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 Reform 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, you know, logic debate, ordered thinking, let's just say.

We've done everything from, you know, 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.

So yeah.

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, in all things, love, 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 a 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.

We can look 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 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.

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.

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, 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 the 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, who 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 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 U.S.

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, we're not doing that, 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 New Testament, he could have, right? Old Testament Judaism was not intended to grow, per se, it was intended to stay put and prepare for the King of Kings to come.

Christianity was intended to grow, and almost like a virus, you'll have to forgive me, I'm not a great biology student, right? 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, right? 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.

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 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 make 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 God.

You have to believe in God.

You have to believe that Jesus is God's Son.

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.

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, but 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.

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 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, 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 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, adiaphora, things like that.

Here is the phrase that I've 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 adiaphora 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 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.

Like 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 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.

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' 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.

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 1 issues are, but as far as the line between Tier 2 and Tier 3 and how close Tier 2 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 1 issue.

It's close enough to them, because they think it's 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, well, 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.

Okay, 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.

Okay, 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 go ahead.

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.

It's 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 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 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.

It's there, but there's not much to it.

Some of these border on the absurd.

So you can have people that say, and they make these logical leaps, 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'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 the faith.

So that's the error of fundamentalism, is everything is essential.

Absolutely everything is definitional.

Yeah.

Okay, and so the opposite extreme, and we talk about in our church, we often talk about two ditches.

There's almost on every issue, you've got the far one side and the far other side, and the opposite extreme of fundamentalism, you have labeled progressivism and leftism, which is making...

Are you saying everything's not essential? Everything's adiaphora? Yeah.

And again, it's kind of like saying a frictionless plane or whatever.

It's like some of those physics things that are just to make a point.

And so this is perfect progressivism, perfect leftism, biological endpoint, let's say, is where 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, 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, 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 it 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, right? 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.

Okay, great.

So just keep, we're not typing out a list, but just to keeping in the list, you certainly believe the Trinity, because you mentioned the Athanasian Creed, which of course expresses the historic doctrine of the Trinity.

The nature of man as made in the image of God, made male and female in the image of God, you referenced the sexuality, and you would, I'm assuming in that you would also affirm man as sinner, as man has fallen.

Yeah, it's part of a biblical anthropology.

Exactly, yep.

And then the nature of Scripture as being part of that center circle.

All right, Matthew, what would you add to that knowing those three things that he has said? And I'm hearing you typing, are you making a list for us? Well, I was, yeah, I was doing a little bit of that, yeah.

Yeah, that's fine, that's fine.

But what would you add in addition to as center circle absolutes? Well, I'm not going to differ with Jake, I'm just going to be a little more specific, I guess, and I would say the deity of Christ is the fundamental issue that sets apart Christianity.

Jesus couldn't be clearer in John 8.

He says, unless you believe that I am, referring ego, I, me, the Old Testament name of God, you will die in your sins.

He says that explicitly when Paul is writing to the Romans, you know, Romans 10, 9, he says, if you believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord, Jesu kurios, and that Lord meaning, you know, referencing back to the Old Testament and all the rich connections with Yahweh as Lord, if you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved is what he says.

So it has to focus first and foremost on the person of Christ and the fact that he is Yahweh God of the Old Testament.

If you don't have that, you don't have Christianity.

All of the cults, your Jehovah's Witnesses, your Mormons, some of your very aberrant ones out there that claim the cloak of Christianity, that is the thing they go after.

It is always the deity of Christ.

Now, in order to do that, you have to whack the scaffolding of the authority of scripture, you have to take out a lot of other stuff like that, but that is the fundamental pillar of what Christianity is.

I would put a few other things in there.

So you would need to believe the statements Jesus made about himself.

So when he said the Son of Man is going to be handed over and put to death, but on the third day he will rise again, if you just say, well I don't believe that, I think Jesus didn't tell the truth, well then you're not affirming him as Yahweh God because he's the source of all truth.

So any affirmation you make that is contrary to something Jesus said about himself becomes a definitional issue.

It becomes something that we can say you are outside the faith because you do not follow and submit to the same Lord that I do.

There's a few other things in there.

I don't want to go too long winded on that, but I think for me that would be the core.

I try and make it simple, of course, the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed, I would affirm both of those in their statements, the existence of God the Father.

Again, if there is no God the Father, then Jesus was a schizophrenic praying to nobody in John 17.

So again, all of these things come back to do we believe what Jesus said about himself.

You said something that sparked my mind, in the Creed there's more than just the Trinity, right? Because the Creed also says he will return to judge the living and the dead.

So that's a piece of it as well, not necessarily are you postmill correct or amill incorrect, but do you believe that there is a return of Christ and that return of Christ comes final judgment? That's included in the Creed on purpose, and so when I said the Athanasian Creed, I mean to encompass that as well.

Yeah, and interesting that you mentioned the Athanasian Creed, because I had already pulled up the—oh, lost Matthew.

I'm still with you, I'm just changing something, sorry.

No worries.

I had pulled up before the show on my computer here the Apostles' Creed.

Now, the Apostles' Creed obviously is not as comprehensive as the Athanasian Creed.

It doesn't really speak to a robust Trinitarianism, but it does give, I think, at least a bare minimum of what we have to believe in regard to God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.

Jesus Christ, his Son, conceived of the Spirit, born of a virgin, you know, died, was buried, descended, you know.

And then I know that descended to hell, there's debate on what that means, and I know there—but ultimately that he certainly was buried and rose again, that he truly died and ascended to heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.

In fact, that last line is where the issue with full preterism comes in, because the argument is that he has already come, and that is not the historic position.

And if you stand in full preterism, you stand against historical Christianity, regardless of whether or not you think you're right, and maybe—I'm not saying maybe you are right, you're not—but you cannot say, I am standing with historical Christianity.

You simply cannot, if you're a full preterist.

Exactly.

So I just, you know, the one issue with holding to an Apostles' Creed centrality is, of course, the Roman Catholics would hold to the Apostles' Creed, and we might take issue with saying that there are Roman Catholic things that would deny our understanding of the Gospel, and does that mean all Roman Catholics can't be saved? No, I'm not saying that, but there are fundamental issues that are tier-one issues in the Roman Catholic Church.

I think all three of us would agree with that, that they're tier-one issues.

Yeah, yeah, because I wanted to add, the solas are there for a reason as well.

So you must believe in salvation by faith alone, grace alone, through Christ alone, right? So that's a part of that puzzle too, and so in terms of the Roman Catholic, it's okay to not understand how a certain doctrine works, like the Trinity.

You can not understand the Trinity, but you can't reject the Trinity.

That's a good point, yeah.

Right? So a Catholic layperson can read their own Bible and come to a saving faith because they have a full Bible present, but the Roman Catholic system is not a saving system because it denies sola fide and sola gratia.

Can I throw a live wire out there that I think you guys might even push back on me for? I don't think that sola scriptura, as defined, goes in tier one, and here's what I mean by that.

A belief in sola scriptura is not required to be considered a Christian, and here's what I mean, okay? When I was a young boy, I believed errantly, but I believed that my parents and God were equally authoritative.

Whatever God said mattered, and whatever my parents said mattered.

If I never opened a Bible, but the only thing my parents ever told me was biblical truth, then I still believe that God working through that, even if I didn't believe the Bible at all, but I just believed what mom and dad told me about God, and let's assume for the sake of argument that everything they said was authentic and good and Christian and all that.

I think God uses that and saves people through that.

I think people that do not, let's say they have the Bible and Dave, and they think that they're equally authoritative, but Dave happens to tell them things that comport with the Bible, even if the person does not personally believe that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church, they can still be a Christian.

Obviously, I would never go to a church where the eldership believed that.

I would never, you know, whatever, but people get really upset when you say, I don't think that the theological belief in sola scriptura is a tier one issue.

Yeah, but we're not talking about individual beliefs though, right? Because the thing that saves you, and this is a Reform perspective, I suppose, the thing that saves you is your election through God's plan and salvation through Christ.

So it's not your mental ascent to any of these doctrines that saves you.

We're talking about the things that would define historical Christianity, right? That would define Christianity itself.

