Re: Folks who’re commenting on Derb’s ignorance of Christianity:
Ignorance is measured relative to the types of arguments in which one must engage.
Derb is not ignorant of Christianity when engaged in a discussion of, merely, “What are the core tenets of Christianity, that is, of ‘Mere’ Christianity, shared by most Christians in most eras?”
As he was raised Anglican, I am sure he could acquit himself admirably in such a conversation, with few errata. For all I know, his upbringing alone might allow him to avoid ALL of the typical beginner’s errors (such as confusing the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth).
But one must know one’s own limits.
In this conversation, being conversant with basic tenets does not fly. One must have put thought, a lot of reading from a lot of sources, and perhaps a modicum of sincere scholarship now and then, into one’s understanding of Christianity to speak comfortably on such topics.
And I gather Derb has never, or seldom, done so. No wonder then, that he sounds like an amateur; sounds ignorant. At this level, on these topics, he is!
An analogy with which Derb himself might identify: We are now no longer talking the basic arithmetic of Christianity; we are talking about non-finite set theory, or five dimensional matrices that do not commute, or some such thing.
A person who was merely raised Anglican, and then drifted away from faith with little or no thought, mostly following every iconoclast’s instinctual distrust of icons, is not going to be able to seriously participate in this kind of conversation. Imagine a person thinking he could talk upper-level Calculus merely because he was raised in a family who knew how to balance their checkbook!
But allow me to qualify: It only comes across as ignorance because the topics addressed are rather higher-level than those in a hypothetical “what are the core tenets” conversation. Perhaps ignorance is the wrong word. Perhaps we should just graciously allow that Ol’ John is “out of his league,” and doesn’t know it, but he’s a good fellow, otherwise.
And I think “graciously” is a word worth emphasizing, here. Grace is, if anything, one of the greatest hallmarks separating Christianity both from the Materialist, and the Islamist.
