Paul told the Galatians, "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6). He expressed a similar sentiment to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:4).
If churches as early as these Pauline ones were in such danger and sometimes erred while under Paul's supervision, there's even more potential in some ways for later individuals and churches to err in that manner. My post earlier this week provides many examples of how that sort of thing happened a lot in later church history, regardless of which side of those later disputes you take. The disputes happened, and both sides (or more than two in some contexts) couldn't be right, given the nature of their claims.
I'm not suggesting that every or almost every post-apostolic source before the Reformation wasn't a Christian or anything like that. As I've argued in many previous posts and elsewhere, there was far more belief in justification through faith alone among the pre-Reformation sources than people often suggest. And I allow for the salvation of people who hold false soteriological views. People are often inconsistent, as we see with Peter and the Galatians, for example. In some ways, later individuals and groups who have contradicted Paul's soteriology have been better than the Judaizers. They've accepted the authority of the apostles, have often read documents like Paul's letters in their church services, etc. So, when Cyprian sees two sacraments (baptism and the laying on of hands) as a means of justification in John 3:5 or a medieval Roman Catholic believes that you have to obey the Pope in order to be saved, for example, I allow for the possibility or probability of their salvation. I make a judgment based on the totality of the evidence, including their access to the gospel and their affirmations of it in some places, even if they were inconsistent with it at times.
My main point here, though, is that departing from the gospel isn't as difficult as some people make it out to be. It was a prominent concern in Paul's day, and it sometimes happened even with people under the apostles' supervision. People often underestimate the soteriological inconsistencies we see in post-apostolic church history. Supposedly, none or few of the soteriological contradictions we see among the church fathers, medieval theologians, and other sources rise to the level of a false gospel. But it makes more sense to acknowledge that the soteriological errors are more significant than that and allow for the salvation of the individuals involved, despite their false soteriology.
1- The Bible says that heresies are works of the flesh and that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. When it mentions heresies, what list of things is it referring to?
ReplyDeleteFor example, isn't someone who teaches justification by faith + works committing heresy? And if so, how were such people saved? How is it possible to be saved without trusting in Christ in the correct way?
2- How do we know at what point someone has crossed over into a false gospel? What is the list of things that constitute the true gospel?
3- Many Protestants say they are united in the essentials, but they disagree on the list of things that are essential for salvation. So now what? What is the list?
I don't have time to discuss all of that, and I shouldn't discuss all of it, even if I had the time. Much of what you've brought up is off topic or problematic in some other way. You've asked some broad questions that go well beyond what my post was about, without providing much indication of what you already know about those subjects. That probably means there would be a lot of time wasted addressing things that don't need addressed if I were to try to answer all of your questions. I don't have to address all of the essentials of Christianity in order to make the points I made in my original post. I don't believe that Protestants are united in the essentials, and I haven't claimed that they're united. My post doesn't depend on unity among Protestants. And there are disagreements about the essentials among Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, etc. Similarly, Muslims disagree with each other about the essentials of their faith, as do Jews, Hindus, and so on. I've discussed whether justification through faith alone is an essential elsewhere, like here and here. I've also discussed how the means of receiving justification relates to other essentials. I've discussed some of the ways of discerning whether somebody is a Christian in other posts, and my initial post in this thread mentions some examples of how somebody associated with a false soteriology may be a Christian anyway. I'm not going to go into much depth about the subject here, since I've already addressed it more elsewhere, and I don't need to do it here in order to make the primary point in my initial post. If you want more information about topics other than what I was addressing in my original post, you can read my earlier posts linked above, click the relevant labels at the bottom of my initial post, or search our archives.
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