Obama..... not religious?

I can't speak for Joe, but I agree with him, and I'm happy to peddle back to the point of saying: "if you don't believe in the divinity of Christ, you can't belong to any of the Christian denominations whose members frequently recite the Apostolic creed in their services -- which doesn't cover all Christians living today, but almost."

If you are content with "almost," then you must be content with acknowledging that not absolutely everyone whom you are willing to describe as Christian necessarily considers your boy Jesus to have been divine.

You've advanced this argument before, and i consider it fundamentally flawed. In fact, i would consider an argument that a "true" Christian must accept the injunctions of Leviticus to be better founded than the argument you advance here. The assumption of the divinity of the putative Christ in "mainstream" Christianity is essentially a product of the suppression of what came to be known as the Arian heresy, derived from the questioning of the trinity by Arius of Alexandria. In fact, Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote the confession which was adopted as the Nicene Creed, was considered an Arian by many of his contemporaries, which did not, however, diminish his influence or the favor shown him by Constantine.

One cannot allege on a traditional basis that a Christian must believe in the divinity of Christ, because there has been (or at least once was) a strong, widely subscribed to Christian belief that Christ was not divine. One cannot allege it by definition, either.

From Answers-dot-com, and based upon the American Heritage Dictionary:

n.

1. One who professes belief in Jesus as Christ or follows the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus.
2. One who lives according to the teachings of Jesus.

From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1 a: one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ

Not following a religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus, nor living according to the teachings of Jesus, nor professing belief in the teaching of Jesus Christ unavoidably entails believing in the divinity of the boy Jesus.

There might be a lot of reasons to argue about in what being a Christian consists, but there can be no unassailable basis for alleging that anyone who would profess being a Christian must also profess a belief in the divinity of the Christ.

I have argued that the Bible should be important to any Christian, because as I understand it, one cannot really claim to be a Christian without claiming Jesus was the Christ...and I do not see how anyone can get to that point without using the Bible. And more specifically, I cannot see how anyone can get there without using the Old Testament!

But if one is going to use the material in the Bible as reliable in establishing that Jesus is the Christ...how can one also claim that the other material is so unreliable that statements like those at Leviticus 20-13 and Leviticus 25:44ff actually mean the exact opposite of what the words say.

A heresy which arose in the fourth century, and denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

My remarks about Christians were in response to a remark by Joe. I have since conversed with Thomas on that subject. You don't need to "clear up" anything for me, Frank, because i no longer care what you think, after your deplorable performance yesterday. The post of mine over which you went ballistic was actually an argument in support of your thesis about the obligation of Christians to adhere to Mosaic law, and yet you reacted by foaming at the mouth. Consider, for sake of the both of us, that none of my remarks in this thread in future have any reference to what you have written or will write here.

JPB wrote:

You can't make this stuff up. It must be right, right?

There is, I think, a rather large difference between someone saying that he is a good Catholic even though he doesn't follow the church's tenets, and someone else saying Catholics aren't genuine Christians. The former is simply a matter of comparing one's stated positions with one's practices, while the latter is a theological controversy. The former is fairly easy to resolve and involves no specialized knowledge, the latter is impossible to resolve and involves an intimate familiarity with religious texts and, preferably, with god himself.

I'll settle for "a workable first shot at a moral compass". More workable than some placebo-compass that we all would agree isn't a workable first shot at a moral compass.

Essentially, Joe, you are offering an ipse dixit argument, by referring back to your personal definition in responding to the issue of Arianism. However, i will accept the authority of the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Quote:

A heresy which arose in the fourth century, and denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

As for what would distinguish a Presbyterian from a Muslim (and leaving aside all the delicious absurdities of John Calvin), i refer you again to the three descriptions extracted from the two definitions i quoted and linked (and resolutely ignoring your irrelevant remarks about the theological authority of the American Heritage Dictionary, whose claim cannot reasonably be considered to be less than your own personal claim). So long as a Muslim or a Bahai is not necessarily conscientiously attempting to live their life in accordance with the teaching of Jesus, following a religion based upon the teaching of Jesus, or professing a belief in the teaching of Jesus, they would not be Christians. That you or anyone else would choose to or choose not to so describe them has no meaning to me.

It seems that the first is a "Christian" only by happenstance -- if he had learned of the "golden rule" from a fortune cookie rather than the bible we could, with equal justification, call him a "Fortune Cookiean." If "Christian" is to be a meaningful category, it must mean more than just thinking that Christ was a smart cookie.