Which Doctrines SHOULD Divide Us?

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. In this episode, I have my two dear friends back with me, Jake Korn and Matthew Henson, to discuss the question of doctrinal division.

What doctrines should divide Christians from non-Christians? What doctrines should divide churches? And what doctrines should not divide us at all? Well, those are the questions we're going to ask tonight, and I want to, again, introduce my panel tonight, the part of the CWAC crew.

We have Jake Korn and Matthew Henson. And I'll start with Jake. I know he's the elder of the two, so age before beauty will allow him to come. And tell the audience who doesn't know who you are. I know you're world famous with the tag groups, and you're on a lot of podcasts now, but tell everybody who you are and your background.

Keith, it's so good to be back, man. Yeah, I'm Jake Korn. I'm a United States Army chaplain currently stationed at Hunter Army Airfield. I'm currently serving as the senior pastor for the Hunter Army Airfield Protestant Chapel.

Previously a pastor, it's part of what you need to be to be a chaplain. And I'm also the tag group king of Calvinist Facebook, so you can look me up on just say you don't understand Reformed theology and move along, and many others.

Come see us,.

We have a lot of fun. I also want to add you're a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, is that.

Correct? That's right, I got my MDiv in 2016. Again, that was just part of the requirements.

To be a chaplain. Yep, awesome, awesome. And Matthew? Yes, sir. Well, to the crew who hasn't.

Been with us in a while or at all, my name is Matthew Henson. I'm just a guy who loves Jesus and is friends with these guys. Keith and I met a few years ago, actually at a debate I was moderating and became friends after that.

I have a passion for logic debate, ordered thinking, let's just say. We've done everything from past theologians to Supreme Court stuff to weather, I mean, all kinds of stuff here on the show. It's been a lot of fun with that.

I'm excited about tonight's topic, I think it's a good one, and I think this is one of those that really you can take out the very next day and use as a Christian, and that's something that high theology is great.

Practical theology always beats high theology when it comes to.

Day-to-day use, I guess. Amen. And you are a great Bible teacher in your own right. You teach at your church, you minister to the students, and you are a deacon, am I correct? I am, yes. I am one of the.

Inaugural group of deacons at my church. I do Wednesday night middle school small group and have done that for about 10 years now, which is wild to think about. And so I love gotcha questions, because they all think they're so clever, and they're not.

But it does keep you sharp, it really.

Does. Well this is something we've talked about doing for a long time, and something I've been looking forward to. As Matthew said, it's something I think is highly practical, and what's interesting is that very recently this actually came up in my own household.

My children go to a private Christian school, and one of the teachers, who I love in their school, is a Pentecostal lady, and she loves the Lord, she loves my kids, and I'm thankful for her. Certainly we have some disagreements, and we've had conversations about those disagreements, but my son, who is eight years old, came home from school the other day, and he said, Daddy, what is a Pentecostal?

And you know, it's interesting to think, well, we all, you know, we love the Lord, we love Christ, we're all followers of Christ, but there are some differences, and some of those differences are on some major things, some are on some minor things, some are on some things that matter, some are on some things that don't really matter.

And so we wanted to talk tonight about that, and I want to begin with this phrase. This phrase is often attributed to Augustine, but it's not certain, just like many phrases that are often attributed to Augustine, Luther, Calvin, it's not always certain whether or not this direct phrase came from them.

But the phrase is, in essentials, unity, in non-essentials, liberty, and in all things, charity. Now some people say, but I like the alliteration of, in essentials, unity, in all things, charity. So the idea behind that phrase is that when it comes to the essentials, then we need to have unity across denominational lines, all Christians should be unified in the essentials, but when it comes to non-essentials, then we are to have liberty.

But the big question becomes, what are the essentials, and who gets to decide what the essentials are? And so that's one of the first things I want to ask the two of you to just comment on briefly is, one, do you think that that's a good phrase?

