Transcript
>Article: The Spirit of the Antichrist: Decoupling Jesus from the Christ
My topic, as you know, this morning is the spirit of Antichrist, and my subtitle is Decoupling Jesus from the Christ. Recently, as I was discussing lordship salvation with a fellow grace person, I was asked a very interesting question. The question was, are we winning? The essence of my answer was, absolutely. Of course, I was not talking in terms of popularity polls. Even if we could take a poll or a vote, who would be allowed to participate? All Americans, all professing Christians, all Protestants, all truly born-again people? Headcounting is obviously irrelevant here.
Unfortunately, many grace people are not aware of the tremendous impact that the grace movement has had and continues to have. But here in Dallas, both at the GES offices and at the offices of Redención Viva, we’re kind of at ground ground zero. We have more information about the impact of the grace, uh, movement around the country than just about anybody else. What I have seen and heard in the last few years is enormously encouraging. Fundamentally, God has been at work with His truth.
The number of people who have been liberated from false gospels is very large. As far as I can tell, my information is based on telephone calls, letters, face-to-face encounters—anecdotal, to be sure—but for every person that contacts us, uh, you can assume that there are many other people who have been similarly, uh, benefited. The reason we are winning, however, is because we are being led by an all-conquering Captain, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All true victories of grace truth are His victories, and they’re not really our victories. He is accomplishing His own purposes.
But having said this, we must also admit that the grace movement faces some significant dangers. And I want to think about those dangers together with you this morning for a few minutes. Part one: the danger of not being open to God’s Word. It may seem strange to say it, but the grace movement must face the danger of not being open to the Word of God. Most grace people probably feel that openness to God’s Word is a highlight of the grace movement. And to a great extent, it is.
After all, we are willing to allow the Scriptures to speak even when they contradict traditional views or long-held positions. The doctrine of rewards, for example, is one of the areas in which the grace movement seems fully prepared to let the Scriptures speak clearly. And I certainly agree that this has been a a strong point of the grace movement up until now. And I hope it will continue to be. But there are some warning flags.
Subpoint A: the doctrine of repentance. One of the central issues in the lordship debate has been over the doctrine of repentance. This doctrine obviously occupies a critical place in the whole discussion. I am concerned that the grace movement not allow itself to become vulnerable by maintaining a position on repentance that really cannot be sustained from Scripture. Lordship people do not tire of telling us that, in the New Testament, repentance is basically repentance from sin. They say it does not mean merely a change of mind from unbelief to faith. And in my judgment, they are absolutely right.
There is not even one clear passage in the New Testament where repentance does not refer to repentance from sin. By contrast, there are many clear passages where it does. Now, I have confessed before, and I’m going to do so again, that I myself once held the change-of-mind position. But I have changed my mind about repentance meaning simply a change of mind. And, not surprisingly, my views on the subject are presented in the new book Harmony with God, which, uh, we are very privileged to be releasing at this conference.
It’s the best kind of venue to release a book in that I can imagine for Redención Viva. We pray that God will use this book, uh, to clarify an issue on which even the grace movement seems to manifest some measure of confusion. But the question is this: Can grace people still search the Scriptures honestly when some traditional view of their own is called into question? Are we open to the Word of God whether it agrees with us or not? That’s a good question that we all need to answer.
Subpoint B: fudging on the simplicity of faith. There is another area where we need complete openness to God’s Word. That area involves the amazing simplicity of biblical faith. I am convinced that some committed grace people are still a little scared by the simplicity of believing in Christ. They are eager to avoid the charge that we teach mere intellectual assent. It is hard for people like this to agree that faith and salvation occur when the core message of the gospel is simply accepted as true.
Instead, they wish to hedge this position with the requirement that faith must include some personal element like trust, or that I must make some personal appropriation of the saving, uh, offer. This is the perspective that rapidly leads to urging or even requiring a prayer of faith. Now, I have argued elsewhere that trust can often be used as a synonym for faith. But when trust is viewed as an improvement on the word faith, or as an improvement on the word believe, the door to confusion is open.
What often results is a two-step view of faith. Step one, believe the facts. Step two, trust Christ for eternal life. The Bible knows no such distinction as this. At the conclusion of John 9, the Lord Jesus says to the former blind man, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” The former blind man replies, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus’ response is majestic: “You have both seen Him, and it is He who is talking with you.” Then the former blind man says to Him, “Lord, I believe.”
