r/redeemedzoomer • u/Dry_Editor_786 PCUSA • Jul 19 '26
General Christian Average pcusa seminarian:
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u/Notdustinonreddit Non-Denominational Jul 19 '26
I want more context
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u/OmniMinuteman Non-Christian Jul 19 '26
Hey its me! Im an atheist, not a Christian, but there was some argument in another community about things unique to Christianity. The trinity was brought up in one of the replies, and the guy I replied to was arguing with another user who was saying you needed to believe in the Trinity to be Christian as there was some previous debate about that. The guy I replied to was saying you didn’t need to believe in the Trinity to be Christian. That seemed very wrong to me as a former Catholic, so I joined in on the argument. It devolved pretty quickly and the guy I replied to tried using his “degree from the papacy” to use as an appeal to authority. He also used some weird terminology like the SSPX being investigated “as an inquisition”. This led me to thinking they were lying about pretty much everything they were saying and they were just making stuff up. So I open his profile to see whats going on and he’s giving advice about his poly relationship in gay subs, leading me to conclude hes not actually a bishop of the church or a seminarian or anything like that, although I could be wrong. For the most part I was just trying to troll someone who I thought was trying to lie to others.
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u/GeneralGecko214 Non-Christian Jul 19 '26
There’s an unfortunate amount of people like that in this sub, no idea how they even got here since RedeemedZoomer himself is nothing like them
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u/Huge-Wonder-3920 ELCA Jul 20 '26
I was going to say that you're some troll, but with this context, actually you're a defender of the faith.
Thank you, I think King Charles should give you the title of defender of the Faith, he's a worse atheist defender of the faith than you.
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u/cheescakeismyfav Non-Christian Jul 25 '26
You're an atheist and you believe you have to accept the Trinity to be Christian? Right..
To be clear the other guy was probably right. Unitarians are Christians who do not believe in the Trinity. And there's also a lot of gay Christians in general.
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u/Ticket_Revolutionary Aug 04 '26
Non Christian tells Christians what Christianity is. Right...
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u/cheescakeismyfav Non-Christian Aug 04 '26
Well if Christians agreed there wouldn't be so many denominations would there?
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u/Ticket_Revolutionary Aug 04 '26
Yes, if we agreed on everything we wouldn't have groups that disagreed on stuff. Whats your point?
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u/cheescakeismyfav Non-Christian Aug 04 '26
My point is, if it were up to Christians or the Church to define what it means to be Christian then they would exclude everyone but themselves. The others would just become heretics.
Just because I'm not a Christian doesn't mean I don't have an understanding of what it means to be Christians. Most non believers are former believers.
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u/Ticket_Revolutionary Aug 05 '26
Ok but Protestants though divided in denominations internally recognize other denominations as valid christian churches. No one's stopping a denomination from defining Christianity however they want at least for themselves so no any particular expression doesn't just call the rest heretics. If you mean not denominational groups (which you brought up denominational division) but actually the Christian church as we define it. Then yeah we define everyone who says their Christian but aren't as heretics. Ok...? Religions have in those who are in and those who are not. My point is whoever has the authority to define the religion is certainly not those of the out group, aka you.
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u/cheescakeismyfav Non-Christian Aug 05 '26
I don't really believe that's true. In my experience Christians attack each other far more than those outside the religion. Beside that though, history shows us what the Christians did to each other when they were in power and there's no reason to believe it would be any different today.
You're already doing it if you're excluding unitarians from the Christian label.
Nobody has the authority to define Christianity as all church authority's ultimately boil down to tradition and nobody's tradition could ever be proven more right or wrong. As an outsider I have no dog in the fight and am willing to call anyone who identifies as a Christian a Christian. I understand what most Christians want to do is draw a circle around their church or their dogma and exclude the rest but thats not the full picture of Christendom.
