To take the survey yourself and explore the data, go to www.thestateoftheology.com. New this year is the option to create a group survey that you can send to your friends, family, or church. It’s completely confidential and is a great way to start a discussion on what the people in your community believe.

1. God is a perfect Being and cannot make a mistake.

Christians strongly affirm that God is a perfect being because to deny that God is a perfect being is to deny that God is God. An imperfect being, by definition, is not God. The great Princeton theologian Archibald Alexander rightly said, “The very idea of God is that of a being infinitely perfect.” God’s work is perfect (Deut. 32:4). His way is perfect (2 Sam. 22:31; Ps. 18:30). His law is perfect (Ps. 19:7; James 1:25). His knowledge is perfect (Job 37:16). All this is true because God Himself is perfect (Matt. 5:48). Westminster Confession of Faith 2.1 expresses this biblical truth in the following words: “There is but one only, living, and true God: who is infinite in being and perfection” (emphasis added; see also Westminster Larger Catechism 7).

The Apostle James makes it clear that to be perfect means to be complete, to lack nothing (James 1:4). Theologically, this idea is most obviously related to God’s attributes of self-existence (aseity) and self-sufficiency (independence). Unlike creatures, whose being is contingent and dependent, God’s being is necessary and independent. In other words, God cannot not exist, and God depends on nothing else for His existence. The One who is “I am” does not have the potential to be anything more or less than what He is. He is, therefore, infinitely and unchangeably blessed in His being, and He is infinitely and unchangeably blessed in His being because His being is infinitely and unchangeably perfect.

For God to make a mistake, there would have to be in Him some imperfection in His holiness, goodness, knowledge, or wisdom. The fictional pagan gods make mistakes because they are created in the image of man, and human beings are less than perfect in goodness and knowledge. God, on the other hand, is neither malicious nor ignorant. Instead, He is perfect in all His attributes because He is His attributes. He cannot, therefore, make mistakes. To suggest otherwise is blasphemous.

2. There is one true God in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirt.

In this short sentence we find a concise statement of the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Although the word Trinity is not found in the Bible, it is a helpful way to speak of a doctrine that is a “good and necessary consequence” of what is expressly taught in the Bible (see WCF 1.6).

The doctrine of the Trinity is grounded in several explicit teachings of Scripture. First, according to Scripture, there is one, and only one, God. We read, for example, in Deuteronomy 4:35, “To you it was shown, that you might know that the Lord is God; there is no other besides him.” Second, Scripture affirms that the Father is God. Jesus often speaks of “God the Father” (e.g., John 6:27). Paul speaks numerous times of “God our Father” and “God the Father” (e.g., Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3).

Third, Scripture also affirms that the Son is God. In the prologue to the gospel of John, the “Word,” who is revealed to be Jesus (1:14), is identified as God (v. 1). Fourth, Scripture affirms that the Holy Spirit is God. He is equated with God in Acts 5:3–4. Elsewhere, the New Testament authors identify the Holy Spirit with Yahweh through their use of Old Testament quotations. Compare, for instance, Isaiah 6:8–10 with Acts 28:25–27 and Psalm 95:7–11 with Hebrews 3:7–11. Fifth and finally, although the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are affirmed to be God, Scripture also distinguishes the three. They are distinguished, for example, by use of the language of sending, loving, speaking, interceding, etc. (see Luke 3:22; John 3:16–17; 3:35; 11:41–42; 14:15; 15:26; Rom. 8:26–27).

The biblical doctrine of the Trinity is summarized in the Nicene Creed:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life; who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.

The doctrine of the Trinity is fundamental to the Christian faith. If any element of it is rejected or altered, every other Christian doctrine is negatively affected.

3. God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

In the contemporary world, it is common for people who believe in God to affirm that God accepts the worship of all religions as long as the worshiper is sincere. There is no evidence for such a view in Scripture, however. In fact, from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture reveals the exact opposite.

This is clearly seen in the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2). The ancient Near Eastern world in which Israel lived was filled with all manner of religions and “gods.” God rejects these other religions. Why? Because the “gods” of these other religions are actually demons, and the worship of these demons is an abomination (Deut. 32:16–17; Lev. 17:7). The Apostle Paul teaches the same in the New Testament (1 Cor. 10:20).

During His temptation, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13 to Satan, saying, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve” (Matt. 4:10). That is religious exclusivism. In the incarnation, the Word who was with God and who was God became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:1, 14). He is now the one mediator between God and men (1 Tim. 2:5). There is no other.

Jesus Himself clearly expressed the exclusivity of Christianity when He said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). “No one” means no one. This is why Peter, when filled with the Holy Spirit, proclaimed the following regarding Jesus: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). For those seeking salvation, there is no one else.

