Triage in the Trenches
In doctrinal terms, certain doctrines (first tier) are essential for the life of the church. If you deny such a doctrine, you lack life; you’re outside the Christian faith. Other doctrines (second tier) are essential for the health of the church. If you deny such a doctrine, it doesn’t mean you’re spiritually dead, but instead that you’re spiritually sick. Finally, some doctrines (third tier) are essential for the practice of the church. These are matters which don’t directly bear on life or health but do relate closely to how we order and structure our churches, and thus there is need for significant alignment on these matters among members of a given church.
As Christians face the fragmenting of some churches, denominations, and movements, many have turned to the concept of “theological triage” to help navigate the turbulent waters of doctrinal disagreement.
In a recent article, Scott Hubbard ably distills theological triage, drawing the basic category from Al Mohler and then using Gavin Ortlund’s book to distinguish four ranks or tiers of doctrinal difference:
- First-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel itself.
- Second-rank doctrines are urgent for the health and practice of the church such that they frequently cause Christians to separate at the level of local church, denomination, and/or ministry.
- Third-rank doctrines are important to Christian theology but not enough to justify separation or division among Christians.
- Fourth-rank doctrines are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry collaboration. (Finding the Right Hills to Die On, 19)
Finally, Hubbard draws on Rhyne Putnam for three tests to aid in our discernment process:
- The hermeneutical test: the clearer the Bible teaches a doctrine, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
- The gospel test: the more central a doctrine is to the gospel, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
- The praxis test: the more a doctrine affects the practice of a church, the more likely it belongs on a higher tier.
This basic framework is helpful. Still, it frequently leaves us with a puzzle concerning the second-tier issues. In most contemporary uses of theological triage, differences over baptism and differences over manhood and womanhood are both regarded as second-tier issues. In actual practice, however, there seems to be a substantive difference between these two issues. Organizations and conferences like The Gospel Coalition and Together For the Gospel treat these two issues differently. In both cases, baptismal differences are not regarded as barriers to participation, whereas differences over manhood and womanhood are. What might account for this difference (and others like it)?
Theoretical Triage: Thinking About the Body
I believe that further refinement of theological triage can clarify why we would treat certain second-tier disagreements differently than others. (Note: this refinement focuses on the theoretical side of triage. In application to any particular situation, there will be critical concrete and practical considerations in play as well.)
The language of triage is drawn from the field of emergency medicine. In keeping with this imagery, we can consider how we assess the life, health, and practice of the physical body, as an analogy for assessing the life, health, and practice of the body of Christ. (In principle, this same analogy could be used to assess the doctrinal health of an individual as well; for simplicity’s sake, we’ll focus on the church as a body.)
In doctrinal terms, certain doctrines (first tier) are essential for the life of the church. If you deny such a doctrine, you lack life; you’re outside the Christian faith. Other doctrines (second tier) are essential for the health of the church. If you deny such a doctrine, it doesn’t mean you’re spiritually dead, but instead that you’re spiritually sick. Finally, some doctrines (third tier) are essential for the practice of the church. These are matters which don’t directly bear on life or health but do relate closely to how we order and structure our churches, and thus there is need for significant alignment on these matters among members of a given church.
First Tier: Are You Alive?
Thinking in terms of bodily life, health, and practice enables us to identify why certain doctrines are “of first importance” (1 Corinthians 15:3). Paul uses that phrase to refer to the gospel by which we are being saved, if we hold fast to it. He refers specifically to Christ’s death for sin, as well as the historicity of his burial, resurrection, and subsequent appearances. To falter on such gospel truths is to “believe in vain.”
Thus, first-tier issues are matters of gospel significance. Manifest errors on or denials of such fundamental doctrines places one outside the Christian faith. We often summarize the basic gospel in terms of either God-Sin-Christ-Faith or Creation-Fall-Redemption-New Creation. Both of these reveal the foundational doctrines to be embraced and confessed in order to be Christian. The doctrine of the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, his work on the cross and in the resurrection, and salvation by grace through faith are generally regarded as first-tier issues. To deny such doctrines is to fall short of the Christian faith completely.
However, often overlooked in our discussions of gospel issues are fundamental errors on the nature of creation, humanity, and sin. Such issues of anthropology (what C.S. Lewis referred to as the Tao, or the moral order of the universe recognized by all people) could also fall into the first-tier category. Paul explicitly says this when he mentions that “Christ died for our sins” as a matter of first importance. Similarly, the Bible points in this direction whenever it makes clear and manifest violations of the moral law grounds for excommunication from the church and exclusion from the kingdom (1 Corinthians 5–6; Galatians 5:22–23). These moral issues are not merely a matter of special revelation, but are universally known and binding through general revelation in creation and conscience.
