-1- wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2017 12:15 am
there is a core Christian belief that all Christians subscribe to.
You've said what you think this "core" is, and I've given you credit for having some of it right, but not for all of it.
But even taking your own "core" definition, Catholics are excluded. Mormons definitely are excluded. So are most of what are called "mainline" churches today, since many of them do not adhere to particulars of those tenets you listed.
So by your definition (not by any of mine) all these are not "Christians."
Consider this:
You are a human (this is a given, although I have no proof of it; let's suppose it's true.)
I am a human.
We are both humans.
We are different, but you can't deny we are both human.
Yes: but that's because "human" is a
genetic quality. It is an all-or-nothing fact, and thus does not have to be settled as a matter or opinion or belief, but only of genetics.
Christians can be different, but you are denying that anyone else who does not believe what you do is a Christian. I say there can be and there ARE Christians who don't believe what you believe.
And the day that "Christian" is a genetic description, you might have a case.
But you don't. Because when I asked you what you thought was the core of "Christianity," you listed beliefs, not genetic markers.
Another difference: nobody is
pretending to be a human. But people can pretend to be all kinds of things to which they are not entitled. You can say you're of a nation to which you have no citizenship; you can say you do a job for which you have no training or experience; you can say you have academic achievements for which you have no degrees or attestation of completion. Human beings lie all the time...not about being human, but about what kind of person they are, what they have believed, thought, done or achieved, how much money they make, who they love and who loves them, their past and their future prospects...
So again, you're forced to use some criterion to discern who's lying, or who's self-deceived, and who's not.
But what will your criterion be? It seems that at present, you regard anybody who says the words, "I am a Christian" as a Christian. But the "self-identification" criterion is not accepted by any serious scholars of religion, because it's hopelessly problematic and uninformative. People lie, or fail to understand what's entailed in the belief system they think they adhere to. "Nominalism" is a well-recognized phenomenon. And scholars of religion know that.
But that is a fault of the
person, not of the
communication of the ideas in question. The whole failure is on the receiving end, not the sending end.
So I still suggest you need a better way of telling, and the idea that it means the communication is flawed is simply a
non-sequitur there, logically speaking.
