# What Makes a Christian?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [January 29, 2014, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009 "2014-01-29T02:12:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steely_Dan_Fan)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/81 "2014-01-29T22:32:24Z")
> [@Skammer](#):
>
> **SDF** , instead of being all cryptic, why don’t you tell us who or what “the Christ” is or was, if not Jesus?
An abstract manifestation of the best within us: universal love and brotherhood.
> [@](#):
>
> And how do you know about this Christ, if not from the New Testament?
The ancient Hebrews had a problem, and they thought the solution would be the Messiah. This Christ is the Messiah, the _real_ Messiah–it might not be in the form they were expecting from prophecy, but it’s the actual, real-world-workable solution to their problems, and to the problems of humanity today as well.
We know what the Christ is by asking the question, “How do we save humanity–how do we keep from destroying ourselves.” We know the Christ because the Christ is whatever the logical and real-world-workable answer to this question happens to be.
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### Author:  [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/82 "2014-01-29T22:33:48Z")
> [@arielburns](#):
>
> Cool, I kind speed read through it. It doesn’t say that Paul didn’t believe in the Christ, at least in that article. I’m interested bc I live in Saint Paul and there is a lot of pagan symbolism in our capitol that could be interpreted as Mithraism. It was said that Paul of Tarsus was a student of Mithraism…so,
>
> sorry off topic, I just wanted to know if there were other sites that may talk about that.
About a Paul/Mithraism connection? Plenty, all packed full of conspiracy-minded nonsense and drivel. But if you want actual evidence and rational scholarship that such a connection exists, you’re out of luck, 'cos it doesn’t.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/83 "2014-01-29T22:35:09Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#):
>
> An abstract manifestation of the best within us: universal love and brotherhood.
>
> The ancient Hebrews had a problem, and they thought the solution would be the Messiah. This Christ is the Messiah, the _real_ Messiah–it might not be in the form they were expecting from prophecy, but it’s the actual, real-world-workable solution to their problems, and to the problems of humanity today as well.
>
> We know what the Christ is by asking the question, “How do we save humanity–how do we keep from destroying ourselves.” We know the Christ because the Christ is whatever the logical and real-world-workable answer to this question happens to be.
So, he’s sort of like Captain Planet?
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### Author:  [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/84 "2014-01-29T22:37:18Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#):
>
> An abstract manifestation of the best within us: universal love and brotherhood.
Well, that certainly seems to be one end of the curve. I’m pretty sure that’s the most liberal interpretation of Christianity it is possible to hold.
Still can’t say I understand the need to be so dogmatic about it, but that’s probably just me.
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### Author:  [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/85 "2014-01-29T22:38:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> So, he’s sort of like Captain Planet?
Pffft. “Captain Planet” wasn’t really a guy, like the documentaries try to tell you. He’s an abstract concept. If you don’t get that, you’re not a real Planeteer.
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/86 "2014-01-29T22:54:21Z")
Re: Given that many millions of people throughout the world believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the English language has a pressing need for a word to describe these people. And I think “Christian” is a far more convenient phrase than “people who believe that Jesus is the Son of God.”
Yeah, this works for me, **Weeping Wyvern**.
If I want to further specify what kind of Christian I am, there are plenty of further descriptors one can use.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/87 "2014-01-29T22:55:19Z")
**Steely Dan Fan** , stop it.
If you want to open a new thread to witness to your own personal beliefs and expound upon them, feel free to so. Your actions in this thread amount to trolling.
Language is used to communicate. There is a 1900+ year tradition of referring to certain people as Christians. This thread is discussing how people should identify that group and its members.
Wandering in here and posting a half dozen cryptic "nuh uh"s on the topic before you even hint at your own beliefs, (that are really irrelevant to this discussion, being, basically, an idiolectic usage), is not appropriate.
You will stop this attempt at a hijack and go open your own thread if you feel it is important.
= = =
EVERYONE ELSE.
This sidebar/hijack is over.
[/Moderating]
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/88 "2014-01-29T23:42:03Z")
OP: By the way, what FB page was that? IOW: link?
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### Author:  [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)
#### Post date: [January 29, 2014, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/89 "2014-01-29T23:57:49Z")
> [@Monty](#):
>
> It’s exactly like that. IME, the ones touting “Mormons aren’t Christians” also hold to the line, “Catholics aren’t Christians.”
However, the Catholic Church does not teach an altogether different definition of God the Eternal Father. I will say that nothing in the LDS Thirteen Articles is contradictory to classical/traditional Christianity, but then again, they neglect to mention Eternal Progression or Temple rituals, which aren’t exactly marginal in the LDS.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/90 "2014-01-30T00:23:46Z")
Good grief. Does it have to be put in large type? IN MY EXPERIENCE it is exactly like that. And I was NOT TALKING ABOUT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH; I was clearly talking about the groups of folks (again NOT THEIR CHURCH LEADERSHIP/HQ) who rant on about how Catholics aren’t Christians and also how LDS aren’t Christians either.
