One of the most impactful lessons I learned in seminary was regarding what my professor called orders of importance. His argument was that we have basically three levels of importance in the Christian life.
Firstly, we have things on which we must agree as the lowest common denominator for Christian faith. These have been called essentials or orthodoxy, but the bottom line is that we believe that a person must believe or affirm these things to be considered a Christian. In this category are things like the deity and humanity of Christ, justification by faith alone, and the necessity of repentance.
Secondly, we have things on which we must agree to have fellowship in one local body. In this category are things that are important, but that we believe can be disagreed on among brothers in Christ. However, disagreements on these things will make it difficult in the life of the Church. Mode of baptism is the first thing that pops into my mind. If we agree that baptism is not salvific (see paragraph one), we can disagree about the mode with other Christians. Members of one church, though, must agree about the mode of baptism so that we can conduct the ordinances of the church in unity. Other things that may fit into this category are church membership process, openness/closedness/closeness of the Lord’s table.
Lastly, we have things that we may disagree on that do not necessitate a break in fellowship. A brother and I may disagree about the end-times, but that does not mean that we cannot share a pew in the same church. Musical styles (depending on who you ask) are another thing that would fit into this category. These are things which believers in the same church may disagree on without any disunity in the local body.
Here’s the difficult part, we have a tendency to elevate everything into the first category. Everything seems to be vitally important as we deal with it. There are certainly some things that we must agree upon. The Scripture is clear on those things. We must stand firm on such issues. Other very important issues will affect the way we conduct business in the local body. We must come to agreement with our local body on these issues for the sake of unity.
My prayer is that the Lord will give us wisdom and clarity on deciding which issues belong in which category. The tried and true, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity” is a great aspiration. May we humbly endeavor to disagree in a God-honoring way.
Soli Deo Gloria
"in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity." ~ Augustine
ReplyDeleteI agree with your Blog. Much of the discussion that has been at the fore-front, namely in the SBC, is coming from some of the assumed settled doctrinal understandings being tested.(Frankly, they have been ignored which has resulted in a shift away from solid Biblical teaching on these very matters.) You mentioned mode(s)of Baptism; the understanding of "believers baptism" is where the notion of liberty has been elevated to essential, and so also with the understanding of Election. 'Arminians & Calvinist' have agreed on "the Elect" as Biblical and limited ~ where the liberty is now being called to essential is to combat 'Open Theism', which is a very real threat and reality among many Sounthern Baptist members. We have much work to do. Even in how we present a call for public professions of faith, which is at the core as well. "Christ died to save men, not merely make them save-able" ~ Spurgeon
I so do appreciate your service, giftedness and love for Christ & His body. Praying as you fulfill this great and important calling for NFCC. joe
Thanks Joe. As you said, we've got a lot of work to do. I can't remember where, but one definition of the "evangelical" church was that she is always reforming, meaning that we are constantly evaluating ourselves according to the Scripture. As different questions are raised, we revisit our positions and examine whether or not they are biblical. It can be a difficult process.
DeleteI remember one of the things that really stuck out to me about the emergent (different than emerging...at least a little) thinkers is that they all seemed to lead with a an attack our words and how they conveyed meaning. Of course, when you look at the whole of their theology, you understand why, but it is very telling that they must find a way to circumvent the harder parts of the text.
Of course, those are the easier cases to spot. It gets difficult when two views hold an equally high view of Scripture, but they disagree on a crucial interpretation.
Thanks for reading Joe.
I agree. I am, unfortunately, barraged with Facebook updates (because Facebook changes people's minds, right?) about such trivial disagreements, such as baptism, whether or not you should have Christian rock and rap, and how old the earth really is. It gets tiring when so much of it really doesn't matter to the extent that they seem to think it does. If someone is blatantly proposing a universalist view and still claims to be Christian, then that's erroneous, but when someone says that the earth is not billions of years old or that the "days" in Genesis were literal, that's not a cause for breaking off fellowship.
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