What Every Christian Must Believe — Keith Hartsell

Essential Christian Beliefs Versus Optional Doctrines

Today we're diving into what every Christian must believe and at the end I'll pass out this like cheat sheet that has everything in summary on it for you but that isn't to like give you a get out of jail free card when it comes to taking notes or whatever stands out to you.

What's been challenging for me going from being a non-christian growing up in a non-churchgoing family to being evangelized by Baptists to then church hopping in college and finally landing in the Anglican Church is it was really challenging for me to know the differences between what Christians must believe and what were optional Christian beliefs because all the denominations emphasize different things and it became a little complicated for me particularly because my dad grew up in the Church of Christ and lost his faith in the Church of Christ and is a sort of proclaimed hell-bound individual who just kind of feels like with everything he learned in the Church of Christ he's just not good enough to get into heaven and that's the end of the story which is really sad and so I became excited slash passionate about helping folks as they come into our church with what I consider a very brief catechesis which is an introduction to the essential beliefs so as to separate them from all the confusing optional beliefs and optional beliefs are kind of what people dive into when they get a master's degree in theology.

They dive into all the... are you getting one now? MDiv. So like you take entire classes like slicing hairs of theology and nuancing theology and it gets really difficult and complicated for folks as they're trying to sort through well you know this church says that they're the only church how do I sort through that and so there's a lot of confusion today among folks trying to navigate all the denominations what does it mean to be a Christian and so that's what I hope this 90 minute teaching will help with so we're going to use two terms the first term is called the status confessionis beliefs that is a fancy way of saying the non-negotiables or the essential beliefs for Christians it's what separates us from Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, etc.

Status confessionis beliefs. If I had a whiteboard I would write it up for you. Is there a marker to that board? Actually I see a bin. If anybody sees any I will... Do you know where the kids are? I brought cake.

You're so nice to us, cake. Got some plates. Your generosity is being permanently recorded and will be posted on the internet. So status confessionis and then the alternative concept is the concept of adiaphora.

A-D-I-A-P-H-O-R-A. Adiaphora means the optional beliefs or all of the ways in which we as Christians disagree about things but we're still Christian there's still Christian beliefs even though they might seem contradictory.

So an example of that would be what we think is happening in communion. There are four different ways of viewing what's going on in communion. All four of them are Christian ways of viewing communion.

That's an adiaphora belief. What you think is happening in baptism which is what Danny's talking about right now and we will get to at some point in this class is what what is the Anglican view of baptism and communion.

An example of a status confessionis belief is was Jesus born of a virgin birth or not. It's status confessionis that he was born of a virgin birth. That he is fully God and fully man. Those are status confessionis beliefs.

So I like to describe the status confessionis beliefs as the boundaries like a big fence of being a Christian and if you go outside of this fence and believe something alternative to a status confessionis belief it's not a Christian idea or not a Christian belief and whether you're a Christian or not kind of is a little sort of up in the air based on how far outside of this boundary are you in terms of what you think about Jesus what you think about God etc but then adiaphora is all the space inside and you can disagree on a lot of different things and still be a Christian in good standing.

Now I say that but I also want to say that I don't think all the optional beliefs are equal in terms of your growth and edification in the Lord. So I think that some adiaphora beliefs will help you grow and some won't.

For example the idea that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are active today healing people. That is one of the beliefs that we as Christians hold but there are some Christians that don't believe that God is at work in the same way today than he was.

That's an adiaphora optional belief. It doesn't determine whether you're a Christian or not but I think that the belief that God is at work today and that miracles happen and that he heals people is really important for people's growth in God.

So I don't think they're all equal like like we're at a buffet and you can just either pick the green peas or the green beans and it doesn't really matter. I think some of them are more healthy than others.

Does that make sense? So one of the beliefs that is an adiaphora belief that I think is really important for growth is the idea of the sacramental worldview that God ministers to us through the sacraments or through matter, through physical things.

And then status confessionist beliefs that are distorted is where heresy is born. It's a sort of corruption of the essential ideas. So if you've ever heard of liberal churches versus fundamentalist churches the basic breakdown between these two kinds of churches are that fundamentalist churches will elevate optional beliefs, adiaphora beliefs, up to the level of status confessionist, meaning you have to believe that Christians only breastfeed in order to be a Christian and a part of our church.

The bottle is not an option, right? That's a fundamentalist idea. It's raising optional beliefs up to the status of status confessionist and distorting the gospel for people. But the liberal church does the opposite.

