Originally Posted by
asdf
I've got no beef with you over the Apocrypha.
I'm glad you're able to recognize that the family of God is bigger than your own tribe.
I would, however, question your list of "core moral and doctrinal positions". Where does your list come from? The focus on "abortion, euthenasia, ****sexuality" reads more like a list of hot-****on issues of the Religious Right than something that has been the traditional standards of Christian morality through the centuries. It would have been more credulous for you to cite sexual fidelity/chas***y, nonviolence (or committment to Just War theory, or something of the sort)...
As for your "Christological and theological positions" which you view as necessary, they are indeed the majority report of Christian doctrine over the centuries, but it's an interesting study to see the various formulations that were "required" as orthodox Christian faith over time - both within Scripture and in the first few hundred years of Church history, with the Ecumenical Councils. (See: the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, the Pauline formulations, the Didache, the Councils...)
It appears to me, for example, that within the Bible itself, there is much more support for saying that the "essentials" of the faith are the Lordship of Jesus and the Resurrection. There is some support for such doctrines as the Trinity, the dual natures of Christ, etc, but their prominence as the bedrock of Christian doctrine was not present until much later.
I disagree. Scripture does refute, or at least supersede, itself in points. More on that soon.
I don't hold inerrancy to be a requisite to consider something authoritative. My parents were not inerrant, infallible individuals, but they were my "authority" in my formative years. They provided me a guiding framework that enabled me to grow and learn, and ultimately to make decisions for myself. Nowhere in there was their "foundation" unsolid due to the fact that their guiding framework was fallible.
Yes, but we also have a rich Tradition of resisting change to our presuppositions until our denial is no longer tenable. See: Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin...