Primary vs. Secondary Issues in Christianity

Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host Andrew Rapaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member.

With over 50 podcasts, I'm sure you're going to find something worth listening to over there. This would be one that's, well, maybe worth listening to, and if you're not following it, wouldn't you mind doing that now?

Follow it, maybe share it with friends so others will. Today's topic is defining primary and secondary issues of faith. This is a podcast where I was the guest on the Providence Perspective podcast with the Reformed Rican.

It was a good, lively discussion. I think this will be helpful to many in defining what issues we need to fight over, which ones can we let pass, where is it when we have something that happens that we have to say, okay, this is something I die for versus I feel strongly about versus say it's just a preference, let it go.

This is something where what we often see within Christianity, many people major on the minors and minor on the majors, and that's a big problem. A lot of social media is fighting over things that really shouldn't be fought over.

And so I hope that this episode is very helpful for you and others to learn where to draw those lines and how to know what things really need to be addressed, whether it be within your church, online, your family, your work, what issues need to be addressed and which don't, what do you have to say things, when do you maybe don't need to.

I hope this is very helpful. I hope this lively discussion educates you. And if it does, would you do us a favor and share it with others? Maybe you can just grab your phone out and text it to five friends.

If you find a good quote that you like in it, just quote it out and then reference the podcast. We would appreciate it. And now for the Providence Perspective with the Reformed Rican.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Issues in Faith

Welcome to Providence Today, this evening, or whatever time it is, wherever you are right now watching. Guys, we're going to talk about something that is very, very important. Something that I've discussed in the past briefly, but I've never really gone in depth too much on.

And that is the essentials of the faith versus secondary issues, right? How do we determine these things? When does something matter? Does it matter at all? Those kinds of things. I'm not going to try to figure this out myself.

I do have a guest with me. Please welcome Pastor Andrew Rappaport. How are you doing today?

Good, Jay. How are you doing?

Good, good. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do, that kind of thing?

Sure. Yeah. Long, long ago, I was born No, we won't go that far back. But what a lot of people do find interesting about me is that I was raised in a Jewish home, bar mitzvahed at, well, technically 12, just before 13.

My parents, when they found out, did exactly what I expected them to do. They went casket shopping, looking to what we'd call sit shiva. They were going to I'd be dead to them. They chose not to do that, which I was glad for.

But later, as they I actually had to Living in their house, I was saved at 16, and lived a secret Christian life for two years. No one knew I was a Christian until 18. They discovered that, and by then I was halfway out the house anyway.

So I, later on, went to seminary, became a pastor, left the pastorate in 2010, and have been traveling around the world preaching, well, literally preaching the gospel. But most people know me for my evangelism.

But started a ministry called Striving Fraternity, which is a discipling ministry. So we go into churches, do weekend seminars. Basically, for smaller churches, we try to give that big conference feel at a small church.

And so that's what we do. We have four speakers. We have online classes people could take at our Striving Fraternity Academy. We have a Christian podcast community, very similar to the network that you have with Truth and Love, right?

I always get mixed up. I think it's Truth and Love. And so, similar thing, just getting I shouldn't say guys, but getting Christians working together in the podcasting realm. So my podcasts are the I should say the full name so you get the pun, but it's Andrew Rapaport's Rap Report.

And then Apologize Live is a live stream we do every Thursday night where we answer anyone's questions, any difficult questions. I like this. Okay, Jay, I know you're going to think I'm nuts, but I love it when someone comes in and they're ready for a debate and I don't know I'm debating that night.

They come into Apologize Live because anyone can come in and I get Catholics and Church of Christ and Mormons and they want to debate something and I'm like, oh, we're doing a debate tonight. Okay. It makes for a lot of fun for the audience, but we answer any questions people have.

So if people want to join, they could go to ApologizeLive .com. So that's what I do.

Absolutely. Great. Thank you so much for that. And guys, by the way, I will be putting more of Pastor Rapaport's information in the description below. So be sure to check that out, especially if you enjoy the video.

If you don't enjoy the video, don't go be mean or anything like that. Just move on. Okay. Why not? Well, actually, you know what? He did say he likes debates.

In fairness. Yeah. I mean, we just had recently in Apologize Live, we had, was it five full preterists that told me that full preterism is undeniable. It's irrefutable. And none of them came on to discuss it.

I guess it was, you know, it's unrefutable in an echo.

