It was technically both. I apologize if I didn't come off as clear. Let me put it this way, if one is not a Christian they are not saved right? Because, we need Christ for salvation. So my question was what is the bare minimum requirement for one to be considered a Christian and thus obtain salvation? I shared my opinion in the post previous but, there are many different views out there as to what saves.
Catholics say works and the Eucharist/Baptism saves.
There are many Calvinists or Reformed Christians who claim that one has to accept their theologies (I'm not one of them.)
There are Arminians who claim different things.
Some Christians claim that one has to accept certain theology like eternal security ...etc.
Basically, I was just curious on the various different beliefs that Christians have and their defense for each of them.
The issue is that by conflating these two things, it presents salvation as a theology exam that one has to pass.
As someone who has engaged in many discussions and debates over theology, one thing stands out: Many Christians suffer from theological illiteracy, and hold to some pretty bad theology.
For example, Nestorianism was condemned as heretical at the Council of Ephesus, and yet Nestorian or Nestorian-like Christological positions are very common. They are very common because people are not being properly taught basic, orthodox Christology.
Does holding to heterodox theological opinions mean someone is damned?
I don't believe so.
As such orthodox teaching is not a metric of salvation, but a metric of orthodoxy. Good theology is important, not because we need to pass a theology exam to be saved; but because what we say, believe, do, confess, here in this world as Christian people matters.
What we say about Jesus to one another and to the world matters. It matters as it pertains to the preaching of the Gospel, the administering of the Sacraments, in how we see ourselves in relation to one another and to our neighbor, and to all of creation. It matters in how we think about God, in relation to ourselves. It matters because one cannot separate belief from activity; how we think about God, how we think about Jesus, what we believe about ourselves, about the world, etc is going to radically change how we think about and engage with reality, and how we live in this world.
Now, it can become a "salvation issue", but not in the way that term may often be used, but rather it can become a salvation issue because bad theology can hurt faith. The seed was sown, but thorns and thistles choke it out, such is what bad theology can do. If I believe in an angry, hateful, vengeful God, should it be very surprising if my faith suffers for it? Should it be considered at all shocking, then, when terrible theology has resulted in the shipwrecking of faith for many. Where many fell into apostasy because the teaching they received was so bad and rotten that it literally drove them away?
And even here, I'm not going to say that God is unable to still rescue these. There are many who have "heard the Gospel" but have never truly heard the Gospel; do they reject the Gospel, or is what they have rejected a false gospel which is the only "gospel" they've ever known?
See then again here how important it is for the Church to be faithful to the Word, to the teaching received from the beginning; that we might be the Word-bearing people, the Gospel people, the people of Easter morning.
-CryptoLutheran
