Many fundamentalist Christians believe that, to be a Christian, one must hold the truth of the Nicean Creed as infallible. Interesting that. For them, the whole foundation of traditional religious Christianity is summed up in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life (paraphrased from memory).
Here, then, is the Nicene Creed:
That last two paragraphs were added after the fact, in response to Gnostic challenges I am guessing, but do not know that for sure. You can read all about the various incarnations and challenges to the Nicene Creed at Wikipedia.We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things seen and unseen.
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 from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same being as the Father, through whom all things came to be, both the things in heaven and on earth, who for us humans and for our salvation came down and was made flesh, becoming human, who suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, who is coming to judge the living and the dead.
And in the Holy Spirit.
The catholic and apostolic church condemns those who say concerning the Son of God that “there was a time when he was not” or “he did not exist before he was begotten” or “he came to be from nothing” or who claim that he is of another subsistence (hypostasis) or essence (ousia), or a creation (ktistos), or changeable (alloiōtos), or alterable (treptos).
I bring all this up because some people (bloggers Joe Carter and Rod Dreher) are now questioning whether or not Obama is a "true" Christian based on some comments he made in a 2004 interview:
People are taking this to mean that Obama does not believe Jesus is the Son of God, which would then preclude him from being a Christian. Maybe, in a strictly mythic sense, this is true.Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he's also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.
And he's also a wonderful teacher. I think it's important for all of us, of whatever faith, to have teachers in the flesh and also teachers in history.
However, I am heartened by Obama's unwillingness to pin down his relationship with Jesus in mythic terms. Apparently there are millions of Christians who agree with him:
[M]illions and millions of people call themselves Christian, worship at Christian churches and believe that acceptance of Christ is not required for entry into heaven. In a recent Pew poll, 70% said ‘many religions can lead to eternal life.’ 66% of Protestants and 79% of Catholics said they agreed with that idea.This is where the arguments of the New Atheists fall apart. They posit a straw man God that is a cliche of Old Testament belief. Sure, some people do believe in this kind of mythic God, and that he bore a Son of a virgin named Mary -- but many, many Christians do not. To them, Jesus was an inspired teacher, and all of us (made in God's image, or really, the reverse, God made in our image) are divine.
To me, and granted, I am a Buddhist agnostic, what Obama and many others seem to believe -- that Jesus was an enlightened teacher who can point people toward a deeper relationship with God -- offers some hope for a more evolved Christianity than I was raised with as a young Catholic in the 1970s.
So, to answer my own question - NO, I do not think that Christians need to believe that Jesus was the literal Son of God. And YES, Obama is then a good Christian. But I am open to other arguments . . . .
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