“The charge of heresy is a serious one. We cannot be trivial or frivolous in throwing around the term. But Paul’s response to the Judaizers (among many other passages of Scripture) teaches us that there are times when we must draw clear lines of separation, even among those who would call themselves Christians.”
More than ten years ago (can’t believe it’s been that long!), Al Mohler wrote a seminal blog post outlining what he called “theological triage.” Borrowing the term from the emergency room, Mohler discussed the need for Christians to prioritize certain doctrinal issues over others. In what can be the chaos of an emergency room, medical professionals need to know how to weigh the urgency of various patients’ needs against one another; that is, a gunshot wound should be prioritized over a sprained ankle. Similarly, in the theological world, Christians must understand the difference between (a) “first-order” doctrines—where to hold an errant position actually precludes one from being a true brother in Christ—and (b) “second-” and “third-order” doctrines—issues on which two genuine Christians can disagree and nevertheless be truly saved. In other words, we need to be able to discern the difference between bad doctrine and heresy.
All biblical doctrine is important. I would go so far as to say all biblical doctrine is essential. It’s difficult to put any doctrine into a second or third tier, because it somehow feels as if to do so is to say it’s not important. But employing theological triage doesn’t mean that everything that’s not first-order is unimportant, any more than a doctor’s prioritizing a gunshot wound necessarily thinks a sprained ankle is unimportant. But the fact remains: genuine Christians can disagree on things like the mode and recipients of baptism; but if two people disagree on the triunity of God, one is a Christian and the other isn’t.
The Reality of Damning Error
Some people reject the very notion that disagreements about doctrine could preclude someone from salvation. After all, no one has perfect theology, and we’re saved by believing in Christ, not by believing in doctrine, they say. And it’s true, regeneration does not promise protection from all error. But it does promise protection from some error—that is, the kind of error which, if believed, indicates you’re not a child of God at all. We know that that kind of theological error exists because the Apostle Paul wrote Galatians 1:6–9:
I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; 7which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
Paul wrote that about the error of the Judaizers, which, if you think about it, by some evaluations was quite a fine point of doctrinal disagreement. Think about everything the Judaizers shared in common with the faith once-for-all delivered to the saints. They believed in one God, who exists eternally in three Persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They believed in the deity and humanity of Christ. They believed that He was Israel’s Messiah in fulfillment of the Old Testament. They believed in penal substitutionary atonement—that Christ bore the punishment of God’s wrath against the sins of His people when He died on the cross, so that they might be free from sin’s penalty and power (and one day its presence). They believed that He was buried, and that He rose on the third day. And they believed that repentance and faith in Christ was absolutely necessary for forgiveness of sins and fellowship with God in heaven. That is a lot of really important doctrine that they got right!
Their one issue boiled down, basically, to whether good works were the cause or the result of salvation. Was law-keeping the ground or merely the evidence of saving faith? Are we saved by faith alone, or by faith in Christ plus our religious observance? Now, that point of disagreement is an admittedly fine distinction! And yet Paul still employs the harshest language of condemnation for their error. “A different gospel” (Gal 1:6). “No true gospel at all” (Gal 1:7). “Let him be anathema”—condemned to hell (Gal 1:8, 9). “Severed from Christ” (Gal 5:4). “They will bear their judgment” (5:10). “I wish they would emasculate themselves” (Gal 5:12). Strong words for a disagreement on the ordo salutis! What it teaches us is, at the very least, there are certain things which, if believed, preclude someone from salvation, because to believe those things is to believe a different gospel, which is really no true gospel at all, and therefore which cannot save but can only condemn.
What Are the Fundamental Doctrines?
That brings us to the natural question: How much can one get wrong and still be a true child of God? Or said another way: What are those false doctrines which, if believed, by definition indicate that someone is not truly saved?
I think we get a clue by understanding why Paul so severely condemned the Judaizers’ doctrine. It’s because there was something fundamental to that teaching that denied—was mutually exclusive to—the Gospel of grace. That’s how we answer the question of what’s bad doctrine versus what breaches the bounds into heresy. The wrong beliefs that indicate someone is not saved are those teachings, which believed, necessarily undermine or deny the Gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to Scripture alone for the glory of God alone.
But what are those wrong beliefs? I think we answer that question by asking a number of questions that span several categories of Christian doctrine.
1. Soteriology
We have to start here, because the question, “What false doctrines preclude salvation?” is a fundamentally soteriological question. We should ask: Does this teaching instruct us to trust in ourselves to contribute to our righteousness before God, even in part? Does this teaching encourage us to trust in anything else other than Christ alone for righteousness? Does this teaching teach us that salvation is something other than our redemption and deliverance from sin through the work of God in Christ?
The Roman Catholic Church’s denial of sola fide is a false doctrine that requires an affirmative answer to those questions. By denying that sinners are declared righteous through the instrumentation of faith alone, Roman Catholicism actually makes the very same error as the Judaizers (they just advocate adding different works to Christ’s righteousness). See this post for more on this.
But the Wesleyan Arminian’s doctrine of synergism, though unbiblical and rightly labeled as “bad theology,” is not a damning error. Perhaps the logical implications of it are—and if a synergist was truly consistent with himself it would lead to heresy. But Wesleyan Arminians avoid the damning errors of Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism by confessing that the source of their faith in God’s grace alone, and not anywhere in themselves. Their doctrine of prevenient grace is not to be found anywhere in Scripture, and they can’t consistently account for why one believes in Christ while another doesn’t, but they are in a manner saved by their inconsistency, as they nevertheless look to Christ alone through faith alone for salvation.
2. Theology Proper
Because God Himself is the Author of salvation, we cannot be truly saved if we are trusting in anyone but the true God. Many people—even those who would call themselves Christians—profess faith in the God of the Bible. But some have transgressed so far that they have recast the true God into a god in their own image. There is something about their god that is fundamentally different from the true God. So we should ask: Does this teaching affirm something about God that is so false—so antithetical to His nature—that to believe it is to truly believe in a different God, and not the God of Scripture?
I think we have to answer “yes” to that question in consideration of the God of Open Theism, who suggest that God is “in process,” is learning, and does not know the future. This is an outright denial of the omniscience of God—the One who insists that He declares the end from the beginning, and brings to pass all the plans of His heart (Isa 46:9–10; Ps 33:11; Ps 139; Heb 4:13). This isn’t simply a misunderstanding about the God who is; this is a fundamentally different god.
But we would answer “no” to the above question with respect to the doctrine of the order of the divine decrees. Infralapsarians believe that God’s decree to create and ordain the fall of man logically (note: not chronologically) preceded God’s decree to elect and accomplish salvation. Supralapsarians believe that God’s decree to elect and save was logically prior even to the decrees to create and ordain the fall. Neither of these positions so distort the person and character of God as to make Him a different “god” than what Scripture reveals; neither does it undermine salvation in any way. So this is not a first-order issue.
3. Christology
In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul tells the Corinthians that the false apostles are proclaiming to them “another Jesus,” i.e., different from the One who exists. He also pairs that designation with the concept of teaching “a different gospel” (2 Cor 11:4). Since salvation comes only through the work of Jesus Christ, we must be sure to be trusting in the Christ who exists, and not “another Jesus” whom we’ve concocted according to our own understanding. So we must ask: Does this teaching affirm something about the person or work of Christ that is so false, so antithetical to His nature that to believe it is to truly believe in a different Jesus?