Posted: Apr 13, 2019 10:38 pm
Rumraket wrote:willhud9 wrote:Quite simply he states that moderate Christians aren’t exactly Christians because they cherry pick their verses.
Oh and, isn't that essentially right? Is there no end or limit to what a Christian can be? What is a Christian then, what does the word refer to? If there is no limit to how far one can depart from Christian scripture and yet remain a Christian, then it is a word without meaning. A category that has the potential to encompass literally everything. One could be an ISIS muslim, or an atheist, or not exist at all, and still be a Christian.
Alternatively you could argue that is exactly.... exactly... what does happen and exactly what would be expected to happen to a belief system given enough time. The world changes and religion has to change with it to stay relevant.
Christianity today has little resemblance to Christianity of the early Middle Ages.
I would say that a fairly ubiquitous and tautology-free definition of a Christian would be 'someone who believes in Jesus having a unique divine significance'; that would cover all 2 billion of them today, whereas most other definitions would struggle to include them all.
It's that old prescriptive/descriptive conundrum, but as a non-believer, I don't feel obliged to contend with scriptural arguments for a definition.