They take the essentials and lower them to optional so that you can believe Jesus was born of a virgin birth or not, it doesn't matter. You can believe that he actually was in a physical body and died on the cross or that his body was more like a spirit body, it doesn't matter.

That's the liberal, sort of universalist way of treating theology. Everything becomes optional. And so we want to, as much as possible, keep the essentials the essentials and the options the options, which is what we're doing here.

So any questions about that before we move on? The basic paradigm of how we're going to treat all the views or all the ideas in theology? Great. Fire away whenever you have something that you're like, that doesn't make any sense to me.

So we started the class last week with the source of our authority in terms of what is essential and what isn't essential, and that is the great tradition. And I don't know if Danny did the five fingers of the great tradition, but the great tradition is what we sort of root everything in, in terms of the authority that determines what is Christian and what isn't.

The great tradition is made up of five fingers, and they're not double-jointed fingers. The first one is one canon, that is the Bible, and not adding to the Bible or subtracting from the Bible. So the second finger is two testaments, so the Bible has to be made up of the two testaments.

You can't be a Marcionite and totally get rid of the Old Testament, which was a heresy, 3rd, 4th century, something like that. So one canon made up of two testaments that are explained in three creeds.

Does anyone know all three of the creeds, the names of them? Athanasius, Nicene, and Apostles. Those are the three creeds of the church that articulate Scripture in a way that defines our theology. Athanasius, it's the least familiar one for people because it is so darn long, and we try to say it once a year, but even on that one day a year when we say it in our service, I kind of regret it.

No, it's a statement of belief, and it basically describes the Trinity redundantly over and over and over and over again. So it's one that most people aren't familiar with. I generally pass it out at this class.

I don't think I brought it with me. We usually say the Apostles Creed, which is the shortest, or the Nicene Creed. The Apostles Creed is the the creed that they have baptismal candidates learn and say to be baptized because it's the shortest and the simplest.

But basically it introduces ideas like Trinity, which is not a word found in the Bible. You have the example of the Trinity, say at Jesus's baptism, where the Father speaks, the Son is being baptized, and the Spirit descends like a dove.

You have this illustration of the Trinity, but you don't have the explanation of the Trinity. So the Church Fathers and Mothers articulated the idea of the Trinity in the Creed. So the creeds help us understand and articulate our faith that is in the Scriptures.

So it took a couple of hundred years for those creeds to be written. So continuing with the Five Fingers, the one canon made up of two testaments articulated in three creeds written in the first four councils of the undivided Church, which took place in the first five centuries.

So the Nicene Creed was written in 325 AD, fourth century. And I believe that fifth century and that fourth council allow us to add one more document to help us with our understanding of Christian essentials, and that's the definition at Chalcedon, which is a definition of Jesus as fully God and fully man.

So three creeds plus this document that's not a creed, it's just called the definition at Chalcedon. Is that how you say it? Chalcedon? I've heard it pronounced Chalcedon. Chalcedon? Chalcedon. Okay, so it doesn't matter how I pronounce it.

Good. Everybody deviates. I always wonder how the academics know that stuff. I'm like, they don't have tape recorders. You just say it with confidence. Yeah. That's what you say. So that's the great tradition.

That's where we root all of our theology. And of course the church over the centuries has fought distortions of these ideas that became heresies.

Yeah, Judy? You know, how is it that my parents are Baptist Christians and I don't remember our evidence?

Yeah, most of the Protestant denominations have sort of gotten rid of anything that was after the first century.

After 0 to 100 A .D. So they did this newer group that goes back to Swerve, which is the undivided church.

Yeah, you know, I think there was just a lot of, everywhere that I've experienced it, it's a kind of collective embarrassment of the church. And that if we could just go back to the first century and root ourselves in the first century, we can be the first century in us, subtract the last 1900 years.

It's kind of how most people think about the church. They don't really like it. And so then there's not a lot of familiarity with it. Would you guys say that that's true? So it's kind of a rejection almost of the Catholic church, really.

It's sort of seen as Catholic.

Yeah, it comes up in the Middle Ages when the Protestants and the Catholics split. They wanted to do away with everything. But even like you said, the church didn't really start to split until the 5th or 6th century, but there's still all kinds of good stuff in the first couple centuries.