So I think sola scriptura is what is definitional of Christianity, but if you guy don't have that ordered correctly in your head, I don't think that changes it being a tier one issue, because that's why I don't like using it's a salvation issue.

Yeah, I don't like that terminology either.

The thief on the cross didn't understand any of this stuff at all.

You know what I mean? He didn't have any of this rightly ordered.

The way I've likened it to is like if you've got a ship that goes down and then another ship comes up a few hours later, like the Titanic or whatever, someone says, well, the lifeboats saved all of the people.

Well, no, actually not being hypothermic saved all of the people.

The lifeboat was the mechanism by which they were guarded from the danger, but the lifeboats didn't actually save them.

The fact that they were not negative 30 degrees is what saved them, okay? So when you have someone who has proper doctrine but does not believe in sola scriptura, that's an anomaly, because that doesn't normally happen.

You remove the safeguards, and it's like throwing a bowling ball down the alley without the little bumper things like that.

Yeah, you can hit a strike, sure, but odds are you won't for the rest of your life.

That's all.

There was two things I and I agree with you, Jake, that they belong in the center circle.

But I would also say, and I think I'm sure you would agree, that a person can be saved by faith alone without understanding the doctrine of sola fide.

They can be saved by faith alone without even understanding how that works.

But a congregation that rejects it is not a Christian congregation.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I would agree, yeah.

That's the difference.

A person can be a fool and be saved.

That's not what I'm saying.

Praise the Lord.

If a church rejects sola gratia, that is not a Christian church.

That is a church that is deep in error.

So the other thing I wanted to mention, and this could take another show, and maybe we should do a show about this, because this is a hot-button burn-your-fingers issue.

And yeah, I'm almost nervous to bring it up, because I don't know where you guys stand on this.

But the doctrine of what's sometimes referred to as eternal subordinationism, but is actually, the more specific term now is E-R-A-S, and that stands for Eternal Relations of Authority and Submission, relating to the economic relations between the Father, Son, and Spirit within the from all eternity.

So would that...because I have seen people who would say that if you take a different view on that, then you're no longer a Christian, but then at the same time, in doing so, are removing from the Kingdom men like Bruce Ware and Wayne Grudem and others who take a view of E-R-A-S.

So what are your thoughts on that? And again, we're not the authority, we're just giving our opinion, but I think that there is some grace in there.

I think that men can disagree on this and still be in the Kingdom, but where do you guys stand? I think as long as you don't go Arianism, you're fine.

As long as Christ is not a created being who is not Yahweh God from eternity past into eternity future, as long as you don't go there, I'm kind of okay with that.

Because you've got some Carmen Christie, some Philippians 2, you've got some John 17, a little bit that's giving you just a little tiny peephole into that eternity past bit.

I don't like making definitional things out of what we have so little data and we're so speculative on.

I think it was, I forget which church father it was, got into so much trouble speculating on what...no, no, it was Jonathan Edwards got into so much trouble speculating on what Eden was like and what pre-fall Adam was like, and we just don't have enough biblical data to really make definitive statements there.

And with respect to the EFS guys and the ERAS and that, like I'm not saying those conversations aren't important and Christology matters and hear me on that, but my line would be full-blown Arianism.

As long as you understand the equality of the Father and the Son and you don't go to creator-creation relationship between them, the particulars of how all that works, I'm comfortable putting that secondary or maybe even audio.

I would put that audio for, honestly, if the guy in the pew next to me is full EFS and I'm not, I would still go to church with that guy.

I think he's a little whack, but I'd still go to church with that guy.

Yeah.

It's speculative theology, which is good.

It's like crazy physics or imaginary numbers in math.

It's a thought experiment that we don't have the data to really reproduce.

I think Ware and Grudem make good-faith arguments that are just wrong, but I don't think they're denying the Trinity.

I think they're misstating the relationships of the Trinity with not correct, but good-faith arguments from Scripture.

Good thoughts, good thoughts.

And like I said, that may be something that we may want to travel that road again.

And I will say this, anytime I've talked about it on the podcast before, I have always gotten someone to come in on one side or the other of this argument and leave a page of comments because I either didn't understand the EFS side or I didn't understand the other side.

And so anybody who's ready to crack your knuckles and begin typing, I...

I will never read it.

I mean, another one to say, this is just kind of a good touch point.

Like Jake said, church history gets a vote, like not determinative.

We're solo scriptura affirmers on this podcast, unless you called that into doubt from my comments a few minutes ago.

But if no church in history has ever separated over this issue, maybe pump the brakes a little bit.

It's not to say we don't investigate it with the scriptures as the highest authority, but like ERIS or EFS, like if you can't find a church in anywhere prior to like the 18th century that split over this or any real disputes that became more than friendly disagreements as Christians have, maybe stop kicking people out of the kingdom for it.

But I would say that the creeds were not crafted in 20 minutes.

They meticulously fought for every word, every clause.

So to say that Christ is very God of very God, very light of very light.

These are super specific words that are addressing EFS.

They are addressing those topics with the words that they chose on purpose.

And so I would challenge, especially, you know, kind of newbie self-trained theologians on the internet.

Love you.

Super glad you're getting your theology from YouTube.

You know, but study those things really carefully in their context.

Those words were chosen on purpose.

Those men, which were all of the most brilliant Christian minds of the world at that time, like labored for a very long time to choose those words on purpose.

Yep.

Now, is there anything, because I want to move to the second circle and we are, you know, moving right along.

I don't want to belabor it too much, but is there anything that we didn't say about the center circle that we may want to add? And here's my one thought.

I asked earlier about the pastor from our church.

And again, for people who don't know the history of our church, our church used to be part of the Disciples of Christ, very liberal theological, theologically liberal denomination.

So that changed when we left the denomination in 99, and I got saved that same year, interestingly enough.

But before that, we had a pastor, 1988 to 90.

I was in the church, I was a little kid, and he did not believe in the virgin birth.

I would say that guy should not be a pastor, I should say, anywhere.

I don't think he should be if that's your position, that Jesus wasn't born of a virgin, you've denied the authority of Scripture, you've denied the truth of God which is laid out for us, but can he be a Christian? The creeds are very specific.

No.

The creeds would say no, right? That's right.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

This is like what I bring up with my LDS friends.

I've got lots of LDS friends.

I went to college in Utah, so my very closest friends are LDS, and you know, they'll say, but we are Christian, we believe in Christ, we're Christian, we're Christian.

I'm like, you wholesale reject what that term has meant for 2,000 years, and now you want to jump in? Your whole thing is based off the fact that the church is apostate in what we believe, and now you want to co-opt it? Well, then what does that mean? It doesn't just mean following Christ, because Paul specifically says, you can follow a Christ, that's the wrong Christ.

And so this church has consistently said, these are the things, this is where we draw the circle, and the virgin birth has always, always, always been a part of that.

Now I will only hear this argument, okay? The Bible doesn't say the word virgin.

It says Alma.

It is a Hebrew word.

So if you want to have a semantic discussion about what that word means, I will entertain that with you.

That is a worthwhile discussion.

Are we packing into the word? I'll give another example.

Just like in Colossians, it says Christ is the firstborn.

That is a word that needs some unpacking.

That is an English word.

The Greek word needs less unpacking than the English word as far as the baggage that comes with it, correct? But I just want to be clear, though, the Greek says Parthenos, which is clearly virgin, and that is the Septuagint translation of Alma in the 200 years before Christ.

So anyone who would— Do I know it? I believe in the virgin birth, don't get me wrong.

But I'm saying, if that's the direction that you're coming from and you want to make a semantic argument, then I think you're a Christian who is misguided, right? I don't think you're not a Christian.

You're still holding the authority of Scripture, but your language study, you know, it's like you can know enough Greek and enough Hebrew to be dangerous, to be wrong, you know what I mean? Like the layperson who just gets a little bit of Greek and a little bit of Hebrew can go whackadoo.

I'll just follow up on that just a little bit and say the next question would be why.

Why do you reject the virgin birth? And if it is the semantic argument, like Jake is saying, well, I think that this Hebrew word here actually means this, and I don't whatever this, and there's a sexual variant here, okay, you're wrong, but okay.

If it's, well, I don't think that when, you know, Isaiah or, you know, I don't think that when he wrote that, I don't think that was God's word.