Do you think that's a good motto? Is that a motto a church should have, or just a general Christian motto? And who do you think gets to decide who the essentials are, or what the essentials are? So we'll let Jake go.

First. Well, I think this is one place where it's really beneficial for you and me, Keith, to be Reformed Baptists, you know, because for us, the way Baptist polity works, right, it is the local eldership that is the determining factor of decisions under Scripture.

So for me, I would say that it's the local eldership that's going to need to decide what those categories are for their individual congregations based on Scripture. But I will say, I think it's extremely important for us to allow our dead brothers and sisters in the past throughout church history to at least have a vote, so we can at least hear their voices in the conversation.

This becomes extremely important. This is really relevant in my job as United States Army Chaplain, because we do have to kind of cast a broad net of who we serve, right? Like I serve a battalion of everybody, all religions, and then I have a chapel, which you heard me call it Protestant chapel.

It's not Calvinist chapel. It's not Baptist chapel. It's Protestant chapel. So I have to have a much broader scope of who that includes. And so I let history kind of help me determine that. So for example, if a Latter-day Saint wanted to be part of my body, I would have to say, listen, historically, the personhood of Christ and the Trinity, that's always been a primary marker of who is in the family and who's not in the family.

That's just traditionally always been who is determined as Christian and not. And we can look at history to determine that. And then I, as the senior pastor of the chapel, kind of filter that from Scripture through history directly to my congregation.

So, you know, that's how I look at that based off of the framework of my theology as a Reformed Baptist.

Amen. And that brings me to a question. I don't want to get too far off into military, the way things work, but let's say a Latter-day Saint wanted to come into the Protestant chapel. They'd be welcome, right?

But how does that work?

So I have a ton of freedom in my chapel setting, as opposed to in my unit setting where I don't. You know, I'm more of a government employee in the unit, but in the chapel I do. I have the right to fence my communion however I want, to fence my baptism however I want.

Ostensibly, I probably could fence attendance if I wanted to, but I wouldn't stop someone from attending. What we don't have in chapel is membership, and that's because I theologically do not consider a chapel as a church.

So a chapel is a place that you visit when you're transient between places. You know, if you're on vacation or in the hospital, you go to a chapel. I do not consider it a church, so I wouldn't have a problem with a Latter-day Saint attending, but I do very clearly fence my communion around, if you believe in the Triune God as expressed through the full divinity of Christ, and you've made a credible confession of Christ, then you may partake in this Lord's Supper.

But again, you know, that's me as the facsimile of an elder in that chapel.

Setting making that determination from Scripture. Amen. All right, Matthew, back to the question of Inessentials Unity. What are your thoughts on that quote, and who do you think is the.

Arbiter of that? Well, I think it's important to note that when we look back at Church history, the Apostles were certainly all of one mind. I mean, the Apostles, everything they wrote, we consider to be God-breathed, to be God's very Word to us.

And yet, even they had instances recorded in Galatians, for instance, where Peter and Paul, for instance, were at each other. And so even the very Apostles, those in the earliest part of the Church who gave us the Scriptures, Christ founded His Church, but in an earthly sense, the men who founded this movement and preached at Pentecost and had the Holy Spirit come upon them and all that sort of thing, these men differed.

And what was it that they always went back to? It was the words of Christ. That's what Paul confronts Peter with in saying that, you know, this division that you're bringing into the Church is one that Christ died to get rid of.

And so even they had to hash this stuff out. So it should come as absolutely no shock or concern to Christians nowadays if we have some disagreements that we need to hash out and understand that sometimes that can get a little bit messy, and that's okay.

Ultimately, and we'll get to this in a little bit, but ultimately, who gets to decide what is or isn't essential is God. God gets to make that determination. And when He gave us His Word in written form, He gave us exactly what He intended for us to have.

He did not feel the need to make things clearer in some cases, and He made some things absolutely crystal clear. And so I think what that does is it gives a Church, it gives a Christian really, flexibility on adapting to their local context on the non-essentials, on the secondary and tertiary issues, while holding the same core like you alluded to, Keith.