This is an impressive passage. The issue of concern is in no way what “believe” may mean. Rather, the former blind man feels only a need for information. The term Son of God, of course, was a functional equivalent to the term Christ, as John 20:30-31 show. The blind man understood that Jesus must be telling him that the Christ was present somewhere. His confidence in Jesus is so high that he needs only to find out who Jesus is referring to. Jesus informs him that He is referring to Himself.
So the man believes. That is, he believes that Jesus is the Christ, and is thus born of God in conformity with John 20:30-31 and 1 John 5:1. But if the former blind man had been a 21st-century evangelical, he might have said, “Lord, what do You mean by believe?” Or he might have said, “Do You mean personal trust? Do You mean intellectual assent? Do You mean commitment of the whole person?” I hope you can see that, in the context of John 9, such statements are actually theological nonsense.
They are the result of failing to take the biblical treatment of faith at at face value. When it comes to believing something, the Bible does not contradict normal usage or common sense. Theologians, however, have been known to do both. I hope you see that, in the context of John 9, such, uh, that, uh, there is no excuse really for not seeing the simplicity of biblical faith. The question is, however, whether we are open to that this aspect of the biblical testimony about faith, or will we continue to hedge our view of faith with alternate expressions and with unbiblical provisos?
To put this another way, can we present the gospel so clearly that we can actually ask someone, “Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ?” And would we be satisfied if they said, “Yes, I do”? Summary of this portion of the talk: The issues I’ve just discussed are examples only. Of course, they are intended to remind us that the grace movement must bring all of its convictions to the bar of Scripture. And we must be prepared to revise those convictions however God’s Word requires.
No movement can remain vital which no longer examines itself in the light of Scripture. When such examination of our convictions ceases, tradition and dead orthodoxy are not far down the road. Part two: the danger of losing the historicity of the gospel. The danger of losing the historicity of the gospel. Now we come to the major burden of my talk this morning. A second danger that confronts the grace movement is the loss of the historicity of the gospel message.
My reference to the former blind man in John 9 was definitely not a throwaway illustration. It happens to impinge directly on my chief concern this morning. Did you notice that when Jesus said, “Do you believe in the Son of God?” the blind man did not say something like, “Well, of course I do.” Instead, the blind man said—and I’m paraphrasing here—but the blind man said, “Well, I’d love to believe in Him, but before I can do that, I’ll have to know who He is.” Are you impressed by that? I am.
You see, it is sometimes suggested that a heathen person in some faraway land can get saved just by trusting the Creator God to save him. Acting on the light of nature, he puts his eternal destiny in the hands of his Maker and is born again. Without knowing it, he has believed in God’s provision through Jesus Christ. I’m sorry. It’s a beautiful scenario, but very contrary to the Scripture. What it does, in fact, is this: It denies the essential historicity of the gospel.
It does this by denying that the gospel is inseparable from the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. If the truth which men must believe to be eternally saved is separated from Jesus, it is also separated from history. This separation, in turn, results in separation from the biblical revelation itself and from the messiahship of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Subpoint A: back to the deserted island. Last year I created a deserted island scenario that some of you may remember. The man who is marooned on that island gets a fragment of the Gospel of John washed up on the beach. That fragment contains the opening words of John 6:43: “Jesus therefore answered and said to them,” and everything is unreadable until we reach the words of John 6:47: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life.” My question was, is that enough information for the man to get saved? My answer, of course, was yes.
But now I want to offer you a variation on my deserted island scenario. Suppose the portion of John 6:43 containing “Jesus answered and said to them” was missing. Does the man still have enough information to get saved? This time my answer is no. Note well that even though the entirety of John 6:47 is legible for our marooned man, he does not know who the “I” or the “Me” refer to. He would have to inquire about the identity of the “I” and the “Me” of this verse, just as the blind man inquired about the identity of the Son of God.
Let me state this issue in terms of the purpose of the Gospel of John. According to John 20:30-31, the book was written “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ.” Please notice that it was not written simply that we might believe in the Christ. No, instead it was written that we might believe that Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is the Christ. Think about this for a moment. We are not being called to believe that the Christ gives us eternal life. Rather, we are called to believe that Jesus gives us eternal life because Jesus is the Christ.