So the first couple of centuries we talk about is the undivided church that, for us, forms our authority. You can't really say as a Christian today, it's just the Bible and me. Because the Bible is misinterpreted so many different ways that without the first couple of centuries, as I said, with the four councils in the five centuries of articulating our faith, then you can just go in any direction that you want.

Heresy, Authority, and the Trinity

So Jehovah's Witnesses, which is a cult, has distorted the idea of who Jesus is and say that Jesus is one of many sons of God, many gods, and that we will all be gods like Jesus is, ruling over our own world.

Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons. Jehovah's Witnesses says Jesus is a god.

No, they don't believe he was God at all. No, they believe he's an angel.

Yeah, so a god is from John 1 and it's a lowercase g. That he's not the god, he's a god, like a deity, a sub-deity. Well, they sort of view him as a sub-deity. As the word was with God, the word was a god, not the god.

And so you have these distortions of Christian theology that become cults that are heresies, etc. So we want to draw that line clear so that you know what's in and what's out. So, those are the great tradition.

And you got a pretty decent explanation of the formation of the Bible last week, am I right? Then, the Trinity becomes sort of the hallmarking doctrine of the church. The idea that God is one God made up of three persons.

I don't want to go into great detail because I know some of you guys are familiar with this in great detail. And what's frustrating about this for somebody like Nick is we're totally going to do the fly-by and not really dive in.

No, feel free to jump in. But it is totally a fly-by based on time and how much we cover. That whole degrees are built around diving into each topic for a whole semester. So the idea of the Trinity, triune God, is that Christians are the only faith group in the world that worships a triune God.

That worships one God with three distinct persons that are all equally God. That's super unique. The language that really articulated the idea of the Trinity was formed in the second creed, the Nicene Creed.

Which is the one that's most commonly said in liturgical churches, the Nicene Creed. And a couple of words were really important as they argued about the language. One was that they are of the same substance.

So the word same was argued with the word similar. Is Jesus of a similar substance as the Father or the same substance? And so they reject similar and choose same. The phrase distinct persons was a novel word that came up.

This is all obviously not in English, right? This is in Latin.

The Homoousius versus Homoousius. Koine? It was Homoousius versus Homoousius. And that's Greek, not Latin? Yeah, you're probably right.

And the words... Wow, that was 325. They were still speaking Greek in 325. When was the Vulgate translated? Greek into Latin. By what's-his-name in Bethlehem. It'll come back to me. Distinct persons to describe the three different persons of the Trinity.

And the Cappadocian fathers came up with that word person to describe God's threeness. It was Origen's language in 325 at the Council of Nicaea that used same, not similar, refuting Arius. Also the idea that Jesus was created before time was an idea that they put down.

That while Jesus did exist before all of creation, that there was a time before Jesus. That there was a time when he was not. And so that was rejected. Articulating, along with John chapter 1, that Jesus was with God, Jesus was God.

There was not a time when Jesus was not. And some misunderstandings that they were trying to refute were ideas of God becoming the Father, then becoming the Son, then becoming the Spirit. Ideas of one identical person being projected in three different images, kind of like Aristotle would describe philosophically.

These were all rejected. And stories of Jesus' baptism were the illustrations of God doesn't project himself as three different images. That there are three persons interacting in a holy community. Exchanging and receiving love.

And so St. Augustine in the 5th century wrote quite a bit about the idea of the Trinity and love in the community that they shared with one another. So that is essential beliefs for Christians. Any questions about the Trinity or Trinitarian theology?

So you were saying that it's one of the Catholic Ocean Fathers and was it Trinitarian? Origin.

Origin is the one who contributed the word same. I don't even know how to pronounce it.

Homoousius is same, homoousius is similar.

It's the same word with one iota. One iota. So it's kind of an irony. The problem itself theologically was represented in these actual alphabetic words in our language.

So these conversations, these arguments, did they take place in those four councils? Or these are just things that people had to make a decision on in the early church?

Yeah, I think that these were ideas that gained ground in different parts of the world as the gospel spread out. And then these councils were times when they all came back together again and basically had the debates of what is the correct way of understanding God?

What is the Christian way of understanding God? And so there was a real effort to protect the tradition that was handed from the apostles to the second generation and the third generation of Christians and to not let it get distorted.

So it sounded like back then there was an effort to have this large coming.

Then it was East and West coming together independently of one another.

Most were a vast majority. Because sometimes you'll hear today that like, oh, they were silencing them. It wasn't like a 49 to 51 vote. There were a couple that were pretty close. But for the most part, it was a very small percentage of people like Arius who was espousing these kind of ridiculous beliefs.

