Bloggers gather at the Blogger Party 2007 at the Blitz Megaplex, in Grand Indonesia, Central Jakarta, in this file photo. It was estimated that the number of Indonesian bloggers has reached 247, 000 this year. (JP/Ary Hermawan)

In the 4th century, a charismatic Christian presbyter of Alexandria, Arius, sparked a fierce theological discussion on whether or not Jesus Christ was God in the same way as God the Father.

The laity -- sailors, travelers, bakers and traders -- were at the time openly discussing the abstruse subject with great enthusiasm the way people these days talk about politics and celebrity gossip. This was before the Holy Trinity was officiated as the Church's creed.

About three hundred years later, the newly-established Islamic theocracy from the Arabian peninsula conquered Jerusalem and encountered the Christian pilgrims. With the Koran, Muslims opposed the idea that Christ was the Son of God, inciting another ferocious theological debate.

Since then, thousands of religious treatises and apologias have been written. But for centuries, the perennial debate on God and the nature of Christ rarely ended with the opposing sides arriving at convergent conclusions.

In the ancient world, theological discussions were not without risks, especially when the emperors, sultans and inquisitors of both parties took part and forcefully ended (won) them.

More than one and a half millennia after Arius posed his Christological question, bloggers and web forums have rekindled the stormy discussion on God and religions, reflecting the enduring thorny relationship between the world's two Abrahamic faiths. This time, there is no terror of ruthless inquisitors.

Mohammad Irwan, 42, an employee at an oil and gas company in Jakarta, has been immersed in a theological debate for the past few months over an Internet blog that regularly posts entries challenging the Christian view on Christ.

"I will worship Jesus Christ if you can prove to me that he is divine," the Bandung Technology Institute graduate once challenged an irate Christian who criticized articles on the blog, which is run by a Yogyakarta-based blogger using the pseudonym "Wedusgembel".

The articles posted are insulting and have infuriated many Christians, especially the laity. The blogger writes, for instance, that "a Muslim is more Christian than a Christian because the former follows the 'true teachings' of Christ", or that Mother Theresa, the symbol of religious devotion and purity in the twentieth century, will "go to hell because she believes in the Trinity".

The blog draws new comments every day.

The heated debate between the two faiths, whose followers now account for half of the world's population, is not only ancient, but also a global digital phenomenon. One can easily find apologetic sites such as answeringislam.com or answeringchristianity.com on the web.

Interestingly, one will find it difficult to trace similar sites by the followers of other faiths such as Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

Indonesia Faithfreedom.Org, which is linked to the popular anti-Islam website Faith Freedom International, is one Indonesian language site that belligerently posts offensive articles on Islam.

A number of local Muslim bloggers have created sites to counter the site's accusations, some of which are no less hostile than the site they combat.

Blogging is nearly as easy as writing a diary on which almost every subject is permissible, breaking all the social taboos of the offline world: A high school student and an overseas PhD candidate have the same opportunity to speak their mind.

This condition paves the way for an open debate between Muslims and Christians, which is no longer exclusively practiced by theologians and religious scholars. Saints or bigots, the learned or the laity, they are all allowed to join the frenzy.

Does this new form of dialogue foster a better understanding between the two sides?

Irwan, who chooses to remain anonymous when blogging from his Blackberry, said he had lost interest in discussing theology on the Internet.

"Being anonymous, people can express their ideas more freely, but they can also commit acts of cowardice. They just do not respect the opinions of other people," he told The Jakarta Post.

Instead of achieving a mutual understanding, he said, a number of religious blogs have been filled by hate speeches and the comment forums have turned into a warfare where the so-called believers can cowardly cast aspersions against other faiths.

"From my experience, it is more effective if we have a face-to-face dialogue," he said.

The concept of the Trinity is apparently too subtle to grasp for a young Muslim blogger who neither reads the Bible in its original languages (Hebrew and Greek), nor is trained in philosophy and the methods of multilayered exegesis of the Scriptures.

Meanwhile, Christians can easily find references on the ugly faces of Islam to verbally attack the religion.

Catholic priest Beni Susetyo said he did not consider the intense religious and theological debates on the net as positive, and refused to regard it as a form of "interfaith dialogue".

"They are mostly people who have a narrow understanding of religion. They think other people are their competitors. What they say is nothing but rubbish," he said.

With the enactment of the new cyber law and the recent blocking of YouTube and a number of sites by the government following the Fitna controversy, the question arises whether offensive sites should also be blocked; something that bloggers in general are now fearing.

A lecturer on communication studies at the University of Indonesia, Ade Armando, said the existence of such provocative religious sites was inevitable as the Internet provided almost absolute freedom to its users.

"We cannot let the state interfere," he said, adding that "for good reasons, freedom on the web should be upheld and supported."

He argued that not all religious bloggers were zealots and provocative, and a blogger named Ahmad was not necessarily a Muslim nor did he represent Islam.

"The bloggers have their own code of ethics and this matter is actually very much related to their conscience," said Armando, now editor in chief of Islamic magazine Madina.

A blogger who uses the pseudonym Danalingga writes on his blog that posting and discussing religious matters is a good thing, but that bloggers must have the right attitude; that the opinions of others could be right or wrong.

Both Armando and Susetyo believe the impact of sites containing hate speeches will not affect the coexistence of Christian and Muslim communities, because the number of people who have access to the internet in Indonesia is insignificant.

The number of bloggers, however, continue to increase in line with the growing information and technology industry. According to Blogspot profiles, there are at least 600 new Indonesian bloggers per day.

In addition to international weblog providers such as Blogspot, Wordpress, Multiply, Facebook and MySpace, a local weblog provider, Dagdigdug.com, has recently been launched to lure new local bloggers.

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