Or take 1 John 5:1: “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” Did you notice something? It is not whoever believes in the Christ for eternal life is born of God. But once again, the issue is Jesus. If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, then, but only then, do we have a promise of eternal life. The New Testament offers eternal life exclusively to those who believe in Jesus for it. There is no other offer of eternal life in the New Testament. None. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Jesus is man’s only way to God. He Himself says so. In words familiar to all of us, Jesus said to Thomas,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
No one gets to the Father apart from Jesus. In the context of the Gospel of John, this does not mean that men may come to God and not know that they come by means of Jesus. On the contrary, John is always at pains to point the believer to the historical Jesus as the object of faith.
Subpoint B: faith in Jesus saves. As you can see, the Gospel of John teaches that people are saved by believing in Jesus, not by believing in God, not by believing in an unknown Messiah, but by believing in Jesus. Regardless of how people were saved in the Old Testament, I’m very comfortable with my good friend Bob Bryant’s presentation there, but regardless of how people were saved in the Old Testament, what we’re saying now is how they are saved today.
This is certainly not contradicted by John 5:24. We are used to reading that verse this way:
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life.
But the first thing we must notice is that there is nothing in the Greek to correspond to the word “in.” So we really should read the verse like this:
Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has everlasting life.
Notice carefully, the believer hears Jesus’ word, and when he believes it, he is believing the God who sent Jesus. Point—the point is, of course, that Jesus’ word is God’s Word. To believe Jesus’ word is to believe what God says. This is a a very important point for John. Take, for example, John 12:48-50. Jesus says,
He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him. The word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken on My own authority, but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak.
Or again, in John 8:28, we read,
When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself. But as My Father taught Me, so I speak these things.
As all my former Greek students will know, I hope, John’s characteristic, uh, phrase for the faith that brings eternal life is pisteuō eis. This is usually rendered by our English versions as “believe in” or “believe on.” It was a mistake for the translators to use the words “believe in” or “on” in John 5:24.
As far as I’m aware, John never makes God the object of pisteuō eis. John’s point is not that we can believe in God for eternal life just as we do when we believe in Jesus for that. On the contrary, his point is that when we believe Jesus’ word, we are in fact believing something God Himself is saying to us. And, of course, faith in Jesus’ word is still faith in Jesus. But obviously the saving experience of John 5:24 cannot come to someone who has never heard Jesus’ word.
No matter what he believes about the Creator, the heathen person still needs to hear the message brought by the Savior whom the Creator has sent. And note well, when the unsaved person believes the word of Jesus, he is not simply believing God, but believing the God who sent Jesus. To put it plainly, God apart from Jesus is never the object of the faith that brings eternal life.
Of similar significance is the way the Samaritan woman of John 4 is led to faith in a specific historical person. Jesus first draws her attention to the water of life that He can give to her. Then, as the exchange between her and the Son of God draws to its climax, the woman states, “I know that Messiah is coming, who’s called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us all things.” As you already know, the climax of this unforgettable interview comes when our Lord announces, “I who speak to you am He.”
Like the blind man of John 9, she places her faith in the person of Jesus. Someone may wish to haggle here and raise the question, did she know His name was Jesus? To this we may say two things. Number one, it would be surprising if she did not. After all, this is a mere fragment of the total conversation. Would they not have introduced themselves to each other at some point? But two, it doesn’t really matter. It was a historical person called Jesus that she believed in.
“Who is the Christ? You’re looking at Him,” said Jesus. I am reminded also of the statement Jesus makes in John 6:40:
And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
Once again, identification of the historical Jesus is the issue. Of course, an individual can be saved without seeing Him, as John 20:29 makes clear. But if someone sees Him and believes in Him, he has obviously believed in a particular historical person.
The Gospel of John is completely adamant. The Gospel of John is completely adamant that the historical person of Jesus must be the focus of our faith if we are to have eternal life. As the apostle Paul has put it, “God is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” Romans 3:26. There is no salvation for anyone outside of faith in the historical person of Jesus. The New Testament promise of eternal life is made exclusively to believers in the historical Jesus. Nothing else has even a shred of biblical evidence.
