Anti-Climacus

LINKS: Joe links to this post on the growing divide between Christians (and Diotima links to this good post about what evangelicals are not). From the first:

"What's the difference? Born again Christians - and I consider myself one - are convinced that Christ was God in bodily form and that Jesus "was crucified, dead and buried, and on the third day he rose from the dead." For us, it is Christ's bodily resurrection that defines who Jesus was, and that furthermore, we understand Christ to be alive now. Hence, we say we have a "personal relationship" with Christ because we know him as a living being with whom we are in spiritual communion.

Because this fact defines our relationship with Christ and the way we understand Christian faith itself, it generally compels born-again Christians to emphasize Christ resurrection and divine identity over other aspects of his ministry. After all, take away Christ's resurrection and his self descriptions of his divinity, and all you are left with is his ethics."

Actually, it strikes me that this maps very closely to what the difference is, but it's not really the difference itself. To get to that sort of belief (very Nicene Creed-y, or perhaps more Apostle's Creed-y) seems to require beginning with a fundamental belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. If you're inclined to take it seriously, then you have to take it all seriously, and it's going to get under your skin (as it were) in a way such that it becomes the basis of everything. If you're committed to something less than that, it seems, it's not impossible that you'd have the same beliefs as the former sort of person (though it's unlikely), but what you're going to choose to emphasize are the parts that stand up the best apart from all the other parts.