Yesterday I (Stan) wrote:
This indicates to me that you are not very well informed about the
historic, Biblical Christian faith. What is the source of your personal
information about Christianity?
And you replied:
What does my personal faith have to do with the historical christian faith?
Is the historical christian faith infallible ? Is my view that man is
basically good until corrupted by society and interactions with other
unchristian ?
I also wrote:
Your statement that you consider yourself to be a Christian is,
in light of the above, puzzling to me. Just what IS a Christian to you?
and you replied:
According to the "born again" doctrine, I am a christian (and saved as
well) by accepting JC as my savior and inviting him into my life.
I also wrote:
I really am curious about these things, and I am concerned that YOU
are the one who has erected a mental "straw man" regarding the nature of
Christianity.
And you replied:
A mental straw man ? I am impressed how you are willing to doubt my
beliefs and faith Stan ? Is the word of a fellow christian not worth
anything ? Yes I consider myself a Christian and I also believe that man
is basically good. Both beliefs have worked quite well side by side.
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My comments were intended to ILLUMINATE your beliefs and faith. From much
of what you have written on this list, I have concluded that your worldview
and fundamental beliefs are very different from my own. Thus, I was quite
surprised to read your statement that you consider yourself to be a Christian.
The Christian faith is based on revelation from God, a revelation which is
in part propositional in nature. It involves the affirmation of specific
truths and the denial of specific falsehoods. As Keith pointed out in his
followup post to you, the very concept of "salvation" which is at the center of
Christian faith and practice presupposes that there is something we need to be
saved from. And not just something...but the very specific guilt we have as
a result of our rebellion and disobedience against God. How do we know all
this? From the propositional revelation given to us in the Bible. Paul's
letter to the Romans, chapters 1-8, give an excellent summary of the Biblical
Christian position on man's nature as a sinful, rebellious creature; these
chapters also describe what God has done and continues to do in order to
redeem a people for Himself through the work of Jesus Christ.
So your response to Keith, that you need to be saved "from yourself", is at
best incomplete. It fails to come to grips with the revealed truth that
man apart from Jesus Christ is *dead* in sin and needs to have a fundamentally
new life implanted in order to be acceptable and accepted by God. My reason
for asking you what you consider a Christian to be was simple: to find out if
you understand and believe the revealed truth of the Bible, and accept what it
tells us about our need for Christ. Your answers, such as they are, leave me
confused. I am still hoping for some clarification. I have now told you why
I, and many others throughout the ages, believe that man is essentially sinful
and unable to enjoy a relationship with God apart from Jesus Christ. Just
what is the basis for your belief that man is basically "good"? The word good
to me implies a moral nature that is the very opposite of what the Bible
describes as "the sinful nature".
Please don't think that I am picking on you in particular by asking for an
explanation of what you think a Christian is. If a person in my church
congregation told me that she thought of herself as a Christian but then
made known her views on a variety of issues which seemed to me to be at
variance with what is affirmed by the historic, propositional, Biblical
Christian faith, I would ask her the same thing in order to clarify: "Just
what do you think a Christian is?"
Would you be willing to answer my question in some detail?
Stan Zygmunt
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, IN 46383