If the grace movement should ever lose its grip on this simple fact, it would have subverted the gospel and subverted the worldwide evangelistic enterprise. Just as grievously, it would have failed to properly honor the name that God has placed above every name. Someday every knee will bow to that name, and every tongue will confess that the exalted name of Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. God has ordained that the name of Jesus should be the one and only name in the universe that is a source of eternal life. If the grace movement ever loses all this, it will richly deserve to die.
Subpoint C: the spirit of the Antichrist. In the light of—in the light of all that we have just said, we can better appreciate the subtle wickedness of the spirit of the Antichrist. As John informs us in the first epistle, there are already many antichrists in the world. His words are familiar:
Little children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know it is the last hour.
Shortly afterwards, he adds,
I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?
In chapter 4, the apostle also says,
And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard was coming and is now already in the world.
Please observe, the spirit of the Antichrist is revealed by denying that Jesus is the Christ, or by denying the historical manifestation of the Christ who came in the flesh and blood of Jesus. Let me stress that the spirit of the Antichrist is not defined by denying that there is a Christ. Nor is the spirit even defined by denying the salvific significance of the Christ. He is defined instead by the denial that the historical Jesus, the Jesus who had flesh and blood, is indeed the Christ.
Even more precisely, the spirit, this spirit, is defined by a failure to confess this truth. Listen to 1 John 4:3 again:
Every spirit which does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist.
Needless to say, the satanic assault is targeted at the person of Jesus for the precise reason that there is no salvation apart from faith in Jesus.
One can actually articulate a gospel that even sounds theologically correct, but without Jesus, it is not the gospel at all. For example, I might say, “Salvation is by grace alone through faith in Christ.” But if the hearer does not know that the Christ is the historical Jesus, he does not yet know how to be saved. Like the blind man of John 9, he will have to ask, “Who is the Christ that I might believe in Him?” And if Jesus is totally subtracted from my message so that there is no witness to Him as God’s Christ, my message is not merely inadequate. It is also perfectly acceptable to the spirit of Antichrist.
All right, I’m supposed to open it now, I think, for questions.
“I’m Mike Bower from Dallas.”
“I know you, Mike.”
“Yes, you do. Mental assent. Someone says to you, ‘Faith is just not mental assent.’ How do you respond?”
My response is still the same as it is, uh, in Absolutely Free. I wish that we could, uh, assign the terminology intellectual assent to the dustbin of theological history and forget it. The reason I say that is because, uh, intellectual assent in contemporary semantic use carries with it, uh, an unwanted and undesirable connotation of detachment. It is almost part and parcel of the meaning of the term now, and, uh, that kind of, uh, aspect to the, uh, term makes it an unsuitable definition for biblical faith.
We’re not saying that that, uh, biblical faith requires some kind of, uh, involvement. We’re saying that the definition of biblical faith should not rule that out by suggesting that biblical faith, uh, is basically a detached, uh, acceptance of the truth. I much prefer, therefore, the terms terms like accepting God’s Word as true, because immediately when we say that, we get rid of the undesirable connotations of a phrase like intellectual assent.
I know that some grace people do use the terminology intellectual assent, but in my judgment, the semantic history of this, uh, expression leaves it an unsuitable vehicle for us today. And I would like to see us abandon it and use more biblical substitutes, like receiving what God says as true, taking God at His Word.
“Do you think that’s trying to psychize—”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You think it’s trying to psychize the word faith too much by using mental assent versus head versus heart and that kind of thing?”
“Yeah. All of that kind of psychologizing is is extra-biblical. And and what I’m really saying about intellectual assent is that the semantic history of this, uh, expression right up to the present, uh, rules it out as an effective instrument for us, it seems to me.”
“Okay. Okay. And I was wondering, do you think someone has to believe the humanity of Christ, but not necessarily the deity of Christ, in order to have eternal life?”
“I I think the person has to believe there was a historical person and, uh, named Jesus. Yeah.”
“But not necessarily understand Him as deity.”
“Yes, that would be my view. Uh, the woman at the well and the Samaritans did not have this concept. And it’s interesting that the term Son of God is not used by them in their confession of faith. The point here is that there is a a person who walked, uh, the planet in the land of Palestine, a flesh-and-blood person, not an imaginary person as the Docetists sometimes wanted to say. And He is the object of faith.