If God accepted the worship of all religions, there would have been no need for the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ because there were plenty of existing religions already during the first century. If God accepted the worship of all religions, there would also have been no need for the Great Commission and the evangelization of the nations. If God accepts the worship of all religions, the evangelism that Jesus commanded is a waste of time.

God does not accept any religion other than the one He graciously provided. He does not accept religions that substitute worship of the creature for worship of the Creator. God does not accept false worship. God does, however, accept the worshipers of any religion when they repent of those religions and trust in Christ.

4. God created male and female.

A fundamental aspect of human nature is that human beings are male and female. This is the case because God created human beings as male and female: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). The same truth is repeated a few chapters later: “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” (5:1–2). Jesus refers back to this basic fact of creation when the Pharisees pose a question about divorce. He begins His response by saying, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?” (Matt. 19:4).

Nature teaches this same truth, as any student of biology knows. There are noticeable physical differences between males and females due to the way God created the human reproductive system. Every other system in the human body can fully function in a single human body. The digestive system, the respiratory system, the circulatory system, the immune system, etc., can all fully function in an isolated single human being. The reproductive system, on the other hand, requires a male and a female to fully function and to actually reproduce human beings. Because of the fall, birth defects and other abnormalities in the reproductive system sometimes occur, but we recognize these as abnormalities only because we clearly know what the normal reproductive system is.

Maleness and femaleness are given biological realities for human beings because God created that reality. It is as much a part of reality as gravity.

5. Biblical accounts of the physical (bodily) resurrection of Jesus are completely accurate. This event actually occurred.

To deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is to deny one of the central tenets of Christianity. It is, in fact, a rejection of Christianity. The Apostle Paul made this abundantly clear when he included the bodily resurrection of Christ in his summary of the Christian gospel (1 Cor. 15:4). He goes on to say, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (v. 14). If that were not clear enough, he then says, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (v. 17). He says both of these things in the context of a lengthy discussion of bodily death and resurrection.

The Gospels also clearly teach that the resurrection of Jesus was the raising from death of the same body that was crucified. It’s why the tomb was empty (Luke 24:3). When Jesus appears to the disciples after His resurrection, He goes out of His way to make it clear to them that He has been raised bodily:

And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. (Luke 24:38–40)

He goes so far as to tell Thomas to touch the wounds He suffered at the crucifixion (John 20:26–27).

Numerous alternatives to bodily resurrection have been suggested by skeptics over the centuries, but none of them explains the actual evidence we have. The “swoon theory” suggests Jesus did not really die on the cross. He merely fainted, and then the cool air of the tomb revived Him. He rolled the massive stone away and walked out. Given what we know about Roman scourging and crucifixion, this would have required a miracle on par with bodily resurrection.

Others have suggested that the many people who saw Jesus after His death and burial experienced a mass hallucination. A hallucination involves perceiving something that is not actually present in the world outside the mind. In other words, a hallucination is internal to the individual experiencing it. It is completely subjective. In order for the hallucination theory to even approach plausibility, one would have to posit multiple people, one after another, experiencing the same subjective hallucination. On top of that, one would have to suggest that hundreds of people simultaneously experienced the same hallucination (1 Cor. 15:6). In short, one would have to change the very definition of hallucination in order for the hallucination theory to be plausible. There are other theories that have been suggested, but like the swoon theory and the hallucination theory, they cannot account for the actual evidence.

6. Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.

To affirm this statement is to align oneself with one of the most serious heresies ever to confront the Christian church. The orthodox Christian doctrine, as found in the Nicene Creed, states that the Lord Jesus Christ is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” The Nicene Creed was a result of the Arian controversy in the fourth century. Arius, and those who followed him, taught that the Son is the first and greatest being created by God. This puts the Son on the creature side of the Creator-creature distinction, which would mean that the Son is not “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God” and not “of one substance [Greek homoousios] with the Father.”

The original Nicene Creed was produced at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. It was a direct response to the teaching of Arius. After the council, variations on the Arian theme developed along with new heresies regarding the Holy Spirit. The Council of Constantinople met in AD 381 to deal with all this. It supplemented the original Nicene Creed to more fully address these new developments. The Nicene Creed summarizes the church’s belief in the teaching of the Scriptures regarding the Holy Trinity.

The Scriptures assert that the Son is on the Creator side of the Creator-creature distinction and has, in coming into the world, assumed a human nature. In short, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God incarnate. The evidence for this doctrine is found throughout the New Testament. The Word, who is identified with Jesus in John 1:14, is said to be God in John 1:1. The New Testament also repeatedly attributes to Jesus words, deeds, and properties that can be properly said only of One who is truly God. Jesus is rightly worshiped (Matt. 2:2). Jesus encourages His disciples to pray to Him (John 14:14). Jesus forgives sin (Matt. 9:1–8; Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:17–26). Jesus is sovereign over nature (Matt. 8:23–27). Jesus will be the judge on the last day (John 5:22; Acts 10:42). None of these things could be properly said of Jesus if Jesus were not very God of very God. The Son of God is not less than God. He is God.

