eggnogstick

What are the Requirements to be a Christian? Must you belieive in the resurrection of Jesus? If so, must the belief be in a spiritual resurrection or a physical? If either one, how do you decide? Who is to say?
Must you live an ethical life, according to the teachings of the New Testament? Must one believe in the end times?
After thinking much about my conversion from Christianity to Agnosticism, I quesstioned what it even meant to be Christian, and I find that the task of defining what it takes/means to be a Christian is a sufficient reason to reject whatever it may be.
The best model of Christianity that I find appealing to a nonchristian, would be the following: To be a Christian one must believe that the false prophets talked about in the New Testament are fundamentalist Christians.
If Jesus did indeed rise from the dead and preach morality, I am sure he would reject Christians today, without a doubt. Infact, he would probably call Christians today, the followers of the anti-christ.
According to this model of Christianity, Jesus seems pretty cool. He isn't viewed as the: Damn the NonChristians! Go to Chruch every time possible! Give 'X' amount of money to the Chruch. Ect, Ect.

Back to my original point. The reason I find defining Christianity to be a problem is, despite all the disagreement on major doctrines; as well as the bombarding disagreement upon minor doctrines among 'Christians', scripture isn't clear. [ by scripture I mean the New Testament that is accepted among fundamentalist Christians - nothing that is hidden from the public]
Futhermore, if Christ truely rised from the dead, then surely he has the power to interact with modern-day Christians? If so, then he would be able to make clear all the misunderstanding(s) among the church(s). Why would he have his people divided? The best example is the tradition definition of what it means to be a Christian: To be a Christian one must believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus. Okay.... so, can the scriptures talking about his resurrection be understood in more than one way? By all means!

I conclude that before a one becomes a christian, one should be able to reach a firm definition of what it means to be a christian, beyond a reasonable doubt. - Good luck with that (pshhh)

seebs

I disagree with this conclusion. I don't see why I should be able to define things precisely in general.

Lemme give you a concrete example: I do not know exactly what the words "male" and "female" really mean. I have transsexual friends, some of whom are going for operations, some of whom aren't. Thinking about it, I have concluded that these words have boundaries I do not understand.

But there are easy cases, and I turn out to be male, and I don't have to fully be able to define the term to say that, whatever it means, I'm somewhere in there.

Toto

Are you interested in a historical definition or a modern practical definition?

Somewhere around the 2nd or 3rd centuries, a group of people referred to as "orthodox" set themselves up as arbiters of Christian doctrine, and enforced a definition of Christian, as someone who believed in what was claimed in the Nicene Creed - that Jesus was the son of God, born of a virgin, crucified under Pontius Pilate, resurrected after the third day, etc. etc. Other so-called Christians who didn't believe in these doctrines were defined as "heretics" and stomped out.

At present, no one really believes in the supernatural, but the Christian Churches, who require an allegiance to these doctrines, own too much real estate for everyone to just walk away from them. So there are some who claim to believe in these doctrines, and many fancy ways of reconciling them with modern views of reality. If you want to discuss that, you'll need to go to GRD.

Doug Shaver

Words are defined by the people who use them. There will be no firm definition of Christianity until people who call themselves Christians reach some consensus on what it means to be one.

Doug Shaver

Words are defined by the people who use them. There will be no firm definition of Christianity until people who call themselves Christians reach some consensus on what it means to be one.

Peter Kirby

I have seen a couple definitions. Cribbing from Romans, one could say that a Christian is one who confesses Jesus as lord. Influenced by (post?)modernity, one could say that Christians give most prominent place to Jesus Christ in their systems of self-defining symbolism. I'd settle for,

Christian, noun. A person who acts as if Jesus lives.

regards,
Peter Kirby

Joan of Bark

A Christian is anyone who says they are a Christian. This is an all-inclusive definition, of course, but an accurate one.

Julian

[MOD]
This seems more like a general discussion, so GRD it is...

Julian
Moderator BC&H
[/MOD]

Imnotspecial

When I still considered myself a Christian I often tried to condense my understanding of it and I came out with: one has to be "nice' to everyone. To be noticed as one of them one needs to display some of the trappings, i.e. church attendance, crucifixes and the holy jargon.

No Robots

Christian, noun. A person who acts as if Jesus lived.