“Now, when we talked about what you have to believe, uh, in order to be saved, we what we really said was that you make Jesus the the one that you believe in for eternal life. If you believe that Jesus can guarantee eternal life, uh, then you’re saved. Now, it’s a lot easier to believe that He can guarantee eternal life if you also believe that He’s the Son of God and and, uh, God manifest in flesh. But it’s not inconceivable, uh, that a person might not come to the knowledge of the deity of Christ until after he’s come to saving faith.
“Many years ago, when I was washing dishes in the, uh, seminary dining room to earn my my, uh, food, there was a a janitor who came in every night. We talked theology, and one night he really shocked me. He says, you know, he says, ‘I am sure that I was saved before I knew that Jesus was God.’ He had trusted Jesus for eternal life. That’s the first time I’d ever heard anyone say it to my face, you know. Uh, and, uh, but I didn’t I didn’t challenge him. Uh, and I believe that that, uh, was a true testimony on his part.”
“Graham?”
“Uh, yes. Uh, you wrote about, or you talked about, the spirit of Antichrist and referenced 1 John 4:24. And, uh, I think I wrote this down. It is, uh, defined by the denial of the historical Jesus, flesh and blood, and a failure to confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. If the hearer does not know the historical Jesus, then one cannot be saved.
“Few years back, uh, Professor Murray Harris wrote a book, uh, that Dr. Norm Geisler countered, and it concerned the resurrection body of Christ. Uh, Murray Harris takes the position that the body that Christ, uh, had on the cross and the body that He had in the grave was material, but after the resurrection, after He came out, uh, it was—and his words were—essentially immaterial. Uh, Dr. Geisler attacked that view, stating this same passage in 1 John, using that the historical Jesus, His body, flesh and bone, as Jesus stated.
“Um, I’m hearing some things today about, uh, believing in Christ, and some teach that Christ, uh, today, God-man, is essentially a body that is invisible. Now, if you take that view, are you in the spirit of the Antichrist?”
“Reminds me of the seminary classroom where you were, uh, drawn into the subject and you were surrounded on every side. I am aware of that discussion, and, uh, my sympathies in the discussion are with Dr. Geisler. And, uh, so I personally believe that a real, material, physical body, different in quality but nevertheless, uh, a real human body, uh, came out of the grave.
“But the, um, the statements about the the Antichrist deal with, uh, the, um, body of Jesus and His historical manifestation on earth. So it would seem to me it doesn’t apply, but I would be happy to be instructed to the contrary. But that is my initial reaction. This is not a discussion I’ve tried to follow very much, but, uh, that’s my initial reaction to it. Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Uh, understanding that not every situation of Jesus interacting with someone when they come to faith is there an explicit, uh, confession that He is God or Son of God. But in, uh, help, uh, help me to understand how your view that a person may not have to believe that Jesus is God fits with John 20:31: ‘These have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that believing you may have life in His name,’ just in light of believing He is the Son of God.”
“Okay. Uh, is there a question there?”
“The question was, in light of what the discussion a few minutes ago about not necessarily having to understand or or confess that Jesus is God, Son of God, uh, in light of that passage, how does that view fit in this passage? ‘Believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, you have life in His name.’”
“Well, I would say that the Son of God there is a a Jewish functional equivalent for the term Christ. And, uh, my argument that the Gospel of John discloses the fact that that is not necessarily an essential item of faith is found in John 4, where, in confessing Him as the Christ, there’s no mention of Him as the Son of God.
“We also know from from historical material that the Samaritans believed that the Messiah was a prophet, and apparently did not have the same view of the deity of Messiah that was held at least in many Jewish circles. So that’s, uh, very evident from the woman’s interaction with Jesus. Uh, this—the statement that she makes, ‘Sir, I believe that You’re a prophet.’ And then she says, ‘I know that when Messiah comes, He will tell us all things.’ That’s all the role of a prophet. So she’s thinking still in her categories there.
“It would be very surprising, uh, to, uh, reach the conclusion that she somehow leaped over that barrier at that point. I think at a later point, obviously, she came to believe that He was the Son of God and and, uh, a manifestation of God in the flesh. But that’s the the passage that I would would go to for that.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Right. Bob.”
“Are you comfortable with the GES slogan, ‘Faith alone, in Christ alone’?”
