do this
other" OR centers on the idea of it being the ABSOLUTE Word of Deity. In
the second sense, bulls promulgated by the Pope under "Papal
infallibility" could be considered prophesy; most Christian and Jewish
traditions hold, however, that BOTH elements - predictivity and
absolutism - must be present for a statement to be prophetic.  There are
interpretations in Jewish thought that hold that as man has fallen from
righteousness, G-d has removed some of His gifts, the most notable of
those removals being the Temple at Jerusalem, the Kingdom in Israel, and
Prophesy itself.

>Myself, I always thought the issue was merely one of secular rulership: who
>really had the right to rule, those elected by council or those descended
>from the Prophet's family.  Of course, Islam doesn't separate church and
>state at all, so if you have authority in the one I guess you'd have to have
>authority in the other.

To some extent, yes.  The Caliph would be the overall politico-religious
leader of the unified Moslem empire - but as there is not now, and
really never has been, a centralized absolute final authority in Islam,
and because Islam's religious authorities are generally named from below
(by consultation/council, as in my previous post in this thread), rather
than above, the Caliph would have somewhat less authority in the
religious sense than the Pope does over the Roman Catholic church.

There's some good reading on the topic at Wikipedia.