NationStates Jolt Archive

Is it possible to be a Christian whilst not believing the old testament?

I'm just curious as only the New testament is about the teachings of Jesus

See, anything is possible.
If they say no, make a new religion, call it "Christness" or something, and, wallah! you've got what you want.

Good thing I'm here to help, huh?

No not really.

No not really.
Picky, picky.

Well, the Church of Christ doesn't believe in the Old Testament, but the teachings of Jesus are founded on the Old Testament, just changed, a few drastic changes but mainly minor ones. But essentially being Christian is accepting Jesusas your God and Saviour and following his teachings...

That's actually kind of tricky.

Technically, yes. Christianity is based upon the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, and all of that stuff's in the New Testement. Certainly many people recieved the basics of the gospel and came to belief without knowledge of the Old Testement; if they've never heard it or read it, how can they believe it?

Realistically...yes and no. Odds are, if you're posting here, you're not in some thoroughly pagan place where Christianity hasn't saturated the culture, so you do know that there is an Old Testement and a whole bunch of stuff prior to Jesus. If you're a Christian, then you must believe in the divinity of Jesus; and Jesus certainly seemed to treat the Old Testement as an authoritative source. So yeah, as a Christian, you should regard the Old Testement as a sound authoritative source.

However, what do you mean by "believe?" Do you mean "take everything exactly completely literally?" Do you mean "believe that it's completely error-free?" (There's a known discrepency somewhere in there - I forget where - about the number of horses some king had; one book said he had X number of horses, while another said that he had X x 10 number of horses. Trivial, but it's fodder for plenty of people to scream, "SEE!? YOUR WHOLE BOOK IS FLAWED!!!") In that case, there's a bit more wiggle-room.

Keep in mind that the Bible is not a textbook written by modern history scholars for a classroom environment. Nor is it the New York Times. It's a whole series of books of different styles, written on different issues for different purposes by a different culture on the other side of the world several thousand years ago. What is said in the Bible (Old Testement or New) must be taken in the proper context. Some of it may well be folklore. Other parts may be parables. Some of it is dramatic and apocalypic imagery (typically a lot of the scary, earth-shaking and skies-of-blood "Day of the Lord" stuff) that's really more meant to mean "bad scary stuff happening" than "skies literally raining blood; some of it uses figures of speech and trash talk (like when a nation is "utterly laid to waste" and "made a rubbish heap"; just like how, if we were reading an account of the American Civil War where someone says that they "whipped the rebs," that doesn't mean the Union soldiers were out there with bullwhips; it means they won decisively). And all of it, while it may be divinely inspired, was actually written by flawed, imperfect human beings.

The heart of Christianity is the divinity of Christ; the heart of Christian teaching is to love God with all of your ability and to love your neighbor as yourself, and trust in Christ's ability to reconcile your imperfect self to a perfect God. Whether or not the world was created in six 24-hour periods is definately a secondary concern.

That's actually kind of tricky.

Technically, yes. Christianity is based upon the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, and all of that stuff's in the New Testement. Certainly many people recieved the basics of the gospel and came to belief without knowledge of the Old Testement; if they've never heard it or read it, how can they believe it?

Realistically...yes and no. Odds are, if you're posting here, you're not in some thoroughly pagan place where Christianity hasn't saturated the culture, so you do know that there is an Old Testement and a whole bunch of stuff prior to Jesus. If you're a Christian, then you must believe in the divinity of Jesus; and Jesus certainly seemed to treat the Old Testement as an authoritative source. So yeah, as a Christian, you should regard the Old Testement as a sound authoritative source.

However, what do you mean by "believe?" Do you mean "take everything exactly completely literally?" Do you mean "believe that it's completely error-free?" (There's a known discrepency somewhere in there - I forget where - about the number of horses some king had; one book said he had X number of horses, while another said that he had X x 10 number of horses. Trivial, but it's fodder for plenty of people to scream, "SEE!? YOUR WHOLE BOOK IS FLAWED!!!") In that case, there's a bit more wiggle-room.

Keep in mind that the Bible is not a textbook written by modern history scholars for a classroom environment. Nor is it the New York Times. It's a whole series of books of different styles, written on different issues for different purposes by a different culture on the other side of the world several thousand years ago. What is said in the Bible (Old Testement or New) must be taken in the proper context. Some of it may well be folklore. Other parts may be parables. Some of it is dramatic and apocalypic imagery (typically a lot of the scary, earth-shaking and skies-of-blood "Day of the Lord" stuff) that's really more meant to mean "bad scary stuff happening" than "skies literally raining blood; some of it uses figures of speech and trash talk (like when a nation is "utterly laid to waste" and "made a rubbish heap"; just like how, if we were reading an account of the American Civil War where someone says that they "whipped the rebs," that doesn't mean the Union soldiers were out there with bullwhips; it means they won decisively). And all of it, while it may be divinely inspired, was actually written by flawed, imperfect human beings.

