[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Acrobat]

But seriously, if you have some single characteristic that's definitional for Christianity, please let us know.

Try belief in a literal, historic, and scientific Christ. Or as “Paul” puts it....if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. That’s seems like a good start for defining....Christian....belief, lol.

This handily separates those who are literally Christian, from those who are only metaphorically or culturally christian. The difference between a belief in a specific god and the belief in good and meaningful fables.

Seems like an important distinction......what with one group being Christians, and the other, not.

Yet many denominations of liberal Christianity including some liberal scholars like Marcus Borg, Dominic Crosson don’t believe in a literal/historical resurrection. Yet they still view themselves as Christian.

They also will likely to not subscribe to the few that the Bible is free of errors, or that the writers of scripture couldn’t have been wrong about certain things, some might disagree with Paul.

It should be said that pretty much all Christians including liberal ones, understand the resurrection as metaphorical as well, as representative of the transformative nature of god in our lives, that the resurrection in such a way takes place in the life of believers. They don’t merely view as a historical truth, about something that took place 2000 years ago.

Christ rose from the dead, but the reality of the resurrected hope in the lives of the early believers was equally real, inseparable from the meaning of the resurrection.