How to tell the difference between essential and non-essential doctrine.

Revealed Apologetics

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How does one differentiate between a damnable heresy and a non damnable heresy?

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Not merely by appealing that one damns the other doesn't, how do we determine that from scripture? That a denial or affirmation of something is damnable or not damnable?

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Boy, I'm so glad you asked that question, Eli. It's almost as though I gave you the question, which I did not, but that's a good question.

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What I would suggest people do is go to my website, karm .org, C -A -R -M dot O -R -G, and look up Doctrine Grid.

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Doctrine Grid. Doctrine hyphen Grid. And you'll find this article that I've written, and I have had a lot of comments over the years about this article.

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A lot of people have been very grateful about it. I wrote it in November of 2008.

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So it's been around for 12 years, almost. And what I did was, through my thousands of hours of reading the scriptures, debating the scriptures, debating with cults, debating with just various people.

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Remember, I've been doing this a lot. I do this a lot, okay? So I do full -time for years. So I discovered through the scriptures,

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I would gradually list them out when I'd be reading. Go, wait a minute, that's an essential. For example, Jesus says in John 8, 24, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

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So what he's doing is he's saying you gotta believe that he is the I am. In John 8, 58, he says, before Abraham was,

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I am. They pick up stone to throw at him and he hit himself. And so we see that there's a statement with a warning or a consequence associated with denying it.

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Unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sins. So that obviously is an essential doctrine. You have to believe that he's the

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I am. Now, most Bibles will translate it, I am he. The he is not in the Greek.

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It just says, egoi me, I am. That's what it really says. And he's using that specifically for that reason.

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The he should be in italics if you're in a decent translation, which means it's not there in the Greek. Now, then we have that one.

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We also have the idea that Jesus rose from the dead. You can go to 1 Corinthians 15, 14, and verse 17, and it says, if Christ be not raised, our faith is in vain.

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So let's talk about the physical resurrection. And I can relate that to John 2, 19 through 21, and 1

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Corinthians 15, 35 through 45. We're talking about the necessity of the resurrection and the same body

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Jesus died in is the body he rose in. You can cross -reference that with also with John 20, 25 through 28, put your hand into my side, et cetera.

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So when Paul said, if he's not raised, our faith is in vain, you could falsify

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Christianity by demonstrating that Jesus never rose from the dead. If you could prove it somehow,

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Christianity is false. That's how important this doctrine is. And so there's a warning with that.

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There's another warning with the issue of salvation. And we know from various verses, I've already quoted some of them, but I didn't get into, or the addresses of some of them, didn't get into Galatians 5, 1 through 4.

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And Galatians 5, 1 through 4 talks about, if you receive baptism, Christ will be of no benefit for you, for you who are seeking to be justified by the law, you've been severed from Christ.

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And so the issue of circumcision, excuse me, is a ceremony of doing one little thing, adding one little ceremony to the work of Christ.

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And you're severed from Christ, circumcision, severed, you get the pun and things like that. So I can go into that, but I won't go into too much more, but that's an essential doctrine because it's warning.

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We also have the nature of the gospel and go to Galatians 1, 8, and 9, if we are an angel from heaven should preach to a gospel, contrary to what you preach to you, let him be accursed.

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We also go to a monotheism, and that's out of Exodus 20, 1 through 17, the 10 commandments,

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I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall have no other gods before me. And it goes in and he says, there's visitations of punishments upon them if they were to deny that.

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Now, what I've done here, I know I'm going quickly because there's so much to cover. The thing is

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I'm doing is showing you that there are certain scriptures and certain statements in the Bible that declare their essential nature.

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And because of that, I call them primary essentials. This is just me, this is my designation.

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I say primary essentials because they designate a warning. Unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sins.

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That's primary. A secondary essential would be something like the Trinity. Now, the

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Trinity is an essential doctrine of the Christian faith that properly describes God, but there's no statement in the

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Bible that says, unless you believe that God is one, there's only one God and three distinct simultaneous co -distinct persons, then nothing like that.

