From: Sam Norton (elizaphanian@kohath.wanadoo.co.uk)
Date: Fri Mar 04 2005 - 14:41:14 GMT
Hi DMB,
A quick response.
> And I think Wim makes a good point. Let's say we have to figure Christ
> into
> the equation if we are going to call ourselves christian. That only seems
> reasonable to me. But does that mean a christian has to put the unique,
> historical and only begotten son of god into the equation? <snip>
> What if I'm also quite convinced that
> the most important and essential point of his life story is to illustrate
> how each one of us to become a Christ and that in this view the churches
> are
> among the least worthy of wearing the label?
> Think about it. Who gets to decide and on what basis is that choice taken?
> If a guy wants to describe himself as a christian and is willing to
> explain
> why he uses the label, who gets to tell him that he's not the right kind
> of
> christian or that he's not christian enough or whatever?
The Nicene Creed, accepted by the vast majority of Christians - churches and
people - explicitly denies this (Jesus is the 'only begotten'). If someone
wants to call themself 'Christian' on this basis, then fine, but it will
lead to confusion. Why not just use 'post-Christian' or 'semi-Christian' or
something like that (or even 'follower of Jesus' etc)?
In other words, why would someone who denies the central tenets of
(historical) Christianity want to identify themselves with a group that they
disagree with, on such a fundamental thing as the nature of Christ? Just
seems odd to me. I would suspect that such a person is in a state of
self-denial.
Sam
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Mar 04 2005 - 15:25:11 GMT