The heart of Christianity is the divinity of Christ; the heart of Christian teaching is to love God with all of your ability and to love your neighbor as yourself, and trust in Christ's ability to reconcile your imperfect self to a perfect God. Whether or not the world was created in six 24-hour periods is definately a secondary concern.


A wonderfully reasonable and lucid exposition on the topic, I must say!

Evidence indeed that christianity can be honestly differentiated from christian fundementalism and that worship of god is not necessarily an action requisite of both baseness and ignorance.

Evidence indeed that christianity can be honestly differentiated from christian fundementalism and that worship of god is not necessarily an action requisite of both baseness and ignorance.
Not requisite, but far too common for my taste.

Consider the following:
According to Christian doctire God is omnipotent, meaning he is able to do everything, this in itself is a contradiction, but I will ignore it for now.
If you ignore the Old Testament, you say that the word of God was wrong. 'God is omnipotent, it is impossible for him to be wrong.'
Thus any true Christian must embrace both, which means of course your life is hypocritical in every aspect, but meh.
I would rant on and on about how Christian doctire is hypocritical, flawed and cruel, but I've already done that countless times, so I will pass it up this time, that and I'm far too tired.

I fully agree with you, Arenestho, but just so you know, in reagrds to your signature, it is "Xian". The "X" stands for the cross, and means "Chirst". So "Xtians" would be transliterated into "Christtian". Just thought you should know.

I've wondered about the proper spelling for quite some time, I will be sure to correct it.

Is it possible to be a Christian whilst not believing the old testament?

I'm just curious as only the New testament is about the teachings of Jesus

No. Jesus was a rabbi who based his teachings on the OT, and claimed that his authority came from there. If the OT is false, than Jesus was a liar.

A wonderfully reasonable and lucid exposition on the topic, I must say!

Evidence indeed that christianity can be honestly differentiated from christian fundementalism and that worship of god is not necessarily an action requisite of both baseness and ignorance.
As if this weren't common knowledge? Helllooo! :)

Is it possible to be a Christian whilst not believing the old testament?

I'm just curious as only the New testament is about the teachings of Jesus

It has been asked at least once in this thread, but I'll ask again, what do you mean by "believing the Old Testament?" Is it literal (i.e. God made the earth in 7 twenty-four hour days?)? Enoch and Elijiah ascended to heaven without suffering a physical death? Methusaleh lived to be over 980 years old? etc. What do you mean by belief in the old testament? The question is WAY to broad IMHO. To be a Christian means to believe in Christ, yes, but it does not mean the O.T. has no meaning. Please elaborate.

I think when they say believing old testament, it usually means, do you believe wholly in the mosaic laws.

Like 'not eating fish without scales', 'stoning if you commit adultary', 'if you see a diseased person, you must shout at him "Diseased!" and shoo him away', 'do not touch an unclean person or you'll be unclean' , etc.

For me, I'm a protestant (Pro-testament) christian, some may call me a 'Grace-preacher'. I believe in the finished work of Christ, that I am fully forgiven. I am not judged based on the mosaic laws or based on my works (so i can do whatever I want). But obviously, I don't go out killing people, because it isn't beneficial, and of course, it's not a good testament to my God.

I think when they say believing old testament, it usually means, do you believe wholly in the mosaic laws.

Like 'not eating fish without scales', 'stoning if you commit adultary', 'if you see a diseased person, you must shout at him "Diseased!" and shoo him away', 'do not touch an unclean person or you'll be unclean' , etc.

For me, I'm a protestant (Pro-testament) christian, some may call me a 'Grace-preacher'. I believe in the finished work of Christ, that I am fully forgiven. I am not judged based on the mosaic laws or based on my works (so i can do whatever I want). But obviously, I don't go out killing people, because it isn't beneficial, and of course, it's not a good testament to my God.

Here's another question for most Christians:

Why is the Fourth Commandment (Third in the Catholic version) the only one that the majority of Christians feel no need to respect at all? Wouldn't it be a far better witness of G-d's grace to keep the same Sabbath that Jesus did? Heck, many so-called Christians even want to keep/restore laws enforcing sunday as the true Sabbath, a doctrine found no where in the Bible.

Is it possible to be a Christian whilst not believing the old testament?

I'm just curious as only the New testament is about the teachings of Jesus
You have to believe in the teachings of Christ...That being said the Levitical law(Old Test.) was abolished upon Christ's ressurection. The ten commandments were all that carried over...The only punishment you can not avoid is death of the physical body...The only unforgiveable sin is rejecting the free gift of Salvation...If you reject then you are cut off from God at death and sent to hell...If you accept the gift of salvation then you do not answer for your sins upon your death but for the actions you did in Christ's name after you accepted his salvation gift...That is the fundemental ground work for true Christianity... Read John 3:16...Thanx and have a good day...