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The Real Enemy of God’s People
Haman’s self-absorption led him to plot genocide and ultimately became his downfall…the real “enemy of the Jews” was not so much Haman himself, but what Haman represented: the one who puts himself or herself above anyone else.
Who is the worst enemy of God’s people? Some American Christians may say “the Left”. Others may point to unjust leaders who tried to prevent churches from meeting during the early days of the pandemic and imprisoned pastors for opposing them. Some students could name their teachers or professors who have an intense determination to get them to deny their faith. In other parts of the world, where Christians face real persecution, they could be tempted to name oppressive communist governments, Muslim or Hindu radicals, or others who vehemently oppose Christianity. These could all be considered enemies. I prefer to think of them as “opponents” rather than enemies. It is not that we have enmity against them but by opposing Christ they are also opposing us. But are they “the enemy”? In the New Testament, “the enemy” is used referring to Satan (Matthew 13:39, Luke 10:19), but in the Old Testament it is much more generic. However, there is one person in the entire Old Testament specifically given the title of “the enemy”. By examining him, we learn who our worst enemy is. Conversely, by studying his arch nemesis, we learn how to overcome our worst enemy.
The Enemy of the Jews
In the Old Testament, the Jews were God’s people, so it naturally follows that someone given the title of “the enemy of the Jews” would be by extension the enemy of God’s people in general. This phrase is only used four times in Scripture, and all of them refer to the same man. That man was Haman the Agagite. Anyone familiar with the story of Esther will likely remember Haman as the man who plotted a genocide to exterminate all of the Jews throughout the Persian Empire. This certainly made him an enemy of the Jews, but the Jews faced similar threats of annihilation before, so why does Haman get the exclusive title of “the enemy of the Jews”? Perhaps his enmity went beyond his plot such that he can be considered the prototypical enemy of God’s people.
To understand this, we need to look at who Haman was and what prompted him to plot a genocide. We first meet him in Esther 3 when he is promoted to be second in command to King Ahasuerus. Climbing to this rank would have been no small feat in such a massive empire, so he must have been a man of considerable knowledge, skill, and connections. It would have also meant he was one of the men the king trusted most in the entire empire. He seemed to live up to his name, which literally meant “magnificent”. By any standard, he had it all, so what was the problem that led him to plot to annihilate an entire race of people?
The problem began when one man repeatedly refused to pay homage to him after his promotion. This man too was a man of influence, since he was regularly in the king’s gate. The fact that throughout the book he is regularly found there suggests he was a senior official, as many men of prominence throughout Scripture can be found sitting in the gate. Thus, his refusal to bow is reminiscent of how Daniel’s three friends refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s statue in Daniel 2. Regardless, he was of a high enough position and reputation that Haman didn’t dare openly oppose him. Still the refusal of this one man to pay homage to him disturbed him greatly—so greatly that when he found out the man was a Jew, he began plotting to exterminate all the Jews. This plot was not the result of a fit of rage but of prolonged and calculated scheming (Esther 3:7). He got the king to agree to the plot by falsely accusing the Jews of being enemies of the king and even bribing the king with a large sum of money. He was thus able to sway the king to authorize the murder of every Jewish man, woman, and child throughout the entire empire and the plundering of their property. It is therefore fitting that he alone is given the title of “the enemy of the Jews”.
The Little Man
But who was this nemesis of Haman whose refusal to bow was enough to prompt Haman to plot genocide? He was basically Haman’s exact opposite: Mordecai, which can be translated “little man”. Up until his promotion at the end of the book, we know little about his role other than the fact that he was regularly in the king’s gate as already discussed. Thus while Haman was the second most powerful man in the world, Mordecai was just another royal official quietly and honorably doing his job. He was also the older cousin of Esther, whom he raised after her parents’ death. When he overheard a plot to assassinate the king, he used his relationship with Esther to get word of the plot to the king. There is no indication that he sought credit for himself in this situation, but was merely doing his job diligently.
While we don’t know the measure of Mordecai’s faith in God since the book of Esther does not once mention God, we know that he did have faith that deliverance would come to the Jews (presumably from God). This is evident in his response to Esther’s fear to go before the king on behalf of the Jews without being summoned: “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14) It is also quite possible that his reason for refusing to bow or pay homage to Haman came from his devotion to God—the same motivation as Daniel and his three friends. Like them, his disobedience of sinful edicts was quiet and respectful. There is no indication that in refusing to pay homage that Mordecai acted disrespectfully toward Haman, he merely continued to faithfully carry out his duties. The reputation he developed as a result (and the unmentioned though obvious hand of God) eventually put Mordecai in Haman’s place as second in command. The last verse of the book can be considered a summary of Mordecai’s career: “For Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Ahasuerus, and he was great among the Jews and popular with the multitude of his brothers, for he sought the welfare of his people and spoke peace to all his people.” (Esther 10:3). From this, it is clear that Mordecai sought the welfare of the people in general and the Jews in particular rather than his own gain. This was the exact opposite of Haman, which is what caused Haman to despise Mordecai so much that he plotted not only to kill him but his entire race.
