[Guillermo]

And, to anyone who says the NT is not the basis of Christianity, how can one become a Christian without knowing it? The way to become one and remain one is contained there and only there, not in the OT, not in the Koran, not in the writings of Confuscius.

[aruanan]

And, to anyone who says the NT is not the basis of Christianity, how can one become a Christian without knowing it?

Well, there were all those first century Christians who didn't have the New Testament but just one or the other apostles (or their friends or associates, ie., Mark, Luke) who at one time or another wrote a letter or one of the gospels. But these writings were to instruct them in the faith they already had in Jesus. The preaching about Jesus was done on the basis of telling how he fulfilled the Law and the Prophets by referring to the Old Testament prophecies about him. That verse about faith coming by hearing and hearing by the word of G-d wasn't referring to the NT because it didn't exist then. Paul's telling Timothy about the relevance of scripture to the Christian life was referring principally to the OT.

People in the first century to whom the letters and gospels were written already had an understanding of how Jesus fulfilled the OT prophecies about him. Look at Paul's practice of speaking about Jesus in the synagogues. Look at Phillip's instruction of the Ethiopian eunuch. Neither of them relied on the then-non-existent NT to show them why and in whom they should believe. Because of this, most of the NT was written assuming the readers already knew these things. People who rely exclusively upon the NT may have the distillate, but they're missing out on everything that took place to get things to that point.