Is Christianity a religion?

Question

If Christianity is a religion and I know that Christ is head of The Church (When the Bible is refurring to Church, The Church are the poeple that believe in Christ). So that means that Church isn't a building. If Christianity is a religion, first of all there is no man-made rules in christianity. Religion has man-made rules like buddhism, hinduism, and many other man-made religions. On the other hand, Christianity doesn't. 2 Peter 1:20-21 say's, "20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. 21For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Think about it!

Answer 1

What is the Christian religion? Or a still more rudimentary question, What is religion? This question seems to me to be often answered amiss. The word connotes a bond and means essentially (I suggest) a personal relation with the unseen. The relation may be a reality or a delusion. Religion, as we speak, may be true or false, but its essence is in this relation through the veil that hides from us the invisible world.

And Christianity purports to be a relation with a person, with a personal God. God has, as Christians believe, revealed Himself to man in some degree through nature, in a greater degree by a progressive revelation to the Jewish people, culminating in the incarnation of God Himself as a man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And it is through Christ that we enter into relation with God.

Moreover, we are taught to believe that it is by the power of God that we are enabled to enter into this relation. God is thus manifested to us after a threefold mode: He is the ultimate object of our devotion; He is the Saviour and Redeemer by Whom we, in spite of our sins, can obtain access to His divine nature; He is the Spirit Who, from within us, shapes our purpose and faith and leads us to be saved by Him, the Saviour, and to adoration of and union with His perfect divinity. This relation is not merely individual; it is essentially social: the Divine Spirit incorporates the individual in a society of which the Head is Christ and in the corporate life of which man draws near to God.

All this expresses a mystical experience; by "mystical" I mean an experience which is partly and only partly intellectually intelligible. A mystery may be defined as a half-disclosed truth, like a mountain with its summit in the clouds. And the Christian religion is such a mystery. The mystical relation of the worshiper to God is a perfectly real experience, though it is not an experience of which a complete intellectual description can be given.

But though the intellect cannot describe the experience, it can partly explain and justify it. The personal relation which constitutes religion is sustained by a certain body of theological opinion expressed in our creeds. The doctrines can be stated; and though the statements are avowedly incomplete and must be put in a form which presents a contradiction or at the least an inconsistency, and are therefore incapable of complete rational assimilation, yet they make paths down which we can spiritually move and achieve the experience which is the essence of our religion; that is, we can enter into this relation with God after the fashion that our theological rules direct us.

Theology regulates religion and justifies it against the imputation of being a mere imaginative delusion; but theology is not itself religion. Theology is a function of the intellect. Like other sciences, it is pursued with most success by the most able minds, and skill in it is attained by study and learning. But religion is experienced without elaborate study or learning or more instruction than is needed to be able to enter upon a relation with the unseen. The relation is the reality; theology is only the explanation of it.

And if theology is not the same thing as religion, neither is morality. The penitent who has turned from his sins and been converted, who has been instructed that his sins have been atoned for and that he is redeemed, goes forward to a life regulated by moral rules and sustained in whatever lapses by a settled purpose to strive toward the righteousness of God. This new moral life is the consequence of religion; it is at every point sustained by a persistence in religious practice and the enjoyment of religious experience; but the moral conduct thus achieved and strengthened only manifests religion and depends upon it; it is not religion itself.

It is important to insist upon the truth that religion is a personal relation to God, and the Christian religion a personal relation through Christ to God, because other ways of defining it have led to confusion and, it may be feared, to a good deal of unreality among those who have been brought up to be religious, but have never really understood what religion means.

Individuals who have either lost belief in Christianity altogether or accept only vaguely and in part the full creed of Christendom, often seem unaware of what religion really is and how to seek it. And the whole process of apologetic controversy becomes confused because the disputants begin, so to speak, at the wrong place. They do not start with the relation and expound it, and then discuss whether it is most likely to be a real relation or a delusion of the imagination, and go on to arrange the whole body of Christian apologetics by way of support to the proposition that the experienced relation is a reality and not a dream; they begin, on the contrary, by arguing this or that part of Christian theology as though it were a proposition to be proved, and if proved, to be accepted, and that religion would somehow or another spring out of that intellectual acceptance.

But this way of presenting the matter is not the way in which the human mind does, as a matter of fact, commonly become religious. The most that such a way of proceeding can really do is to make a man try after religion, and it very seldom achieves even this. A great sorrow, a vivid sense of the difference between good and evil, and of the appalling power of sin - these things are much more potent to make people try and find religion by actually entering into the religious relation than any intellectual argument.

Even mere assertion, if it be obviously sincere and confident, does much more to induce the doubting to make trial of the religious relation than a process of reasoning.

