September-October 1997

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DIGGING DEEPER Back to Basics What IS Christianity? by Greg Koukl

If Christianity is true, how do you make sense of different denominations saying their way is right? And if we can answer that question, then we must ask, what are the basics of Christianity that unite us all?

With regard to the first question, some people like to overplay this issue-"Five thousand different denominations and everybody claims their way is right." Of course, it is true that those who belong to a particular denomination do so because they think the details of the teachings in that denomination are accurate. Who would want to belong to a denomination they thought was teaching falsehood? But this question overemphasizes the differences.

I found a very helpful metaphor for the person who complains about all the denominations. There are many different baseball teams and each team has a coach. Each coach coaches according to a certain set of principles. He differs with many coaches about principles of coaching. He could say that his way is right, but the others think their way is right.

The fact is, they are all still playing baseball and they are playing with the same set of fundamental rules. Within the context of those rules are a number of variations in emphases and strategies that can be expressed in the way the game is played, but the fundamental game is still the same.

Christianity is much like that. There is a fundamental core of beliefs and teachings that identify any particular denomination as being Christian. That is why we call them Christian denominations. It may be that these denominations differ in regard to the finer points -- points that may be moot or debatable.

For instance, how do you baptize people? Do you dip them, sprinkle them or fully immerse them? There are different points of view. Few would say it really makes a critical difference whether you are dipped, sprinkled or immersed. Most would say that Christianity teaches baptism and that is something we all agree on. Even if you are baptized in a slightly different way, it doesn't mean the baptism doesn't count.

Most of the differences in denominations are similar to this kind of thing. Do you worship on Saturday or Sunday? In the morning or the evening? Do you use musical instruments or worship without them? Should you have a choir? Should you teach topically or verse by verse? What are your particular views about the way salvation is mediated by God? Do you speak in tongues or not? These are more peripheral issues to the fundamental superstructure of what C.S. Lewis called "mere Christianity."

When it gets to mere Christianity, the basics and fundamentals are rather few. All Christians agree on the basics and fundamentals. If they don't, they should not be called Christians.

The variations people point to are somewhat smaller and incidental and are debatable issues. They aren't the kinds of things that undermine the basic truth claims of Christianity as a whole. The fundamental truth claims of Christianity are rather basic. Christianity stands or falls on those things, not on the parochial particulars.

What are the fundamental truths of Christianity?

The particulars of mere Christianity entail four basic things: Your view of God, your view of creation, your view of man and your view of salvation.

God

Christianity teaches that God is both personal and transcendent. In other words, he is personal in that he has a will. He has emotions, after a fashion. He can communicate. He can create. He can do personal activities. He is an individual. But he is distinct from his creation, as opposed to being the same as his creation. He is transcendent. Yet, he is somehow personally involved in his creation so that he is not isolated from the universe. He doesn't wind a clock and let it run out. He is involved. The fundamental Christian view is that God is a personal Being who created the universe as something other than himself, but who is involved with that universe.

We are already making some dramatic distinctions between Christianity and other religious viewpoints. For example, the idea that God is personal contradicts many eastern worldviews that say God is impersonal. To distinguish God from his creation is to distinguish theism from pantheism.

Creation

Pantheism says that God and creation are one. God is the tree, the book, the river, the stone, and he is you and I and everyone else. Christianity would say that's not an accurate view of the world.

The truth of the matter is that God is distinct from creation and he existed before anything else. He created everything that exists. That distinguishes Christianity from Eastern religions.

Christianity is also distinguished from the philosophies of naturalism and deism. Deism would hold that God created everything, but he just wound it all up and is letting it run by itself. He is not intervening in the affairs of men.

Naturalism would say that the universe is a closed system of cause and effect. Whether God exists or not is irrelevant because we are stuck in the machinery of nature.

Christianity would take exception with naturalism and deism because Christianity says that God is different from his creation but is involved with it. Christianity also takes exception with naturalism's view that the only thing that accounts for anything in the universe is natural law.

Man

What does the Bible teach about the nature of man? First, it says that man is different from all the rest of the creatures in the world. This would be over and against naturalism and evolution, of course, which teach that man is simply a highly developed and well-evolved animal.

Man is made in the image of God. He has a rational soul that has the capability of making moral choices, not just personal choices but moral choices. He can also be creative.

Because man is made in the image of God, he has a different value than everything else in creation. This is why justice is important to humans.

These are things that follow from a Christian worldview and don't seem to make a lot of sense in an atheistic worldview, or an evolutionary worldview, or even an eastern worldview.

That is why the notion of justice in our country is founded on Judeo-Christianity. That's no accident. Justice relates to the idea that man is a moral creature, made in the image of God and ought to be treated with dignity.

Salvation

But something is broken and twisted in man. He is made in God's image, but he is desperately fallen. He is broken in some way, which is why he can do desperately evil things. Because he does evil, he is guilty before God's tribunal and is worthy of punishment. God has provided a way for man to escape the punishment, and that method of escape comes through God's mercy, expressed in forgiveness, made possible by Jesus.

Who is Jesus? Jesus is a man, but not an ordinary man. He is the incarnation of God himself. He is a man who is fully God and fully human at the same time.

As God, he accomplished something that no man could have accomplished -- the salvation of mankind. That is why it is necessary for us to put our trust, faith and belief in the God/man Jesus Christ so we can be forgiven of our sins and reconciled with the God who created everything.

That is basic, mere Christianity. A personal God, creating a world other than himself. He placed man in the world -- man who has transcendent value because he was made in the image of God. Man who also, because of his free moral choices, has become desperately evil and is guilty before God.

God made a way for man's rescue by becoming a man himself, taking the punishment upon himself and making it possible for humans to be forgiven.

If you take any of those elements out, you don't have Christianity. You have some other religion. It may be a very nice religion, but it is not Christianity.

Some things are more important to be right about than others. I might be wrong about my view of baptism, but it isn't going to change my view of the world. But if I am wrong about my view of God, then everything else built upon that collapses. 

Greg Koukl is president of Stand to Reason, an organization dedicated to showing that Christianity is worth thinking about. 1-800-2-REASON.

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