Because if Christianity is going to be a worldwide religion, and it is, and it will continue to be, the Gospel will march on, there will be some differences in exactly how things look in various contexts, but they all must hold to a common core.

And I believe that the definitional, inarguable, I've said definition twice, but the inarguable parts of Christianity, the tier one issues, are the ones that we see clearly expressed in Scripture as being, this is the way that it is.

And if someone wants to differ from that, doesn't mean we hate them, doesn't mean we cast them out necessarily, and depending on the context, like Jake was saying with the chapel, but we do acknowledge you are following a different religion.

Once you have something that is not definitionally Christianity, it is appropriate to say that person is not a Christian, and we don't need to be afraid to say.

That. Amen. It's funny you said common core, that might strike a, cause a few people to fall into an allergic reaction to that. Well, yeah, and just to continue the metaphor a little bit,.

As the constitutional amateur, very amateur scholar, I mean the whole idea of the US was set up that way. You have a small set of things that everyone can agree on, and then otherwise you have what's called federalism, where every state kind of does what they want on this and that and the other.

Now, I think Christianity has more to say than just the four pages of the Constitution. We have an entire Bible, for crying out loud, so I think there's more definitional things, but for those political junkies out there, Christian federalism, if such a word existed, not federal vision stuff, but Christian federalism in the sense that we can have one thing we can all agree on, while each individual polity out there can kind of come up with their own way of doing some things, is a healthy thing, and that's how Christ built his church and continues to build it.

And I want to say, I think it's, what you said right there is so important, that's how Christ built his church. It was intentionally by design. If God had wanted to give us a Leviticus for the intended to stay put and prepare for the King of Kings to come, Christianity was intended to grow, and almost like a virus, and you'll have to forgive me, I'm not a great biology student, but the nucleus of the virus needs to stay the same, but the little protein spikes that come off the end, how you view art, how you view music, those things are intended to kind of adapt to the culture, not in a relativistic sense, but so that like a virus, it can grow and spread, and that's why the purity of the church in Somalia today, if you found a pure church there, is not going to look anything like a pure church in the deep south of America.

Yep.

Well, good thinking, good thoughts, and I want to mention that something I picked up as each of you were talking is both of you mentioned specifically that church history does speak to this. When we talk about what the essentials are, you know, Jake, you mentioned are the people who've died before us, and Matt, you specifically said, you know, we got to look to the past.

You know, God is the one who decides, but God has shown this to us through history. So one of the things that I think is really a huge light bulb is when we see churches that are making things essential that have not been historically essential.

Yes, absolutely. And that creates one of the things we're going to talk about in a little while, and that's with one of the diagrams that Matthew created, which is the hyper-fundamentalist, which makes everything essential.

But we'll get—I don't want to give away too much right now, because we're going to move to those charts here, and if you're listening to the podcast today, you may want to go over to the YouTube video so that you can see what we're doing.

And subscribe when you get there. Absolutely, please do. And if you like this video, hit the thumbs up, and if you don't like it, hit thumbs down twice. Always remember that. That's right. But I'm going to put the slides up on the screen now.

This is going to our faces smaller, so that'll be a benefit. But this is what we're talking about, what doctrines should divide us. And the one issue I have with the Augustinian quote, if it is truly Augustinian, is when he says, in essentials unity and non-essentials liberty, I do believe there is a third category, and that there's essentials, there are secondary matters, which I would say are the denominational distinctions, where denominations can divide.

And then there's what might be referred to as adiaphora, or those things which are sometimes considered argumentative, doubtful, unsure, the things that are on the third tier, tertiary, if we want to say primary, secondary, and tertiary.

And this is the drawing that I did the other day, for those who are looking at the screen. My son asked me what a Pentecostal is, and so I broke out a piece of paper and I just drew faith essentials in the middle, and I started talking about, you know, God.