And those, again, who are satisfied with a certain standard of godly conduct and suppose that that is all that matters in the religious life, are the enemies of their own happiness. It may well be that such lives, when they are thoroughly lived, are sufficient to make a person have that desire for approach to God which is, I suppose, the essence of salvation. But a merely moral life is certainly not sustained by the comfort, peace, and joy of the true religious relation. Those who are satisfied with what they call a straight and honest life do, in fact, walk in desert places, and, whatever mercies they may hereafter receive from God, do not now know the quenching of the inward thirst which man has for God. They may be righteous, but they are not happy.

If, then, it be admitted that religion is in itself neither opinion nor conduct, but a mystical relation with an unseen presence, the all-important question follows: Is this relation a fanciful delusion, having no existence outside the mind of the person who believes in it, or is it a true access to the unseen world, to the person of the external Creator, Saviour, and Sanctifier? Is the Christian religion true or fanciful?

Those who would give the answer that it is the work of fancy hardly seem to feel how difficult their answer is. For it is the undisputed fact that people have for nineteen hundred years past entered into this relation, which we call the Christian Religion, and believed in it, and have acted upon it, and been transformed in character by it, and have made sacrifices and efforts in response to it as though it were real. All sorts of people have done this, of all sorts of temperaments, and they have done it alike in primitive and medieval and modern times, notwithstanding the immense revolutions in mental outlook that have taken place.

The Renaissance has come and the Reformation and the Democratic Movement and the Humanitarian Movement and Rationalism, and all the discoveries of science; and yet, though Christian people have in some respects modified their theological opinions, the essence of their religion remains unchanged. They still worship as Christians, still feel that they know Jesus Christ as a living person, still confess sins, still believe themselves to be redeemed and forgiven, still feel that by the power of the Spirit they are led nearer to Christ, still make that approach by the ordinances of the Church, still receive Holy Communion [the Lord's Supper] and are sustained and uplifted by it; and they who do these things still include persons of all sorts of temperaments, and among them sober, unimaginative, and learned men, as well as others of a more emotional and enthusiastic type.

Christianity is not in the least dead; it is, on the contrary, vigorously alive, strongly influencing human action, of vast importance in the inner life of countless multitudes. If all this spring out of fancy and delusion, how surprisingly strong and how surprisingly valuable is the influence of fancy and delusion. The world has been transformed by it.

By common agreement it has been the strongest of all the influences at work since Christ preached and died. If the stories of His nativity and His resurrection and all the miracles of His ministry, of that Ascension by which He passed out of this world, and of the coming of the Divine Spirit to bring Him and His disciples forever together, united as Head and body, till the end of time - if all this be folklore and legend, how highly must we value folklore and legend. Men, it seems, would be poor and miserable without their delusions. Except for the capacity of mankind to believe falsehood, all that is best in our civilization would not have existed.

I find this a very incredible position; yet it seems forced on those who deny the truth of Christianity. I suppose they would rejoin that much of what I have said about Christianity might equally be said about Islam; yet no one [Christian] thinks Islam true. To that I should rejoin that in so far as Islam is concerned with elementary fundamentals - that there is a God and that it is possible to be in relation with Him - it does indeed speak the truth. All religions, Christian and non-Christian, are so far in agreement: they claim that there is an unseen world and that it is possible to have relation with it. And I should press my opponent to admit that you must either say that all mankind are under delusion or that at least it is true that there is a God and that you can have relation with Him.

Answer 2

Religion is MAN'S view and interpretation of God. But the Bible speaks about how the Word of God is "....spiritually given, spiritually discerned", meaning we cannot take it upon ourselves as humans WITHOUT an honest godly influence to "interpret" Scripture. I heard a great method for interpretation within the boundaries of truth once. It said, "When literal sense (method of literal interpretation) makes COMMON SENSE ( gives one the ability to comprehend it for the situation at hand), SEEK NO OTHER SENSE!"

Answer 3

Christianity is not a religion and never has been.

Christian simply means a follower of Christ.

Catholicism and Protestantism and Buddhism are examples of religions.

The Church is not just people who believe in Christ. The Church is a physical entity on earth established by Christ and headed by His vicar on earth, the Pope.

Email me if you want to chat more about the true Church. [e-mail]

God bless you.

Answer 4

God’s true church would be the church He chose before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blame before Him in love (Eph.1:4 below).

We are holy and without blame before Christ Jesus in love as the church of God (1 Cor.10:32 below).


Eph.1:4 According as he (Christ) hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world (Eph.2:9, Jn.17:5), that we should be holy and without blame (Col.1:22, 2 Cor.11:2) before Him in love.

1 Cor.10:32 Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God (1 Cor.1:2, 1 Cor.15:9, Gal.1:13).



Pat (ndbpsa ©)

Answer 5

Depends on your definition of religion. If you define religion as "man made to enslave humanity" then depending on your view of Christianity it may or not be. If you mean "service to the Creator" then yes. If you mean "myth" then it depends on your view of Christianity once again.

Answer 6

That is what I always heard.