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From: jnelson@trwrba.UUCP (John T. Nelson)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Biblical Christianity
Message-ID: <972@trwrba.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Sep-84 10:36:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: trwrba.972
Posted: Mon Sep 24 10:36:09 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Oct-84 00:56:07 EDT
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	First of all, the Bible simply is not essential to being a
	Christian.  There were plenty of gentile Christians before any
	of them knew much about the Jewish scriptures, and the New
	Testament simply didn't exist until some time after the year 60
	(if that early).

I agree with you here, except that the only record of what you will
call "the essential doctrines" of being a Christian were communicated
to us through that book.  That being the case, many people will then
claim that therefore the New Testiment must be taken in its entirety,
and the Old Testiment too.  Frankly I prefer your veiw better.

	The only essential christian doctrines are
	these:

	    (1) All men are sinners.
	    (2) Christ, who was the son of God, died for our sins.
	    (3) We are all reborn to eternal life in his resurrection.

	That's it.

No flames, sorry... but I can't agree with you entirely here.  There
are other tenets to observe like "Love your neighbor as yourself",
"Forgive your neighbor's sins", "Be kind to animals."  I suppose
you've pointed out the rough essentials though.

I'm glad that you didn't phrase the first of your doctrines as, "All
men are born into sin."  Do you believe that men are sinfull by the
fact of man's fall from grace.... i.e. we're all destined for the
fires of Hell because of Adam and Eve's little indescretions?

	I refuse to subscribe to the notion that their is no Godly
	inspiration in the scriptures.  I must, however, submit that
	the writers and copyists have added a lot of their own rubbish
	and lost lots of the good material.  All the evidence suggests
	that the human ear hears the divine voice imperfectly at best.

Which certainly upholds your first doctrine, that men are sinfull or at
least imperfect.  Many argue that the Bible is absolutly inerrant and
flawless in its description of all the universal subtlties...  yet the
Bible itself (in Revalations) admits that it is possible to change
scriptural content.