You have to believe in God. You have to believe that Jesus is God's Son. You know, I'm talking to an eight-year-old, so I'm making it very, very simple. And I did reference the fact that you have to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and rose from the dead.

I think those are essential things, and we'll talk about that in a minute, because our Church has a historical anomaly. In the 80s, the Church that I currently serve in had a pastor who did not believe in the virgin birth.

So I want to ask you guys in a few minutes, would that disqualify? I know what I think, but do you think that would disqualify someone from the faith? I know it certainly should have disqualified him from being a pastor, but that's something I would want to ask you gentlemen.

So moving out from that circle, I put denominational distinctions, and that's where I began to explain to him what Pentecostals believe versus Baptists. And it's funny how many things are the same among Pentecostals and Baptists.

They have a similar view of baptism, they have a similar view of what it means to be saved, they have a very similar view of those things. It's the miraculous gifts and tongues and things that separate and create those distinctions.

And then the outer circle, which my son really didn't understand this part, but I wrote Millennial Views, and I even put head coverings there, which I know drives some people crazy, because some people think that's more of a secondary issue than a tertiary issue, that's where this came from.

But after this, I've got the chart that Matthew has created, and I'd like to turn it over to you for a minute, Matthew, and kind of walk us through your thinking as you put this together. Sure. So I'll have the listeners,.

You're deprived of my incredible Microsoft Paint skills here, but basically here's what we have. We have a bullseye, essentially, and there's three concentric rings, and the title says Biblical Christianity.

And because I couldn't come up with good names for these, I copped out and called them Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 issues. I've played around with, through the center ring, definitional and this and that and the other, but I just can't settle on good terminology, so I'm just calling them Tier 1, 2, and 3.

So Christianity at its core, sorry, my, it's not a religion, it's a relationship, bro, people out there, it is a religion, Christianity is, and a religion is demarcated by certain beliefs. There are certain things you must believe in order to be a Christian.

Now, this differs from some religions in which there are certain things you must do. We are not a works-based crew here, in case you didn't figure that out, we are, we believe that Christianity is a religion of belief.

Now certainly, faith without works is dead, good works will be a fruit, we're not denying that, but we're talking about belief here. So Tier 1 issues are in the dead center of Christianity, they make something definitionally Christian.

So Keith has a wife and some children, and we would call that his family. It's very easy to determine who is in Keith's family and who is not in Keith's family. And if you're not in Keith's family, it doesn't mean you're a bad person necessarily, it just means that you're not in Keith's family, and it's very easy to definitionally demarcate how that works and who is there.

So then you have your Tier 2 issues, and these are what I would simply call congregational issues, in the sense that if you differ from what I think the Bible teaches on these, I'm not saying that you're not a Christian, I'm not saying that you're not saved, but I wouldn't go to your church, and we might not partner with you for ministry, perhaps.

That might be something that we would draw a line on that and say, we're not going to do that. And then you have Tier 3. Tier 3 issues, as Keith alluded to, Adiaphra, things like that. Here is the phrase that I've, I've, I came up with that I've settled on the most, and I think this holds.

Mature Christians should be able to attend the same church while differing on these matters. Now, there is some Romans 14 kind of an idea of if it's an Adiaphra thing, but it causes the weaker, you know, newer Christian, baby Christian to stumble, you should give up your position on those, like that's fine.

But I'm making a demarcation, I'm saying mature Christians should be able to attend church in the same pews while knowing the other differs on these type of issues. That's a Tier 3 issue. And so that, that sort of model, the three-tiered model, I think explains pretty well every Christian doctrinal belief, we could put it in one of those three.

Categories. Before we go on, can I take a stab at this one? Yes, please. I've shortened it like this. The middle tier is, I'm right, and you have to agree with me. Tier 2 is, I'm right, but you're still Christian if you don't agree with me.

