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by ordinary
3849 days ago
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First of all, thank you for your contributions to this thread. They've been very interesting. I noticed a couple of points in this post that I would like some clarification on, if you have the time and inclination. Christians are supposed to submit to their government, even oppressive ones. There are quite a few references for this (b) (c). Finding more examples isn't difficult if you want more. Where does this sentiment come from, considering that Christianity was illegal in the Roman empire at the time? To an extent, I can understand requiring submission to persecution for reasons unrelated to the faith, but it seems strange to me that early Christians would be required to submit to a government that is persecuting those that attempt to obey God, for attempting to obey God. They either already know they're not following God or don't care (which is basically the same thing). Is it really impossible to be 'good' if you don't follow God, according to scripture? Is an atheist sinful by definition? |
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In typical Christian theology, everyone is sinful -- "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God", "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves", etc.
As to whether not being Christian is itself a variety of sin, or makes you especially bad, or guarantees damnation rather than salvation, the tradition (even the particularly important subset of it called the Bible) is not perfectly consistent. A few examples:
For": the "Letter to the Hebrews" says something like "Without believing in God it is impossible to please him".
Against: one of St Paul's letters speculates that pagans' consciences will "accuse or perhaps excuse" them when they are judged.
For: There's a rather nasty idea embedded in the Christian tradition, that deep down everyone knows* that God is real and is the way Christians say he is, and therefore people who aren't Christians are being dishonest with themselves. The main source for this in the Bible is early in the "Letter to the Romans" where St Paul says something along these lines: "God's anger is being revealed against people who wickedly suppress the truth. For since the creation of the world God's existence and nature have been apparent just from looking at what he made, but some people deny it." He goes on to link this with gay sex, weirdly enough. Anyway, I think most Christians have the decency not to assume that everyone who doesn't share their religion is a liar, and most of the rest have at least enough decency not to say it out loud, but the point is that if you think that everyone really knows that Christianity (or at least something like it) is right then it becomes more reasonable to think that those who reject it are doing so out of wickedness.
(But unless my memory is deceiving me, which it might be, the Pauline letter speculating about pagans' consciences excusing them is in fact the same one as the one that says pagans are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Make of that what you will.)
Disclaimer 1: I'm not a Christian, but I'm pretty familiar with this stuff. Disclaimer 2: Christians do not all agree about any of this, and in particular some will disagree with any given bit of the above. (Probably quite a lot will disagree either with my characterization of the thinking in Romans 1 as a "rather nasty idea" or with the idea that it's "embedded in the Christian tradition".)