It helps take the focus away from my face . (A good thing)
CalMeacham:
Well, would you consider Christians to be Jews? After all, Christians believe in the divinity of the Old Testament just like Jews do…they just have an additional set of books as well!
Mormons believe in the Christian Bible PLUS the Book of Mormon, etc.
I’ve known Christians who did not believe Jesus was the Son of God (or at least, not any more so than anyone); I’ve known Christians who did not believe in sin, so they did not believe in anyone “dying for their sins”. I’ve also known people who said you weren’t a Christian if you didn’t attend their church.
As a non-member of the group I consider anyone a Christian who calls them self one, but I guess some people find it to their advantage to narrow it down a lot.
Then there are Christians who believe you don’t have to perform good works, such as feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or visit those in prison. You don’t have to love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give all you have to the poor, or offer your cloak to the man who steals your tunic. All you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He is the Path to Eternal Salvation. By faith alone they will be saved.
Those Christians disgust me.
If they say “I believe in Jesus and God, I believe <insert teachings> to be the important things about being a Christian, and I follow them” then they’d be a Christian in my book.
Depends on how widely/narrowly one wants to define “Christian”-
the main controversy with the LDS is their belief that our Father God is an exalted
man who became God through obedience to His Father God;
Shakers believe in an additional Christ, as you noted- Mother Ann;
Christian Science claims that matter is illusory, thus denying that Jesus has come in the flesh, a doctrinal test laid down in I John.
I have an larger definition and a narrow personal definition- the larger one is-
you have to believe that somehow Jesus is the unique Son of God, your Lord and Savior, and risen from the dead, and make a conscious effort to follow Him as Lord; the narrow one includes belief in the deity of Jesus, the Triune nature of God, & JC dying for your sins, along with a more stringent standard of behavior.
Here’s me, agreeing with Der Trihs, in a thread about religion. Go figure.
As an atheist, I’ve got no business deciding who does or does not belong in the group, “Christian.” I’m not a part of that group, I’ve no right to determine the requirements for being a member. If two factions within that group are trying to paint each other as “not Christian,” that’s an internal matter to the group, and also none of my business. Some Catholics say Mormons are Christians. Some Baptists say Catholics aren’t Christians. Fred Phelps says nobody is a Christian, except him and his church. I’ve got no reason to take the word of any one of these factions over other factions in the meta-group of “Christian.”
That’s not what I said - or at least not what I meant.
I meant “someone who calls himself a Christian is someone who calls himself a Christian.”
For times when it is useful for me to classify someone as Christian or not, I would use a different set of criteria - self identification alone is not sufficient. But how I classify people is not what the OP was asking.
You changed the question, not fair. You asked do you need to believe in the supernatural, not whether it was really there or not. Big difference.
Should be
May I intervene? There are probably as many different definitions as there are Christians – something on the order of 2 billion, last count. But some interlocking or nesting criteria can be set up to give broader or more restrictive definitions, as it may suit people.
1. Jesus was a great and wise teacher, whose teachings we should listen to and perhaps follow. Notice that the word just or only does not occur in that sentence – you can be the strongest fundamentalist in the world, and believe what that sentence says, so long as you don’t take it as reducing his role to that. But this makes room for the Christian Unitarians, the Jesus Freaks, the New Age Christians, all the groups that reject traditional dogma and yet follow Jesus as they conceive him in some manner. Lekatt’s approach would fall here, I think.
2. Jesus is Lord. Paul’s definition. “If you believe in your heart and confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, you will be saved.” Remember that “Lord” implies divinity in the time and social milieu to which this was written. Not deity, and not Trinity, but divinity.
3. Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah sent by God. Goes a step beyond 2 to acknowledge the Markan formula and the identification of Jesus with the promised Messiah expected by the Jews.
4. ??? This one doesn’t have a quick definition, but it accepts the idea of God manifesting in or through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but not necessarily in the nice neat Nicene-Chalcedonian formulary. Many ancient formal heresies, including the Assyrian Church that includes many Iraqi Christians, and the LDS, seem to fit here. I think the Jehovah’s Witnesses do too, but I’ll let someone who grasps their doctrine more clearly speak to it.
