My husband and I have been talking about this issue of what doctrines are absolutely essential, what are secondary, and what are tertiary since a sermon our pastor preached a few weeks ago. I said I was tempted to get a board and lay out all the doctrines in order of importance but I think that some of them would be different by microscopic degrees.
As I was sitting here thinking about this topic while waiting for the internet to start working again I was struck by the idea that there are a lot of Doctrines that are absolutly insisted on, that don't make it into Gospel presentations. An example would be the hypostatic Union. No one is going to touch that issue while talking to an unsaved person and yet we see in the Bible the denying either the deity or the humanity of Christ is a damnable heresy.
1 John 2:22 Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
1 John 4:1-2
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
I think that correct doctrines are like good works. We do good works BECAUSE we are saved not to get saved. We believe correct doctrine (beyond the Gospel essentials of sin, righteousness and Judgement John 16:8) BECAUSE we are saved not to get saved
So a person that denies either the deity or humanity of Christ to continue that example after being taught is giving evidence of not being saved, just as a person that continues a willful lifestyle of sin is giving evidence of not being saved.
Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones in his book, What is an Evangelical, discussed "Essentials" and "Secondary" Truths: After the Great Doctrine of God.
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Essential Truths
So what are the essential doctrines for evangelicals that distinguish them from other Christians or professors of faith?
1. “The first is the doctrine of Scripture” (340). The Bible is our supreme and sole authority, God’s completely trustworthy self-revelation. The evangelical believes in propositional truth, the miracles of the Bible, the history as well as the didactic teaching. The Bible is not just true in its “religious” parts. It is without error in all that it affirms. This means that the evangelical believes in the historicity of Adam and Eve. Further, “we reject any notion of a pre-Adamic man because it is contrary to the teaching of Scripture” (343). The first chapters of Genesis must be accepted as history and cannot be undermined based on evolutionary theories.
2. We believe in the existence of the devil and evil spirits.
3. Man is spiritually dead and totally incapable, on his own, of any spiritual good.
4. The evangelical believes in the atonement, with a special emphasis on its penal, subsitutionary nature.
5. “We must also assert in a very special way justification by faith alone, faith only. We have to go on to assert that justification is not the result of regeneration, nor does it depend upon regeneration” (349).
6. No evangelical “can possibly believe in a state or territorial church” (349).
7. We believe in the importance of doctrine and church discipline.
8. We reject every notion of apostolic succession.
9. We believe in the sacraments, but reject every suggestion of sacerdotalism (the notion that there is inherent efficacy in the sacramental act itself).
Secondary Truths
Non-essential doctrines “are very important, and they must be discussed by evangelical people, but we must discuss them as brethren…we call them non-essential because they are not essential to salvation” (351). These doctrines are not as clearly taught as essential doctrines. Thus, sincere Christians sometimes come to different convictions in these areas. We must note that “difference between a defective understanding and a positive denial of truth by able people” (352).
So what are some of the doctrines Lloyd-Jones marks as non-essential?
1. “One is the belief in election and predestination” (352). Pelagianism is to be condemned, but not evangelical Arminianism. Though Lloyd-Jones was a convinced Calvinist, he put the issue in the category of a non-essential because Calvinists and Arminians disagree on the mechanism of salvation, not the way of salvation.
2. The age and mode of baptism. You cannot prove one or the other from the Scriptures.
3. “In the same way, we must not divide on the question of assurance of salvation” (353).
4. “We must not divide on the issue of church polity” (353).
5. “In the same way, clearly, we must not divide on the question of prophetic interpretation: pre-, post-, a-millennialist, and so on” (353).
6. Our differing views of sanctification are not essential.
7. Ditto for “the whole question of the baptism of the Spirit and the charismata, the spiritual gifts” (354).
Our object in all this is to safeguard the gospel, to keep the evangel clear. This is our motive for defining “evangelical.” By the same token, we should realize that none of us will be perfect in our understanding. We are all saved in spite of ourselves.