The Real Enemy of the Jews
But how could Mordecai’s refusal to pay homage to Haman spark such rage in Haman that he would plot to exterminate the Jews? To use modern terminology, Haman was “triggered”—and it was clearly Mordecai’s refusal to pay homage to him that triggered him. While there is no evidence of malice or disrespect from Mordecai to Haman, his failure to pay homage threatened Haman in a very real way. How? The answer becomes obvious as we continue to read the book of Esther. After attending the first of Esther’s feasts, which only he and the king attended, we see this:
And Haman went out that day joyful and glad of heart. But when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate, that he neither rose nor trembled before him, he was filled with wrath against Mordecai. Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home, and he sent and brought his friends and his wife Zeresh. And Haman recounted to them the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honored him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king. Then Haman said, “Even Queen Esther let no one but me come with the king to the feast she prepared. And tomorrow also I am invited by her together with the king. Yet all this is worth nothing to me, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.”—Esther 5:9-13, ESV
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Non-Leftist Employees Appeal for Neutrality After Disney is Shanghaied Into Joining the LGBTQ+ Activist Army
The open letter gesture offers the Storytelling world a glimmer of hope. Implications and precedent aside, Disney’s non-leftist employees have brazenly exposed the hypocrisy of “progressive orthodoxy,” and by doing so have drawn a line in the sand, opposing a nihilistic authoritarianism devouring everything in its path.
Non-leftist Disney employees have quietly protested Disney’s move away from neutrality.
The protest was delivered in the form of an anonymous open letter that also aired grievances about the double standards, intolerance, and bullying of conservatives in the ‘progressive orthodox’ woke workplace.
Employees are responding to the contents of an apology given by Disney CEO Bob Chapek to LGBTQ+ groups, which reactively commits Disney to the advance of LGBTQ+ ideas and activism.Last week, Chapek capitulated to hyped-up accusations claiming that Disney was supporting “anti-LGBTQ+” Florida parental rights legislation.
Reacting to the bill, gay activists, and legacy media have (for weeks) deliberately engaged in a misinformation campaign, falsely labelling the proposal of the “don’t say gay” bill. This is despite the legislation never mentioning the word “gay.”
What the legislation offers is curriculum transparency, greater parental oversight, and the protection of children in grades K-3 from age-inappropriate overexposure to LGBTQ+ ideology.
The 1,000-word Disney Employee remonstration began with an assertion of love for the world of Disney, story, and a ‘fountain of wonder that inspires joy, awe, and delight in guests and audiences of all ages.’
However, the authors protested:
“The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive.”
They added:
“We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.”
Citing the Florida bill, the open letter states:
“[Disney’s] evolving response to the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida has left many of us wondering what place we have in a company actively promoting a political agenda so far removed from our own.”
Disney’s dissenters said, they’ve ‘watched colleagues, grow increasingly aggressive in their demands.’ Right up to ‘openly advocating for the punishment of employees who disagree with them.’
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Homosexuality: To Affirm is to Apostatise — The Bible Demands That We Treat Human Sexuality as a First Order Salvation Issue
The Bible treats the issue of human sexuality as one of primary importance. It is a salvation issue. Those who practice, teach and encourage sexual sin of any kind without repentance are in great eternal danger. This is not simply an issue of differing interpretation between brothers and sisters in Christ. It is not something on which we can agree to disagree and yet remain in fellowship. If we are to stand firm for the truth of the gospel in our generation, we need to first recognise the nature of the issue at stake. We need to undertake theological triage and treat the issue of human sexuality with the seriousness that it deserves.
There is no greater internal challenge facing the church in the UK than the pressure to revise the orthodox historic teaching on human sexuality and accept and affirm same-sex relationships. Some denominations have already decided to perform or bless same-sex marriages, including the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, and the United Reformed Church. The Baptist Union still formally upholds the biblical understanding of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual relationship but allows individual churches to perform same-sex marriages if they wish. The Church of England is in a lengthy process of consultation and deliberation (Living in Love and Faith) as to whether to allow gay marriage, and five bishops recently broke cover to demand that the church revise its teaching and practice to allow same-sex marriages. The Bishop of Oxford reiterated his support for same-sex marriage, and his re-reading of Scripture to justify this, in an article in the Telegraph on Saturday.