5. The Apostles Creed. A few small groups will reject the text of the Nicene Creed but accept the Apostles. Many more use the Apostles Creed exclusively though they have no issue with the contents of the Nicene Creed.
6. The Nicene Creed. Nails down the Trinity as three distinct Persons in one Godhead, of which the God the Son is also incarnate as Jesus Christ, truly and fully God and truly and fully man.
7. Attack of the killer theologians. At this point everybody starts getting into why his and his church’s take on doctrinal details is right and everybody else’s is wrong. The original church and the One True Church is the Catholic Church. No, it’s the Orthodox Church. No, it’s the Baptists, who were there all along preserving the original faith, but nobody noticed them because they lurked well. (In a sarcastic mood, I refer to this as the Invisible Pink Baptists Hypothesis. ;)) Priesthood of all believers. Sola Scriptura. Sola Fidei. Double Predestination. Entire Sanctification. Second Baptism, in the Holy Spirit. Und so weiter. This is where Kanicbird’s “Born-Again Christians” come in, and almost every other oddball doctrine you may have heard of.
Well, quite a few of them do count the Bible as God, or give every impression of doing so. But the rest of us just consider that it’s a quite valuable and holy book.
I found his question somewhat odd (because to not believe in the supernatural aspect would be to instead merely regard Christ as a historical figure, which people other than Christians can also believe), but he didn’t change it as far as I could tell. I think you and he merely have a difference in opinion on what “supernatural” means. From your answer it doesn’t seem as though you include God in that definition, but his reply strongly suggests that he does; therein to someone who believes God is supernatural your reply would parse to “no, you don’t need to believe in the supernatural - you just have to be good to people and believe in this supernatural being.” Could be confusing, no?
Back to the OP. When a person claims to be Christian, all you can be sure of is that they believe that Jesus, the son of God, is our lord and savior. If there were a lot else you could be certain of, we wouldn’t have so many Christian sects, would we?
I would like to say I agree with you in whole but that would be me judging them. I will say that for those who don’t have the deeds let us hope that it is only that they need to grow, to get the courage , the strength to live what Jesus taught us with His sacrifice. And I would never judge you , you are very noble,sir. You speak the truth . For all to see.
It is a self-definition not requiring external certification.
I would be hesitant to infer anything at all about a self-identified Christian’s core beliefs.
Historically most ‘Christians,’ when pressed, would have deferred the specifics to their leaders. Those leaders would have given specifics which reflected agreed-upon teachings within their specific subgroup. Such teachings might have included doctrines such as:
- The historical existence of Jesus
- The doctrine that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, sent to be crucified as a mechanism to redeem mankind
- The doctrine that to be redeemed requires a recognition and acceptance of 1. and 2. and this results in a profound change in an individual which is then reflected in their post-conversion life…etc
In modern times we have seen the rise of individualism and a movement away from strict adherence to the doctrines established by centralized leaders. A person identifiying himself as a Christian could be referring to a specific narrowly-defined set of doctrines or he might just be making a broad reference of what is no more than a cultural background.
No there isn’t. God doesn’t exist if you don’t believe he does.
While there are Christians who are Jews, most Christians are not. Judaism is rather more rigidly defined than Christianity, though there are some disagreements. At any rate, one of the earliest debates among Christians was whether or not they had to be Jews, too. Obviously, most decided against it.
Actually, you can’t even be sure of that since there are, as noted earlier, some denominations that (a) don’t believe Jesus was the son of God and/or (b) don’t believe Jesus is our Savior.
>Then there are Christians who believe you don’t have to perform good works, such as feed the hungry, clothe the naked, or visit those in prison. You don’t have to love your enemies, turn the other cheek, give all you have to the poor, or offer your cloak to the man who steals your tunic. All you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that He is the Path to Eternal Salvation. By faith alone they will be saved.
>Those Christians disgust me.
I think the technical term for those Christians is “Protestants”. See Sola fide - Wikipedia
Quite. And let’s remember that the next time we all debate Islam and terrorism, oppression of women etc etc and the ‘no true Muslim’ argument is trotted out by apologists.
Religions are what the self-identified religious do.