Christianity in your mind's eye

[historia]

Christianity is one of the world's largest and most diverse religious traditions.

And yet, for brevity's sake, it's convenient to make reference to 'Christianity' or 'Christians' on this forum without having to reel off a litany of qualifiers about which particular churches, beliefs, and practices we are describing. But do we all have the same thing in mind when we do this?

Consider these comments from a couple of our friendly neighborhood atheists:

Take mainstream Catholic teaching, remove Mary, mother of God stuff, remove Papal authority. That's my working assumption of what Christianity is

As far as I'm concerned, anyone that says they're Christian is Christian, but pretending that the Catholics are anything but the standard for orthodoxy is chutzpah.

Questions for debate:

When making reference to 'Christianity' in general terms, should we all have in mind Roman Catholicism (or something close to that)?

Is that, in fact, the expression of Christianity you have in your mind when you personally use the term 'Christianity'?

[theophile]

What makes you think, just because idiosyncratic views are being expressed, that they are not objective?

If a view is truly idiosyncratic, then it rests on the peculiar assumptions and interpretations of an individual. That is to say, it is more subjective.

The peculiar nature of the assumptions / interpretation doesn't mean they are wrong; it just means they are different from those of the mainstream. A concrete example may help...

e.g., One 'idiosyncratic' view I have is that God doesn't create ex nihilo in the bible. Creation is rather a formation of pre-existing elements.

Historically, we could trace the development of the mainstream doctrine of creatio ex nihilo through the first few centuries AD, with its ultimate codification by early church fathers like Irenaeus and Tertullian (who declared all else heresy). Does that make creatio ex nihilo objective, and my view subjective, just because some guys decided to shut down other threads of Christian discourse and install a relatively new metanarrative at the basis of the Nicene creed? I don't think so.

From another perspective, biblically, we could look to principal texts like Genesis 1 to see what they have to say. See Genesis 1:2 for example, and the explicit mention of the deep / waters which are never created by God (as would be expected by the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo), but are, as the story shows, the stuff God uses to form the heavens and the earth. Does that make creatio ex nihilo objective, and my view subjective? I think it definitely lends objectivity to my view, and flies in the face of what has reigned supreme in history (and dogmatically in the very churches you are looking to as exemplars).

I have two main points in all this:
1. Whether a view is idiosyncratic or mainstream says nothing for certain about its objectivity.
2. There are multiple fact-bases that can be used to give objectivity to a view (e.g., historic, textual, etc.)

There may be other points, but I think those are the main ones

Does being mainstream give objectivity to a view?

No, but more objective views tend to become mainstream, since they don't require people to adopt one individual's peculiar assumptions and interpretations.

I think there are other, more important drivers of what makes something mainstream than the objectivity of the view (like power for example, and the preferences of those with power - you know, "might makes right" kind of thing).

But hey, we can all hope that over time the mainstream view is tending towards the truth. It's certainly a lovely idea

All I see you doing is applying your own biases, favoring the most "historical" churches with the "largest" followings, to push what the default view of Christianity should be.

Don't we normally understand social phenomena like religions, political parties, and cultural movements based on an analysis -- both historical and in the present -- of what they actually believe and do? How is that 'biased'?

Looking at Christianity from an historical point of view commits us to certain historical facts, whether we personally like them or not, and so is more objective. Whereas conceiving of Christianity as an idealized concept of what the Church ought to be, based on someone's personal interpretation of passages that they selected from the Bible, seems far more subjective. If the Bible alone provided some objective way of determining what Christianity ought to be, then there simply wouldn't be the diversity of Protestant denominations and sects we see today.

It is biased because it is your preferred mode or lens from which to view the matter. Just as my bias is admittedly the bible itself (i.e., the biblical text, versus historical events, is my fact-base). And to be clear, I'm not saying this is a bad thing - it's good that we all look at things from different biases (/perspectives).

Also, isn't history open to interpretation as well? I agree it provides a fact-base (see above), but so does a biblical text. Both are artifacts that ultimately need to pass through interpretation. Hence why I pushed earlier for more academic pursuits, where at least there is an agreed upon process (peer review and whatnot) that aims for objectivity. This is true in biblical hermeneutics as much as it is history.

[Bust Nak]

Catholic minus papal authority and Mary mother of God isn't just one sect though.

Isn't that just protestentism?

Kinda? There are more difference between Catholicism and Protestantism then these two thing. But that's the point, there exist an idea of "what Christianity is" that captures the vast majority of what self proclaimed Christians believe.