Chamber. That would have been very fun to watch. So sad that they missed it. But see,.

That is some of what we're going to talk about tonight, right? Is the fact that for some people, okay, for a large group of people that are on social media, they do not know how to have discussions without feeling that if you disagree with them, you're calling them unsaved.

Or nowadays, the thing to say is if you disagree with someone, you're saying they don't exist, which is really strange, because if I'm talking to you, obviously, I think you exist. But that's, I mean, that's the culture we're in now that everyone must agree.

And that's just not reasonable, logical, or realistic. And so when people do that, it's like, what are you really trying to get out of this? And so this is the thing that we end up seeing is that for many people, they get too tied up in what they believe and cannot separate primary doctrines, secondary doctrines, tertiary doctrines.

I'm sure we'll get into what those mean throughout the show.

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that's a great segue, because I wanted to ask you the first question that I wanted to discuss with you. What are primary versus secondary or even tertiary issues? You brought that up as well.

Like, what do we mean by those terms?

Yeah, so when we talk doctrines, theology, there are certain things that we're going to hold at different levels, especially as we communicate with people. So primary, I mean, I think people can figure out primary first, secondary second, tertiary third.

I like to explain it this way. Primary issues are beliefs. They're things I'm going to die for, right? Someone puts a gun to my head and says, deny Jesus is God. That's a primary thing. That's a belief.

And that's something if we're going to do ministry together, we must agree with. Then you have a secondary issues, convictions. I feel really strongly about some things, but it's not a salvation thing.

So I'll give some examples. I feel I'm a cessationist. I believe that some of the gifts, those miraculous gifts have ceased after the completion of the canon. Now, am I going to break fellowship with that?

No. One of my very good friends, we've debated the issue of gifts probably a half dozen times formally. So does that affect our friendship? No. Can we do ministry together? Yes. But do we have strong convictions against each other's view?

Yes, we do. Then that would be secondary. Tertiary are what I would call preferences. Things that, I prefer this, but it's not a big deal if we disagree. And there's going to be a wide range in there, but let's do some extremes.

I mean, there's things that people will, right nowadays, there are folks who are in reformed camp that it's big to show yourself having a cigar with alcohol and posting pictures. Does the Bible condemn that?

Well, it condemns drunkenness. Now, that's not what I would present. I wouldn't do that, but that's a preference. I can't sit there and say, this is something, the first is I'll die for, the second is I'll fight for, and the third is, okay, we can just forgo these things.

We can just deal with one another and say, that's not a big deal. Music is another one. Although some churches put music to the level of, well, belief of primary. I mean, there's some churches that music is the main issue that they're going to fight over and divide over.

Music shouldn't be. Now, to some extent, if you're singing unbiblical lyrics, if you're singing like, boy, I may get myself in trouble with you in your audience, Jay, I'll try not to, but send the hate mail to me, not Jay.

I'm saying this, he has no, but I won't sing in my church songs from Bethel or Hillsong. Why? Because, well, when you start to dig into Bethel and Hillsong and their theology, it's cultic. The problem is, is that they use their music as the hook, as the evangelism to get professing Christians to get into their belief system.

And that's where I have the issue with it is because they openly admit their music is the hook to bring people into. So I wouldn't do that any more than I would have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing in my church.

Because it's a known heretical group that's using it to bring people to their false teaching.

How to Work Through Disagreements with Grace and Discernment

Yeah. Yeah. No, by the way, I think if anybody's been following my show for a while, they would know that, yeah, they can go ahead and send me hate mail as well, because that's my position. And I've spoken about it at length, at least, I don't know, two or three times.

I don't remember how many videos I've done on that. And you know, the funny thing is I've had good solid brothers who don't necessarily agree with that. And that's, I guess that kind of leads to a follow up question that I want to ask, because it can get muddy.

From the way I see it, it can get muddy sometimes, you know, when we're talking about like tertiary issues versus like secondary issues, or even sometimes, and we'll probably talk about this a little bit more a little bit later, but even, you know, secondary issues and how they affect what is essential.

So how do you work your way through this stuff?

Carefully.

Fair enough.

So when we look at the primary issues, they're going to be things where we look in Scripture, and it says you are outside of the faith if you don't hold to this, such as Jesus being God. That salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Amen.

Right? Those are things Scripture is clear that we cannot be saved by works. That's explicit in Scripture. And when it's explicit, then I'm going to take that in a primary way. But there's a lot of things where it comes to how you're interpreting.

