What's with the spate of folks resurrecting old threads around here lately? If you wait long enough, someone will repeat the topic of your choice. I just realized how old this thread actually was after I responded.
Are liberal Christians who don't read the Bible literally true Christians or are the fundamentalists true Christians?
Can one accept ordination of women and still be true to the Christian doctrine?
Can one be for embryonic stem cell research or IVF and still be a Christian?
Does people who don't believe in historicity of genesis, Noah's flood, and exodus are true Christians?
Who decides these things? It seems to me that since the Bible is open to so many interpretations, there are no final authority to settle these things.
MB.
That's schismatic talk. First came Holy Tradition as given to the apostles. Holy Tradition guides the Ecclesia. The New Testament came AFTER the Church had been established. The New Testament is only interpreted correctly in light of Holy Tradition (which the Ecclesia believes is guided in complete Truth by the Holy Spirit).
One can only be saved if they are in the saving ark of Christ's Holy Church. Our salvation is corporate (just like the curse of death was corporate- death through Adam, life through Christ, the New Adam). One is brought into the Church through baptism and chrismation (which is the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit). Those in the Church are in communion with each other- literally via the Eucharist (the body and blood of Christ). Christians have Christ in them.
Christians live out their faith daily in the life of the Church. As Saint Cyprian of Carthage said, “You cannot have God for your Father if you do not have the Church for your mother.... God is one and Christ is one, and his Church is one; one is the faith, and one is the people cemented together by harmony into the strong unity of a body.... If we are the heirs of Christ, let us abide in the peace of Christ; if we are the sons of God, let us be lovers of peace.”
This is why the issue of the Eucharist/Communion is so important. It implies a complete and total unity of belief and faith regarding the body of Christ, which only makes sense. If we don't believe the same things, then those individuals/groups/sects that aren't adhering to the Traditioned faith are in error, because God is not the author of confusion.
As to those whom are not in the Church we can only say, "We know where the Church is. Only God knows where the Church is not." As we are each working out our salvation by daily picking up our cross and following Christ, we would be presumptuous to even proclaim our own salvation when our race isn't finished. Those whom we don't see as being part of the Church have a God that loves them, and their condition of being a true Christian or not is between them and God.