In essence, those who want to change the teaching and practice of the church take the view that loving homosexual partnerships are pleasing to God and ought to be celebrated and affirmed. They argue that the Biblical teaching condemning homosexual practice is either limited to abusive homosexual sex and does not prohibit same-sex relationships akin to marriage, or that the Bible’s teaching has been superseded in the present day, either by extrapolation of a claimed ‘redemptive trajectory’ or the assertion that in the light of developments in science, psychology and societal attitudes the Holy Spirit is saying something different to the church today from what he said in the Scriptures when they were first written. Some of those making these arguments claim to be evangelicals committed to the authority of Scripture, such as Steve Chalke and Jayne Ozanne.
I will not provide a comprehensive rebuttal of these arguments in this post. Suffice it to say that the idea that the Biblical passages condemning homosexual sex are confined to abusive relationships has been discredited by scholars of all theological persuasions. The Bible consistently teaches from Genesis to Revelation that sex was given by God exclusively for heterosexual marriage, which was created for the procreation of children and the modeling of the eternal relationship between Christ and his church, not merely for the psychological wholeness or personal fulfillment of men and women. There is no ‘redemptive trajectory’ argument that could be applied to homosexual relationships because redemption restores God’s good creation. The abolition of slavery cannot be equated with gay marriage because there was no slavery in pre-fall creation. Homosexuality was never part of the original good creation, as Romans 1v24-27 makes clear. The idea that the Holy Spirit is saying something different to the church today would be to entirely undermine the doctrine of Scripture and to claim that God is either a liar or a being who changes his mind about sin.
My purpose is this post is rather to argue for the significance of this issue. I am increasingly convinced that the affirmation of the biblical teaching on human sexuality is a primary issue, not a secondary issue over which honest Christians may disagree in interpretation and conscience. It is not in the same category as many ‘disputable matters’ that evangelicals are used to treating as ‘secondary,’ for example issues such as baptism, church government, eschatology, women’s ministry, charismatic gifts, etc. Over such issues, it is possible to disagree without breaking fellowship, as the disagreement does not indicate that a person cannot be accepted as a believer in the Lord Jesus. Such issues may be of ecclesiological importance, but they are not determinative of soteriology, in contrast to issues such as the deity of Jesus, his bodily resurrection, and justification by faith alone, which are essential to salvation.
In several major talks this year I have made the assertion that the issue of human sexuality is a primary issue, with consequences for how we view those who seek to argue for the acceptance and affirmation of same-sex relationships in the church. I made my views clear in my plenary talk at the European Leadership Forum in May, on ‘What is an Evangelical,’ and in my Keswick Lecture at the Keswick Convention in July. I made the same assertion at the recent FIEC Leaders’ Conference preaching fromJude v1-16.
These are the reasons why I think that human sexuality is a primary gospel issue, and the implications that should flow from this:
1 The New Testament states that it is a primary salvation issue.
The only reason for believing that homosexuality is a primary gospel issue is because this is the way that the New Testament treats it. To be more precise, the New Testament makes clear that a person who commits sexual sin without repentance, believing it to be morally good and acceptable to God, thereby showing that they are outside the Kingdom of God. Their behaviour is to be taken as categorical evidence that they are not converted believers in the Lord Jesus and have no right to bear the name of ‘Christian.’ They are either unbelievers or apostates who have fallen from their profession of faith.
The principle that high-handed (ie proud and unrepented) sexual sin disqualifies from the Kingdom of God is thus true of all sexual sin, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Some of the New Testament references refer to ‘sexual immorality’ in a broad sense, which includes homosexual sex, but other references explicitly state that homosexual sex disqualifies a person from the Kingdom of God.
Ephesians 5v3-7 states:
‘But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.’
In these verses, Paul makes quite clear that people who profess to be Christians with their lips but practice sexual immorality with their bodies without repentance have no inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ. They are those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ about Jesus but who do not truly know him, and he will cast them into judgment as evil doers. The gospel does not just forgive our sins but delivers us from our sins. A person who continues to sin sexually after conversion without repentance, sorrow, grief, and efforts to resist future temptation is showing that they are not truly regenerated. They remain dead in their trespasses and sins.
Revelation 21v6-8 makes exactly the same point, contrasting those who will enter the new creation because they have maintained their faith in Christ with those who have continued to live a life of sin:
‘He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.”
In exactly the same way as Ephesians 5v5, Revelation 21v8 makes clear that those who unrepentantly continue in sexual sin, which includes homosexual practice, will be cast into judgement rather than enter the kingdom. Those who ‘live in sin’ can have no hope of living in the eschatological Kingdom of God – unless they repent and turn from their sin.
In 1 Corinthians 6, the exclusion of those who continue in homosexual sex without repentance from the Kingdom of God is made explicit. The wider context concerns a case of high-handed heterosexual sin committed by a man who is proud of what he is doing and who refuses to repent. In 1 Corinthians 6v9-10 Paul states that his sin, and the sins of others who are unrepentant, will exclude them from the Kingdom:
‘Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.’
Paul could not be clearer. Men who continue to have sex with other men without repentance are excluded from the Kingdom of God.
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