And even if someone disagrees with me, I can look at how they're coming about their conclusions from the way they interpret and say, okay, I disagree with your conclusion, but at least you're being consistent within your system of interpretation.

And I'm going to have a little bit more grace there and say, okay, that's going to be a belief. You know, I personally, I'm Baptist, so I'm not going to believe in infant baptism. But if I'm talking with a Presbyterian, in fact, I was preaching in a Presbyterian church, and first time visitor came up, and because he saw me at the pulpit, he walks up to me, and he literally says to me, I was raised Baptist, but my first time in this church, how would this church differ from my church, like with baptism?

So I said, well, I'm a Baptist. What did I do? I immediately identified that I'm not in agreement with Presbyterian baptism. But then I went on to explain Presbyterian baptism. Why? I mean, shouldn't I fight to say like, no, you must believe the Baptist baptism?

No, I am at that moment an ambassador for that church. I am representing that church. So I'm going to explain their view of baptism. In fact, when the pastor took me to lunch afterwards, he actually said, Andrew, I wish people in my church understood Presbyterian baptism as well as your Baptists do.

And we got to be able to be fair with each other's sides to do that, to rightly define what they believe. And so it's a matter of, I would say that baptism is a sign after salvation. But when you're viewing it through a covenant lens, and you're looking at baptism replacing circumcision, therefore you're going to see why you would baptize children as a covenant sign.

So we're going to approach that differently. But people can be consistent with their system, and that becomes a belief thing. So I'm not going to fight them over it in that sense. And so, by the way, for any Presbyterians listening, sometimes Baptists will make the claim that Presbyterians don't believe in Believers' Baptism.

Because Baptists think they're the only ones that believe in Believers' Baptism. To which I will always ask the Baptist that says that, what do you think Presbyterians do with adults that get saved? And they go, well, they baptize them.

What's that called? Infant baptism? They're like, no, it's for adults. So when you get baptized as an adult, what do you call it? They go, Believers' Baptism? What do you think they call it? Oh, you know, the point being is a lot of times what we're doing in discussions like that is we're looking how to attack someone's view rather than how to understand someone's view.

If we're looking to attack it, we think we have great arguments, and they're straw man arguments that get burned down very quickly, but we don't accept that they got burned down because we think they're good, but we didn't take the time to try to understand them.

And, you know, part of being raised Jewish, it does affect it because just a Jewish way of raising your kids, you raise them to debate. You do. And that's why I think so many Jewish people become lawyers.

What other profession do you get paid to debate, right? So I think that's why so many Jewish people become lawyers. But the purpose of it is for sharpening your thinking and being able to understand someone else's perspective.

I mean, a Jewish father will sit down and say, Okay, older son, you're going to debate this. You're for it. Younger son, you're against it. Go ahead. And you may not have been prepared. You're just okay.

What are some good arguments? What you're doing is working off one another to sharpen your thinking, even in something you disagree with. I think that a lot more Christians need to do that, be a lot more open-minded, be more willing to have their own thoughts challenged.

Because if you think your theology is perfect, let me reassure you, you're wrong.

Well, I don't know about that. I know my theology is perfect. Well, I'm just being great. No, I'm just kidding.

Well, no, so I was invited to be a keynote speaker on an Apologex cruise with a friend of mine, Matt Sleck. We were debating. We did a whole bunch of talks. I think I did nine talks, he did 10. And one of those was we did a debate against each other on covenant theology versus dispensational theology.

Very interesting comment from one of the people in the audience was that this woman had said, you know, I notice that Andrew, you keep defending bad arguments that your side makes against Matt's side.

And Matt, you keep arguing for bad arguments your side makes against Andrew's side. Why do you do that? Now, I'm going to give you my answer first because Matt's was far better. So even though Matt answered her correctly, and after he did, I was like, yeah, I got nothing to say after that.

But my response was because I do it because someone from my side will hear it better when they're making bad arguments, when it's coming from someone that agrees with their position. Matt's argument was even better.

His answer, he just said, because Andrew and I both know we're wrong in our theology. We do not know where, because if we did, we would change. But when we sit at the feet of Christ, both of us know that we will be corrected in areas of our theology.

And really what he's saying there is that neither one of us holds so tightly to our theological systems that we can't be convinced otherwise, and that we don't recognize that we could be wrong in some areas.