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But we know that Trinity is true, so I call it a secondary essential. It's an essential of the faith, but there's no warning given to affirming or denying it.

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Not specifically. Let me ask a question real quick then. Let me ask a question. So someone,

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I know people have asked this question often, is that if, and maybe they've read some of your articles, if the

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Trinity is a secondary essential, can someone be saved while denying the Trinity? When people ask me these questions,

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I say, technically, yes. But they have to understand what I mean by technically. Because you could have someone technically who could be regenerate and has been taught some bad stuff and just doesn't understand the doctrine of the

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Trinity. I've had this happen before, where I've actually talked to someone who says they've trusted in Christ, believe in salvation by grace alone, but they deny the

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Trinity. And I said, well, the Trinity is an essential doctrine. They go, no, it's not. And I said, well, yes, it is.

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I said, can I talk to you about what the Trinity is? They said, sure. And I said, well, it's one God in three persons.

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And they went, really? I thought it was three gods. Said, no, it's one God in three. Let me show you in the scriptures.

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We spent a half hour through the scriptures and the guy went, well, that makes sense. I believe it. So in the technical sense, he was denying it, but not really.

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But the point here is that because he's regenerate, we'll end up believing the truth.

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So when I say technically, yes, you could have, in that sense, yes. But then you could also have people who were saved who have no idea what the

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Trinity is. They're not denying it. They just don't even know. A lot of people don't even know that Jesus is a man right now, which is an essential doctrine.

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So I gotta modify this and put it into a secondary essential. There's a reason for it. A lot of pastors don't even know that.

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A lot of pastors don't even know it. And I need to modify that. Put it in number nine here, move all the numbers up.

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But he's a man right now. And the reason that's important is because if he's not a man right now, he can't hold a priesthood.

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If he can't hold a priesthood, he can't be our intercessor. And that gets into Hebrews 5, 6, 7, and 8.

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But at any rate, so I learn as I do this. So technically the answer is yes, they can be

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Christian and deny the Trinity, but not in a real sense of denial, not at a continued sense of denial.

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They're gonna come, the true believers are gonna come to the faith. That's what I mean by that. And also another non, it's an essential doctrine, but it's not a primary, it's a secondary, the virgin birth.

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You can't defend the deity of Christ, the hypostatic union, communicatio idiomatum. You can't defend this without the virgin birth being real.

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But no statement says, thou shalt believe in the virgin birth or your anathema. And Jesus is the only way to the father,

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John 14, 6. No man goes to the father, but by him, things like that. There's no warning on that, but it's an essential doctrine.

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So when we have these kinds of things as essentials, we understand what it is, then everything else is what we call audiophora.

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Audiophora are non -essentials. Like I'm a pedo -Baptist, not for salvation, but as a covenantal perspective.

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Now you don't agree with that. Okay, maybe you're right. Maybe you're not right.

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Maybe I'm right. Maybe I'm not right. I don't think there's any way to really know until we get to heaven and that's okay.

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I'll tease you about it and mock you about it and things like that. But you always laugh back at me and stuff like that.

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And so, I'm all millennial. I believe that the wicked will be taken before the good will be taken when

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Christ returns. I believe in the new heavens and the new earth and things like that.

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And if you don't agree with those things, okay. So this is how we know what the faith really is by looking at the scriptures.

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And there's more information on other primary and secondary essentials and moral issues, because that's another area we gotta look into.

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But for now, that's what we have. So if we know these things, then we're able to have a scalpel of truth that we can divide truth from error.

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And that's what we need to be able to do. So, but you'll find that even though a lot of times here, I'm very to the point.

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A lot of people don't know I have Asperger's. You know, I have this autism spectrum thing.

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And so I'm not very focused. But in real time talking to people, you know, I'm not in a debate with or preaching heresy.

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I'm very congealed, very, very nice, very patient with them, very caring with them and working with them through things.

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When I'm in a teaching mode, it's a different thing. I go directly to the point, stuff like that, so. Yeah, I love your short answer.