Reply #14: I don't think I can accept your reasoning.

[Selwynn]

If Jesus isn't God, or if his words aren't divinely inspired, then Jesus's promise--that doing such and such will lead you to salvation--hasn't any weight.


This seems to depend on what you mean by the word "salvation." I could see how, if you feel that the promise is of eternal life after death in heaven, that only the promise of one who has sovereignty over that heaven would carry much weight.

However, salvation - the root of which is salve, like a healing ointment, is not necessarily interpreted that way. There is a large amount of basis for the idea that "salvation" is really a "salving" healing restoration of hope and joy in this life. So that when Jesus says "I have come that you might have life - and life abundantly" it means just that. It requires no divine sanction to suggest that living one's life according to the the compassionate examples of Jesus and cultivating attitudes of love is indeed "saving." The alternative is a broken, dysfunctional life - that is the not ordered by the call to love and act in peaceful, humble compassion towards those around us. Living out that call is salvation.

No one argues that Paul is God, and yet to many if not mosts, Paul's words are usually considered authoritative. Apparently "divinity" is not a necessary precondition for finding validity in a scriptural text. Each of the following points you make reflect the dogmatic school of thinking. For example, your if statements always connect to further doctrinal "then" statements for support. If this doctrine is not necessary, then this doctrine is not necessary, then this doctrine is not necessary, etc. But the fact remains that one could argue that precisely none of this doctrinal assertions seem relevant to what Jesus actually taught (or at least what the gospel writers said).

According to the authors, Jesus did speak of "believing in me." But when I say "I believe in you" I neither mean simply that I acknowledge that you probably actually exist nor do I mean that I believe you have supernatural composition. What I do mean however is I believe in the quality of the kind of person you are, I believe the things you say, and I find them valuable and worth heeding.

Furthermore, you confuse what one has to believe in order to be a Christian with being saved. One doesn't compel the other.

This is a stunning and original claim. Let's take a little bit more.


Therefore to say "Jesus didn't say that belief in virgin birth is necessary to being saved" doesn't mean much. Jesus didn't say we had to believe in his divinity, either. Yet, without a belief in his divinity, you aren't a Christian, not because it is against the creed but because it makes Jesus another man with no difference from John the Baptist or Paul or other good talkers. Nobody is going to say Jesus wasn't a heck of a guy and a good talker. Even jews and muslims buy into that.


Who cares about being a Christian if it isn't directly connected to being "saved?" This is an amazing argument. You conceded that Jesus never sets the criteria for "salve-ation" as affirming x number of doctrinal creeds. Why should I care about anything else? It is almost as though you are placing the simple membership card as a "Christian" as separate from and more important than what is necessary for salvation, which if I read you correctly, seems to have no necessary connection to "Christianity" as you define it?

Further, it is not true that either one must accept every doctrinal assertion about Jesus or Jesus is "just another guy." It would be more convenient I'm sure if that were true, but of course it isn't. First of all, throughout centuries of Christian tradition, no one has consistently agreed about the nature of Jesus. If you have familiarity with First-Century Church history, you know that the debates (and I use that term loosely, because they were more like fights) over what doctrinal assertions about Jesus should be considered "orthodox" raged long and hard. If Pelagius had had a little more clout to match Augustine's "connections," we would have a very different "Christian" history.

Second of all, in the spirit of "if you have seen me, you have seen the Father," it is completely possible to interpret the symbol of Jesus as bearing witness to, revealing or reflecting the true nature of God. That makes him more important than just an "every man." It doesn't necessarily make a creedal commitment to his divinity necessary.


So you are left with being "Christian" meaning very little except that you think that the Beatitudes sound like good ideas, for whatever reason. Rather than dilute the meaning of a perfectly good term like Christian, just call it The Good People Club. It is actually more descriptive and not already taken.


I agree that if you see no necessary connection between Christianity and Salvation, then it is indeed not very meaningful. I would suggest instead however that perhaps you call it the "meaningless dogma club" if there is no necessary connection to salvation. However, on the other side of the fence, if someone believes that the fundamental moral imperative of human life is healthy relationships, then the account and example of Jesus's life and teachings becomes more than the mere story of a good person - it becomes intimately connected to the very meaning of full, responsible, right human existence. One could almost argue that such a position takes it infinitely more seriously than one that only see things in terms of a dogma checklist.

Theism, for the record, is the simple belief in the existence of a god or gods. Form that point, spiritual paths diverge. Seeing the account of Jesus as informative and valuable as a man who deeply, profoundly and vividly bore witness to the nature and character of God, as well as sharing with us a beautiful message of how we might live in fellowship with that God --

-- and recognizing that our understanding and awareness of that witness give us the tools to enjoy healing and restorative fulfillment of even our broken lives right here where we live, thereby living lives devoted to hunger and thirsting after greater compassion and relational concern, healthy attitudes and "good fruits"...

...well my friend, we may see it differently, but your attempts to disparage this as somehow trivial or meaningless fall flat.