Can you be a Christian without believing in the resurrection?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Yeah, that is where I wrestle with the matter. Along with your examples, it reminded me of C.S. Lewis’ idea in The Great Divorce. In that model, a bus comes down from heaven every day to help bring people to heaven. There is no general lake of fire, though I suppose people can make their own and generally do what they want including tormenting others. Anyway, no one has to be there if they want to be with God, but people who love the world and don’t like God can eek out a life there for eternity away from God.

It doesn’t address unborn or young children who don’t have a chance, and other quandaries mentioned here about those who don’t believe in Jesus. I largely work from the viewpoint that I am a scientist, so making claims about how God will decide these and who is elect and who is damned is not really something I see a way to assess. I am certainly glad that I am not the one making those sorts of decisions.

I have faith that there is something more, I have faith that Jesus represents a significant part of that something more and can accept that he is the Son if that is what is, and I trust that God is just and will address these difficult questions in a wonderfully better way than we can. Finally, I know that I am weak, so I depend on that walk to perfect me in ways I cannot perfect myself.

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451

Well said with humility I need to emulate

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If a person is saved (goes to heaven, whatever), it will be because of the sacrificial death of Jesus. Maybe the saved person knows nothing or lived but a day or so. But…Jesus is still the only way to the Father.

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Jesus and the Father are one.

… distinct personalities to be sure…

… but still one.

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I never said they were not one. Also, I would say they are distince persons, not distinct personalities.

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I wasn’t arguing with you. I was backing you up as well as explaining why to me at least the claim that no one gets to the Father except through Jesus is a bit of a tautology… I thought you would agree and not interpret the passage as meaning that the name “Jesus” was some kind of secret password to get you through the door.

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Not a tautology. And certainly not a secret password. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. "

And there are other passages as well.

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Thank you for this discussion. Randal Rauser posted an interesting video about this topic. I appreciated his tone. It focuses, to a large extent, on fideism and how we deal with doubt:
https://randalrauser.com/2020/10/can-you-be-saved-if-you-dont-believe-god-raised-jesus-from-the-dead/

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I guess it depends on if by resurrection they mean a physical one, or a spiritual one. Some people believe resurrection only refers to a bodily resurrection and that those who believe in a spiritual resurrection don’t truly believe.

I don’t think a physical resurrection is necessary to believe in. But I can’t see how someone who denies Jesus defeated death and that none of us have new life through Christ can be a Christian. The resurrection is a core doctrine of Christianity.

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This is one of the last things I struggled with becoming a Christian. Many Christians like to point out the first part of Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 15 saying how essential is this teaching of a bodily resurrection is to Christianity… but then they like ignore the rest of that chapter where Paul clearly explains (hammering the point repeatedly) that this is a resurrection to a spiritual body not a physical body. I was never going to believe in a physical resurrection any more than I was going to buy into creationism. It is just not rational – not even logically coherent. But Paul’s explanation in 1 Cor 15 (bodily resurrection to a spiritual body) made that part easy.

The hard part was understanding why Paul and so many Christians kept saying this was so crucially important – central even. I came to the conclusion that the point is that death is not the end… that there is a continuation of life afterwards. All of Jesus’ teachings are set in that context. Yes, this life is important, BUT the next life is more important. This life is but a brief instant. The next life is eternity. So while there is much of Jesus’ teaching which applies to this life and can make life on Earth better. To ignore or leave out a reference to an afterlife would cut out the heart of Christianity.

It also seems to me that in the context of Jewish beliefs of the time of Jesus, these two ideas were pretty much equivalent. Even today the question of whether there is an afterlife is largely unanswered in Judaism. So in Jesus’ time those who believed and taught a resurrection were advocating an afterlife and those who did not teach this were not. In Matthew 22 the Sadducees who did not believe in a resurrection confront Jesus with questions about this idea, trying to catch Him with what they thought were inconsistencies with this teaching.

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I agree. Interesting to learn that some Christians at least think non-physical resurrection is enough. News to me. The fact that you have theological justification for that position is also interesting. I wonder as a percentage how many Christians accept your justification and also how many agree with you about resurrection.

But this still strikes me as extremely unlikely. Why should our personal biographies weigh so heavily in the grand scheme of things? The sense of personal identity is an evolved capacity with a concrete job to do for culturally minded creatures such as ourselves. But if spirituality is anything at all, surely it involves detaching from personal possessions. For my money this is related to the difficulty we had detaching from the idea that the earth was the center of the cosmos. But really I just don’t see how disembodied subjectivity is, as you put it, rational. I don’t insist that everything subjective be rational, but I see the subjective as requiring minds and cultures. What need does the cosmos have for my disembodied subjectivity? What purpose would it serve? Would every raindrop likewise have its moment apart from the oceans immortalized in an eternality of the subjective? Seems simpler for us to identify with that which is greater without demanding that everything which sets us apart from it be included as well.

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biographies? no. choices? yes.

The point is that we participate in our own creation. Our choices weigh so heavily because what we are is a result of them.

There is nothing disembodied about it. It is a bodily resurrection which Paul teaches. It is just to body which is not made of the same stuff.

Cosmos? The question does not seem coherent to me.

What need does God have for this spiritual result of our physical choices? It is the reason He created the physical universe as a womb for giving birth to children for an eternal relationship, by which God who has everything can give of His abundance to others.

