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Hi Katie —
Thanks for e-mailing. Let me bring out the definition you offered.
You said:
a Christian is someone who professes a belief in
Jesus Christ, is Christ like, and is humane.
Many people think along those lines when they speak of someone as a Christian,
but the ancient churches look at it differently.
Yes, being Christ-like — being a disciple of Jesus — is a central theme
of living a spiritual life. Being kind and humane is also a beautiful virtue.
However, these are not the Church's definition of a
Christian. The example of Scripture makes this clear: in Acts, the believers
in Antioch are the first to be called Christians. One becomes
a Christian by believing the Apostles' message and being baptized.
In the Church, we follow this same pattern: one is a Christian if one
holds the Apostolic faith and is baptized, as the early Church did.
So if a baptized believer does something wrong, unkind, or un-Christ-like,
we don't say he's not a Christian anymore — unless he goes so far as to
give up believing. There are good, virtuous, faithful Christians, and there are weak, sinful Christians. I'm sometimes
one and sometimes the other!
When a religious movement, such as the LDS (Latter Day Saints) or the Jehovah's Witnesses sect,
comes along with many good, kind people, but with different beliefs about
God and about the identity of Jesus Christ — then we are forced to admit that those beliefs are not the same as the
faith of the early Church, and we consider them to be not quite within
the fold of Christianity.
In contrast, the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches (Greek,
Syrian, Russian, Coptic, etc. ) and the historic Protestant communities
and movements (e.g. Anglican, Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist)
hold to the same understanding of basic doctrines:
Who God is:
There is only one God, who is eternal, without beginning or end. God
is called a Trinity: that is, there are three Divine Persons in this
one Being. Each is divine, omniscient, and all-powerful. Because there is
more than one person in God, we can truly say that God is love.
God's relation to the world:
God created the universe freely out of nothing, and made all creatures,
including the angels and us human beings.
Who Jesus is:
The Son, one of the three Divine Persons of the Trinity, wishing to
save us sinners, became human, with a real human soul, mind, and body,
even while He remained a Divine Person: eternal, omnipotent, and
omniscient. He was born of Mary, the virgin, and He — being truly human
— "is like us in all things", except that He does not sin.
What the death of Jesus means:
Jesus, the God-man, willingly suffered and died, and His self-sacrifice
has infinite value to make atonement for our sins.
Jesus truly rose from the dead:
He laid down His human life freely, and — being God — He freely took
it up again, gloriously on the third day of His entombment. His body is
now glorified, and He has ascended to Heaven. Thus a human being is now
— with body and soul — in the presence of God, the
Father.
Jesus, the Son of God, remains truly divine and truly human, the eternal
mediator of man and God, the High Priest whose worship is pleasing to the
Father.
When you read the classic declarations of Christian doctrine — for example,
the Nicene Creed or the Athanasian Creed, you'll
see that these are the doctrines the Church considers most important for
our
salvation.
I hope all these various observations shed some light on the subject.
When the Catholic Church regards Mormonism as set apart from Christianity,
it's not a judgment on the individuals at all, but an
acknowledgment that we have some differences in these basic doctrines.
Thanks for writing! It gives us an opportunity to answer more questions
and improve the web site, and of course. it's good to hear from another
person who desires to love God.
God bless!
— RC
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