Why is it not my place to offer consideration? Even without my motive, being to benefit humanity, I will still inevitably change people. Hell, you're changing me right now; I've been changed having been on this forum, and yes, ignorance-wise. And I do fret over the insurmountable depth over people's ignorance, including my own. To not fret, would to not be me.

I feel like I have a responsibility to help others around me consider. No, I don't go the activist route and push people, condemning them for maybe not considering something, but I do try to spread knowledge, 'planting seeds' as I cited earlier. I do not put myself on a pedestal, for that would be a grave mistake. Many have the potential to look above the clouds, but don't for whatever reason. I'd like for myself and others to provide them this opportunity, if possible. New perspective.

But I am cautious about the use of divine because it can mean a number of different things to Christians - there are varying understandings of Jesus' divinity.

So for the purposes of establishing necessary and sufficient conditions for being a Christian, we have to qualify our use of divine so as to not exclude certain understandings of Jesus' divinity, if we are going to use the measure at all.

I'm not so sure the historical Jesus is immaterial to Christian doctrine. Personally, I'm not worried about the matter, but some organizations seem to be attached to his historical existence. It is immaterial to me, but I'm not sure it's immaterial to all Christians. The fundamentalists are Christians, after all. They may seem more like Paulists sometimes, but they would claim otherwise.

Christ divinity is very important to most Christians. I have never met a Christian, other than on line, that did not take the bible literally, Christs divinity is literally held. I would agree, that it is not the life which is important, but the significance of that life, which could be said of any spiritually influential figure.

Neither have I. Which is why I'm still confused over this liberal labeling of "Christian". Hmph.

But what do we mean by divinity? For Christians, the term can mean many different things. Granted, the depth and popularity of these disagreements is not as significant as in the time just after Jesus' death and before the larger centralized Churches became supremely powerful, but I think they are still worth considering if we are going to give the subject a fair treatment.

Shouldn't Christians have the same beliefs in terms of Jesus' divinity? If not, then what exactly is the common denominator between all Christians again (I know you spoke on this earlier, but someone called you out on it, still leaving me confused)? Or, is there no common denominator (which wouldn't even make sense)?

I think that's the problem in front of us. Christians do not share all of the same beliefs about the nature of Jesus. So, now the problem is formulating necessary and sufficient conditions for being a Christian.

Do you think there's a possibility you're just watering down the concept of being a Christian in order to fit your own ideals? In other words, maybe you're not really a Christian in the majority sense of the word, but still have some faith that you want to hold onto that's making you want to label yourself as such?

Thomas, Come over to the dark side, we have candy!

Thomas has a significant (and VERY literate) interest in early Christians (hence his username), who were diverse in ways impossible to imagine in modern Christianity. And I think this is an invaluable source of understanding about where modern Christianity came from.

That said, the word Christian in the 100 AD context is NOT the same word as in the 2008 AD context. It's a historical belief system from a time with more diverse beliefs. But there are no more ebionites or gnostics. Someone can identify with the ebionites and call themselves that, but frankly that's a fringy solipsistic thing and it's not what Christianity contains anymore. Just as there are no more Jewish temple priests, no more sagisees and pharisees, etc.

Incidentally, I doubt that any early Christian belief system denied the divinity of Jesus whatever way you define that word.

Early Christianity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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