Okay, now we're having a different conversation, because then again, I'm going to keep going back to my standard of what did Jesus say? Jesus quoted that authoritatively, so you're disagreeing with him.

Or something more more eisegetical, right, along the lines of, well, you know, it really was a power dynamic, and she was a young girl, and so she needed to hide the fact that she had, right, like, you know what I'm talking about, like some of those weird proto-feminist arguments? Like, if you're in that eisegesis territory, then you are completely wrong.

You're not making a good faith argument from Scripture.

Yep, agreed.

You know, kind of like with the homosexuality, arsonic, coitus stuff, like you are eisegeting what you want that to mean.

You're not actually coming at it from from what you believe the language actually says.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so when we look back at the chart, we have the tier one.

I think we've expressed our thoughts on tier one, and we may look at this one for a second and just say, okay, they have sinfulness of man, unique nature of Christ, substitutionary atonement.

Oh, we didn't talk about substitutionary atonement, that might be something.

Bodily resurrection, justification by faith alone, those are things that they would say, and I think for the majority we've agreed with that.

Biblical inerrancy, bodily return of Christ, future judgment, God is infinite and personal, image of God in man, the Trinity.

And then the practice, we didn't get into these, but like necessity of baptism, necessity of communion, evangelism, giving prayer, those are things that Christians are supposed to do, and they're saying that those are things that Christians...that's what makes Christianity Christian, and so they're putting that in that first category for that reason.

But let's go to the secondary doctrines.

Let's go to the tier two things.

As I said at the beginning, I think this is where the denominational distinctions lie, and so right away, the biggest thing that separates denominations...well, the two biggest things I know of that separate denominations, and maybe you would all disagree, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The two biggest things that I think separate denominations are sacramental understanding, meaning baptism and Lord's Supper, particularly.

What do those do? How are those to be administered, and to whom are those to be administered? Those two things tend to be great dividers, you know? And I have a friend, Radim Zuma, I don't know if you guys seen any of my videos with him, he makes a really good...he has a chart on this where he says everything above this line baptizes babies and everything below this line doesn't, and it was just Baptists and Pentecostals who were below the line, and I was like, that's kind of interesting, like the only ones who don't baptize babies were what he considers low church, because he's PCUSA, he's sort of middle of the way high church, you know, Presbyterian church is more liturgical, and then you get into Episcopal, Anglican, Catholic, which is very high church.

So his line was right there, but as I said, sacraments is the first thing.

And the second thing is the thing that would divide, I would say, is gifts in regard to tongues, and maybe you guys would disagree, but those are the two things that are on my mind for the secondary category, are sacraments and how the gifts are practiced.

And specifically, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but I remember one time meeting a pastor, he was a Pentecostal pastor, when he found out I was a Baptist, the very first thing he said to me while shaking my hand was he pulled me in tight, and he says, we believe the evidence of sanctification is the utterance of speaking in tongues.

I'll never forget that he said it just that way.

We believe the evidence of sanctification is the utterance of speaking in tongues.

Why he said that when he found out I was a Baptist, only thing I can come to the conclusion is that he wanted me to know that's where he knew we differed.

He wanted me to know that's where he knew that's where the line was between us.

So those are the two things on my mind under secondary issues, because I still think that man was a Christian.

In fact, that particular gentleman just recently died.

He was a very sweet man.

He was my mother's pastor, and she loved him dearly, and I've known him since I was eight years old.

He married my mom and my stepdad.

Lovely man.

But I just remember when he found out I went to a Baptist seminary, he shook my hand, pulled me in tight, and said that.

But doesn't that mean that implies to him that speaking in tongues is a primary issue? Yes, I'm going to get to that in a minute, because this is where I talk about the bleed over from the secondary to the primary.

I don't think he would say I was unsaved, but I would say he would think that I didn't have the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, you're permanent on spiritual milk forever.

Yes, I hadn't received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

I think he would say that and believe that, even though I would obviously disagree.

Yeah.

I would think a third category that separates is church government.

Ultimately, what's going to separate your Episcopalians from your Anglicans is the way their church government functions and who they answer to and stuff like that.

So I think that's a third category.

It's amazing how the bleed over works, because look at us Calvinist Baptists or any of Calvinistic Baptists.

So I'm endorsed by Liberty Baptist Fellowship of Liberty University.

They're clearly, clearly Baptists.

And I asked them, but none of you guys are Calvinists.

They're like, no.

But do you care that I'm Calvinist? No.

You just care that you're Baptist.

And it would be the same on the other side.

I could say, but I'm way into spiritual gifts.

I'm not a Pentecostal, but I'm super into it.

I'm very charismatic.

Yeah.

But are you Baptist? Yeah.

That's all that matters.

Bapticostal is a legitimate category now.

That's something that...

Because the greater Baptist conferences don't generally have a cessationist confessional view.

You could be anywhere in the charismatic scale and be a Southern Baptist for the most part.

And in some Baptist circles, you really need to be more.

So those aren't even hard and fast lines to cut what a denomination is, because you could be a baby dunker and be of several strains, and you can be an adult dunker and be of several strains.

So it's just interesting.

I think the essential, or rather this tier two has gradations to it.

So I think, let me give you three issues.

Paedo or Credo Baptism.

The ordination of women to the office of elder, and a church that insisted on a monolithic elder structure, single pastor model.

Okay, those are three different types of issues, and I would never attend a church that ordained women, but I would consider a church that had single pastor model to be merely unwise, and I would say this is against the witness of scripture.

It is not on the same level as ordaining a woman.

I've heard the arguments for it.

I just don't think they're very good, and I could go to church there.

I could.

I would probably not make it my top priority, but I could go to church there.

And furthermore, if that church wanted to do ministry together, absolutely, 100%.

You want to go feed the homeless together and sing some worship songs, sure.

We want to do a sunrise Easter service with five different churches, and that one has solo pastor model, and we're plurality eldership.

And honestly, and that one over there baptizes babies, yeah, 100%.

Sure.

We'll sing songs with you on an Easter morning.

And yet I recognize that 500 years ago, we would have burned each other at the stake for that very issue.

I can understand that.

It's funny that Jake used the term Calvinistic Baptist, and at the same time, Calvin would not allow us to exist.

But that's a lot more of the relationship that church had with government back then, this safety firewall.

I would say, I look at the PCA and the PCUSA, and I think one's based and one's cringe, right? But I wouldn't say those are two different denominations.

Those are two sects of one denomination, in my opinion.

You may hate that if you're a Presbyterian, if you're a PCA guy, but I'm not a Presbyterian.

Those are two sects, a correct sect and an incorrect sect, but you're both sects of Presbyterianism.

So even denominational, how useful is that? The ones that get me are the non-denominationals.

Bro, you're all Baptists.

You're all Baptists.

There isn't a single non-denominational church that's ever existed that baptizes babies.

I've never met one.

And don't at me on the internet if you are one.

I will never read it.

I don't care.

The large, large, large majority, they're Baptists, generally Bapticostal.

So you can call yourself non-denominational all you want, but do you baptize only believers? Yes, you do.

Do you have some view of the gifts? Yes, you do.

Now, are you lady pastor or not lady pastor? Do you have a single pastor? Do you have elders? I don't know.

You're different sects of the denomination that's called non-denominationalism.

Get over yourselves.

Call yourself something else.

Yeah.

I want to say this.

In the comments below, anybody who goes to a church that identifies as non-denominational, you can't just say we're not attached to a denomination.

No, your church has to identify as non-denominational, but you baptize babies.

I want to know in the comments.

I doubt we'll find one person.

I doubt we'll find one person that church identifies as non-denominational that baptizes babies, but I'll be surprised.

We'll see.

Because the majority of the big non-denominational churches, they're all brethren Christian church guys.

Almost all of them are.

Yeah.

I will say one that I've come to believe is definitional, but a lot of people want to put here that we didn't get to earlier, but now that I'm thinking about it.

If your church sanctions so-called homosexual marriages, what you are doing is you are endorsing and celebrating a damnable sin that will eradicate the souls of the people you do it for.

You are taking what Paul described as the central metaphor of Christ and his church, and you are profaning it, and you're turning it into something that Scripture explicitly condemns.

