Can't We Find a Doctrinal Middle Ground?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question:Dear Mr. Hunt and Mr. McMahon: I realize that the church today is moving further away from sound doctrine, but on the other hand, there are some who are doctrinal extremists.The latter legalists can be just as harmful to the faith as those who take too many liberties with God’s Word.Is the axiom “In necessary things unity; in doubtful things liberty; in all things charity,” a good rule of thumb?

Tom:

Dave this is very similar to, it seems to me, or it relates to our previous segment where we were talking about extremists.Somebody who wants every jot and tittle of God’s Word, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but when you have a misunderstanding or a misapplication of God’s Word, it ends up being a problem.A lot of what we talk about on this program has to do with somebody missing the mark with regard to, or not even caring about God’s truth, God’s Word, God’s doctrine.But there are those extremists.

Dave:

Give us that little saying once again Tom.

Tom:

Okay, I think this is from Richard Baxter, the Puritan.He wrote, “In necessary things unity; in doubtful things liberty; in all things charity.”

Dave:

Yes, then of course, you have an argument about what is necessary.It is very hard to make these little sayings work, but I am sure what he had in mind would be what we would agree with if you could accomplish it.In necessary things, unity.In other words…

Tom:

The gospel.

Dave:

There has to be unity on that.I cannot allow false teaching on the matters that are essential to our salvation, and that is apparently what he had in mind.But I should be charitable in everything.On the other hand, again it depends on what you mean by charitable.Am I going to be charitable to someone who is leading people into hell?Giving them a false hope, a false gospel?What would charity in that case mean?Jesus said as many as I love I rebuke and chasten.So I think the most charitable thing I could do in that case would be to point out to the person their error.

Tom:

And I think Richard Baxter would go along with that.

Dave:

Yes, so—what was the question again?

Tom:

Well I think this person is just concerned that there are extremists who push the envelope as it were with regard—for example there are churches who have split over whether in the communion they had one cup or many little cups.Or whether the bread were little bits of wheat or whether it was a loaf of bread that was broken.

Dave:

Yes, Tom, you can take ideas that are not clearly expressed in the Bible, and make rules out of them.And that becomes tradition.You could go to the Hutterite communities up in Canada and they have a certain way of living, a certain way of dressing, a certain way of doing things.They can’t show it to you from the Bible directly, but they’ve been doing this for awhile.This is their tradition.On the other hand, they would try and find something from the Bible.Now let’s take the people we were just talking about who allowed their daughter to die of diabetes.

Tom:

Yes because they sought no medical help.

Dave:

Well it says we walk by faith.You could take a scripture like that, “we walk by faith.”Well then whatever we do has to be done by faith.Or you could take the scripture that we are to trust God with our lives.Well then I am trusting him with my life.So you must use some common sense in reading the Word of God.Some things are allegorical; some things are literal.Some things are speaking spiritually; other things physically.For example, the idea that Catholics and many Lutherans and Calvinists have concerning what is called baptismal regeneration.That an infant that is baptized is brought into the kingdom of God; their sins are forgiven.Or that this is really Christ in the bread and the cup when taking communion.It is not a mere remembrance of what he accomplished on the cross, but this is literally Christ himself and we need to ingest him into our stomachs.Now of course that is not rational and furthermore it is not biblical because Jesus himself said the flesh profits nothing.The words that I speak, these are spirit, these are life.In this area then we would walk by faith.The idea that some physical thing that you could do would bring spiritual power.So there are so many things in the Bible that a person could misinterpret and then it becomes fanaticism and we are going to hang onto this.So what we need is submission to God’s will and say Lord, I want to obey your Word, I don’t understand everything.The scripture says if you lack wisdom ask of God and he will give it to you.

Tom:

Liberally.

Dave:

Right, and let us not be fanatics about anything, but let us be very firm in what we know is true that has to do with the eternal destiny of souls and that is the gospel and without faith in Christ, there is no salvation.We cannot compromise on that.