interesting question.

Jesus believed the scriptures that were canonized (official scripture) in His time, and quoted them often.

But I am sure there are differing opinions on the definition of the word Christian.

I like to start with, “someone who is a follower of Jesus Christ (Jesus the Christ)”.

I believe that you can’t be His follower if you don’t believe He is the one and only savior, rescuer, deliverer, redeemer, AND, not just an intellectual agreement to that fact. It must be that you have put your entire trust in Him, that is, your entire hope for getting to heaven, is put in the fact that you trust that His victory on the cross is the one and thing that made a way for you to get there.

But then you also have to FOLLOW, which means trust and OBEY. Jesus said not all who cry “Lord, Lord” will enter. But those who do the will of His father in heaven.

So your trust and belief get you in, and your continued trust plus obedience, to some extent, keeps you in His grace. It’s not for us to know how he deals with various persons when the get discouraged or skeptical for a while. We can trust that He is both Merciful and Just. But the apostle warns us, “if he cut out the branch of those of the chosen people who disbelieved, he can cut off your branch, too. And if the do not persist in their unbelief [that is, is they come to belief (trust), he can graft their branch back in.

So, trust and obey, as the song says, “for there’s no other way…” If you trust and obey, (follow) Jesus, how could you not believe the Bible? Jesus believed the scriptures that were canonized (official scripture) in His time, and quoted them often.

I feel strongly that folks who are following Christ should believe, and try to be patient with themselves over the parts that are hard for them to believe or understand. Trust that it is ok for there to be mysteries. Portions that seem illogical or seem to be contradicted elsewhere, or seem to break “rules of physics” may become understandable to you later.

But the basics of the Bible, the easy parts that most everyone agrees on are clearly to be believed. My mom said she had a hard time with a whole lot of not just the Bible, but the explanations of it (or “creeds”). She said she only had a mustard seed’s worth of faith and was afraid she’d never have much more than that. She hoped that would be enough and God would have mercy on her. I hope he did, too, because she’s passed on and I believe that a person’s status regarding heaven is determined before they die and does not change afterwards.

I would ask someone who thinks they do not believe the Bible, “Which parts DO you believe?” Almost everyone accepts some parts of it. Then depending on who they are, I would pray that that mustard seed grows, or urge them to pray for that (if they are trying to be a believer), or both.
-rb tulsa

We know that demons believe in God (and even tremble!), according to James 2:19. I’m sure they also “believe” in the Bible–they know it is true and right. Yet obviously they are not Christians.

I posed this question because I was thinking of dominionist who claim that our country was founded by Christian leaders. I think they were founded on some Christian principles because of the impact of the revivals that were going on in those days, but I don’t think that all the leaders were Christians, but only a small minority. Their were those who claimed to believe in God and maybe even gave kudos to the Bible, but does believing in the Bible make someone a Christian? No For even Muslims believe in the Bible, Jews believe in the Old Testament portion of the Bible, only believing upon Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who took on human flesh, being rich in mercy choose death for us, so that he can raise to life again, thus defeating death on our behalf, and bringing us salvation by grace. That alone is what makes someone a Christian. Not all of our forefathers believed upon Jesus, therefore they were not Christian.