I don’t know much about the Bible but it strikes me as a pretty poor citation for anything.
It’s a great citation for what Jesus Christ was credited as saying in the Bible.
“Was credited as saying.”
Indeed.
Yeah, but the Bible is the Christian holy book, so when talking about what Christians believe that Jesus said, it’s a great citation.
For those that read it, you’re probably right.
Even most Christians that haven’t read the Bible will probably tell you that they believe in the Bible
Sure, but in their mind, the Bible is a book about this guy:
so I think it’s fair to bring it up when talking about what Christians believe or claim they believe.
It’s fair, but there are limits. Christianity is ultimately whatever Christians say it is, and if what modern Christians believe directly contradicts the Bible, then it’s the Bible that’s not adequately describing modern Christianity, not the adherents.
But then you’re just picking your favorite stereotype to malign.
We were talking about Christians who claim to adhere to the Bible’s teachings without actually knowing a word of that Bible. The subject was already narrowed to such a specific subgroup that there weren’t many stereotypes left to pick from.
I think most Christians would say fidelity to the teachings of the Bible are most important. That most fall short is a normative observation but not helpful for any deeper discussion with those same people.
Falling short of the teachings is qualitatively different than “can’t be bothered to find out what those teachings are” IMO.
I’m focused on your defining Christianity as a whole along normative lines.
People think they know the basics of what they believe. But if they are based on a text, we can look at that text to address errors.
And my point was, whenever there is a discrepancy between what people believe and what the text upon which they base that belief says, it can be the text which is the outlier. This was as a counterpoint to the assertion that the text can be used as a neutral reference for the entire religion. Wherever the religion is unmoored from the text, that simply isn’t true.
Every discrepancy is not necessarily a failure of the adherent to be faithful to the tenets of the religion as defined by the text, it could be a failure of the text to be relevant to the religion as defined by its adherents.
We find the same dynamic in policy debates. Pointing out that few people who believe in X have read any literature on the topic and know nothing about the details isn’t remarkable. It certainly proves nothing about X.
IMO, it demonstrates that you can’t use the literature as a means to show what people believe.