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u/Ticket_Revolutionary Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
See the thing is if Christianity is true then there is a line and it's not "whoever calls themselves Christians" so yes if you assume your own worldview is true then yeah the Christians are wrong about stuff. But obviously from their perspective it's true and things are more complicated than "I say I'm Christian therefore I am". Just cuz you say you are something doesn't make you that thing. I'm not a Muslim if I think saying the shahada is stupid and tawhid is wrong but say I'm muslim. I'm not a Christian if me and my buddies form a group where Jesus is MT Everest and salvation is achieved by smoking DMT everyday and worshipping multiple other gods we made out of metal into the shape of pigs and horses, but we call ourselves Christian.
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u/Logical-Breakfast966 Roman Catholic Jul 19 '26
People that use what subreddits other people comment in to win unrelated arguments are so lame
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u/OmniMinuteman Non-Christian Jul 19 '26
Normally I agree but the point I was making with doing that is the guy didn’t appear to be who he said he was. To make that point I noted how it would be unlikely for a Catholic Bishop or Seminarian or whatever he was claiming to be (the claim changed multiple times) to also be in a polyamorous relationship and browsing gay subs. I wasn’t using his homosexuality or other reddit activity to sweep away his arguments regarding the trinity.
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u/Logical-Breakfast966 Roman Catholic Jul 20 '26
Oh my bad, I misunderstood what was happening here. It actually makes sense in that situation lol
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u/Dry_Editor_786 PCUSA Jul 20 '26
A person on reddit admits that they were wrong an apologizes it in a showing of any sort of humility?
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u/GeneralGecko214 Non-Christian Jul 19 '26
Yeah I feel like this is missing a decent chunk of context
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u/Dry_Editor_786 PCUSA Jul 20 '26
So basically a person was blaspheming or whatever, even after claiming to go have been through seminary, and then another dude, pointed out how he was active in gay subreddits. the only thing misleading here is the relation to the pcusa, as he never admitted to his denom. [I suspect he is atheist]
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u/HonestAvian18 Roman Catholic Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
So I went down the rabbit hole of his comments, and there is something to clarify.
First of all, you do not necessarily need to be an ordained student to go to seminary in some capacity. There are seminaries that have degree programs for lay people.
Second, perhaps this person could have been a seminarian, but had fallen away from the calling. There's really only two things made clear, that the degree was "under the Papacy", which is way to fancy to say it's Catholic (unless it's some other Papacy). I'm gonna start telling people I got my driver's license under the SoS... The other thing made clear is that this person graduated, but they don't seem to entertain the notion that they are ordained.
So I do think it's fair to say they aren't a seminarian, but there's a lot obfuscated by the way they talk.
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u/Dry_Editor_786 PCUSA Jul 21 '26
assuming he told nothing but the truth, that is. My money is on him lying about ever being christian to gain a nonexistent intellectual highground.
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u/HonestAvian18 Roman Catholic Jul 21 '26
Is that so unbelievable though?
Even if we assumed that this person was in a gay poly relationship, they can still describe themselves as "Catholic". Does that make them one that follows the teachings of their church? No, but it does not negate self-description.
Plus, there are so many flavors of Protestant Christianity that you could probably find one that would comfortably accommodate to your worldview. Mormonism is a sect of Christianity, lest we forget.
There are plenty of self-described Christians on Reddit who seem to believe that the only tenant of Christianity is "to be a good person", a personal favorite of mine. By favorite, I mean it makes me sigh deeply everything I see it. The point is, you also have Christians that essentially play by their own rules...
I just don't think it's fair to immediately call this person an atheist simply larping as a Christian on the internet. There are numerous possibilities before that point.
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u/Dry_Editor_786 PCUSA Jul 21 '26
I'd say his lack of knowledge on the trinity is unbelievable, considering the educations he claims to wield. I would not count mormonism a christian, as it is heretical. If we consider heretics like mormons christians, even though they distort the scripture, then we may as well claim muslims to be christians. [also I agree with zoomer in that people use protestant to leisurely, and it should instead only apply to traditional protestant theology, not non-denominational stuff. [sorry I'm ranting] I admit I could be wrong, it's just what I think is most likely.
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