Christians believe in the Trinity, Jesus Christ, and the Church

The argument

Christians believe in God the Father, Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit. They believe that the one true God of the Old Testament sent his son Jesus, the messiah, to save the world. The Christian faith centres on beliefs regarding the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ and Christ's second coming, the Day of Judgement and salvation of the faithful. A Christian is “one who believes or professes… to believe in Jesus Christ and the truth as taught by him… one whose life is conformed to the doctrines of Christ.”A central tenet of many Christian groups is the Trinity. Tthe Trinity consists of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - three separate persons, all eternal, all present, all powerful, all knowing. They form a single, unified deity. Most Christians believe that Jesus co-existed with God before the foundation of the world. A few denominations deny the Trinity, including he Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church), Jehovah’s Witnesses and the United Pentecostal Church. Some say if you do not believe in the Trinity, you are not a Christian. As a tradition, Christianity is more than a system of religious belief. It also has generated a culture, a set of ideas and ways of life, practices, and artifacts that have been handed down from generation to generation since Jesus first became the object of faith. Christianity is thus both a living tradition of faith and the culture that the faith leaves behind. The agent of Christianity is the church, the community of people who make up the body of believers.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The argument refutes its own headline in its second paragraph. It names the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses and the United Pentecostal Church as denominations that reject the Trinity, and hedges the doctrine as 'a central tenet of many Christian groups'. Many is not all, and this position is specifically about beliefs held in common. A doctrine that several bodies within the tradition — including one the question itself lists as a sibling position — explicitly deny cannot be listed as common ground. The response offered is to define the dissenters out: 'some say if you do not believe in the Trinity, you are not a Christian.' That saves the claim by stipulation, and it is contested by the groups concerned, who profess Christ as saviour and understand themselves as Christian. Settling a question about what Christians hold in common by first excluding the Christians who disagree makes the premise unfalsifiable. 'The Church' fares no better as shared ground. Whether the Church is a visible institution with apostolic succession, an invisible communion of believers, or a congregational gathering, and who holds authority within it, is the substance of the schisms between Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christianity — the very divisions this question's other positions catalogue. Naming the Church as common belief papers over the largest disagreement in Christian history. The dictionary definition quoted has the same problem in miniature: a lexicographer's summary records usage, not doctrine, and cannot adjudicate a live theological dispute. Ironically, the argument holds a defensible core it does not isolate — belief in Jesus Christ as the centre of the faith, and the authority of scripture, come far closer to genuine commonality than the two contested items in its title.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Belief in Jesus Christ as the centre of the faith is close to genuinely common ground, but the premise bundles it with a Trinitarian formulation that the argument's own text concedes several denominations reject — including one this question lists as a separate position. [Rejecting P2] The Trinity is described in the body as central to 'many' Christian groups rather than all, and the fallback that non-Trinitarians are therefore not Christians rescues the premise by stipulation against the self-understanding of the groups concerned; 'the Church' is likewise the subject of the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant schisms rather than a belief shared across them. [Rejecting C] Because two of the three items named are contested within the tradition, the conclusion overstates what is held in common; the defensible version of this position would rest on Christ's centrality and the authority of scripture, which the argument mentions but does not isolate.

Further reading

Fairchild, Mary. "Compare Major Beliefs of 7 Christian Denominations." Learn Religions, Mar. 9, 2020, learnreligions.com/comparing-christian-denominations-beliefs-part-1-700537.