What Is "The Good Fight?"
Understanding theological triage, a concept Christians have been practicing in some form for all of church history
There is a lot of conversation among Christians lately about which battles are worth fighting and where Christians can “agree to disagree.” So I thought I’d share an excerpt on this topic from my book, Agents of Grace.
The Bible does tell us that there is a time to stand up and fight. Listen to what the Apostle Paul tells his young protégé Timothy, a young pastor of the church of Ephesus, “Fight the good fight of the faith, “Paul urges Timothy, “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses (1 Timothy 6:12).” In his last letter, before he was to be executed by Rome for the crime of preaching the gospel, Paul declares that he had “fought the good fight of faith (2 Timothy 4:7-8).”
Scripture often uses language of conflict, urging us to “put on the armor of God” (Ephesians 6:10-18) and to “Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong (1 Corinthians 16:13). Of course our fight is ultimately against an unseen foe, an enemy the Bible describes as “walking about seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Yet this ultimate spiritual conflict often manifests in conflicts with others.
Jesus would tell his disciples in the Upper Room--before he was led to the cross to defeat Satan and secure our salvation—that to follow him was often to follow him into trouble. “They hated me, “Jesus says, talking about a world without his love, “they will hate you (John 15:18).” This is why there are times to stand up for truth.
It’s possible to be deceived by religious teaching that sounds like Christianity, but is false and leads to deception and away from Christ. The Bible mentions this a lot. Here is one example: “But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ (2 Corinthians 11:34)
So there is a time to fight, to guard against spiritually harmful ideas. John Piper says it well: “Right thinking about what the Bible teaches about God and man and salvation really matters. Bad theology dishonors God and hurts people. Churches that sever the root of truth may flourish for a season, but they will wither eventually or turn into something besides a Christian church.”[1]
There are things worth fighting for. There exists a body of truth passed down from Scripture, through the apostles and prophets, and given to us as a gift. Jesus said to the Apostles that he would illuminate them in a special way and reveal his Word to them: “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come (John 16:12-13).” In Acts 5, Peter says that he and the other Apostles were “witnesses of these things.” This essentially describes the giving of the New Testament. This plus the Old Testament, revealed by Jesus to men like Moses and the prophets, form the basis of God’s revealed word to us (Ephesians 2:2), a word we can trust with our lives (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
The Bible describes this body of truth in different ways, but all describe something that must be cherished, preserved, and passed on to the next generation:
· In 1 Timothy 6:20, we are told to “guard what is entrusted to your care”
· 1 Timothy 4:6 and 4:11, we are told to “point out these things” and “command and teach these things.”
· 1 Corinthians 16:13 urges to “stand firm in the faith.”
· In Jude 3-4 we are told that God’s people must “earnestly contend for the faith, once delivered to the saints.”
· Hebrews 10:23 urges us to “hold fast to our confession of faith without wavering (KJV).”
What are “these things?” or “the faith once delivered to the saints?” What is the Bible talking about when it describes “the confession of our faith?” The Bible here is talking about basic Christian doctrine. Today, often, we will sometimes hear well-meaning pastors or leaders say things like, “Doctrine doesn’t matter” or “Loving Jesus is more important than doctrine.” But doctrines are merely the way we think about God. They are what God has told us about himself and his Son, Jesus Christ. Studying theology this way should lead us to worship and awe and wonder. Understanding and appreciating and believing the truth about Jesus is part of what it means to love him.
We defend orthodoxy not because we want to be seen as right, but because Christian theology is beautiful. It is truth revealed about ourselves, about our world, and most importantly about the God who loves us and about his Son who died for us.
Imagine saying, about a best friend or your spouse or one of your children, “Learning about them doesn’t matter as long as I just love them.” How absurd, right? In order to best love my wife, I should learn more things about her, what she likes and dislikes, and how she is uniquely wired.
