From: hartigan@ac.dal.ca
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: AR, ANSWERING -------------> Sean II
Date: 22 Dec 92 03:03:24 -0400
Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

In article <Dec.21.15.35.40.1992.23086@farside.rutgers.edu>, hedrick@farside.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) writes:
> On whether Christians agree on the "essentials":
> 
> Clearly it depends upon what you mean by essential.  I'd say that all
> Christians agree on the areas that are needed for salvation, i.e.
> repenting of our sins, depending upon Christ's death for forgiveness
> of them, and living as his disciple.  At that level I think you
> include just about everybody who would be likely to call themselves
> Christian.  In at least some churches, the Apostle's Creed is used as
> a definition of Christian.  I believe it is accepted by everybody who
> would be involved in these discussions.  (I'm tending to test my
> comments by thinking of Catholics, liberal and conservative
> Protestants, JW's and LDS. 

This seems like a reasonable way to think about this question. 
Just for the interest of anyone who has been following this thread,
Mr Rose's definition of "essentials" did not include the LDS, although
they adhere to these general beliefs. For this reason I concluded
that he was applying the word "essentials" in a more specific way,
i.e. sectarian, way.
 
> The next level beyond that is probably the Nicene Creed and Chalcedon.
> This gets at the Trinity and Incarnation, which I think most
> Christians consider central doctrines.  These are accepted by
> Catholics and Protestants of all types.  They exclude only groups that
> in my view are somewhat at the margin, e.g. JW's and LDS.  (In fact I
> think many LDS could say the Nicene Creed without problems --
> Chalcedon would rule them out.  I believe JW's couldn't even say the
> Nicene Creed.)  Many Christians would probably prefer to use the term
> Christian to refer to this set of people.
 
This seems reasonable. However, if one considers the history of the church,
it seems to me rather harsh to label any one who does not adhere to
these two creeds as non-Christian.   It _know_ that there are ministers
in the United Church of Canada (a pretty liberal group, in some ways) who
do not accept the Trinity and Incarnation in any supernatural sense,
they regard them as metaphors for a state of being that Jesus, a rare
man, attained.  And these people are ministers in the largest Protestant
denomination in Canada. My comp. religion prof assured me (to my surprise)
that such views were now the _norm_ among the young ministers in the
U.C.C.   It seems to me that we are in a very grey area when we try to
decide who's Christian and who isn't. These things are not cut and dried,
as Mr Hedricks points out admirably.

> The next level begins to get into doctrines that as far as I'm
> concerned define specific approaches within Christianity.  This is
> where we get justification by faith alone, the role of the Pope,
> Maryology, and the inerrancy of Scripture.  By and large I don't think
> people believe that these doctrines are essential for salvation.
> There may be conservative members of each approach that would say
> that, but I don't think it's the majority view in any area.  This is
> the categoy into which I think most of your questions fall.  Going
> down the list:
> 
>  - I'm not sure how many people would say that belief in the 
> 	Trinity per se is necessary for	salvation.  As you point
> 	out, for several hundred years, no one believed in it.
> 	If someone simply asserts the NT statements about Jesus,
> 	and refuses to deal with formal theology at all, I think
> 	it would be hard to say that they are in trouble.  However
> 	the Trinity was developed to answer questions that came
> 	up later.  Generally questions like that don't simply
> 	disappear.  Most groups that reject the Trinity don't
> 	simply take a naive NT view -- they take one of the
> 	positions that the Trininty was developed to combat.
> 	I personally do not believe that being an Arian will
> 	necessarily damn you, but I do think that it's denying
> 	one of the central tenents of Christianity.
> 
>  - baptists will all say that baptism by immersion is commanded
> 	by God.  But I think it's pretty unusual for them to
> 	say that people baptized only as infants will be damned.
> 
>  - similarly with salvation (justification?) by faith.  As far as I 
> 	can tell, the official Catholic view (from Trent) and the most
> 	common evangelical view are now essentially the same.  The
> 	primary dissent is by Calvinists and Lutherans.  While
> 	they believe that election and grace are important, I
> 	think it's pretty unusual for them to say that all those
> 	Catholics and Southern Baptists are going to be damned
> 	because they don't accept justification by faith alone.
> 	(Yes, I know Baptists will claim to believe justification
> 	by faith, but if you look at what Luther actually meant
> 	by the term, it turns out that most Baptists actually
> 	hold the position that Luther was arguing against.)
> 
>  - currently I do not believe any major group says that you
> 	have to receive sacraments from an authorized priest to
> 	be saved.  I believe Catholics who tried to maintain
> 	this position in its literal form have been excommunicated
> 	for it.
> 
> My own preference in terminology is to use the term Christian for
> anyone who looks to Jesus Christ as Lord and savior (the wider
> definition), but to identify the basic Christian doctrines as roughly
> equivalent to the second list, i.e. the Nicene Creed and Formula of
> Chalcedon.  I realize that there's a certain inconsistency in this,
> since it means that I acknowledge Christians who don't believe certain
> Christian doctrines, but that seems to be the best match to reality.

Agreed. Thank you for an informative and fair-minded (in my view) post 
about this rather contentious subject.

Sean Hartigan
hartigan@ac.dal.ca