We don't think we are. I mean, you don't think you're wrong,.

Otherwise you would change. Right, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. But if you do disagree with me, you are wrong. No. We will find out soon enough. Yeah, I will say this. I will say this. R .C. Sproul will agree with me when I get to heaven.

On everything. On everything. And both of us will be corrected. Correct, correct. Because he's already got it, right?

His theology is solid today. I argue he's a Baptist today. He is a Baptist. Yeah, I'm a Baptist, so. Yeah, in my podcast, sometimes when I do a live stream, I get Presbyterian, and they really want to push for Presbyterian.

I'll just say, you know that R .C. Sproul is a Baptist today. He was not a Baptist. And then they realize.

I said today, and they get what I'm saying. That's awesome. You know, so, okay. I'm thinking through this. And so, just kind of going back to the whole essential versus secondary thing, right? We can work with our differences, obviously.

But sometimes, and I think this is one of the biggest problems that we have with this whole thing, is who, or what, I guess you could say, who or what gets to determine what is a primary, secondary, or tertiary issue, right?

Because I'm thinking of, for example, some churches, they say, well, we've got to sing Psalms only, right? And that's very important. Or not have instruments. Or, you know, we wear head coverings, or we don't wear head coverings.

Or, you know, who gets to say how important these things really are? Because I can almost see, like, if we had a Roman Catholic, or an Eastern Orthodox, or something like that listening in, they would say, well, that's the problem with you guys, is that you guys don't have a centralized authority.

So, how would you respond?

Well, we need a Pope. And there it is. We need some fallible man who could speak ex-Cathedra, who they claim never did it. Because any of the things that they used to say was ex-Cathedra, they now disagree with, right?

So, I think the way it really comes down to is, like I said earlier, those things that are absolute in Scripture, those things that the Scripture is clearly explicit on, that are required for regeneration.

Or required, in other words, when Scripture makes it explicit that homosexuality is a sin, and someone wants to say, no, God never meant that, He just meant the abuse of homosexuality, that's the sin.

It's pretty explicit. And now you're trying to twist and rewrite Scripture to fit what you wish it said. Well, when it's explicit and you're in denial, then you've got a problem. So, let me give an example of this.

Do you need, well, let me ask you this, Jay. I'll ask it and see. Do you need to believe in the Trinity to be saved?

I mean, I would say so. If you don't know who the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are, their nature, who, I mean, the centrality of who they are, I mean, or even God's attributes, if we want to add that in there as well, I would say you don't know God.

Because if you, you know, you say you come from a Jewish background, for example, right? Well, Jews say that they believe in the God of the Bible, but Jesus is the God of the Bible. And so, if they deny Jesus, there's no salvation in anyone else.

So, I would say, yeah, you kind of have to affirm the Trinity. Okay, so now here's where I'll,.

Let me twist it for you and see whether you're going to change your view quickly, because I think you will. Okay. Being Jewish, I never heard the word Trinity, nor understood anything about the Trinity.

I was told Jesus is God. That was enough. Did I understand there's separation between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? No. And people will say, well, how did you believe Jesus was God, and He was on the cross and still controlling things?

Because He's God. I can't understand Him, right? I knew enough to know Jesus was God. I didn't understand all the in-depth things of the Trinity. In fact, the Trinity wasn't defined for quite a while after a few hundred years after Christ died.

So, we have all the Old Testament saints, plus many of those first couple century saints that never had the Trinity defined and laid out. It came about when someone denied that Jesus was God, that it was defined.

So, the difference being is, I believe, yes, you can be saved, but you have to believe Jesus is God, because that's explicit. But the Trinity, though taught in Scripture, doesn't say you have to explicitly teach that or understand that to be saved.

But I would say that in a case like where I was, out of ignorance, I could be saved, not knowing the Trinity. However, if I understand the biblical teaching of the Trinity and then deny it, believe in modalism or something else, now I can't be.

Because it's open denial of the.

Truth versus ignorance of the truth. Right. Okay. So, now you're getting into what I was thinking, because I believe your initial question—maybe I'm wrong on this—was that, do you have to believe in the Trinity in order to be saved?

Okay. So—.

Not to believe in a triune God or believe in—.

Right.

The idea is, there are people who—and the reason I use this as an example is because when we think about it, there's so many who think that everyone has some orthodox doctrine, so when we hear Trinity, well, you must believe in the Trinity, because that's what the Bible teaches.