Now imagine if people came along and began sharing things that were flatly untrue about Angela. Imagine if I said, “Yeah, I’m not going to fight about those things. All that matters is that I love my wife.” Um, that won’t work. How loved would Angela feel if I was passe about untruths people spread about her? Instead, I should be vigilant that everyone I know knows what is true and good and beautiful about the wife I’m sharing my life with.
So you see why the Bible urges us to reject false teachings and fight for truth? We are standing up for orthodoxy because this is one way we love the one who saved us from our sin and walks in a relationship with us.
The Right Hills To Die On
So how do we know which things in the Bible are those things worth fighting unwaveringly for and which are the issues about which Christians might disagree? This is vitally important, not only because we have limited energy, time, resources, and passion, but because we should not want to unnecessarily divide from brothers and sisters in Christ and provoke unneeded conflict.
Christians have been thinking about this for all of church history, but most recently, theologians have labeled this kind of work, “theological triage,” a term coined by scholar Albert Mohler, Jr. He explains it this way:
The word triage comes from the French word trier, which means "to sort." Thus, the triage officer in the medical context is the front-line agent for deciding which patients need the most urgent treatment. Without such a process, the scraped knee would receive the same urgency of consideration as a gunshot wound to the chest. The same discipline that brings order to the hectic arena of the Emergency Room can also offer great assistance to Christians defending truth in the present age.
A discipline of theological triage would require Christians to determine a scale of theological urgency that would correspond to the medical world's framework for medical priority.
I’ve had to take my kids to the emergency room more times than I can count. The best emergency rooms understand how to triage, how to prioritize the most important and urgent cases from the less urgent, though still important. We need to learn how do this with conflicts among Christians. We don’t want to devote our passions to hangnail arguments when spiritual heart surgery needs our attention.
Mohler goes on to urge Christians to think of doctrines and beliefs in three categories: first-tier issues, secondary issues, and tertiary issues. In his excellent book Finding the Right Hills To Die On Gavin Ortlund expands this to four categories:
• First-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel.
• Second-rank doctrines are urgent for the church (but
not essential to the gospel).
• Third-rank doctrines are important to Christian theology (but not essential to the gospel or necessarily urgent for the church).
• Fourth-rank doctrines are indifferent (they are theologically unimportant)[2].
Sorting out important doctrines from the less important is not a new practice. Some of the most important creeds in the Christian faith—creeds recited weekly in many church traditions—were hammered out and formed as Christians through the ages tried to put in one document what is important for Christians to believe.
These major Christian creeds are The Apostle’s Creed, The Nicene Creed, The Chalcedonian Creed, and The Athanasian Creed. In varying ways, these statements summarize the essentials, the first-tier beliefs of the Christian faith, doctrines such as the virgin birth of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus, the deity of Christ. Mohler writes, “The earliest creeds and councils of the church were, in essence, emergency measures taken to protect the central core of Christian doctrine. At historic turning-points such as the councils at Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon, orthodoxy was vindicated and heresy was condemned--and these councils dealt with doctrines of unquestionable first-order importance.”
There are beliefs that are clear from a study of Scripture and that, to deny, would put you essentially outside of the historic Christian faith. I believe this includes important contemporary issues, such as the Bible’s vision for human sexuality and gender and the authority and reliability of Scripture. The church has always considered these to be first-tier doctrines. Scholars Donald Fortson and Rollin Graham are right when they say:
“One of the primary things handed down in the Christian church over the centuries is a consistent set of ethical instructions, including specific directives about sexual behavior. The church of every generation from the time of the apostles has condemned sexual sin as unbecoming a disciple of Jesus. At no point have any orthodox Christian teachers ever suggested that one’s sexual practices may deviate from biblical standards.”
Historians, including many who are not professing Christians, have affirmed this to be true.
And again, we believe this, not to be contrarian or to be proven right, but because we believe the Creator knows what is best for human flourishing.