And then Tier 3 is, I'm probably right, but it's okay. Because I don't want us to look at Tier 2 and say, you know, it could go either way. I don't look at baptism and think it could go either way. I look at baptism and say, this is unbelievably clear, but you're still a Christian.

But Tier 3, I look at head coverings and I go, I'm probably right on this, but if I find out I'm wrong, it's okay. Tier 2 issues.

Matter. If you're, and I hate the term church shopping, but I mean mature Christians who say they're moving to a new town that need to evaluate a church's doctrine, if there's a difference on a Tier 2 issue, don't go to church there.

I mean, go somewhere that teaches what the Bible, and acts out what the Bible believes, and that can range from worship issues to ecclesiology to leadership, all kinds of different stuff like that can fall into Tier 2.

And to echo what Jake said, it does matter. It's just not, and I don't like this terminology because I think we boil things down too far to it. It's not a salvation issue, a difference in a Tier 2. Now it can portend some problems in Tier 1.

Very often there are linkages here. You know, for example, if you never celebrate the Lord's Supper, like ever, I'm not saying that you're automatically going to hell for that. But if I ask why, and you say, well, I don't believe Jesus's death on the cross really did anything.

Okay, well now we're at a Tier 1 issue. So there's linkages outwards, and sometimes you can find pathways into inconsistencies in Tier 1 if you ask the right questions.

I got an alliteration for you if you want to rename these. Go, go. Definitional issues, denominational issues, discernment issues. Ooh, there we go.

Yeah, there you go. Or don't-care issues.

I don't care. I love calling the second one denominational, though, because this was so funny. I took issue with Rick Warren. I take issue with Rick Warren a lot, but I took issue with Rick Warren specifically when he stood up at the California SBC, which was two years ago.

It wasn't this year, it was the year prior. And he stood up and he said, we don't need to be arguing about secondary issues. And I raised my hand. I said, you're in a denomination, everything in a denomination is a secondary issue.

Yeah, that's the point. In the sense, yeah, if it's only about the primary issues, then it's not a denominational issue anymore, because it's a Christian issue. The primary issues make it definitional to the faith.

And the issue he was talking about was women pastors, and the issue of women pastors, I would say, is a secondary issue, is in that green circle, the second circle. But as Matthew just said, it certainly can affect the primary, because it can be a broader issue of how somebody understands how the Bible applies and the authority of Scripture.

So it's not necessarily a primary issue, but it can speak to how that church understands the authority of Scripture.

Because if you say, I read Scripture in such a way that I believe it says women can be pastors, okay. If you say, I don't believe that those parts of the Bible are authoritative to me,.

Not okay. That's a different issue. Exactly. The difference between N .T. Wright's argument for women—he makes an argument from Scripture. I disagree. Matthew and I did a show about it where we talked about N .T. Wright and his reasoning for women being able to be pastors.

I totally disagree with him, but I understand he's at least trying to come from a biblical perspective. He's not saying the Bible's not authoritative. And there's a much different argument.

These aren't hard and fast. The tier one issues are, but as far as the line between tier two and tier three and how close tier two is before it gets dangerous, some of those are going to fudge. And as we'll see, some people consider things in categories that I don't consider.

You talk to your hardcore Presbyterians, and they'll consider Second Commandment violations in their reckoning. To them, it's almost a tier one issue. It's close enough to them because they think it's flagrant, flagrant sin.

And I get that, but for me, it's not. I could go to their church and have no problem with it, and I can have images of Christ in my church and have no problem with it. Again, history has to inform us of this.

I'm arguing with Catholics online, and they'll go, you guys got the 40 ,000 denominations. Or sometimes when a baby Protestant starts to discover church history a little bit, they're like, we just need to have one church.

This denomination thing is crazy. I'll be like, well, what do you believe? Do you believe in baby baptism or believer's baptism? Well, I believe in adult baptism. So what do we do with the baby baptizers?