Some people want to put that in the secondary issue category.

I cannot.

If a church wants to say we will host, endorse, support, welcome into membership, offer marriage counseling, all of those things for two men or two women who state that they are married, they are not a Christian church.

End of.

Yep.

I think we would all agree with that, which is what has created, not to get off on another subject, but the huge problematic issue coming up with the Andy Stanley Conference, which is happening just very soon.

Albert Mueller wrote a good article on it where he points out the issue, which is they're going to have homosexual married, and I'm using air quotes there, married men who are married to men speak at the conference, and the only assumption can be they're going to speak in favor of the...

Like, what are they going to say? Yeah, yeah, they're not going to get up and preach against it.

The Spirit is able, and onstage conversion at that moment would be a powerful witness.

Because you're in a different category at that point.

You're in false teacher category.

When you not just condone but promote sin, it doesn't matter what else you say you believe.

You probably don't have a regenerate heart.

You are a false teacher, and that's a different category than a different denomination, and so that's why I included biblical anthropology as a primary issue.

Well, and I'll say just as a backstop to that, so we don't give the fundies too much credit, if you say that not wearing a suit is a sin, therefore the guy who doesn't wear a suit, those people are dumb and not being biblical.

That's eisegesis.

That's an eisegetical view of however they're trying to make that argument.

They can't make that in good faith.

Yeah, fair enough.

Just for us, this is conversations with two-thirds Calvinists.

Two and a half.

Calvinism is something that people get wrong about Calvinism all the time, but the doctrines of grace, while they are the primary expression of how the gospel is given in the Bible, assent to TULIP is not a primary issue.

Exactly.

I'm right about this, but my Arminian brothers, their churches, provided they have the other primary issues, they are saved churches.

When people ask me what is a hyper-Calvinist, there's a lot of definitions of hyper-Calvinist, but for me, a hyper-Calvinist is someone who elevates TULIP to a primary issue.

You must believe in TULIP to be saved, and of course I don't believe that.

I'm glad you said that, and I want to jump in here real quick, Matthew.

Sure, keep it short.

Because this is actually a conversation I've had with one of my elders.

He and I agree on this, that while we, of course, believe the doctrines of grace, we would put them in the second category in the sense that a person can disagree and still be saved, and we have known people that have said one specific instance where it was like, well, we can't send a person to that church because they preach a false gospel.

They're Arminian, therefore they preach a false gospel.

And we're saying, no, wait, wait, no, no, no, no.

Just because a church is Arminian doesn't mean they're preaching a false gospel.

They may not have as full of an understanding as we would hope that they would, but you guys may stone me for this, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Somebody asked me one time, which would you prefer to go to? Would you prefer to go to, if you went to Jerkwater, Georgia, you had to move to nowhere, right, where there's two churches, and the one church is your Presbyterian church that baptizes babies or your Baptist church that's not Calvinistic.

And I have said, and I've said it on the show, I would probably choose the Baptist church.

And here's my reasoning.

I have a genuine allergic reaction to infant baptism.

I would have a hard time sitting in and affirming that, whereas I can work through the people who don't understand Calvinism.

I've been there enough with people who don't get it that if they use terms like free will and things like that, I can work through that, and I can understand that.

I don't have as an allergic reaction to that as I do to infant baptism, and that's my conviction.

But some people, oh, well, you're a Calvinist, you should go to a PCA church.

Not necessarily, because both of them are secondary issues.

I'm just choosing which secondary issue I'm going to have to work through.

So that's my, and you may have a different, Jake, you may say, well, I'd rather go watch babies be baptized and not have to worry about the free will thing, and that's fine.

That's a secondary issue, and I think we can come to that on our own conscience, where we want to take our kids and where we want our kids to grow up.

You know, I think, because as the resident non-Calvinist, not yet Calvinist, excuse me, we have to get that in the show.

I shared this meme, and I have a very small but growing tag group called KGs posting their Ls online.

If you're not familiar, that's shorthand for Cage Stage Calvinist, and whenever KGs say something extremely cringe, I post it in that group.

But this is a meme going around, and it had, I don't know, some 1500s painting of a bunch of Reformers doing Reformers things, and the top said, he who says he is Christian but not Calvinist is neither, and I was like, okay.

So if that's you, stop.

Secondly, go back into your cage and marinate for a bit until you're ready to come out and be a mature Christian.

And I'll say this too, and we're going to get into this in tier three issues.

When we say fundamentalism, most of you have been thinking about the 50-person church in Jackwater, Georgia.

Let me just say, the greatest growth in fundamentalism, and by that I mean the expansion of doctrine, the exclusion of people, the doggedness on things that are not tier one is growing the most rapidly in Calvinist churches.

It is utterly amazing to see where you have churches that have latched onto Calvin's soteriology, but have adopted the cloak of 1950s fundamentalism, and they wear the superior theology, and that's not a dig at the Presbyterians, as gives me the eye there.

That's a dig at me.

That's my term, the hashtag.

Superior theology, right.

People in churches that think they have the superior theology in Calvin's soteriology, but then backfill a whole bunch of, we're going to exclude you because of your music, we're going to exclude you because of your dress, we're going to exclude you because of this and because of that, and they're just out there canceling people all over the place.

That's where fundamentalism is thriving right now, is unfortunately in Reformed churches.

Well, I was going to say the problem with the Calvinistic version of fundamentalism is that what you quoted, Keith, about the people who were—I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought because I was going to make a bad joke—the people who were upset about they can't go to church because they have a false gospel, that's a man-centered view of the gospel, right? The idea that the gospel is how I'm going to go get saved as opposed to the gospel is the good news of a risen king who will save for himself a remnant to bring glory to himself.

There's the man-centered piece of that which is incorrect.

The gospel, how it pertains to us, is that as a byproduct of the plan of salvation, we get to participate in Christ's plan, but it has nothing to do with what's preached from the pulpit and how it's expressed in synergism or monergism.

That's not the gospel.

The gospel is the full work of Christ, and an Arminian would—we make fun of them for saying, oh, you say that choosing God is a work.

I mean, yeah, but they don't believe that.

In good faith, they don't believe that it's a work.

They believe that it's a free gift of grace, and they say, I chose God.

And we would say, yes, you did, after you were generated to do so.

That's all.

Yeah, yeah.

Somebody asked me the other day, do Calvinists believe that people make choices? Yeah, absolutely.

Every day, all the time.

Yeah.

Now I do have a quick question, Jake.

If you were going to Jerkwater, Georgia—and it's Jerkwater, not Jackwater—if you go to Jerkwater, Georgia, and you only had the two churches, I'm just curious, because I can't ask Matthew this question, because he certainly wouldn't go to the PCA church, because I don't think...

They're wrong on more than one thing.

But which...just, and again, this is a total conscience issue.

It doesn't matter to me what your answer is, I'm just curious if you had to choose.

And there may be other things, but if your only decision was Calvinism versus baby baptism, which one would...otherwise, both churches are equally good.

They're both nice people, they're both whatever.

No question.

No question at all, I would go to the PCA church.

And here's why.

Anti-Calvinists are rabid.

Anti-Credo Baptists, we have fun together.

So somebody who's opposed to Calvinism says it's the doctrine of devils, right? Somebody who's opposed to Credo Baptism just thinks I'm kind of silly, but ultimately we get along because of TULIP, you know what I mean? Well, that's a good point, and as I said, I'm looking at it as if both were equal, and that it's not a rabid anti-Calvinist.

They just don't understand or don't preach it.

If it were anti-Calvinistic, and I'm walking into a place where I'm going to be getting a meat grinder every Sunday, and they're going to be screaming Michael Cervantes at me as I walk to the water fountains, yeah, that would definitely be a game changer.

I tend to think that the Calvinist church is just going to have a bit more theological rigor.

And I don't doubt that.

I would make that assumption that there's more theological rigor and less emotional-ism.

Arminian theology just tends to lean toward an emotional-ism because you are convincing somebody to make the free will choice, right? So there's more stories and more emotional manipulation techniques, just in general.

And I spent most of my life, you know, at least on the Arminian side.

So I would, but...

I will challenge that notion just a little bit, even about Calvinism itself being a tier two issue, and I fully respect those who put it there, but my own church is probably about half and half.