And 99 of the church said, no. No, that's not the way it works.

It's an illustration of how the church needs each other to stay on track. And we're going to use two different words. And they're both going to mean two different things based on whether you're saying capital or lowercase words.

So orthodox, uppercase O, is the actual orthodox church. The lowercase O means correct theology. So you just said orthodox, lowercase O, correct theology. It's the same with Catholic. We'll say Catholic, uppercase C, meaning Roman Catholic Church.

Or lowercase C, which means universal church. And then one other idea that they rejected was whatever you said about one person of the Trinity's character, you had to say about, they didn't reject this.

They argued this needed to be the case. Whatever you said about one person of the Trinity had to be said about the character of the other persons of the Trinity. Which is a problem we actually see today where you might hear someone say, I really love Jesus because he's so gentle and forgiving.

But I don't like the Father because he's so wrathful and angry all the time, based on how people read the Bible. And so that's sort of rejected as a heresy because the Father is gentle and compassionate and forgiving.

And Jesus makes a whip and drives people out of a temple and says mean things to Pharisees and such. And so whatever you say about one person of the Trinity and their character has to be said about all three persons of the Trinity.

It was a famous Latin phrase, ad... Oh, I had it memorized. So it was some famous phrase. But you don't need to write it down. So that influences how we talk about the Trinity. And not separating them out so far that they are like two different, or three different, vastly different characters relating to the world or to us.

Original Sin and Human Responsibility

The second major area is sin and how sin affects mankind. The doctrine of original sin is what this usually discusses. But the doctrine of original sin is not universally understood the same by everyone.

And so I'm going to tease out two different components of original sin. One is the idea of... Well, let me first start with Adam and Eve. In the undivided church, they agreed that before the fall, Adam and Eve were created with the possibility of not sinning.

That's called passe non peccare. It was possible for them not to sin. According to St. Augustine, this is 5th century, 4th council. They were given free choice, had the possibility of remaining obedient to God, and never allowing sin to enter into the world or into creation.

This is teased out literarily and poetically by C .S. Lewis in his second book of the science trilogy, Paralandra. And I loved that book, toying with the idea of what would have happened had they never sinned.

But they chose to sin in our narrative. And now as descendants of Adam and Eve, we have inherited their sin. This is called original sin. We're all affected by original sin. And everyone agrees that we're all affected and that we now cannot avoid sinning.

So everybody agrees that we are now non passe non peccare. It is not possible for us to not sin. It is, however, possible for us to resist temptation in a moment. But it's not possible for us to become sin-free before we die and see Jesus face to face.

So that was a dispute brought about by Pelagius versus Augustine. Pelagius wanted to argue that we could reach a sinless state and become perfect or perfectly holy before dying. And the distinction between these two is, did you then die because of the sins you had committed in your life since you were born?

Or were you guilty for Adam or your parents' or your grandparents' sin? Became the dispute within original sin. So everybody upholds personal responsibility. Everybody agrees that we are damnable for our own sins.

But the question became, for those who may not have yet committed their own personal sin, i .e. Benjamin, what do you do with babies who die? How do you understand their state of being sinless or sinful and their relationship to God?

And so this is where East and West actually divide in their understanding of original sin. The West, i .e. Augustine Roman Catholic Church, argued that you were guilty for Adam's sin. So doctrine of original sin meant you had inherited guilt.

Whereas the Eastern Orthodox believe that you don't have inherited guilt. They believe in the doctrine of original sin but without inherited guilt. That you are only damned by your own sin and that everybody has committed their own sins.

So that's the difference. Now how you understand infants is different than according to both of these. This is the adiaphora component. You can believe either one and still be a Christian, right? So how you treat infants and them getting into heaven is different based on these two different ways of understanding sin.

So the West had every midwife trained in emergency baptism. And they tried to baptize every baby that came out of the womb immediately. And then they went through what is called conditional baptism in the church.

Which is kind of a funny custom. It's still a second baptism. It's not a second baptism, theologically. But you do the same thing that the midwife did. You only add the words, if you have not already been baptized.

I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It's just adding the phrase. And that constitutes conditional baptism. So that's what the West did in order to cover themselves with the idea that maybe perhaps infants would die.

And be hellbound. Which was a horrible idea to everyone. The East developed this category of non-moral innocence. Where animals, babies, and children, and the mentally ill all fell into that category.