Because up until the early 1500s, we would kill you if you disagreed, but we're not going to advocate for killing them, right? No, we're not going to advocate for killing them. So what do you do with them, with the ones who are in that category?

Do you force them by gunpoint? No. Do you kick them out of Christianity? No. Okay. What do you do? You let them have a church, live in peace. What else do you do? What do you do with those people who have denominational issues that are different than yours?

You can't force them. You can try to convince them, but let's say at the end of the day, you don't convince them. We don't murder them, so we let them live in peace. That's what we do with them. And making errors on that is.

Actually what we get into in the next slide, because we're talking about errors here and how.

You apply these categories. Yeah, I want to look at the next slide real quick, and I would ask you again, Matthew, since you created these beautiful works of art, if you would explain to us what the next two are.

And I don't remember the order, but I think the first one is...oh, okay. So we have tier three, and then we have tier one. But what you're saying is if all of the circles are gone, and it's only that, so what?

Yeah. So for the listener, we're looking at a.

Single circle. It says tier one, the whole thing's red or pink. Jake's shirt color, essentially. Red. Yeah, there you go. This is what we would call fundamentalism. Okay. So the error of fundamentalism is considering everything a tier one issue.

Now, the fundees are correct on this, that some things are tier one issues. Most fundamentalist Christians would, you know, affirm the deity of Christ, the resurrection, this, that, and the other. But they would put things that have no business being in tier one, in tier one.

And by the way, this diagram shows a perfect, someone who's perfectly sold out to this kind of thing. In reality, most fundamentalists have a massive tier one, and then a little itty bitty, bitty, bitty, tiny, tiny tier three.

Like, it's there, but there's not much to it. You could, some of these border on the absurd. So you can have people that say, you know, and they make these logical leaps. If you're not, if your pastor's not preaching in a three-piece suit out of a leather King James Bible in front.

Of a wooden podium, lectern, whatever. And that King James Bible is a big part of that. That's.

Right. Yeah. Not in everyone, but that, yeah. Certainly. Then you're not a Christian. Not just, I wouldn't go to your church. You are not saved. The gift of the spirit has not been given you. And on the last day you will be cast into hell.

And I I'm putting it in that drastic of terminology because there's a lot of people that believe this way. A lot of your cults tend towards this as well. Now they tend to have a little bit of a different source of authority.

It's whatever the leader says. So if the leader says it, it's a tier one issue. So anything that the leader happens to define of the cult becomes a tier one issue. And anyone who doesn't go along with that lock, stock and barrel is outside of, outside of the faith.

So that's, that's the error of fundamentalism is everything is essential. Absolutely. Everything is definitional. Yeah.

Okay. And so the, the opposite extreme, and we talk about in our church, we all, we often talk about two ditches, you know, there's almost an, almost on every issue, you've got the, the, the far one side and the far other side and the opposite of extreme, the opposite extreme of fundamentalism, you, you have labeled progressivism and left slash leftism, which is making, are you saying everything's not essential?

Everything's adiaphora?

Yeah. So at the, and again, this is just, it's kind of like saying a frictionless plane or, you know, whatever. It's like some of those physics things that are just to make a point, you know, and so this is perfect progressivism, perfect leftism, biological endpoint, let's say, is where enough, absolutely nothing is essential to where these people can have perfect unity with everybody.

This is why, when I went to an Episcopal high school and we had chapel every week, we had a week, and this is in 2010 or 11, you know, so that was even what, 12, 13 years ago, we had tolerance week, it was called, and there was a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim imam that were on stage during the chapel service, and we had an Episcopal priestess, lady priest, that was on there proclaiming to everyone that these faith traditions bring something valuable to the table, and we're all just going to find our own way to God, and I really respect them for coming, and so we're all worshiping the same God, was the message.

So what that person has done is they've taken all of the things by which historic Christianity has defined itself, and they've just moved it into tier three, meaning you believe the deity of Christ, you believe in the resurrection, you believe in Christ's return, oh that's great, you don't believe in those things, well man, you're still a Christian, and we're still good friends with you.