Like, right now, the congregation, I would guess, is about half and half.

I have a pretty good idea who's who, but it's just not a touchpoint for us.

We found so many other things to get upset about, we just don't get upset about that one.

I mean, I am not saying that it's not a tier two issue, don't misunderstand me, but mature believers in my church have fellowship with one another and sing in the same pews.

Here's why I think it's a tier two issue.

In my definition, a tier two issue is, I'm right about it, but you're still Christian.

A tier three issue is, I could be right or wrong about this, it's okay.

I know for a fact that I'm right about this.

There's no other way to read the Bible, in my opinion.

But see, I wouldn't put it on the same level as, you know, some of the ecclesiological points, right? For me, Keith, if I'm in the situation you're saying, I'll contextualize it to things that I would find important.

Here's a Calvinist church that has plurality eldership, and here's an Arminian church that has a single pastor.

I'm going to the Calvinist church 10 times out of 10, because the plurality eldership model is, not only is it more biblical, it is functionally better.

It just works better, and it guards the church from error, having multiple shepherds that way.

And so, like, I go to a five-point affirming Calvinist church.

I would go to your church, Keith, because you have plurality eldership.

You are a unashamed 1646.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, yes.

The true second London Baptist Confession.

That's right, that's right.

The first one was in 44, the second was in 46.

Actually, there was a couple of additions prior to 1689, which was a wholesale change, so yes.

Right.

We'd have our tulip differences, but the fact that you have multiple shepherds that I could submit to means that that's a church I could go to, and you have men who would exegete the scriptures to the very best of their God-given ability.

I could go to that church.

Again, I'm not saying they're not Christians or whatever.

I would avoid a single-pastor church.

That would make me nervous.

Amen.

So this may end up being a short little, like, just because I do these longer videos, but this one section right here, I just want to get a quick answer from you both, because I actually think denominations are a good thing, and I think denominations have value, and that each denomination tends to focus on different things, and oftentimes what they get right, they get really right, and sometimes what they get wrong, they get really wrong.

But I think the people who say denominations are terrible, and they're a violation of Scripture, and Christ calls for unity, and we're opposing unity by having denominations, I don't think that's correct.

For me, I think denominations can actually be a blessing.

Do you guys agree? Disagree? You think I'm crazy? You think I'm right? What do you think? Yes, denominations are a blessing.

Denominations are a blessing.

When Christ says unity, what are we united to? Him.

That is the thing, right? So, like, most of Paul's theological arguments in the New Testament are, if you are in Christ, or with Christ, or united with Christ, like, he's wearing out all the prepositions he can, that is the thing that we are to be unified in.

If different groups of people in different churches believe differently on secondary matters, God has a purpose for that, okay? Like, there is a reason why a church in Rwanda may not do, you know, one of these secondary issues the same way you do, but that's God, in His goodness and in His grace, creating a durable church that can grow there, and that's a beautiful thing.

Yeah.

Jay? Yeah, I agree.

I think, provided that the tier one issues are unchanging, unmoving, denominations are only of benefit because, just like the eclectic view of the text, having multiples of these secondary issues allows for clarity of comparison to see over time, I think, which is right.

And that might be more of a postmill view.

We're going to move toward what is ultimately right.

We have seen the result of one denominational rule for 1,500 years.

We saw what that did.

We saw what that looked like.

We're never going back to that.

That was the wrong answer, and the growth of Christianity has exponentially increased because of denominations.

Amen.

And I want to say this just to finalize that thought.

When people see me dressing up in my little outfits and playing the parts of the different denominations, for the most part, I am pointing out some of the most ridiculous aspects of denominations, but I am also trying to show that we can have fun together.

I'm trying to show, even with the Methodists, I'm thankful for the global Methodist movement, which is currently trying to bring some reformation to a denomination that sorely needs it.

It needs strong voices to speak out and say, hey, go ahead.

No, I just so agree with you.

This is one of the best parts about my job.

I run a chapel, and I have seven chaplains underneath.

I'm the only Calvinist.

And I've always worked with chaplains of Christian denominations, folks whose churches I would never go to, but we have to work together.

You can say the Methodists are wrong all you want, and a young, again, internet-taught theologian can be superior to Methodists all they want, but they've never read John Wesley.

And you cannot read John Wesley and tell me that that man didn't love Jesus, was devoted to Jesus, gave his life for Jesus.

George Whitefield believed he did, for sure.

Right, precisely.

The same can be said of even some of our Catholic brothers and sisters from the distant past, like the Chrysostom, for example.

So really read church history and read people who hold tier one issues but are way off on your tier two and tier three issues to expand your view.

When I look at a fundamentalist or especially somebody online who views themselves or comes across as, as Matthew was talking about, the Calvinist fundamentalist, I look at that and go, that's somebody who's never done ministry in the real world.

They're not doing real life ministry.

They've never held crying parents when they lost a baby.

They've never fed the homeless and prayed for them.

That's an internet theology of a race to a purity that even the Bible is not expecting.

I'm not saying that the Bible doesn't expect us to be pure, but I'm saying the purity test of what a Christian is does not reflect either the Bible or reality.

So if you are a crazy Calvinist, read John Wesley and grow from it.

You would be surprised.

Jacob Arminius said his favorite commentaries were Calvin's.

Yeah, right.

So like, you know.

So the last circle, and this is going to be where we begin to draw to a close, even though we have a lot to say on this, I'm sure.

Certainly the center circle means what it means to be a Christian.

The second circle means what it means to be a part of a particular tradition of Christianity or denomination within Christianity.

But the third circle, as has been said, there can be people within a church who disagree, and I would say even leaders in a church.

And this is where I may—not necessarily different with you, Matthew, but in the sense that when you said there's half your church that's Calvinistic, half that's not, in general what we find is that the church leaders will agree on these things.

Not always, not always, but like for instance, I served as an elder for ten years with a brother who was a pre-millennialist, and I've been a non-millennialist since 2006.

But we were both Calvinistic.

We just had a differing view on how we understood Christ's return and how it affected the millennium, and so what I would put immediately into the third category would be eschatological views, particularly relating to things like millennialism.

Not, is Christ going to return? Because if a person says he's not, then that goes back to a tier one issue, and that's how that tie into eschatology.

Yes, is eschatology in the center issue? Yes, but it's limited as to how much.

I know people who would say that if you are not a dispensational, pre-millennial, pre-tribulational person, that you don't know Jesus.

Yeah.

And that's a scary thing, to take a third circle issue and ram it into the first circle and say, you know, it's one thing to say, I think you're wrong.

Like, Jake, you're very willing to tell people, I think you're wrong, and the dispensationalist would say that back to us.

I think you're wrong.

Okay, but on this, there must be an ability to say, I'm pretty confident in my understanding of the millennium, and even though I'm not post-millennial, my amillennialism is not that much different than post-millennialism.

We can hang together and be very similar.

It's way different from premillennialism.

It's light and dark.

It's two different things.

But I can say that my premillennial brothers can share the same roof, and we can worship together.

So what are y'all's thoughts on those third-tier issues? Any, I think any third-tier issue should be one that your elders can come to you and say, we need you to change your view or at least your practice on this for the sake of the weaker brother, in a temporary sense for their strengthening.

You should be able to do that.

I would not come to Jake and say, hey, Jake, for the sake of the weaker brothers, I need you to stop being Calvinist.

Like, that's not a thing.

But if you say, or if, and again, I'm going to keep going back to weaker brother and saying this person needs to grow, your elders should be able to come to you and say, hey, I know you think we only need to do communion once a month, but we have some new Christians that would really benefit from doing it once a week.

And so we've decided that's what we need to do, and we need you to be okay with that.

That is the type of issue that you need as a mature Christian to be okay with.

What is not, would not be okay is to say, we have some new believers that don't understand communion, so we're just not going to do it anymore, and we need you to be okay with that.

Like, obviously that's not okay.

We have some, you know, some Christians who, we have some new believers who don't like this or that going on in the church, and so we're asking you, mature Christian, on a temporary basis, if you would withhold on that while we disciple these others along and bring them to a place where they're mature Christians as well.

I think that's one definition of a third-tier issue, of an audio offer issue.

