What factors of someones belief define whether they are a Christian?
The only defining feature of Christianity is the belief in Christ. That the son of God lived, died for our sins and then rose again. If you have that then you can believe that yellow pigs fly on the 15th of March and still be Christian. Different sects of Christianity will add more to the requirement, but that is not a constant throughout the religion. Some sects believe that true christians can get bitten by poisonous snakes and survive by the grace of god, so the let themselves be bitten. Another believes that you must physically punish yourself for your sins to be a real Christian.
As a former Christian, here’s how I see the core of Christian belief. God sent his son to die for our sins. Jesus did so, and then rose from the dead. Anyone who accepts the forgiveness this act grants us is ‘saved’, and gets the good afterlife. By my lights, anyone who believes the above is a Christian. There’s a lot of other stuff, of course – what happens to the unsaved, what it’s acceptable to do on the Sabbath, whether killing in God’s name is a good thing and so on, but they’re irrelevant to the question of whether someone is or isn’t Christian.
It’s not actually subscription to any set of beliefs that determines whether a person is a Christian or not. It is based upon their response and submission to Christ as Saviour and Lord. The Bible puts it this way, “Examine yourselves, see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realise that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Cor 13:5) Christ dwells in believers by the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9-11). This is called the new birth (John chap 3). Therefore, all people who have been born again by the Holy Spirit are Christians. Only after this miracle of grace takes place will that person begin to understand and embrace the beliefs that distinguish Christianity from all others. Some Christians remain spiritual babies and do not grow in the deep things of God. Others mature and progress in understanding. Yet their salvation is not dependent on how much knowledge they have! We can even see people claiming to be Christians yet denying the need fo