And there was just this love of God and grace for this group of people. And it just didn't really matter in terms of whatever way you might parse out where their soul is at. They were just covered by the love and grace of God.

Which is really helpful. Because if you have kids, then generally somewhere around six months, maybe a year. You don't really see them sinning until that point. When they've really exercised their will against mom and dad.

But before that, it's like, you can't really see an infant sinning. So even in the West, while Roman Catholics believe that infants who are unbaptized are damnable. They don't actually practice it at funerals.

You just don't see anybody practicing that idea as they lay a baby to rest. So what questions do you have about sin?

Not religion, but your baptismal certificate or whatever other religion. In terms of having documents of who you are. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, those documents. And the church was really sort of the law of the land for so many centuries. That if you didn't have standing in the church, you didn't have standing socially. Yeah.

So learning about this particular issue totally changed my mind from the Baptist perspective on baby baptisms. To the Anglican perspective on baby baptisms. Because I thought baptism was saving the soul of your baby.

And I was like, I don't really believe that. So then this idea of babies are in the category of non-moral innocence. Helped me see baptism less as saving the baby. And more of bringing the baby into the presence of God.

Which I was like, well, I wouldn't want to not do that. I would love to do that. That sounds great. So I totally then changed my practice based on understanding this. And I obviously identify with the Eastern Orthodox view personally.

Is that something that Anglicans do too? Anglicans have this wonderful, this broad umbrella of adiaphora. So that you can have different views. You can be very Catholic. Or you can be very Orthodox. Capital O, Orthodox.

Capital C, Catholic. And still be Anglican. Because the Anglicans have created this umbrella of theology that's all-inclusive. Not all-inclusive. But a lot inclusive. Because in England, as the Church of England was forming.

They kept going back and forth between Protestant and Catholic. Protestant and Catholic. Until Elizabeth married the theologies together. And created the prayer book with Cramner. Who wrote it. That sort of married Protestant and Catholic theologies together.

Creating this sort of place for everyone. Which is what I love about it. It's not so fundamentalist. That you have to believe what we believe. So you have people in the Anglican Church who baptize their children.

And people who don't. And it's totally fine. There's no first class, second class Anglican. Everybody just agrees that we're going to disagree on this issue. And they bless each other. And they find ways to sacramentally accommodate one another.

Within the Church. So that's something I've come to love. About the Anglican Church. Yeah. Yeah. We find ways of blessing the children one way or another. Simeon? Yeah. Yeah, Anna and Simeon. Yeah, absolutely.

So one question that comes up is. How does the doctrine of original sin affect the person of Jesus? Was he guilty of original sin? Was he not? How's this worked out? So theology that is status confessionist says.

Jesus as the new Adam was born of Mary. Posse non peccare. Which is possible to not sin the same as Adam and Eve. Posse non peccare. And that he could have sinned. But chose to obey God the Father. So the temptations for him were real temptations.

They weren't artificial. They weren't going through the motions. He could have sinned. But he chose to obey God the Father. Therefore he becomes the perfect scapegoat. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

You do have in some circles. Trying to dilute the. The human genetic contribution to Jesus. So as to like. Try to dilute. The original sin that perhaps he might inherit through. The one human contributor to his.

Existence. You'll see that in some funny circles within the Catholic Church. With Jesus being born of a virgin birth. Followed by or preceded by. Mary being born of a virgin birth. Which is the Immaculate Conception.

Sort of continuing to. Mystify or create the origins of Jesus. To be more mysterious. It's not. Christian essential beliefs. It's just sort of on the. The periphery of audiophora. But most Protestants don't really go any further than Jesus.

Who was born of a virgin birth. Did I just confuse everybody? Anybody from a Catholic background? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So if you ever start getting into the Immaculate Conception. It's about Mary and her.

Her. Her conception. So. All that to say. In Jesus's case. Sin is not inherited through genetic material. But as a state of the soul. Christology was the next major issue that the church tackled. In the definition of Chalcedon.

Christology and the Hypostatic Union

Jesus is being fully man and fully God simultaneously. It is the. Theology. The article by which the church stands or falls. What you think about Jesus. It's his two natures that are at stake in the debate.

Fully God. Fully man. Partially God. Partially man. More God than man. More man than God. Is the. The debate. The issues. And so. Probably a dozen or so heresies. Come out of this issue. Of over emphasizing one of his natures over the other.

