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Catholic heretics, sure. I tire of all the people who say we're not Christians though. Even if we grant that the Catholic church is the one true church, with 100% correct beliefs, you still aren't in charge of dictionaries. And yes, this is fundamentally a debate about the definition of the word "Christian." State whatever you want about the beliefs themselves, but attempts to simply define them away just waste everyone's time.
Okay, generally I'm up for a theological fight but today I have a cold and am constantly sneezing, and it's pointless anyway. Mormons and Unitarians and Uncle Tom Cobley and all claim the mantle of Christianity merely by invoking the name of Christ, even in sects where Christ has been reduced down to "just this guy, you know?" and we're all equally divine and there are many paths up the mountain and besides what if you were born in a Hindu or Buddhist country and all the rest of it.
I think when it comes to the point of "all the doctrines of traditional Christianity are wrong, all the history of the Bible is wrong, we have the special unique extra true scriptures" then it's so different from the originating faith, it's not the same thing at all, so why call it Christianity? It would be like the USA maintaining the name of the Colonies long after the break with Britain and the monarchy.
I agree that a theological debate is pointless--I think we'd both agree that my definition of Christianity includes Mormons and yours does not. The question is which definition is more useful.
If they believe in Christ more than they believe in any other human, I'd call that Christianity, even if they don't believe he's divine. That's generally how we describe other faiths. Jews and Muslims probably believe in Christ more than people like Unitarian Universalists, but in everyday conversation it's easiest to call the latter Christians and the former two by their own names.
We literally don't believe any of this.
Most of them are correct, but getting just a few seemingly small things wrong can lead to big issues.
The history of the Bible is correct, and the Bible itself is mostly correct in its description of that history.
We have some of them, believe that others have yet to surface, others have yet to be written, and that still others have perhaps surfaced in other faiths but we don't yet know that they're scripture. I'd agree MORE with this statement if it was modified to [some of the special unique extra true scriptures]. Even then, it's less because those books are so special, and more just because they're newer and haven't been warped quite so much as older books of scripture have been over the years.
Well, I'd be fine with "The United Colonies of America" as a name. Going by our modern definition, they would no longer be colonies, but if they insisted that they were colonies, well, the UCA is powerful enough that we'd probably just say that "colony" now has two meanings. One for the original meaning of the word, and another for UCA-style countries which started out as colonies. Similarly, Marxism is nothing like what Marx wanted, but we still call it Marxism because that's just how the movement has evolved. We already do this with so many different things, and it's a natural part of the evolution of language. We still call the royal family the "King" and "Queen" even though they hold no power and are essentially glorified celebrities. We call smart phones "phones" even though they're exactly as phone-like as the original cell-phones, and far more computer-like than the original computers.
I'd honestly be pretty OK with some umbrella term besides "Christian" to describe non-Catholics, if not for the baked-in assertion that your church membership irreversibly determines your beliefs forever. Does someone with 100% Catholic beliefs instantly become non-Christian when they are baptized into another church, even if their beliefs don't change? What if they've never even heard of Catholicism and are just joining the best Christian church they know about? Seems silly to me to assert that these people aren't Christian even when they are following literally all of Christ's teachings to a T (pun intended and highly meaningful).
I can't speak for your interlocutor, but I would imagine that he would extend Christian farther than Roman Catholic. I'm guessing the key things that would be pointed to would probably be the trinity or maybe salvation-related things.
When people say Christian, they do mean more than "likes Jesus most," or at least I do. I'm not familiar with the Mormon conception of what Jesus is doing, though, because my impression is there are some pretty substantial soteriological differences, among other things.
I think the biggest difference is the concept of the Trinity. We still think Jesus is divine, died for our sins, saved us, and is God, but we don't think that he and God the Father are literally the same person.
I'd be willing to accept another definition of Christianity, but I think the Nicene Creed is a bit too restrictive. The entire doctrine of the Trinity seems unimportant to me relative to the doctrine of Christ and salvation through him.
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