{"id":27114,"date":"2014-11-20T07:38:52","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T12:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=27114"},"modified":"2014-11-20T07:38:52","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T12:38:52","slug":"christian-universals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/11\/christian-universals.html","title":{"rendered":"Christian Universals?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Defining Christianity is challenging, despite what you will sometimes hear from conservative Christians as well as some atheists. Does one have to view Jesus as God? Accept the Trinity? Accept a particular view of the significance of Jesus\u2019 death? The early Christians disagreed on all\u00a0of these things and more, and it is unclear to what extent\u00a0various \u201cessentials\u201d of Christianity can actually be traced back to Jesus himself, which\u00a0is ironic, since many would say that Jesus\u00a0and\/or his teaching are in fact the one universal feature in Christianities \u2013 although the fact that Muslims can revere Jesus as a prophet, and Hindus can view him as divine, muddies things still further.<\/p>\n

I thus got a kick out of the cartoon below by \u201cPliny the In-Between\u201d<\/a>\u2013 although I will immediately express my appreciation for Unitarians and thus problematize even this alleged Christian \u201cessential.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Universal<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defining Christianity is challenging, despite what you will sometimes hear from conservative Christians as well as some atheists. Does one have to view Jesus as God? Accept the Trinity? Accept a particular view of the significance of Jesus\u2019 death? The early Christians disagreed on all\u00a0of these things and more, and it is unclear to what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":27115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,42],"tags":[1846,1848,3686,13150,13155],"class_list":["post-27114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity-religion","category-humor","tag-christianity-religion","tag-christians","tag-funny","tag-unitarian","tag-unitarians"],"yoast_head":"\nChristian Universals?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Defining Christianity is challenging, despite what you will sometimes hear from conservative Christians as well as some atheists. 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