So. Docetism. Gnosticism. Ebionism. Are all three heresies that are about. His humanity or his divinity being primary. And so. We do everything we can to avoid. One of the two natures of Christ being primary over the other.

So the definition of the council at Chalcedon was written. Describing Mary as the God bearer. The Theotokos. Not. The Christ bearer. The Christotokos. And that is because. The word Christ. Was ambiguous.

It meant Messiah. It meant anointed one. It did not necessarily. Mean. God. And so. To rule out all ambiguity. It rejected Christ bearer. And settled on God bearer. So that there was no confusion. Mary gave birth to God.

This is called. Marrying these two natures together. The unity and distinction. The Chalcedonian definition calls it the hypostatic union. Where two. Integrities are married. Two realities exist in a unity.

And such that they cannot be divided. So. In that way. Christ person. Being fully God and fully man. Are also not to be separated from his salvific work. What he does to atone for the sins of the world.

So his being is tied invariably to his function. As savior of the world. His function is broken down into three roles. Three sort of Old Testament archetypes. Of. Prophet, priest, and king. And he serves in all three roles.

For us. Simultaneously. And in the role of the priest. He also serves. As the sacrifice. Priest and sacrifice. I think so. I think they're in the summary.

Did you guys ever want to. There's. These. Scholars have translated all of the. Results of these councils and the letters. Yeah. They're all online. I mean if you're. Some. Some. Library. The Christian classical theory.

Let's see. CCTL. New Advent. Or. There's a couple of them. There's only. I mean. If you ever really want to read. The. Definition phase. From Chalcedon. Or. I mean. It's. They're all there. Yeah. Gorge yourself.

Yeah. There's so much. Yeah. And. Because they're online. Yeah. Control F. And like. Search for it. Yeah. Yeah. So you could see where. Hypostatic Union. Came from. Where it's written. In a document. That they wrote.

And what they wrote about it. The next issue. I think is really simple. I love that it's simple. People are surprised. That it's really simple. It's. It's. The understanding. Of the end times. Eschatology.

The Essential Christian Hope of Christ’s Return

The study of the end times. The status confession. Is. Is simple. The audio for. Is not. Right. The optional beliefs. About the end times. Are as varied.

And as many as. As. There are perhaps. People. In the world. But. What all Christians. All times. Everywhere. Agree on. About the end times. Is a few things. One. The end. Will happen. There is an end.

They all agree on that. They call it the eschaton. Or the. Final event. Which is the coming of Christ. That Christ returns. Something that we celebrate in Advent. Not just the first coming of Christ. But we also.

Celebrate in Advent. The second coming. Sort of awaiting. The coming of Christ. So it's. The two comings of Christ. That we celebrate in Advent. Everybody agrees that the event. Will be disruptive. Of the present evil age.

All Christians believe that Christ. Will return and judge. The world. And they all agree that Jesus. Will be victorious. Those are all the non-negotiable. Beliefs about the end. That's it. Everything else.

Is adiaphora. The manner of his return. The timing of his return. What specific events. Are around his return. And every Christian theologian. And scholar has an opinion. But it's fairly simple for us.

In terms of what's essential. What did you want to add Nick? Oh. I was going to ask you to repeat those. Those four things real quick. Yeah. The final event. The eschaton. Is the coming of Christ. It's a disruption of the present evil age.

Everybody agrees that Jesus is victorious. Like he wins. He doesn't just come back. He also wins. And. That he will judge the world. Those are the. The essentials. So the late great planet. Left behind series.

Adiaphora. The left behind series is. A complete 100 literal interpretation. Of the book of Revelation. As if everything in it was. Nothing was symbolic at all. But it was all literal. Is that particular view.

So. Most scholars think that there's a blend. Of literal and symbolic. Which is sort of the difference. In the nature of apocalyptic language. But no one knows. What parts are literal. What parts are symbolic.

What parts are. Representing. I guess that's what symbolic means. Of other things. There's nobody knows. So it's kind of. Interesting. We. We do caution folks not to like. Go. Obsessive. About apocalyptic literature.

But it's really good to study it. And learn it. And to be familiar with it. Contrary to the. Simplicity of the end times. This next issue in theology. Is really complicated. Simply because it is what.

Possibly sparked. The Protestant Reformation. So it's the issue of soteriology. Or how one is saved. The issue of salvation. Soteriology. Soteriology. S-O-T-E-R. Soter. Eology. And it centers around the issue of.