7. Jesus was a great teacher, but He was not God.

Arians, who believe Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God, affirm that Jesus was a great teacher, but those who believe that Jesus was a mere man often affirm the same thing. They will say that Jesus was simply a great teacher. Many people in our day affirm something along these lines. What many of them do not understand is that one cannot affirm that Jesus was merely a man and at the same time affirm that He was a great teacher. Why? Because if He was merely a man, what He taught is delusional at best and demonic at worst. Many years ago, C.S. Lewis made the same basic point in his book Mere Christianity when he argued that given the things Jesus said and did, He is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord.

The problem with the claim that Jesus was merely a great teacher but not God is that His teaching and actions repeatedly included both explicit and implicit claims that He is God. If a teacher is not God and yet claims to be God, then that teacher is not a great teacher. He or she is either a liar or insane. So, what did Jesus teach through His words and actions?

Jesus claims to have existed with the Father before the creation of the world (John 17:24). He uses the Old Testament name of God in reference to Himself (8:58). He claims authority to forgive sins (Matt. 9:6; see Isa. 43:25). He encourages His disciples to pray to Him (John 14:13–14). He taught that He is to be the object of men’s faith (14:1). He claims sovereign authority to judge all mankind (5:21–27; see Matt. 28:18). He claims omnipresence (18:20). He claims a kind of knowledge that requires omniscience (11:27). Anyone who is not God and says all these things is not a great teacher. Jesus said these things. He can be a great teacher only if He is God incarnate.

8. The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.

The idea that the Holy Spirit is a force rather than a person is an old heresy dating back to at least the fourth century, but it has survived to this day. It is the view, for example, of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who argue that the Spirit is God’s “active force.” They argue that Scripture speaks of the Holy Spirit’s being “poured out” on someone or “filling” someone. A person cannot be “poured out” or “fill” something, they argue, so the Holy Spirit must not be a person. They argue that when Scripture uses personal language in regard to the Holy Spirit, it is using figurative language.

Those who argue in this way have the facts precisely backward. In the first place, the language of “pouring out” and “filling” is applied to subjects in the Scripture about whose personality there is no doubt. David (a human person) cries out, “I am poured out like water” (Ps. 22:14). Paul (another human person) speaks of being “poured out” like a drink offering (Phil. 2:17; 2 Tim. 4:6). Since we know that David and Paul were real persons, we know that the language of “pouring out” is being used figuratively. What about the language of filling? In Jeremiah 23:24, God declares that He fills heaven and earth. This does not mean that God is an impersonal force. Jesus is also said to “fill” all things (Eph. 1:23; 4:10). Jesus, too, is not an impersonal force. In short, if someone is said to be “poured out” or to “fill” something, it is not proof that that someone is not a person.

Additionally, personal language is applied to the Holy Spirit in a multitude of ways and in a multitude of contexts that make it impossible to conclude they are all examples of personification of an impersonal thing. Scripture regularly uses personal pronouns when speaking of the Holy Spirit (e.g., John 15:26; 16:13–14; Acts 10:19–20; 13:2). The Holy Spirit is “He,” not “it.” Scripture ascribes to the Holy Spirit personal properties such as understanding (Isa. 11:2; 1 Cor. 2:10–11) and will (1 Cor. 12:11; John 3:8). Scripture also ascribes numerous personal activities to the Holy Spirit, including speaking (Mark 13:11), revealing (Luke 2:26), guiding (John 16:13), teaching (Luke 12:12), bearing witness (John 15:26), loving (Rom. 15:30), warning (1 Tim. 4:1), and appointing people to office (Acts 13:2).

Has a force such as gravity ever appointed anyone to office? Has a force such as magnetism ever exhibited understanding and will and the ability to speak and love? No. The Holy Spirit does these things because the Holy Spirit is not a force. The Holy Spirit is a personal being, the third person of the Trinity.

9. The Holy Spirit gives a spiritual new birth or new life before a person has faith in Jesus Christ.

The important theological truth communicated in this statement is that regeneration precedes faith. Regeneration must occur first because every descendant of Adam is born dead in sin (Eph. 2:1; see Rom. 5:12). Eventually our spiritual death will be followed by our physical death (Gen. 3:19). This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). Those who are spiritually dead—and that includes every human being—must be brought to spiritual life. We must be spiritually resurrected, and this is not something we can do ourselves. It is a sovereign work of God. We cannot be regenerated by having faith because dead people cannot do anything.