Raindrops are not alive. I don’t see the relevance.

I quite agree that the physical universe cares nothing about us… our subjectivity… our beliefs… our desires, hopes, and dreams. Like I have said before, this is precisely why I do not believe that the objective physical universe defines the limits of reality.

What makes something greater? Just being bigger? Without all the distinctions, without the complexity and individuality, I just don’t see it as being greater. It is like the Borg in star trek absorbing everything into its collective, annihilating the individuality of life in the galaxy. This is no positive addition to life. It is a disease – a cancer. The richness of real life is characterized by diversity – individuality. It is necessarily for relationships. Sameness takes away the need for relationships. There is nothing greater about it. It has power, sure. But power is not greatness.

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It is irrelevant what those who have no confidence in the resurrection of Jesus believe. They have no knowledge or understanding of the Father’s workings. They do not have the proper understanding of the depth of their depravity and that they are slaves of sin and that it is impossible for them to save themselves from their sins. “The fool says in his heart there is no God”. Without being united in the death and resurrection of Jesus a person is still under the power of sin that lives in them. They don’t know God and cannot please him. The death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus are the central aspect of the good news of the Kingdom of Heaven.
If we die in our sins than we will be condemned accordingly and justly so but if we turn and put all our confidence in what Jesus did on the cross we become new creations, the old has passed away and all has become new.
God foretold of the coming of Jesus and that his death and resurrection would deliver us from the power of sin. Not only would it bring forgiveness from past sins but it would give us power over sin. Through Jesus we have died to sin and have been made alive in Him and the life we now live, we live by faith in the one who died and rose again. Of what value are the thoughts and words of those who are still slaves and bound to their sins, none. Their thoughts and imaginations have no power to save them or those who listen and are persuaded by their vain arguments. The whole world lies under the power of the wicked one, it is only through Jesus’s death and resurrection that we are freed from our bondage to sin and the devil.
The preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who don’t believe but to us who believe, it is the power of God unto salvation. We who believe oppose every thought that lifts its self above the knowledge of Christ. The Father loves the Son and all who put their trust in Him. If you don’t honor the Son as you do the Father you have no part of either of them and are still in your sins. The words that you express are not of the Spirit of God and are of no value.
If we suffer or are despised for our trust in the cross of Christ we take it patiently, for our hope is in God, not in man. It is Jesus we look to for our salvation, it is Him we have confidence in and it is His death and resurrection that is ours. Through it we have died to the world and its lust and have been born again, recreated in Christ. The foolish will mock, the wicked will stumble at the cross and resurrection but the righteous will rejoice. We forsake the love of this world and look towards heaven where our help comes from. We are strangers and foreigners in this life, we look for a city whose builder and maker is God.
His death was my death. His resurrection was mine. The second Adam became sin that I would become the righteousness of God in Him. He came, lived, died, rose from the dead and is seated at the right hand of God as prophecy foretold. All power in Heaven and earth has been given to Him. Those who reject Him, reject the Father who foretold of His coming. All power, might, dominion and glory belong to Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. The Lamb is coming to save those who look to Him and to pour out wrath and judgment on all who reject Him.
Beware lest you find yourself to be one of those in the following scripture, Rev 6:16-17
They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! 17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”

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Can you be a Christian without believing in the resurrection? NO!
A Christian is one who has been born of God, who has been recreated in Christ through his union with Christ in His death and resurrection.
No death and resurrection of Christ…No Christian.

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465

Can you be saved without believing in the resurrection?

According to the teaching of Jesus and Paul, salvation is by the grace of God and not by any accomplishment of ours such as an acquisition of knowledge (like the Gnostics) or the acceptance of a set of doctrines (like the later Gnostics who have called themselves Christian despite having discarded the teachings of Jesus and Paul).

Can you be a Christian without believing in the resurrection?

Can you honestly judge whether your beliefs fit the definition of Christianity? The earliest definition is found in the creed of Nicea 325 AD.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God,] Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; By whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth]; Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost.

So from the very beginning, belief in the resurrection was part of the definition of Christianity. So honesty would dictate that if you don’t believe in the resurrection then you don’t believe in Christianity. At very least you should admit that you believe in a modified version.

So… can you be saved without being a Christian?

Obviously.

Can you be a Christian without be saved?

Definitely! You can be a famous Christian evangelist without being saved. Matthew 22:14 “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

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Why is that so obvious (apart from OT ‘saints’).

467

No. You can have the label and be one in name only, ‘a mere professor’ and a hypocrite, or badly mistaken (hence the severe warnings in the NT and mandates to test yourself and standards to test yourself against).

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Many are called but if you are not clothed with Christ through union with His death and resurection you will not be chosen and will be cast out.

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Just put the first two points together.

Can you be saved without believing in the resurrection? Yes.

Can you be a Christian without believing in the resurrection? No.

Yes, you can fit the definition according to belief and not be saved.

…the teaching of Jesus and Paul is that salvation is by the grace of God and not an accomplishment of man. Again… you just have to read the first two points and it follows quite logically.

ah yes there is a premise here that neither you nor anybody else can dictate how God must save a person. And it is confirmed by Paul in Romans 10 that you cannot say who is saved or who is damned… if you have faith, you shouldn’t even be asking the questions.

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If you don’t live as if you have eternal life and that others can’t, you’re not saved in any meaningful way.