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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Has anyone seen this Kristof Easter interview in the New York Times? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/christian-easter-serene-jones.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

He interviews the dean of  Union Theological Seminary, who is a United Church of Christ minister and a former Yale professor who doesn’t believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection and isn’t sure about heaven.  Still, she considers herself a Christian.

What do you think?
[/quote]

Just like you can be a Christian and not necessarily believe that the Earth has been created in 7 days. 
Why is it so important how Jesus was created or born or Mary ditto? The most important is the message of love. EVANGELIA.
Love one another. Who cares about the small stuff?[/quote]

Its one thing to believe that the earth wasn’t created in a literal 7 days, but it’s another to deny the virgin birth, resurrection, miracles, the reality of heaven and hell, eternal destiny of the soul, belief in Jesus Christ as means to salvation, all while being a CHRISTIAN minister.

To nonchristians Easter is just a symbol of love, rebirth, renewal, and that’s fine because they don’t believe in God or the Bible. So of course Easter is symbolic for them.

But for Christians it means a lot more.[b] It means a LITERAL resurrection. It has to or Christians have no salvation[/b]. If Jesus didn’t literally conquer death and pay for our sins, all of Christianity is pointless. Evangelism is pointless. The Bible is pointless.  Being a Christian is pointless then. So there HAS to be a literal resurrection for a Christian, it shouldn’t be just “small stuff.”[/quote]

And for a lot of Christians (people like the Dean excepted) salvation means everlasting life in heaven, with Jesus, his father, God, and if you're Catholic, the blessed virgin Mary, whom Catholics believe also ascended to heaven (but they call it assumption, not ascension).

Without the salvation offered by believing in Jesus's ascension, there is also no hell, where people who don't believe in Jesus go to suffer eternally, for refusing to believe in the salvation that Jesus offered.

It's true that some people never even learn about Jesus while they're alive, so can't make the decision to believe or not, but with the work of missionaries and modern communication, more and more people are given the choice between believing/not believing, heaven/hell.

What's happening though, is that belief in the resurrection is declining! Deans of Christian seminaries don't believe.  People who were raised in Christianity reject it and don't teach it to their children.  Other self-described Christians don't think belief in the literal resurrection is vital to being Christian.

They won't find out if they're right until after they're dead, but it's obviously a chance they are willing to take.[/quote]

+1.  I think these people like the dean are more interested in politicizing Jesus and morphing him into just a regular guy with nice happy feeling messages, rather than actually understanding why he came to earth in the first place, or the whole point of Christianity.

Just goes to show that not everyone who calls themselves Christian are Christian, even [b]deans of theological seminaries[/b]. You have to be very aware and discerning of false teachers these days. [/quote]

I've heard no call for her to resign her post, her ideas might be pretty mainstream.[/quote]

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