For the love of Pete, I don’t think I’ve ever used that posting style before. And that’s probably because it’s never been necessary before now.
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### Author:  [@llcoolbj77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/llcoolbj77)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/91 "2014-01-30T00:31:05Z")
> [@Monty](#):
>
> OP: By the way, what FB page was that? IOW: link?
What do you mean? What is IOW?
I had a juvenile client the other day charged with hacking a twitter account. I understood about 1 in 3 words she said. I always thought I was moderately internet savvy. Not so much! 🙂
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/92 "2014-01-30T00:37:06Z")
OP = Original Poster/Original Post
IOW = In other words
FB = FaceBook
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### Author:  [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/93 "2014-01-30T13:11:04Z")
> [@FriarTed](#):
>
> As to what makes a Christian-
>
> Trust in the God of the Bible, OLD and New Testaments (Marcionites are not Christian);
> that Jesus is God’s Only Son, His Fullest Revelation, maybe even in sharing Deity with the Father & the Spirit (I will include Arians & Trinitarians, tho I think Arianism is a major misunderstanding);
> that somehow Jesus died to save us from our sins;
> that God then raised Jesus bodily from the dead & through Him offers us eternal life with Him;
> that Jesus reigns with God as Lord of everything;
> that the Bible is a reliable God-given account of all this.
>
> Personal commitment, a good faith effort to obey what God/Jesus commands, baptism into a fellowship, a practice of prayer & Bible study, & graciousness to others should our of faith in God/Jesus.
This goes back to the fact that anything taught, thought, or written, is from the mind of another human. and the belief is in the human not God!
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### Author:  [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/94 "2014-01-30T13:27:23Z")
> [@tomndebb](#):
>
> Corrections of fact:
>
> The Nicene Council was called at the direction of Constantine.
> It was not called to make up the rules of who would or would not be called Christian. Instead, it was called to resolve the specific dispute regarding the teachings of Arius. (The council ruled against Arius, but his teachings lived on for another century or so). Nothing was said about various Gnostic beliefs. Nothing was said about the monophysite controversy. The teachings that it proclaimed were the ones that were already held by the overwhelming majority of Christians in the world at that time.
> The Nicene Creed that was published by the council was based on the text of earlier creeds that were already in use.
>
> No action was undertaken at Nicaea to “throw out” any scripture that was not “inspired.” In fact, “scripture” was not even addressed in the Council. There is no declaration of what books are scripture and not even an appeal to scripture when announcing its decisions.
>
> Aside from the rejection of Arian beliefs, the principle issues of the Council were the setting of the date on which to celebrate Easter throughout the church and the conditions under which people who had become apostates under the recent persecutions of Diocletian should be re-admitted to the church and how they should be treated once re-admitted.
>
> This council did not set the scriptural canon.
> This council did not suppress multiple forms of Christian belief; it only addressed two, choosing one of them. (In fact, when Constantine was finally baptized, twelve years later, he joined the group who had lost at Nicaea.)
> It was not called by Constantine to make Christianity the official religion of the empire, (he, himself, remained a pagan for another twelve years). It was only to get the two largest factions of people who were already Christian to quit fighting.
>
> [The Decrees of the First Council of Nicaea](http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum01.htm)
I have read that Constantine Is said to have had a vision of a cross in the sky and used that to believe he would conquer the world after noticing the Christian beliefs and practices. He wasn’t baptized until on his death bed.To do this it was important to have a unified Christianity. Many of the Gnostic texts have been found and writings attributed to Thomas etc, were declared not inspired by God.
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### Author:  [@Beelzebubba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beelzebubba)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/95 "2014-01-30T13:59:26Z")
I wonder if I get bonus points for not eating Pork or Shellfish?
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### Author:  [@Steken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steken)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/96 "2014-01-30T15:24:20Z")
Tricky, ain’t it?
I was going to go for something along the lines of “a Christian is a religious person who considers his or her religiosity to be in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ,” but then that would also include Muslims.
I also thought of changing “in accordance with” to “based on,” but that isn’t quite right either.
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [January 30, 2014, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/97 "2014-01-30T15:44:33Z")
> [@monavis](#):
>
> The New Testament was Called the Word of God, and inspired by God, by the decision of the Roman and Orthodox Bishops it was they who threw out anything that the didn’t call inspired’; that was at the Council of Nicacea. in 325 (at the suggestion of Constantine). There were other writings that were in existence but were discarded. .
