What exactly do you mean by God? (There are many god concepts, and many are ill defined. This is an honest question since I'd have to know what the proposition is before being able to believe it. Specifically, there is a vast difference between a deist god and any particular theist god.)
Response: Philosophically “God” means “the ultimate Creator”.
There can only be 0 or 1 “ultimate Creator”s and deism, theism etc.. are theories about God not descriptions of different Gods.
Follow-on: On what basis do you evaluate these different theories about God? In other words, how is Christianity more plausible than other options?
Response: There is, and can be, no algorithm.
You just have to use your judgement and decide.
One not unreasonable heuristic: if God exists then God is presumably not incompetent so one of the major universal theistic religions is likely to be broadly true.
Narrows it down to Christianity or Islam, and for me at least this is an easy choice!
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Sunday, 27 February 2011
What does someone need to do to become a Christian?
Thank you for providing this questions and answer website and the book, “questions of Truth.” I have a theological question to do with how a person attains salvation or becomes a Christian.
It seems to me that to become a Christian you need faith that Jesus has forgiven you and a decision to stop sinning. I think of belief expressed in John’s Gospel and faith in Paul’s letters.
However there have been things in my experience that have confused me. I once read an Alpha booklet and it said we needed to do an ‘act of faith’ and I wondered if that meant a mental faith or something more. I thought about prayers they suggest you do in evangelistic booklets and prayers speakers at gatherings get people to say if you want to accept Christ. Then you have the possibility that there are Christians who just believe in their mind but have never said a prayer and possibly even some people who don’t even know when they accepted Christ. Even the Bible says “confess with your mouth Jesus Lord” in Romans 10:9 which suggests that this is mandatory.
So what (in very basic terms) does someone need to do to become a Christian? Do they need to do an act of faith or prayer or do they just simply believe in their mind? Perhaps a person should say a prayer just in case it is needed for salvation.
At one level this is like “what do you have to do to love someone” It is about orientation of the will but it has consequences for behaviour – we are after all embodied beings. If you love someone and they want you to talk to them and you don’t it’s an odd kind of love. So prayer is great. It’s also a good idea to get involved in some kind of a church if you can – we have lots to learn from other Christians and even more importantly Jesus commands us to Love God and Love your Neighbour as yourself – and the awkward and imperfect bunch in any church is a great place to start.
It seems to me that to become a Christian you need faith that Jesus has forgiven you and a decision to stop sinning. I think of belief expressed in John’s Gospel and faith in Paul’s letters.
However there have been things in my experience that have confused me. I once read an Alpha booklet and it said we needed to do an ‘act of faith’ and I wondered if that meant a mental faith or something more. I thought about prayers they suggest you do in evangelistic booklets and prayers speakers at gatherings get people to say if you want to accept Christ. Then you have the possibility that there are Christians who just believe in their mind but have never said a prayer and possibly even some people who don’t even know when they accepted Christ. Even the Bible says “confess with your mouth Jesus Lord” in Romans 10:9 which suggests that this is mandatory.
So what (in very basic terms) does someone need to do to become a Christian? Do they need to do an act of faith or prayer or do they just simply believe in their mind? Perhaps a person should say a prayer just in case it is needed for salvation.
At one level this is like “what do you have to do to love someone” It is about orientation of the will but it has consequences for behaviour – we are after all embodied beings. If you love someone and they want you to talk to them and you don’t it’s an odd kind of love. So prayer is great. It’s also a good idea to get involved in some kind of a church if you can – we have lots to learn from other Christians and even more importantly Jesus commands us to Love God and Love your Neighbour as yourself – and the awkward and imperfect bunch in any church is a great place to start.
What makes Christianity so special and different?
Alright so it seems that there is some evidence of God. But how do we know that Christianity is the religion that has the right idea about Him? I was once told that Christianity as a whole is mainly stolen from bits of Zoroastrianism and Judaism and that it's only original and wise contribution was the golden rule.(I personally found this a bit unlikely but I didn't know enough about theology and history to argue.) What makes Christianity so special and different?
This is a huge topic on which much can be said. To over-simplify tremendously, I'd offer three points:
This is a huge topic on which much can be said. To over-simplify tremendously, I'd offer three points:
- The life, death resurrection of Jesus
- The extraordinary growth of the Church, from a persecuted minority to taking over the Roman Empire to the massive worldwide following she has today, not least in countries like S Korea and China.
- Philosophically: if God exists He is obviously not incompetent. So one of the major purported communications from God to humanity is likely to be genuine, probably the one with the largest number of adherents spread over all the world, who are not kept in line by threats of violence.
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