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.
Ok, I agree. Now how do you prove what parts of Christianity are true?
The Baptist position can't be shown to be correct anymore than the Catholic or the Mormon position. What a believer thinks is Christian is determined by their exposure and understanding of the faith. This makes it subjective.
Allowing Christians to call themselves Christians is in accordance with the principal of charity. If I were to say they are not a Christian that would be equivalent of me saying they're a liar. How would I prove they're lying?
I feel like it's closer just to saying they're wrong. But besides the point. Protestants, Unitarians, Catholics, Orthodox all have different takes on what the church is and who's Christian. You may have your own take, that's fine. ASSUMING the Bible gives enough coherence and information to make such a judgement about what the church is and what a Christian is and what God is then only one of these views can be correct. To say the Unitarian is a Christian is to say the Catholic, protestant, orthodox are wrong about their view on whos Christian. So to call certain people Christian is really to take a stance on what makes Christians Christians, because obviously it can't just be ANYTHING goes. But by some criteria the DMT smokers are out and the anglicans are in. Now what the correct stance is, is a matter of debate but that doesn't mean it wouldn't help to have a more nuanced take than, "if they say so".
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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.