But that may not fit with my category, not to argue, but, because I would never tell someone to change their millennial view, but I might say, to your point, Matthew, I might say something of, okay, when we teach the millennial views, we're going to teach all three.

Yeah, okay.

So as for the benefit of the disagreement that we're going to...

Let me rephrase then, because I saw you both were a little confused by that.

You should be willing to change your expression or your insistence upon these things being taught or recognized or performed or, you know, whatever.

I've known churches where, we talked about head coverings earlier, where, you know, there was a minority in a majority position, and whoever held the minority position on that were mature believers.

And the elder said, hey, we think that you should change your view on this.

Or no, I'm sorry, we don't think you should change your view on this, but we would ask in a temporary circumstance that you would change your practice on this, since it's a conscience type of issue.

And, you know, and that was an ask of a mature Christian.

Were they asking them to wear the head coverings? I'm just curious, were they asking them to wear them or to not wear them? To not.

They were saying that there was a...

Basically, you had some of these senior saints that had been in the church—not my church, by the way—had been in the church for a while and were wearing the head coverings, and you had new Christians coming in that thought it looked weird and cultic and kind of whatever.

And the elder said, listen, would you just give us a little bit of time to work through this with these people? And in worship service, fine, you can do it.

But if you're doing like a women's breakfast, like, would you mind not for just a couple of weeks while we sort this out? And they did, and they sorted it out, and they went back to doing their head coverings, and all was fine.

So that was just a Romans 14 kind of thing, I think.

So I think I look at it more like this.

A secondary issue is baptism.

This body is not changing this.

We are not baptizing babies.

Yep.

A third issue is, hey, most of the pastors, we're post-mill, but we're not going to take an official stance or make you take an official stance.

You can be here and be pre-mill.

It's fine, right? So I think that's kind of more the realm that I'm looking at it.

I have a belief on this, but we as a body aren't going to be committed to this.

That's a third-tier issue for me.

So I think creationism, for example—I know the Ken Ham folks want to say, if you don't believe in young earth creationism, you don't believe in the gospel.

I don't buy that.

I don't think a church needs to take a stance on that, but a church does need to take a stance on baptism.

I don't think a church needs to take a stance on the millennium, but a church does need to take a stance on ordaining women or not.

Neither of those are anywhere near a first-tier issue.

So I think that's what delineates a second and a third-tier issue for me.

I think I get animated about the third-tier issues when—because—so you should vehemently defend with your life a first-tier issue.

You should be willing to die for a first-tier issue.

I think on the other end, shepherds of the church should be willing to upbraid the sheep who want to make a law out of a third-tier issue.

Yeah, I agree with that.

Because that's forcing that one category out further.

That's right.

So elders should oppose that error.

I tell young baby Calvinists, you're not in the sage stage until you're just as on-edge watching against legalism as you are antinomianism.

The young Calvinist wants to fight antinomianism, but they never fight legalism.

You're in the sage stage when you are just as animated to fight against legalism.

So for example, attire in the church, what you're going to wear in the church.

This was very big, Matthew, when you and I were in church together.

That was a huge issue.

What must we wear? What must our music team wear? And people wanted to make a law out of that.

There's no way you can make a law out of that, and that is the very definition of what the Pharisees would do.

They made a law further out from the law of God in order to protect people from crossing the threshold of the law.

That's what a third-tier issue is.

So pastorally, I get very animated when somebody does want to push a dispensational view beyond its tier boundary.

Pastors need to be able to not ignore the third tier, but teach the freedom of Christ, because there is freedom in Christ in those issues.

If you want to push back on me with head coverings, and you're just severely convicted that that's clear in Scripture and it's sin, I hear you on that.

I can hear you wanting to put that in a second-tier issue, and maybe you need to go find a church where that's a second-tier issue.

That's what I would say.

I respect where you're at with that conviction.

This body's not holding that conviction.

You might need to go either find a church that holds that conviction, or you need to put it back in the freedom of Christ category, because it is for freedom that Christ has set us free, and we can't forget that.

I want to jump in there, because that is a good point, Jake.

Some churches will make something that we might consider a third-tier issue, we'll make it a second-tier issue.

For instance, the King James Only issue.

Some churches say, we are King James Only, therefore, if you come here, you are submitting to us in this area.

You are going to teach from a King James Bible, you're going to read a King James Bible if you have to read publicly.

I've used this example before.

I've preached at churches where I knew they preferred the King James.

Now, they weren't full King James Only, but they preferred King James.

So I preached from the King James when I was there, because that's what that church did.

In the same way, if we went to a church where head coverings were practiced, my wife would wear a head covering so as to not be offensive or anything like that, even though we might have a different understanding of how that is to be applied in our church.

If we're at your church, you get to set the cover charge, right? What you just said is wise, Jake.

It's like, if this isn't the church for you, if that issue is moving into that secondary category, maybe this isn't the church for you.

And not to be ugly.

Yeah, let's leave before it's ugly.

Let's love each other and go the right way.

And I think my biblical warrant for this is Paul telling Timothy, get circumcised.

After he fought the Galatians, right? Yeah, it was right after it.

He goes to town on circumcision.

Then he looks at Timothy, and Timothy's like, yes, no circumcision.

And he goes, actually, Timothy, bro, I got some bad news for you, man.

What does that tell us? Something that's so scripturally important that Paul's going to go, like, say, like, I'm writing with such big letters at you, right, to the church of Galatians, and then tell Timothy, go get circumcised.

That tells us that context matters in very important issues, right, for the variance of the contextualization of reaching other people with the gospel, so as not to cause offense.

And so for that congregation, that was what was appropriate for that congregation.

The problem is, here's the problem.

In the situation that I was referring to with Matthew in our previous church, like, strong leadership was needed to say, this is where this congregation stands.

Yes.

Don't be a people pleaser.

Don't try to stand halfway.

You either say that's a freedom in Christ issue, or this is a secondary issue.

We will dress this way, or nobody's talking about how nobody's dressing, as long as it's not like, you know, parts hanging out.

Yeah, well, and so I think, like I said, you should be able to temporarily flex on these issues for the sake of maintaining unity.

The problem is, we like to camp in Romans 14 and never move on, and so if you're a pastor or an elder, and you're just continually Romans 14-ing people, and going around hand wringing, saying, well, could you just stop wearing red shirts, because Betty over there really hates red shirts, and I need you to do this for the sake of the weaker brother.

Okay, now you get to go put in, pastor, just as much time with Betty in your office about why red shirts aren't a problem, and you get to counsel her out of that, and help her understand freedom in Christ, and then you get to present Betty and the person wearing the red shirt together as unified believers and say, look what the gospel did here.

You don't get to continually just go to people and say, well, it would really help me out if you would just.

You don't operate in perpetuity that way.

That's not what Scripture says.

R.C.

Sproul calls it the tyranny of the weaker brother.

The tyranny of the weaker brother.

When the weaker brother has the ability to bind other people's consciences, that becomes an issue.

And this is where that third category, because I think even on this chart, just to bring it up back again, they do put a few things like politics, schooling, social networking, tattoos.

I see that tattoo on your arm, Jake.

I was going to say, you know...

It's a unicorn.

I love this.

Personal health care decisions.

You know what? Whether or not somebody chooses to wear a mask to church, right? I mean, who cares, right? If somebody wants to wear it, now I don't think we should mandate and say you have to, but if we have a family who is given to sicknesses and they don't want to get sick and they choose to wear a mask because they think that's the best health, and we give them garbage for it because, hey, they're worshiping with a mask on, is that our place? So I do think, again, going back to that chart, and schooling.

I mean, our kids are private schooled.

We homeschooled for years.

I graduated two homeschoolers, and now we're doing some private school, and it seems to be working good for us.

And should that mean that we are looked at differently? I don't think so, because we love our kids.

And we're doing what we think is best at this moment for them.

But there are people who say, if you don't homeschool, you don't love your kids.

Yeah.

We're getting close to Halloween, right? The most contentious time to be a Christian is around Halloween, because we've got to hear everybody's opinion on that, where I just say, as Matthew says, I don't know, go ask your elders.

Yeah.

I have a tag group for that, too.

I want to shave my beard so I look nice in my Batman costume.

