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Hmm. Interesting choice of 'Essential' matters. I'd be interested in hearing how you arrived at these. Why do you think the council of Nicea thought that both the catholicity of the church and the incarnation were 'Essential', but made no mention of 'the authority of scripture'? I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm genuinely interested in how we arrive at our lists of doctrinal essentials.

Try thinking a little bit out of the box. The thing that is still keeping us from listening to the larger Church, is simply that we insist that everyone else talk and think like we do. These three levels are not original with Ed, he probably says that somewhere, but even this kind of "organizing" and "filtering" becomes a problem. Someday I'm going to blog about the "gatekeeper" mentality in the churches and how we try to stop at the gate those that don't fit our doctrinal arrangement of the Christian Faith, and turn them away from any serious consideration. Stay tuned for that.

"Ed says that the problem with fundamentalists is that everything becomes an essential, so we end up fighting about everything. That's clearly something we need to avoid, yet I think it happens more often than we'd like". These are wise words and Ed is right. I will second what you already see- we've got to stop fighting and learn to listen more carefully to those who talk about the things of the Lord a little different than we're used to. It is fairly simple to do this once you answer a basic question such as, "can't we trust oneanother and what God is doing in that life through the Word and His Spirit?" Why do we always have to jump to the defense of the faith at the first little sign of error?

Or to put it another way. Do you mind if I ask you some personal questions? I'll take that as a yes. Do you want others to treat you with dignity and respect, no matter what you think or what you have done? Do you want to be free in Christ to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling- that is wrestling with the narrative of Scripture before the Lord until your convictions are firmed up and are really yours? The conscience of each individual is a very sacred and precious part of who that individual is; we have to learn to give believers the freedom to be who they are in Christ and not what we wish they were or would become. Then there is that element of time-we don't get these things all at once.

If we can begin listen to the many different traditions recognizing the strengths and contributions they bring to the table that we can all benefit from without feeling the need to keep checking our doctrinal statements to make sure we're on safe ground.

May God give us all the glorious liberty that is our birthright as his children. He really is doing some amazing things in the Church and in the world if we could only see them with the eyes of faith.

John Paul Todd

Hi Darryl,

I like this and have heard it several times before in different variations - usually in terms of primary and secondary issues. I try to follow it.

However, the problem arises when people can't agree on where the issue belongs...which has been shown in previous comments.

The other problem is even if we would classify an issue as secondary - aren't we still allowed to debate it with passion and vigor?

For the dudes at the top. I'm sure you will give us some interesting reasons why you think Ed is wrong and that's fine. But seriously there has to be some measure. A canon of theology if you will. How do we establish the canon? That's a good question indeed! How do we decide what is in that canon? Another thing we have to think deeply about. Nevertheless if someone comes into our church and says that Jesus never became a man I think we are safe to tell them to hit the road. At least that's what the apostle John thinks.

Trevor:

I hope to post on why I listed some areas of doctrine in each of the categories.

John Paul Todd:

I think there's a balance. There is a body of doctrine that's entrusted to the church about which there is no discussion. I'll blog about this today or tomorrow. Then there are areas that are less clear. As Nick says later, if we say some things about Jesus we may be exploring, but we may have also gone completely off the rails. I'll post on this, but it seems to me there are some areas that are not up for discussion. Tony Jones and Steve Brown got into this last week in their discussion at Steve Brown Etc.

Jacob:

Absolutely. I think there's a role for passionate debate about secondary issues, as long as we recognize they're not gospel issues.

Nick:

Good comment.

More to come.

In the last line on Convictional Matters I think you meant to write "These are worth discussing..."

Thanks, Richard. I'll make the change.