That's what the Church has taught. And yet, it doesn't explicitly teach that.

Right.

It implicitly teaches that. It explicitly teaches that Jesus is God. And so, now what we end up looking at is, what are we actually seeing? Well, we're seeing that we have to believe that Jesus is God, but the Trinity is a solution to a problem.

You have three persons that are separate from one another, and they're all called God. Right. So, you're right when you said, hey, the view of the God of rabbinic Judaism today, would not be the God of the Bible.

Why? Because they deny the triune nature of God. They believe in a God that will not come as a suffering servant, Isaiah 53. They believe in a God who will not make a sacrifice for them, you know, Psalm 22.

So, they're holding to a different God. That's different. Knowing the truth and denying it is different than just being ignorant of the truth. If they're just denying, well, you know, that doesn't know anything about it, there's a difference, I think, there.

And we have to treat that differently, too, with one.

Another. Right? It's funny because providentially, we'll say, because it is. Because this is the providence perspective. Exactly. So, I was speaking to a friend of mine. And as a Baptist,.

You have, you know, you have, you don't have, you know, you have pot providences, right, at your.

Church? We are reformed Baptists. So, we kind of try to be like the Presbyterians sometimes. We're just posing as Presbyterians. But then when it comes to Baptism, then we get weird about it. Yeah. So, I was talking to a friend of mine, providentially, like I said, today, about my conversion.

And it was about how, just like that, just like what you were saying, I did not understand the Trinity, right? Like, I kind of heard about it. I was like, yeah, I believe Jesus is God. And I've had heard it, I had heard the explanation, right?

Well, the Trinity is like a tree, right? And then there's the roots, and then there's the trunk, and there's the branches. And so, those are, right, which, of course, I didn't realize that was modalism, right?

Or actually, partialism, I should say. But I believed that Jesus was God, right? But it's like you're saying, because that's what we were talking about. If you come to an understanding of the truth, somebody teaches you, walks you through it, shows you in Scripture, and you're like, no, no, it's, you know, that's not true.

At that point, I'm wondering, do they even know the God of the Bible, right? Because they're not, they're no longer following, not just what church teaches, right? But ultimately, what the Scriptures teach.

Yeah. And that's where, if they're being ignorant of it, I'm going to treat it differently. If someone's like, I never heard this before. Right. Okay. But if they know it, and they're debating it, and arguing, and they're telling you how wrong you are, then we're in a different, we're at a different level.

So, you're talking to, let's say you're talking to a Mormon. Are they going to have the same view that we would have of the Trinity? No. Very different. I mean, they're going to think that Jesus, that Heavenly Father was a man on another planet who lived as a good Mormon and became God of this world.

And they'd even argue he sinned in that other world. Very different view, right? But if they're arguing it because that's the only thing they ever heard, okay, I'm going to give a little bit more grace with that and try to work with them.

But if they understand that the Bible teaches that the God of this world was from everlasting to everlasting, and they still deny that and say, no, no, no, it's that Jesus was, or the Heavenly Father was a God of another planet.

I'm going to go, okay, we're now, this can't be reconciled, right? And so, when do we have grace with one another? I think it's going to come down to the fact of what we're looking for is how much they understand first.

We don't want to take our theology like a sledgehammer to people, because I don't know about you, Jay. Typically, when people come at me with a sledgehammer, I don't sit there and say, yeah, hit me over the head, right?

I don't appreciate it. I don't want to hear from them. That becomes the difference. Now, on Apologetics Live, we get different people that come in. And my audience was very surprised when I had a Jewish rabbi came in, and people will always tell me what patience I have with different people that come in.

But with the rabbi, they saw that I took a very aggressive stance, and people were confused with it.

Because you know that he knows.

Because I know that he knows what we're saying. He knows, he's making an argument out of Hebrew that he knows is not valid, but he wants to keep making it. But he's doing it aggressively. And so I returned in kind to, you know, and I explained to people that, you know, there's two factors there.

One, knowing the person you're talking to. And this is why on my show, I can explain to the audience why I do what I do. And that's what we do in Apologetics Live is things like that. But when you have certain, there are certain people or groups, for example, Nabil Quresh, people didn't understand how he would speak to American Muslims and be very calm.