Nitpick: the canon of Scripture for Catholics was set at the Council of Trent. The creeds were selected at the council of Nicaea. The Council of Carthage set the basic canon for the Church.
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2014, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/98 "2014-01-31T02:52:11Z")
> [@monavis](#):
>
> I have read that Constantine Is said to have had a vision of a cross in the sky and used that to believe he would conquer the world after noticing the Christian beliefs and practices. He wasn’t baptized until on his death bed.To do this it was important to have a unified Christianity. Many of the Gnostic texts have been found and writings attributed to Thomas etc, were declared not inspired by God.
I have to correct you on this stuff at least once every year. Would you please go find some actual histories to read and stop harkening back to some New Age blather you vaguely remember from decades ago?
Constantine’s _In hoc signo vincis_ (the Latin version; the actual Greek was supposed to have been ἐν τούτῳ νίκα), occurred when he was battling Maxentius to be sole emperor of Rome after the tetrarchy fell apart. There was no promise or imagined prediction of “ruling the world,” just a claim that he would beat Maxentius to rule Rome, leaving Persia, Parthia, Scythia, Ethiopia, and the lands of the German tribes unconquered.
While he appears to have been fascinated by Christianity on some intellectual level, he never pursued becoming a Christian until his final illness.
Your repeated claim, however, is that he was involved in suppressing other “scriptures” and other variations of Christianity. As presented, that claim is nonsense.
We have copies of lists of accepted Scripture that very closely match the version we have, today, dating to 170 C.E.–154 years before the First Council of Nicaea.
It is probably true that various books of the Gnostics, (and the Monophysites and the Manichaean and Montanists and others) were suppressed, but it had nothing to do with Constantine and nothing to do with Nicaea. It was an ongoing process going back to the time of Paul disputing what he called “Judaizers.” It was a process that included the author of the Epistle of James disputing with followers of Paul regarding faith and works. It was a process that included the many tracts of Irenaeus in the second century disputing people he identified as “heretics” (_i.e._, those taking a separate path). It included condemnations of some of the writings of Tertullian and Origen. It has gone on throughout the entire history of the church.
There was never a point at which dozens of independent minded individuals were shut down in their beliefs in order to “create” a single political entity and it certainly did not happen under Constantine.
Rather, Christians constantly examined one new idea or another agreeing with or disputing that idea and with one side prevailing at each dispute with the winning side being recognized as the (not capitalized) orthodox church.
The notion of some grand conspiracy in which some small group of empire-backed zealots suddenly suppressed dozens of other beliefs is imaginary nonsense.
How do we know this? Because, regardless whether the “winners” suppressed the writings of their opponents, they spent a lot of energy and paper condemning the beliefs of their opponents and we have the records of those condemnations to this day. They did not secretly suppress anything, but trumpeted the (perceived) errors of their opponents at every incident.
Constantine did intervene to stop Christian disputes. However, that was for the sake of keeping the Christians from tearing apart the empire from within. He first intervened in the disputes on Donatism, resolving it at the local level. He later called the Nicene council to resolve the most recent (to him) of those many disputes that affected the wider church–and for the same reason: to stop the Christians from killing each other off over theological disputes. The bishops were brought together from the far corners of the Roman Empire to judge whether Arius or Athanasius had a better understanding of who and what Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit were. In that council, they voted several hundred to two to support Athanasius over Arius. That decision stands to this day. What did Constantine do about it? He exiled Athanasius, called Arius back from his church-imposed exile, and went on to be later baptized by an Arian bishop. If Constantine was trying to make the empire uniformly Christian, why did he not, then, imprison the bishops who voted against his man while they were all gathered in Nicaea in his presence? Alternatively, if he wanted to rule through Christianity, why did he not support the bishops against Arius?
Your scenario makes no sense.
Further, I have posted a link to the decrees of the Nicene Council, above. Read it. There is no mention of suppressing Gnostics or Monophysites or Donatists or Manichaeans or Marcionites or anyone else except the teachings of Arius. In terms of theology, it was a one issue council. Further, there is not a single reference to scripture or creating a canon or suppressing other “scriptural” works.
It is rather frustrating to see you post this nonsense every few months without seeing you make the minimum effort to get it right.
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### Author:  [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2014, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/99 "2014-01-31T03:23:06Z")
> [@Steely\_Dan\_Fan](#):
>
> An abstract manifestation of the best within us: universal love and brotherhood.
Do you have any Scriptural evidence (Old or New Testament) to back up this claim?
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [January 31, 2014, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-makes-a-christian/680009/100 "2014-01-31T05:30:10Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#):
>
> Do you have any Scriptural evidence (Old or New Testament) to back up this claim?
[Take this hijack to a different thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17058621#post17058621)
[/Moderating]
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