Below is a draft of the afterword to Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers, the title of a book-length (103K-word) manuscript I hope to publish in 2025. A search of <Otis Q. Sellers> on this site, which I invite you to do, will return many hits. The book chapters that will, once published, precede this afterword originated as posts; familiarity with them, however, while helpful, is not necessary. Standing apart from them, it is (I hope) intelligible enough to stimulate interest in the larger work. It’s long as posts go, but I’m hungry for feedback. Comments are welcome! So, print it out, or send it to your e-reader, or scan it ocularly.
Does this have anything to do with Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Not directly, but see the fourth reference note.
I wish my visitors a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025!
Anthony G. Flood
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Allow me first to clarify something that might bother many of you upon reading the title. What Sellers called his walk in Jesus Christ seems to express a contradiction in terms. If Christianity is one of the world’s “great religions,” there couldn’t be a religionless version of it, right?
Wrong.
What Is Religion?
For one thing, “Christianity” refers to nothing in the God-breathed Scriptures. Reading Acts 11:26, we learn that Jesus’ disciples were first called “Christians” in first-century Antioch (present-day Antakya in southern Turkey). But nothing then corresponded to the abstraction “Christianity,” religious or otherwise.
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God (εἰρήνην πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν, pros ton Theon ) through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1). That faith is neither a true nor false religion. We are the blessed ones against whom God will not count our sins (Romans 4:8). What religion can give the peace that comes with knowing that?
The only religion (θρησκεία, thrēskeía) that God gave anyone—that is, the only system of outward worship, ritual practices, and religious devotion, rites and rituals, prescriptions and proscriptions governing one’s relation to Him—is found in the תּוֹרָה (to-rah), commonly referred to as the Law of Moses. Continue reading “Religionless Christianity: the afterword to “Christian Individualism””