In a post in another thread someone said
, and I ask how one can tell the difference? What exactly defines one as a “True Christian”, and not one in name only?
I can only ask, but it would be nice if self-designated non Christians waited a bit before jumping in.
Social scientists often use frequency of church attendance as a measurement.
Regards,
Shodan
Most Churches have a different definition, which is often why they are indeed, different churches.
The core seems to be the belief in accepting Jesus Christ as your savior. All else is doctrine or window dressing.
But you can accept Jesus and still do some very “Un Christian” things, which maybe makes you a poor Christian or a hypocritical Christian, but still a Christian.
Just like one can be a Atheist but still pray in a foxhole when shells are coming down.
So tell me, what defines a True Atheist?
I am a practicing Christian , by which I mean that:
I know lots of people who are much more fervent about the above than I am. I know even more people for whom (I suspect) only item 2 is true.
I don’t spend a lot of time trying to make judgments about the depth of other peoples’ commitment to their faith. If I had to try to judge, I think I would place some importance on any evidence I could see that they were moved to altruistic action based on their faith. That is not to suggest that faith is the only motivator for altruistic action, but that altruistic action in a professed Christian suggests to me that there is more going on than social Christianity.
Another question for another thread, I think…especially this early on.
Is this your definition as a Christian(a reference to the title of this thread)?
Not praying in a foxhole when the shells are coming down?
Done. Please respond.
For the purposes of counting people, I think most counters are happy to count anyone as a Christian or a Muslim or a Wiccan who checks the appropriate box on a form. So, who is a Christian in that context? Anyone who says they are.
Where is gets more fraught and often less useful is when people inside or outside the tent start trying to be arbiters of who is or isn’t a Christian. “He claims to be a Christian, but does odious thing X.” “She claims to be a Christian, but believes in heresy Y.”
The level of someone’s commitment to some form of Christian faith is difficult to judge from the outside, and the person trying to make that judgment rarely has a friendly or neutral motive for doing so. I can tell by talking about matters of doctrine or belief whether someone has given much thought to the topic at hand, but that tells me little about their internal life or their relationship to God.
In the strictest sense, there are no adherents to Christian doctrine: everyone fails in multiple aspects. A better test is whether a person aspires to follow Christian doctrine. But that is difficult to objectively determine. And it leaves unanswered “what is Christian doctrine?”.
It also includes people who unknowingly or coincidentally follow Christian doctrine. Not everyone who aspires to “do not murder” is a Christian, for example.
The easiest test is simply the question “do you consider yourself a Christian?”, so that is often used.
I think it has to center more on beliefs than conduct. A bad person who believes Jesus is the son of god and died and was resurrected (or whatever they believe) is still a Christian. In my (outsider’s) view, you don’t have to go to church or even try to live a moral life to be a Christian. If you believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, you are a Christian. I suppose the harder question is for the people who want to follow the example and teachings of Jesus but aren’t convinced he was a god, or that a god even exists. I’d call them Christians too, but YMMV.
Since I was the person who made the original comment:
I would define a Christian as a born-again believer who has accepted Christ as Savior, and their life should evidence that, by the way they live. The explanation perhaps could be much longer than that but I think that suffices. Many Americans call themselves “Christian” but don’t abide by that.
I realize that a “No True Scotsman” criticism could easily apply and it’s not easy to defend or oppose. However, also, when people say that America is 85% Christian, I don’t think that is really evidenced by the society. To use a political analogy, if someone said that the American electorate were 85% Democratic, but Republicans kept winning a lot of elections, you might say “Well surely some of those ‘Democrats’ aren’t true Democrats.” (Avoiding analogies about Electoral College or gerrymandering, which would really be taking the analogy too far.)
Just to clarify(not criticizing), what exactly do you mean by “born again”, and do you see those that are not “born again” by that definition as non-Christian?
I generally agree with this as a personal set of criteria: if I ceased to match that in any particular I would cease to think or speak of myself as a Christian. I would never apply those criteria to another person.
About any number over 50%, I would agree. There may be a majority who would say they are Christian for a poll, but I don’t believe that anywhere near a majority of Americans meet your definition.
Yes - born again = trusting in Christ as Savior alone, not on the basis of works of atonement, and as the delineation, those that are not born again, are not true “Christians.”
I will be the first to say that I do not understand Catholic theology well (since I know that definition means that penance or confession aren’t going to get salvation) and that my definition probably excludes a lot of Catholics, and I do know that has apparently long been an issue of heated contention between Catholics and Protestants/other non-Catholics. Maybe might exclude some Anglicans or Episcopalians, and almost certainly excludes most if not all Universalists.
What about someone who believes Jesus is divine, but who deliberately and explicitly rejects him and lives their life in open defiance of him? I would have a hard time considering such a person a Christian, and I don’t think they themselves would want to be called a Christian.
For what it’s worth: I did a little searching around on biblegateway.com, and found that the word “believer(s)” seemed to be used an awful lot in the New Testament to refer to Christians. But that was in the New International Version, which happened to be the default when I began my search. Comparing other translations, it seems that many of them use the word “brethren” (or “brothers,” or “brothers and sisters”), or in some cases “followers,” where the NIV uses “believers.” I find it interesting that different versions translate what is apparently the same word in different ways, ways that imply that being a Christian is a matter of belief, or of following, or of membership in a “family.”
So Czarcasm, this question has been asked countless times on this MB. You have participated in those threads. Did you forget the answer?:rolleyes: Did you think the answer had changed?:dubious:
If you note the reason this thread stated, it was because there was question over what constituted a true christian in that thread, claiming that some (many, most) who call themselves christian are in fact not.
Rather than hijacking that thread, he started a new one, as apparently, the question has not been answered to the satisfaction of many.
My definition is based on someone’s whose faith is in Christ, but that is neither provable nor falsifiable. So it isn’t much use in discussion.
Plus we are specifically forbidden to judge who is or is not saved. We can judge actions, but “God sees what is in the heart”.
Crotalus and Procrustus, I think, have explained it pretty well.
Regards,
Shodan
From an outsider’s perspective, there’s really no way to discern beyond self-identification. Any claim as to X or Y being the normative Christianity can only credibly be made by someone who accepts some sort of a Christian cosmological framework, which someone who does not themselves identify as a Christian pretty much by definition does not. Thus, if you don’t consider yourself a Christian, you’ve got no meaningful basis to discern between Christians and non-Christians other than what people consider themselves.