Chris Tilling and Ben Myers discuss what's the core of Christianity. I must confess that I am tugged towards Ben on this matter, with the comments of Kim Fabricus a necessary edition. Ben notes that:
So what are the “identifying beliefs” of Christian faith? It seems to me that there are two related ones: Christian faith is identified both by its christological character and by its trinitarian character. And at the core of both of these identifying characteristics is a single, central belief: a belief in the unity between Jesus Christ and God.
I would suggest that the instance one associates Jesus Christ with GOD, then one enters both a narrative and symbolic world. One cannot remove Christ from the narrative of Scripture/History. Thus, scripture must play some role in the identity of Christians. For without this backdop of narrative reference, both Christ and God become vague and obscure. Now we can debate the role that scripture must play [I'm liking Vanhoozer's comments on scripture as the "script for the church"], but I'm not convinced that it plays little or no role. It must have some authority in describing GOD's identiry, and thus shaping our identity, or else we become the determiners of meaning - and then relativism destroys the integrity knowledge.
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