There are only two important questions in life: Who is God? and Who is Jesus Christ? After careful study and teaching, you willfully get them wrong then you are worshiping intellectual idols at your own peril.
I tend to view all matters of Scripture as essential. I am probably in the minority, but I can argue the linkages from the end point all the way back to the beginning from the view of the wholeness of God's special revelation. Thus I see discussions of what is essential as missing the point that everything is ultimately essential.
This does not mean someone can be saved and not understand these topics. Certainly that is not the case. My point is that a believer is expected to move beyond the milk and onward to the meaty main courses of Scriptural teaching. When they fail to do so, they are exposing themselves to Fatherly displeasure. Moreover, those that craft incorrect views have erected intellectual idols and go off worshipping them at their peril and at the question of the genuineness of their belief.
All too often our quest for certainty replaces a quest for truth. The distinction between the two is subtle. Truth is objective reality; certainty is the level of subjective apprehension of something perceived to be true. But in the recognition that truth is objective reality, it is easy to confuse the fact of this reality with how one knows what truth is. Frequently the most black-and-white, dogmatic method of arriving at truth is perceived to be truth itself. Too often people with deep religious convictions are certain about an untruth. For example cultists often hold to their positions quite dogmatically and with a fideistic fervor that shames evangelicals; first-year Greek students want to speak of the aorist tense as meaning “once-and-for-all” action; and almost everyone wants simple answers to the complex questions of life.
Nowhere in Scripture are we admonished to remain at the milk level of our understanding of our faith. In fact, we are explicitly told to study and prove out that which we believe.
Theology and practice are separable only verbally and are inseparable for salvation. As stated above, there are two basic questions in life: “who is Jesus?” and “who is God?” We all know how easy it is to create pictures and images in our minds, which turn out not to have any basis in reality. This is especially easy when dealing with something transcendent (like God) or seemingly paradoxical (like Incarnate Christ): there has to be some outside foundation against which we can check our interior life, so that we do not create some sort of idols or false ideas...and then go worshipping them.
There are many that sincerely believe this or that, but sincerity is never the test of the validity of one's belief. Sincere people around the world have constructed idols from their beliefs and go off worshiping them. There are also many that eschew any sort of appeal to the masters that have preceded us, thinking that they are uniquely able to discern complex doctrines by simply reading the Scriptures, or wrongly assuming anything men have written outside of the Scriptures is unworthy of study or consideration. Very few persons can lay claim to a solitary achievement of mastery of the complexities of doctrine--that is why we read the texts of the masters while checking them against the Word of God.
The study of God, theology, is every Christian's calling in order that we may prove out our beliefs, be ready to defend them, and not bring shame to God.
Looked at from another direction, if our view of God and Jesus Christ is wrong, no amount of good works can erase the idolatry we have erected in our heart. So, both go together: faith (theology) and praxis (life). One guides, corrects, and balances the other. What if our faith is in something we have imagined? What if we have created an intellectual idol? Theology is the guarantor, the check point, and the touchstone, that our faith is legitimate.
Thus, systematic theologians are something like grammarians than like scientists or detectives. Such theologians show us (from the Scriptures) how to think, and how not to think, about God, and thusly how to talk about Him. What we should say, and what we should not say. Such theologians do not control what we may say; they indicate the rules of intelligible speech.
AMR
I tend to view all matters of Scripture as essential. I am probably in the minority, but I can argue the linkages from the end point all the way back to the beginning from the view of the wholeness of God's special revelation. Thus I see discussions of what is essential as missing the point that everything is ultimately essential.
This does not mean someone can be saved and not understand these topics. Certainly that is not the case. My point is that a believer is expected to move beyond the milk and onward to the meaty main courses of Scriptural teaching. When they fail to do so, they are exposing themselves to Fatherly displeasure. Moreover, those that craft incorrect views have erected intellectual idols and go off worshipping them at their peril and at the question of the genuineness of their belief.
All too often our quest for certainty replaces a quest for truth. The distinction between the two is subtle. Truth is objective reality; certainty is the level of subjective apprehension of something perceived to be true. But in the recognition that truth is objective reality, it is easy to confuse the fact of this reality with how one knows what truth is. Frequently the most black-and-white, dogmatic method of arriving at truth is perceived to be truth itself. Too often people with deep religious convictions are certain about an untruth. For example cultists often hold to their positions quite dogmatically and with a fideistic fervor that shames evangelicals; first-year Greek students want to speak of the aorist tense as meaning “once-and-for-all” action; and almost everyone wants simple answers to the complex questions of life.
Nowhere in Scripture are we admonished to remain at the milk level of our understanding of our faith. In fact, we are explicitly told to study and prove out that which we believe.
Theology and practice are separable only verbally and are inseparable for salvation. As stated above, there are two basic questions in life: “who is Jesus?” and “who is God?” We all know how easy it is to create pictures and images in our minds, which turn out not to have any basis in reality. This is especially easy when dealing with something transcendent (like God) or seemingly paradoxical (like Incarnate Christ): there has to be some outside foundation against which we can check our interior life, so that we do not create some sort of idols or false ideas...and then go worshipping them.
There are many that sincerely believe this or that, but sincerity is never the test of the validity of one's belief. Sincere people around the world have constructed idols from their beliefs and go off worshiping them. There are also many that eschew any sort of appeal to the masters that have preceded us, thinking that they are uniquely able to discern complex doctrines by simply reading the Scriptures, or wrongly assuming anything men have written outside of the Scriptures is unworthy of study or consideration. Very few persons can lay claim to a solitary achievement of mastery of the complexities of doctrine--that is why we read the texts of the masters while checking them against the Word of God.
The study of God, theology, is every Christian's calling in order that we may prove out our beliefs, be ready to defend them, and not bring shame to God.
Looked at from another direction, if our view of God and Jesus Christ is wrong, no amount of good works can erase the idolatry we have erected in our heart. So, both go together: faith (theology) and praxis (life). One guides, corrects, and balances the other. What if our faith is in something we have imagined? What if we have created an intellectual idol? Theology is the guarantor, the check point, and the touchstone, that our faith is legitimate.
Thus, systematic theologians are something like grammarians than like scientists or detectives. Such theologians show us (from the Scriptures) how to think, and how not to think, about God, and thusly how to talk about Him. What we should say, and what we should not say. Such theologians do not control what we may say; they indicate the rules of intelligible speech.
AMR