Our situation is similar to that of Lazarus (John 11). Lazarus was dead and could do nothing about it. Jesus stepped forward and commanded Lazarus to come out of the grave. It was impossible for Lazarus to respond, however, unless God gave him life first. In a similar way, we are all spiritually dead when Christ comes and commands us to believe in Him. It is impossible for us to respond until and unless God first gives us spiritual life. God first regenerates us (gives us spiritual life), and as a result we have faith, which itself is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8–10).

Throughout his ministry, Dr. R.C. Sproul often said that this little phrase, “regeneration precedes faith,” captures the essence of Reformed theology. He could not have been more right.

10. The Holy Spirit can tell me to do something which is forbidden in the Bible.

For this statement to be true, two things would have to be possible, both of which are false. First, the Holy Spirit would have to be able to contradict Himself. Scripture, the Bible, is the very Word of the triune God: “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16). The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is closely associated with the inspiration of Scripture: “No prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). In other words, that which is forbidden in the Bible is forbidden by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot command you to do something He Himself has forbidden because He doesn’t contradict Himself (Num. 23:19).

Second, for the Holy Spirit to be able to tell you to do something forbidden in the Bible, the Holy Spirit would have to be able to sin. Encouraging someone to sin is a sin (Jer. 28:15–17). When God forbids something in Scripture, that law is an expression of His will. Sin, by definition, “is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 14). As John puts it, “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). The Holy Spirit is holy. If a spirit is telling you to do something forbidden in the Bible, you can be certain that it is an unholy spirit.

11. Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.

The idea that people are basically good by nature echoes the ancient Pelagian heresy, which affirmed that Adam’s sin affected Adam alone. According to this view, human nature was not affected by Adam’s fall. Scripture teaches otherwise, asserting that Adam’s sin affected all his natural-born posterity (Rom. 5:12–14). By nature, human beings are “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3). This is the theological point behind the phrase total depravity—the T in TULIP. This doctrine is found throughout both the Old and New Testaments (e.g., Gen. 6:5; Pss. 14:1–3; 143:2; Eccl. 7:20; Isa. 64:6; Mark 7:18–23; Rom. 1:21–32; 3:10–18, 23; 8:5–8; Gal. 4:3; Eph. 2:1–3; 4:17–19; Titus 3:3).

Christians can become confused because Scripture teaches that human beings were created by God in His image (Gen. 1:26–27), and God calls all that He created good (v. 31). If everything that God created is good, and if God created human nature, then isn’t human nature necessarily good? Yes. As originally created, human nature was good. However, part of human nature is the human will. The first human beings had the responsibility to align their created wills perfectly with God’s will—to obey Him. Instead, they disobeyed God. Like Satan, they turned their will, as it were, perpendicular to God’s will, introducing sin and misery into the world and into their own natures. In other words, they sinned. When they did this, human nature was distorted and corrupted. Like begets like, and all humans are now born with a corrupted and fallen human nature. Human beings are now born slaves to sin.

This is why the claim that “everyone sins a little” is also incorrect. We tend to measure ourselves against other human beings, and we like to pick the absolute worst specimens for comparison. We like to compare ourselves to people like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong. It’s easy to feel good about ourselves if the standard is refraining from killing millions of human beings. But this is not the standard by which the Word of God measures sin. The standard is God’s will, and the requirement is perfect obedience to that will. “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10; see Gal. 3:10). The question is not, Did you refrain from murdering millions today? The question is, Did you perfectly “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” today, and did you perfectly love “your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37–39)? How often did you fail to do this perfectly? Was it just “a little”? No. We fail to do this a lot, and that means we sin a lot. This is why we need the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. He is the only One who has ever perfectly fulfilled the law.

12. Even the smallest sin deserves eternal damnation.

This statement is difficult for some Christians to affirm because we frequently lose sight of the true nature of sin. We fail to grasp the true nature of sin because we do not grasp the true nature of the holiness of God. When we begin to understand better the holiness of God, we begin to get a clearer understanding of how utterly evil sin is. To be as blunt as possible, all sin is satanic. Every time we commit any sin, we are following in Satan’s footsteps. We are turning against our holy God, spitting in His face, and defiantly saying to Him, “Not Thy will, but my will be done.”

A seemingly “small” sin, eating a piece of fruit, led to the fall of humanity and the curse under which all creation still groans (Rom. 8:18–24). Many people, even Christians, look at this and ask how a just God could inflict such a punishment for eating a piece of fruit. What they fail to realize is that in the act of eating that piece of fruit, Adam and Eve were doing much more than biting and chewing food. They were trusting the serpent rather than God (Gen. 3:3–6) and disobeying a direct command of God (2:17). In doing so, they were choosing to follow Satan rather than God. The moment they acted on that temptation, they became, in effect, Satanists and “children of the devil” (1 John 3:10).

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