Yeah.

You can't wear a cowl when you have a beard.

And this is where us as reformed and somewhat not reformed Baptists can really lean into church polity and just say, yeah, man, God gave the shepherds to the church to equip the saints and to help them adjudicate these issues.

And so the whole Bethel Hill song thing and Elevation music and all that, listen, if it is literally shaking the foundations of your church, I have ultimate respect for a group of elders that come together and say, we don't believe scripture teaches clearly on this, but we believe this is splitting our church.

We need not do that.

The church history has given us enough songs, so we're just not going to do those songs.

And also go to the people causing the problem on that and say, here's where we are biblically.

We disagree with your conviction that this is a tier two or, God forbid, a tier one issue.

And work through that.

Don't just appease and put the fire out.

Actually deal with the problem.

But if a group of church elders wants to say we're not singing songs from them because it causes division in our body and we're going to work to heal that rather than aggravate it, okay, fine.

That's perfectly fine with me.

Don't do what Jake was warning against, I'll say, and make that a law itself and push that back onto people.

Then you're just doing the fundamentalism thing.

You're just expanding the red circle out, and it will eat everything.

And eventually, this is the little tagline about fundamentalism, the thing is, you keep drawing a smaller and smaller circle of who the real Christians are, and eventually it's just you, and eventually you stand on one foot.

And that's not a good place to be.

I love that quote.

I love that quote, yeah.

So I want to finish out with this question.

I'm going to give you both as much time as you'd like.

The question of, okay, you both have been in churches for a long time, and Jake, you've been in various churches.

Matthew, you've been, I guess, in the same church.

I was a member of a Calvinist church in Rome, Georgia, for about four years while I was in college, and I attended there regularly.

Well, I've only been a member of one church my whole life.

I've been here since, in fact, yesterday we were pulling out stuff from the church office, and I found old minutes from meetings from the 80s, and I was in the church in that, so it's just amazing to look back at that.

So I have, anytime I say, I've seen this happen in church, it's either the church I'm in now, because I've been here, or it's my mother's church, which is Pentecostal Holiness Church, because that's the only experience I've had.

I haven't had multiple, as I said, Jake has had military experience and been in various churches.

But what's the worst example of either the red, or, and going back to this real quick, looking at the example of a tier three, nothing mattered, or a tier one, everything matters, and I'll kick it off by giving you my example, and I don't know that this is absolutely the worst, but it's the worst I can think of at the moment when I think about what's the worst example of this, and it is the issue of, again, going back to eschatology, being told that if I don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, if I don't believe in a pre-millennial view, then I don't believe the Bible.

People have, my wife had a good, a dear friend, she's with the Lord now, but her dear friend told her, your husband doesn't believe that, he doesn't believe the Bible, you don't need to go to that church.

That was my wife.

I was like, thanks.

Yeah, exactly.

So that would probably be one of the most egregious examples I can remember, someone saying, hey, you don't believe that, you don't need to go to that church.

And so what's an example from your guys' experience that maybe somebody might be dealing with it right now, somebody listening to this has been with us now for an hour and 45 minutes and has held strong, and what's an example of something that you guys have lived through and seen that was an issue that was either elevated too high or an issue that should have been high and wasn't? Jake? Well, the chaplaincy world is very difficult.

A lot of pastors aren't cut out for it because it requires you to embrace pluralism.

Pluralism is not syncretism, right? Pluralism is, I believe what I believe, here's my integrated belief, and you believe what you believe, and we can both exist in this organization together.

Syncretism is, we have to remove the boundaries around what integrates us as whole individuals so we can kind of become this stew.

But so many chaplains are overly ecumenical because they want to feel like they're able to be helpful to everybody, and they believe that the only way they can do that is if they believe nothing, if they just ultimately melt into this unitary and universalist blob to the point where, like, what do you even believe in? I'm supposed to be a religious professional where I integrate my religious expertise into providing First Amendment protections for my soldiers as well as providing religious services for those of my denominational faith background.

If I don't believe anything, I just say whatever you believe is great, then what am I to you? What help can I become? And this is the military context, but it's the same as operating in what postmodern America wants us to be, right? Like, this idea that secularism is the neutral ground that all of us can act, and that's the only place you can draw your value from, is a syncretistic view as opposed to, here is my absolute tier one identity that I'm willing to die for, now from that unmovable center, how do I interact and love the world around me? That is a very tough place to be in your workplaces and in your, you know, your preschool mom's groups and things like that.

For how does a Christian live in the real world, be real careful that you don't accept the view of that progressive, everything's a tier three issue.

That you have to pretend like there's no tier one identity in Christ that matters first, because that's what the world wants.

The world wants you to give up that tier one and melt into everything as a tier three, and you don't have to do that.

You can be a Christian and still love people from the core of being a Christian.

Amen.

All right, Matthew? So your question was, what's the most egregious example of one of these excesses? Yeah, and I understand.

I hope that you don't think I'm asking you to throw anyone from your church under the bus or anything.

I know I mentioned my wife's friend, like I said, she's with the Lord now.

But even that in that example, I love that lady.

I just think she was wrong about that.

So we're not throwing anyone under the bus.

I just, what have you seen that maybe somebody might be going through? Well, I mean, I gave the example of the Episcopal church I went to.

Well, it was Episcopal High School, whatever, Episcopal School of Jacksonville, whatever they rebranded as now.

And they had a chapel, which again, is kind of a bolt-on sort of, we have to do it to whatever.

And so that, I think that tolerance day thing would probably be just the most in your face.

Like we see wacky stuff like that on Twitter or whatever.

But I mean, you know, not that the world wasn't crazy in 2010, but it was a lot less crazy than it is now on that kind of thing, I guess.

Or at least maybe a lot of that just wasn't as out there.

But this business about all of the things are just the same and we can all just collapse into a morass of whatever.

Like, no, Paul warned his elders.

You will have to contend for the faith.

There will be savage wolves coming in and most of them do not have visible teeth.

They're sly.

They're cunning.

They'll try and, you know, get some believers off like this and that and the other.

And very often the weapon they use to do so is by saying that which you considered essential is just optional.

It's not really that important.

And you have to watch out for that.

So egregious example in that case, I think would be that Episcopal church, probably.

The chapel, probably.

The other direction, just, I mean, some of the online Calvin bros that get that way with their, both their soteriology and some of their like worship and, you know, ecclesiology and all that, you know, I had someone, I had some, I don't know, I was mowing my grass or something like that.

And I had taken a screenshot of something on my phone to send to a friend while I was doing, you know, waiting whatever for the mower to cool off.

Like Spotify was up there at the top, you know, and so it showed the song that was playing right there.

I forget.

It was some Hillsong song from when I was a kid, you know, and it was really, say again, it was shout to the Lord.

Probably.

So yeah, something, something like that.

That is utterly theologically unobjectionable.

I mean, just whatever.

But he, he texts back something to the effect of, you know, I regret that your elders let you walk in continual sin like that.

Yeesh.

And I was like, you know, so like that was that on a personal level, that was one of those issues.

And Jake has alluded to a lot.

There were, there were instances where, you know, we had people saying that if he doesn't dress in this way, then he's not, maybe not, I question his salvation, but basically like he can't serve in a church because he's willing to dress this or that way which just didn't include their preferences.

So I have a lot more sort of bits and pieces there.

I wanted to bring that up as my example.

On the other side, when I was at Matthew's church, I was the executive pastor there.

One of our music leaders just didn't wear shoes.

He just didn't wear shoes.

That was just his thing.

Not my thing.

That was just his thing.

And this became such a righteous stumbling block for some of our, our senior saints, which I, frankly, I get, um, they, they wanted to make a biblical case.

You can't make a biblical case.

In fact, there are far more arguments for taking off your shoes in the sanctuary than there are for putting on your shoes in the sanctuary if you want to make a biblical case.

So, so they went to the, the, well, he's making me stumble.

Don't, don't make me stumble.

I said, very well, but that means that you're the weaker brother.

And if that's the case, you also shouldn't be teaching Bible study and leading the direction of the church.

And maybe you shouldn't be voting at the annual meeting.

If you're the weaker brother, you're so weak, not a senior saint who's been walking with the Lord for 55 years.