That is the opposite error,.

And it's one that we have to recognize and run away from. Yeah, and that's amazing. I forget sometimes that you went to Episcopal High School. You were a weightlifter at Episcopal High School. I was! Yes, I've seen a video of little Matthew Henson, not little, young Matthew Henson lifting.

A lot of weights. I was okay at it. For a skinny kid that was the perfect cross-country runner who.

Went into the opposite sport, I was okay with it. But that's interesting to know that they put an imam and a rabbi up there on the dais. That's interesting. Well, so that does help sort of draw some of the big errors, that when people talk about what's essential, non-essential, making everything essential is an error.

Making nothing essential is an error. But that still brings us back to the question of what, if we believe that this circle, this one that you created with the tier one in the middle, if we believe that that's correct—and I think all three of us would agree with this in general—we still have to come to the answer of what goes in that center circle.

And I know that there are people who are just waiting with bated breath to hear what we, the three of us, the three minds that are behind tonight's podcast, what are we going to say really belongs in this center circle?

Now, before we answer, I do want to reference one other podcast. The Do Theology guys, which I have their names here, their names are Ken Chipcase and Jeremy Howard, and Ken actually sent me this when I mentioned I was going to do this podcast.

I posted a picture of my drawing that I did for my son, and he said, well, my friend and I who do our podcast worked on this chart, and he sent me this chart, I sent it to you guys, and they have broken down, of course, primary doctrine, secondary doctrine, doubtful things, and I like what they've done here.

I think we can reference this at a certain point tonight as we're talking. I don't want to start with them, I want to start with our conversation and maybe come back to this, but at least I do want to say thanks to them for sending me this, and if anyone is interested, you can go to dotheology .com and you can get a PDF high-quality print of this.

And I would say, having looked at it, I would say I agree for the most part with what they have here, but I want us to talk through some of these things. But for anybody who's interested, and this might be hard to see on the YouTube video, here's a little bit bigger view if you want to take a screenshot of that if somebody's watching, but we'll go back to our circles, and I want to talk through this center circle.

What are some of the things that we would say, the three of us, and I know we're not elders together, we're not serving in the same church, but if we just happen to be serving together and we were the ones who were getting to say, okay, here's what we're all going to agree should go in the center circle.

What are some of the things that are non-negotiables, and if a believer was talking to another believer or went to a church where they denied this, you would say, this isn't a secondary issue, this is a definitional issue, and they should run like a white-tailed deer away from that church.

So what are some, yeah, exactly, bounce your way out, blind them with your behind is what we, I teach that in self-defense class, I say as soon as you are able, blind them with your behind, run as fast as you can, yeah.

So Jake, what do you think? What goes in that center circle?

Well, first I'd start with the Athanasian Creed. I choose that over the other creeds just because it is robust, it's a little bit more robust in what it encompasses as a Trinitarian statement. So anything that touches on the person of Christ and the being of God, the Godhead, I think is a primary issue that cannot be changed.

I will not move on the Trinity, I will not move on the Hypostatic Union, I will not move on the Virgin Birth, I think is part of that specifically. Secondarily, I would hold to, I don't know if I would phrase it as gender roles like on the other list that you had, but there's something about a biblical anthropology, how God created man.

So on that other list, there was the image of God in man, there was biblical sexuality. So those things are definitional to Christianity, specifically because one, the words of Christ affirm the Genesis Doctrine, and the Bible is how humanity relates to God, so biblical anthropology.

And then thirdly, I would also say biblical inerrancy. And a lot of people might give me some pushback on biblical inerrancy, but I think authority of Scripture in and of itself, you can deviate from that sometimes because you fall short in sinfulness, that's one thing, and you can interpret differently than me as long as you are interpreting it as authority, but what you cannot deviate from is the fact that the Bible is authority.