What is a 'true Christian'?

If you define a Christian with a qualification that requires the Bible, then none of the people who existed before the Bible was compiled could be considered Christians. Which would include the authors.St. Paul? Nope, not a "true Christian", he couldn't have taken the Bible as the final authority I don't think that we are able to define a "true Christian". There's so much variety within Christianity and nobody really knows what's right.The best way to define a Christian is: "someone who honestly thinks they're a Christian".

Of course not, we can easily determine that. Clearly, yet he existed before the Bible did. So "belief in the Bible" cannot be a qualification, right? Its not up for you to say. A person could be considered, by God, to be a Christian without fullfilling one of the qualifications you insist upon. That's your personal interpretation. You don't get to decide who is, and who is not, a Christian. False. A true Christian could believe that the Old Testament, the old complex and convoluted laws about how you should behave that Jesus replaced with the simplified 'love God and each other', was not literally true (i.e. a "myth" {which has a wide definition}).Most Christians ignore a lot of that OT stuff. The Noahic Flood.

If you were just reporting it, then it wouldn't be coming along with your interpretations of what it means and how it works. That would be Denying the antecedent, a logical fallacy. If P then Q. Not P therefore not Q. That doesn't work.A better verse to make your claim would be where Jesus said that no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6). But still, that doesn't mean that people who don't think Jesus is God cannot be a Christian. Its possible that they could still come to the Father through Jesus even thought they didn't think he was God, we really don't know.Anyways, in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, Jesus explains that there will be Christians who are not saved and there will be non-Christians who are saved, so he disagrees with your qualifications in some parts of the Bible. Regardless, you could still be a Christian.

But the Bible is the books. If you base your definition of being a true Christian as believing in the books, then the people who lived before the books could not be considered Christians. Which is obviously in error, so the definition cannot be based on the Bible.

Right, and therefore, believing in the books cannot be a requirement for being a Christian. There were Christians before there were the books.

Okay, so then there's no requirement to believe in the Bible to be a true Christian.And your definition that a true Christian must take the Bible as the final authority is in error.

The Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Thessalonians, etc., all got their own epistles from Paul. And they were all Christians. They had nothing like like volume of info contained in the Bible.They cannot be considered Christians by your faulty definition.

I'm not sure about the unknowingly part...Like, if there was some Australian aboriginee who coincidentally happened to try to live by the precepts of Jesus, but had never heard of Jesus before and said he followed some other religion, then I wouldn't say that the person was a Christian.Better than most Christians, sure, but not actually one of them. When was the last time that happened? What did I say?

Certainly, because your considerations contradict your definition. Only if I assume that you haven't made an error.

I can respect that. And I'd maybe even join you in calling him one.I was sticking to my definition because of the more dictionary aspects, because I thought that's what the thread was asking. How would you change your definition if you were going more for that dictionary one?Now that I think about it though, depending on what we're supposed to mean by the True part of it, you could be right that we should be considering the qualifying essence more than the dictionary aspects.Either way, both of ours are better than the definition quoted in the OP. Whew, okay, I thought you were talking about actually getting pissed off at me. I don't recall ever actually trying to piss you off, so if you had pointed out something in particular that I said then I prolly would have apologized.

Going back though the messages: You tried to counter that point with this:

quote:

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If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

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So let P = "declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead"
And let Q = "you will be saved" a.k.a "be a Christian"Your quote is 'if P then Q' and you are trying to argue 'Not P therefore not Q'. That's a logical fallacy called Denying the antecedent.I was just pointing it out and then offered a more logical quote for you to support your position with and then tried to move the discussion forward. But you didn't reply to any of that. Jesus tells the sheep that they are saved because they helped Him. And they reply: "What? When did we help you?" And Jesus says: "whatever you did for the least of my people, you did for Me."The sheep are people who didn't have a relationship with Jesus and didn't even realize that they were helping Him through helping others. They ask Jesus when they even saw him. These are non-Christians.Jesus tells the goats that they are not saved because they did not help Him. And they reply: "What? When didn't we help you?" And Jesus says: "Whatever you did not do for the least of my people, you did not do for Me."The goats are people who think that they have been helping Jesus personally and didn't realize that they were supposed to be helping Him through others instead. They ask Jesus when did they not see him. These are people that would have been following around Jesus.The point of the story is that its not about having a personal relationship with Jesus, its about going out and helping others. Jesus was telling them that there would be non-Christians who are saved and Christians who are not saved. That is the point of the parable. I'm not sure, the benefits I guess, but I've seen all kinds of different people that think they are and call themselves Christians. So there must be some reason they want to do it.I call myself Catholic more from a cultural standpoint than a doctrinal one. I went through 12 years of private Catholic school before college, so this is what they got. I'm definitely not a very good one, but there's plenty of apathetic Catholics out there that don't go to church every week. I'm not saying that I, personally, don't believe it. This hasn't been about my own beliefs. This is about coming up with a definition. I don't think your ideas on defining it based on the particular beliefs of the individual are the best way to do it.