You're so weak that you're being, you're stumbling by this young man's shoe preference.

Then we're also not going to come to you for advice on which way the direction of the church should be.

So you kind of have to pick.

So that's a good example of a third tier issue being elevated the other way.

Again, the elders did not come to a definitive answer on that.

They just let it sit in the stew for a while, which is a much longer story, which I'd love to tell someday.

It was maybe a behind the scenes with Jake interview, but, but you know, I would listen to that.

That was bad leadership of, of the, the elders, not to basically letting the sheep fight it out for themselves on that issue, which I think their leadership was needed.

I would have given, I would have given good money to hear someone stand up and say, take thy shoes from off thy feet for the ground upon which thy stand is holy.

You want to, if you want to make the case, you're not going to win with shoes.

Just like I say, with RPW people, when they want to complain about dancing in the church, you're not going to win that argument from scripture.

The Psalms say, let them dance.

And when David was dancing, one person was cursed and it wasn't the guy dancing.

It was the person complaining about the dancing.

Be careful.

You want to make a scriptural argument for your, your preference that you don't lose that fight.

Yeah.

I would just say to, to that particular case, cause I actually spoke with one of the elders that was involved in that, who I attempted to encourage.

And what he said was, well, if he would just put his shoes on, all these problems would go away.

I said, no, they wouldn't.

They straight up wouldn't.

You'd find a, you'd find a new one next week, man.

And the other thing too, is that, yeah, maybe you have stronger relationship and this fellow who, who doesn't like wearing shoes, maybe you could cudgel him using your bully pulpit of elder.

And I need you to submit to me in this moment and whatever.

Maybe you get him to do that.

Maybe you would.

Now, if you're going to do that, if you're going to, if you're going to pull that trigger, you now have homework and your homework is you are doing weekly meetings with the people who are saying, this is causing me to stumble.

And you're opening the scriptures with them and you're doing the hard work of pastoring to figure out why is it that they are so hung up on this thing? Well, that I'm not going to do that.

Okay.

Well then, then this.

Well, it's, it's like that, that clip of John MacArthur, right? The lady asking how much authority does a pastor have? And he says, none.

None.

Pastor has no authority.

The Bible has all the authority.

Right.

And so, so they couldn't make the biblical argument on this.

And that's why these categories matter just to put a, put a bow on it.

That's why good eldership has to think through these categories and, and be in prayer about these categories and, and be open and honest in enforcing what needs to be enforced and releasing what needs to be released.

And that's the job of the elders to set the culture of their flock because that's, some of these are cultural issues and it is the job of the elders to, to enforce or release and not be in the middle about these things.

That's why these categories are so important.

I'll, I'll give this as my parting shot to the believer and to the listener.

The leftist kind of idea of, well, who cares? It's all just tier three.

It's all just whatever is such an enticing thought because you get to get along with everybody.

And it's just, it's so nice to just sink back into the squishiness of that.

It is also so easy to fall into the fundamentalist trap.

Man, piety is one heck of a drug.

It feels so good to be right all on everything and to be the only right one in the room.

As Keith said at the start of the program, there are ditches.

We, the hard thing for the Christian is to walk in the middle of the road where Christ has laid down his word and to not swerve to the left or to the right.

It is so, so easy and enticing to get to claim superiority in terms of the fundamentalist approach or to just go along and get along and never have a single enemy because you're just progressive and everyone's your friend.

Stay the course and be the one in the middle that recognizes these distinctions.

And in that we, we, we're not saying, and I, and I, again, I know we got to sign off soon.

We're not saying be a fence rider, but we are saying that the ditches are the dangers that, that, that there's a, there's a straight path.

There's a right path and it's, it's the ditches that get you into trouble.

So with that being said, I do want to give, I want to give a recommendation for anyone who may be wanting to sort some of these issues out.

One of the books that we teach at our church as a basic book for our Sunday school teachers teach this, our both Brother Mike and Brother Andy.

By the way, you mentioned dress earlier.

Just to go back real quick, recently I posted a video of me preaching and someone said, the only problem with his preaching is he's not wearing a suit.

Because I was wearing a, I don't, I hardly ever wear a suit.

Just like Jesus did.

That's right.

But the book I want to recommend, and maybe you guys could throw a book out there too, if you have a thought.

I love D.A.

Carson's book, The God Who Is There.

Finding Your Place in God's Story.

It sort of goes over the basics of Christianity and I would say it hits the, the, the tier one issues very well and what it means to be a believer.

So if you're a new believer who's looking for a better understanding of those tier one center circle issues, I would recommend just about anything by D.A.

Carson, but specifically the book, The God Who Is There.

It's an easy read.

It's on the level of most readers should be able to handle it well and it'll help you understand a little bit more of what we're talking about.

Gentlemen, do you have any recommendations? And as you do, please give your, also your final word.

Uh, I would recommend, I'm going to get roasted for this, but again, I'm never going to read the comments.

Scripture and the Authority of God by N.T.

Wright, um, has really good, um, how do you integrate scripture into life? How do you view the authority of scripture? Why are we, you know, able to eat shellfish as Christians? It gets into all of that.

So I think it touches on a lot of these good issues.

Um, my final thought is come over to, just say you don't understand Reformed Theology, move along on Facebook.

And, uh, I regret to inform you that the Papists are at it again, which is Matthew's group.

You can have a good time with us.

Also, you, what's the one, uh, uh, positive, good Christian content.

What is it? Oh, wait a second.

This is actually, uh, wholesome Christian content.

I love that one.

I'm on there all the time.

I always post my videos on there because I, because I try to post wholesome Christian content.

So I feel like, I feel like I qualify.

So yeah.

I also buy these shirts on Teespring.

Yes.

And you can now do that from my YouTube page.

If you go to the YouTube page, my store shows up on the YouTube page, which is really cool.

That just started today.

So very cool.

The check better be in the mail.

Yes, sir.

All right, Matthew, your, your final thought? Uh, as far as books go, I would say most of the Nine Marks books are excellent on, um, how to find a healthy church because a lot of these issues are properly handled by healthy elders and a healthy church.

Um, the Nine Marks books on deacons, elders, everything about that.

And of course they have a perspective that they're going to, they're going to advocate for, and that's fine.

And you don't have to agree with everything, but the baby Christian who just wants to know, how do I find a healthy church? Finding a healthy church with courageous, godly elders is going to resolve like 80% of this for you.

Not, not that that obviates your own need to show yourself approved and studied the scriptures and all that, but especially as you're getting started, their job is to shepherd and guide you and keep you safe while you develop the faith.

And then you get to go out there and slay dragons once you're fully equipped and properly ready to go.

So that would be that.

The other one would be, again, we've talked a lot about your elders and stuff.

Um, biblical eldership, Alexander Strauch, it's a much longer read.

It's about that thick.

Um, but knowing how to spot good shepherds and how to spot ones that are operating under compulsion or not all that well, he does an excellent job at covering all of that.

So, um, I would say both of those things, because most of what we're talking about gets resolved when you find a healthy church.

Amen.

I also want to recommend for church history, look up Dr.

Ryan Reeves on YouTube.

If you want to learn some of these church history topics, he does good 30-45 minute deep dives on things like Anathanasian Creed, um, so you can really kind of upgrade your education in that area.

Amen.

Well, thank you brothers for being here, and I'm going to bring us to our sign-off.

I want to thank you again for being a part of this show today.

I know it's been a long show.

We're now at the two-hour mark, and if you've hung in to the end, thank you so much.

And I want to thank you for continuing to support our channel and making us a success.

Please like this video if you did like it and share it with someone if you don't mind.

I want to also remind you that we have a ton of other content on our YouTube channel, as well as our Conversations with a Calvinist podcast.

And if you want to get the podcast, go to any of your popular podcast channels or popular podcast apps, and you'll be able to find us at Conversations with a Calvinist.

And if you have a question you'd like me to address, you can send me the questions at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.

You can follow me on Twitter, at YourCalvinist, and I also do a, about every two or three weeks, I do a news program called Church Soup.

And if you come across an interesting news story that you think you'd like for me to cover on Church Soup, you can send that to me through Twitter or through email with the hashtag, churchsoup.

Thank you for listening to Conversation with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.