Those speaking for Christianity, and those speaking against it, love to use the definite article. In fact, if I were to go back and reread many things I’ve written, I would suspect that I do the very same thing. It seems to come out something like this, “The Christian view of such and such….” I’m hear to tell you, and to remind myself, that there is no one Christian view.
It is often said, “Well, I don’t believe in the Christian God.” What is the Christian God? What defines it? What makes it so definite enough that it deserves a “the” before its capital G? If by “the” you mean the big white guy with the beard in the sky, then I’m sorry to say that many Christians I know don’t hold that view. If by “the” you mean a God that has a hand in how things come to play in our lives, I’d again have to tell you this view doesn’t fit all Christians. Simply, there is no one view that can sum up how God is understood from one end of Christendom to the other.
This same semantical play works for other theological and political statements as well. There is no one Christian view on Jesus, abortion, Christ, sex, communion, LGBT issues, afterlife, the death penalty, peace, war, evolution, marriage, guns…. It isn’t the monolithic structure that appears creeping out of newspapers, court cases, tomes decrying Christian faith and glossy television pulpits. It is infinitely multifaceted and to sum it up in a single “the” takes its beauty and turns it into a beast.