“I love it. Uh, ask me a question about it.”
“Does it need to be ‘faith alone in Jesus the Christ alone’?”
“Well, I’ve always, uh—you know, that’s a good point in the light of my, uh, uh, favor this morning. I see what you’re saying. Bob came at me slantwise there. Or maybe he didn’t, and I just didn’t recognize the frontal, uh, nature of the question. Uh, that’s a theoretical objection to the GES, uh, statement.
“Although, of course, uh, everybody who knows anything about GES, uh, doesn’t imagine that the Christ is anybody but the historical Jesus. So, and I’m sure Bob would—where is Bob? Bob, I know, believes that. Uh, but in the light of what I said this morning, uh, maybe we should, uh, toss that at the GES board and see what they think they might want to do with it. I’m not on the board anymore, so I can’t cause trouble there.”
“I don’t I don’t mean to cause trouble. I was just—”
“I didn’t mean that you did, but I mean I can’t—”
“Right.”
“You’re not causing trouble, Bob.”
“Uh, just briefly, is it true that the baptism of Jesus, where He was proclaimed, uh, to be the Son of God, that was a, I guess, a dispensational turning point on when people needed to believe in His name as Jesus? And before that, they just believed in the coming Christ.”
“If I were tied to the stake and compelled to find a point at which I think the dispensational change occurred, that would serve me greatly. It would be the one I would, uh, prefer. Yeah.”
“Chip Zen. In, uh, your discussion, in your definition of the Christ as the sole guarantor of eternal life, uh, one of the questions—I even had this question last year; I didn’t get to ask it—was, it seems like we are sort of minimizing what the Jewish understanding of the Christ would be as, uh, prophet, priest, king. And even, uh, when, uh, Paul spoke at Athens, he spoke of, uh, Jesus as the righteous Judge.
“Um, are we are we giving an accurate enough definition of the Christ in saying that He is the sole guarantor of eternal life in light of what Jewish expectation would have been?”
“Uh, I’m glad you asked that question because that does allow me to address something that I wanted to address when Bob was up here, and it slipped my mind, uh, while he was here. I think it is very important for us, uh, in considering the issues that you raised and the issues that I have raised in at the last two conferences, to realize that all we are really talking about is the core minimum which must be believed to be saved. That is all that we are talking about.
“We are not saying that other things, uh, cannot be believed at the same time. We are not saying that the other information is not helpful to believing in Christ. The the other information is profoundly helpful. Uh, the death, uh, for our sins, the resurrection from the grave, His identity as the Son of God. All of these things are very important things, and all of them can be part of our presentation of the gospel. I think they should be part of our presentation of the gospel.
“We are only asking the question, if a—what is the minimum amount of knowledge with which an unsaved person must have in order to be saved? That’s all that we’re doing. It’s—one could argue that that’s a theoretical and theological issue mainly. But in my view, until we know what we believe to be the core essentials of saving faith, we will not be able to put the whole package together as clearly as we can if we know them.
“So I would be the last person to deny that it is functionally tremendously valuable to have the full Jewish view of the Christ as the Son of God. But I raised the question particularly from John 4 whether the deity of Christ that is implied in the term Son of God was a necessary part of the core element of the gospel. And I again—let me, uh, let me also say to the audience that feel free to disagree with me on this. One of the purposes of these conferences is to make us think about these issues. Right?
“And, uh, so I’m challenging us to think about if if you had a guy out on a desert island, or if you were in the airport and you had only one minute to give him the gospel, what would be the things you had to say? What is the core minimum? I think that’s a practical question, frankly. And just because I may never present the gospel using only the core elements doesn’t mean that I don’t know what the core elements are.
“And if I do know what the core elements are, then I know whether the individual is getting the essentials or not, uh, when I’m interacting with him. So the purpose of these talks is to challenge us, uh, to think these things through. And and I’m perfectly aware that, uh, there will be grace people come to differing conclusions on this, and that’s great. As long as we don’t muddy the gospel into some variant of the lordship monstrosity, we’ll be doing all right.
“And, uh, so, you know, I hope that this is some is understood, that we’re only talking about core minimum, and we’re talking about that in order to clarify our our total thinking about the gospel. And we welcome questions, problems, disagreements on any of those areas.”