But if he spoke to a Middle Eastern Muslim, he would get very emotional and raise his voice and be very adamant. And people couldn't understand why. Well, I understand why very well. And he's explained it when he was alive.

But because in the Middle East, if you don't show emotion, it's as if you don't really believe what you're saying. You don't truly believe it, you're just saying it. So he has to show that emotion to the person he's speaking with, to show that he believes this firmly.

Now, that's a cultural understanding.

It's kind of like Paul's becoming all things to all people. Would you say that?

That's exactly what it is. And that's the passage that I used with explaining with the Jewish rabbi. This Jewish rabbi knows what he's saying is not valid. He understands the Hebrew better than me. But he also knows that if he gives an inch, he lost his argument.

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For the glory of God. And his pride is such that he didn't want to even give an inch. And so this is the thing that sometimes you deal with. And so I'm going to deal with everybody as an individual. Someone comes to me and disagrees, even if they disagree adamantly, I'm looking to see, A, are they consistent within their hermeneutic?

Their hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation. And so a Presbyterian covenantal hermeneutic would be different than a dispensational one. There's just going to be differences in the way we approach things.

A Presbyterian reformed hermeneutic is going to be different than a Reformed Baptist 1689 hermeneutic. Because the Presbyterians believe that you should be reformed and stop reforming, and the Reformed Baptists believe you should be reformed and keep reforming, because that's actually what it means.

They just stopped. See, you had the Westminster that kept reforming it, and you got the 1689. The Baptists just kept reforming, that's all.

That's exactly what it is.

That's what it is.

But are they consistent within that hermeneutic? And if they are, I can say, okay, I disagree with it. I was out speaking in the United Kingdom and got there late at night and a bunch of the guys wanted to go out, grab something to eat, and one of the guys, it was me and this other guy, and we were talking about some differences we have between covenant theology and dispensational theology.

And as we're having that discussion, this other guy who's just listening in, we were walking him to the hotel after we eat, and he says, you know, I got to tell you two something. I have never seen two guys who feel so strongly about their own position discuss opposing views so civilly.

And what struck him is because at one point, as I'm listening to this brother explain his view, and I'm asking him, well, how do you interpret this? How do you interpret it? How do you? And I said, well, at least I see that you're consistent in your system of hermeneutic.

You're being consistent. I disagree with your conclusion, but you're consistent. And he appreciated that and said, well, I can see how you are too. This is the hardest thing, Jay, in social media. Man, it's like people put something out there on social media and it's as if, no, I can never take it back.

I always have to prove I'm right.

I don't know what you're talking about. I've never seen that. I've seen people be cordial with one another and never, never hurl insults at each other.

For the audience, I encourage you to go back a few episodes to when Jay was talking on several episodes about, you know, Joel Webben. And we will see whether he thinks that he's never seen this before.

No, I'm sorry. The internet's out there, Jay. We have the record.

Listen, I don't know what you saw in those episodes, but it's a lie.

You think it's what you think you saw, Andrew. It wasn't what really happened. Joel and Tobias were getting along just fine. There was no disagreement.

Absolutely. Absolutely. There was no problems at all. Listen, so, okay, we can disagree and still have fellowship and still have friendship and be respectful. But you mentioned earlier that there are things that you would fight for.

Maybe you wouldn't necessarily die for them, but you would fight for them, right? So you were referring to secondary issues. So why fight for them? Why do they still matter, even though they're not essential?

Why Secondary Issues Still Matter

Okay, so because I think that when we get to the secondary issues, they are ones that we feel are very important. They're implicit in Scripture. And because they're implicit, we can't be absolutely dogmatic on it, but we're inferring it.

So let me use the example that I used earlier, the miraculous gifts. Some people would say they continue for today. I would believe that they had ceased after the completion of the canon. Now, why would I fight over that?

Well, it's because it becomes a serious issue if you believe that God is still speaking and providing prophecy today, because that would say that the Scripture He gave us is not sufficient if we have to look for something more.

And so what at the heart of the issue is the sufficiency of Scripture and the sufficiency of Christ. And because of that, I'm going to approach that to say, okay, is your salvation on the line? No, not unless—and there are some who I then put it to a belief system.

There are some charismatics I've spoken to that would say you must speak in tongues to be saved. Well, 1 Corinthians 12 would definitely not say that. Now, are they consistent with their view? Well, yes, because their starting point is that speaking in tongues is proof that you're baptized in the Spirit.