Is the gospel larger than sola fide?

Many Evangelicals have cited Galatians and other parts of scripture against Roman Catholicism and other groups they think hold a false gospel. A common response has been to cite passages in the Bible that refer to the gospel without defining it the way those Evangelicals are defining it (Mark 1:1, 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, etc.).

The Diversity Of Baptismal Beliefs And Practices In The Medieval Era

It's often claimed that every Christian before the Reformation believed in baptismal regeneration, that only heretics opposed it, that only an extremely small number of Christians did, or some such thing. That kind of claim simultaneously makes the concept of justification apart from baptism look weaker and baptismal regeneration look stronger.

But many people believed in justification apart from baptism prior to the Reformation, as I've documented elsewhere. And among those who assigned some type of soteriological efficacy to baptism, there was widespread disagreement about the sort of efficacy involved, and soteriological efficacy was also attributed to other rituals (or sacraments, ceremonies, or whatever you want to call them): the laying on of hands, foot washing, etc. See here for a discussion of many examples from the patristic era. So, justification apart from baptism was more widely held before the Reformation than is typically suggested, and there wasn't the sort of unified alternative to it that we're told there was. Rather, there was a wide diversity of alternatives.

The Sin Of Simplicity

Proverbs warns about being simple-minded. "How long, O naive ones, will you love being simple-minded?" (1:22) The simple should become wise rather than remaining simple (Psalm 19:7).

Despite all of the advantages people in modern cultures have in intellectual contexts - higher literacy rates, more widespread formal education, better technology that includes more access to information, more political freedoms, etc. - it's common for people to not only be too simple in their thinking, but to even treat it as something virtuous and respectable. Supposedly, it's good that they're such simple people who don't learn much about a subject or mature in other ways.

Jesus told us that having more makes you responsible for more (Luke 12:48). Given the intellectual advantages we have in contexts like the United States, we should have much more to show for those advantages than we do.

Be careful not to encourage simplicity where you shouldn't. The immaturity of your children, people in your church, or people in YouTube threads, for example, should be discouraged rather than encouraged. They should be held to a higher rather than lower standard and should be expected to mature over time. That includes maturing intellectually and becoming more active in disseminating information rather than perpetually looking for other people to provide the information.