I want to pause here and say that there is something beautiful and refreshing and life-giving about knowing that when we step into the church and we recite a Christian creed or we sing a song or hymn with lyrics that articulate precious truths, we are joining millions of believers from every nation, tribe, and tongue down through history. Studying theology should not be a dry, boring exercise, but a pursuit that brings us further up and further into knowing the One embodies our beliefs.
Underneath the first-order doctrines are beliefs that are important, but secondary. These are issues that Christians have disagreed about for much of church history, such as the nature of baptism. Now, to be sure, while disagreeing on these issues doesn’t make someone a less faithful Christian, that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. This is typically at the level at which denominations are formed. I’m a Baptist. I believe strongly in what is referred to as “credo-baptism” which is the belief that water baptism by immersion is an ordinance reserved for someone who professes faith in Christ. My Presbyterian brothers and sisters believe differently on these issues. They couldn’t be members at my local church, and I likely couldn’t be a member at theirs, and that’s okay. I can partner with them in many gospel initiatives because we agree on the first-tier issues.
Then there are third-tier issues including topics such as eschatology (your beliefs about the end times), the role of sign gifts, the age of the earth, what Bible translation is best to use, etc. These are issues where even Christians in the same church might disagree with one another. And while I think it is good and right to have strong views on even these tertiary issues, we should be open-handed with others who may have differing views. These are issues about which we may be confident, but not so confident we would be willing to die for those ideas.
Of course, sometimes this division into three or four tiers is complicated. Some issues such as debates over Calvinism or speaking in tongues become important depending on church tradition. A Presbyterian church will likely not have too many who don’t hold to at least some of the tenets of Reformed theology. An Assemblies of God or Pentecostal church would be a difficult place for someone who doesn’t necessarily believe in speaking in tongues. A Methodist church would most likely be an uncomfortable place for a Calvinist. At the same time, some fellowships allow for healthy disagreement on these issues.
What’s important is the way we think about those who differ with us on secondary and tertiary issues. While we may have substantive debates, we may land in a different place than a brother or sister who thinks differently about, say, the age of the earth or how exactly the end times will unfold, or the sign gifts, we should not consider them unfaithful or less of a Christian because they have come to a place, on an issue where Christians throughout the ages, have historically disagreed. I believe we should also have this kind of grace in the way we come to convictions about how we apply our beliefs in public, whether it is the way we choose to educate our children or the way we might use our voice in the public square.
I’ve heard many lament the fact that Christians do find disagreement on these kinds of third-tier issues and have throughout the ages. But when I look across the Christian landscape and see faithful believers organizing in various traditions and denominations, I see a mosaic, a beautiful diversity among the people of God. And each brings an emphasis and perspective that, if we allow it, can shape us in profound ways. My library today is filled with treasures from various church traditions. I’d be impoverished if the only spiritual formation I received came from the denomination in which I’m most comfortable. I’m a proud Baptist and will be all my life. I think our movement has been a blessing to God’s people, with our emphasis on evangelism, expository preaching, and the concept of a free church in a free state. Yet I learn and grow from those with whom I disagree.
This is what it means to pick the things we fight for. It doesn’t mean we all worship in the same tradition. It also means there are differing ways in which we partner together, depending on our specific convictions. Biblical unity and picking the right fights sometimes look like a Baptist and a Presbyterian and Methodist church agreeing on the basics of the gospel and partnering on prayer for the city or an evangelism initiative. But it might also mean we don’t partner in other areas because there is a strong disagreement on the way we organize our churches. This is okay.
Christian communities don’t have to be monolithic. We can have reasoned debates about the places we disagree. But we can also save our energy and our fighting spirit to stand firm in those places where we must not budge, rather than on issues of lesser importance. All Christians share a precious body of truth handed down to us from the Apostles, kept alive by the Spirit in 2,000 years of church history, and which shapes the life of Christ among his people.
You can read more in my book Agents of Grace
Wonderful essay , thorough and very educational. Thank you!