Our little group of "pastors, leaders, and dreamers" that used to meet at Barnes and Noble every Thursday has morphed into a more intentional discussion group that meets once a month at Cincinnati Christian University. Today was our first meeting. It was good!!All of our regulars were there, plus two others. It's pretty interesting how group dynamics change just by adding one or two new personalities.
Anyway, we started talking about what it means to be "ecumenical" vs. "non-denominational" and how the more mainline/liberal theologies tend to prefer the word "ecumenical," while more conservative/evangelical types like the word "non-denominational" better.
Pretty soon we were talking about what the essentials of Christianity are and what happens if someone doesn't believe certain essentials.
To which I raised the question, "Can a person be saved and yet have bad theology?"
That's easy to answer when you're talking about something like infant baptism. If you come from the Anabaptist side, you might say that, yes, a person can still be saved even if they were only baptized as an infant. If you come from a more Reformed perspective, which holds that infant baptism is a sign and a seal of God's covenant with humanity, it really doesn't matter if someone else thinks you can't be baptized as an infant. They're just wrong on the issue, but they're still saved.
But what about issues like the resurrection or the virgin birth--so-called "closed hand" issues? Can a person who believes that Jesus' resurrection in the New Testament was really a metaphor for the spirit of Christ and his teachings being resurrected in the community of early Christians--can a person who holds that belief on the resurrection be saved?
Or can someone who doesn't believe in the virgin birth be saved?
I think that they can. Nowhere does the Bible say, "To those who hold to good theology and true doctrines, to them he gave eternal life." It says, "To those who called on his name, he gave the power to be children of God." (That's a rough paraphrase from John 1.)
All that's required for salvation is faith in Christ--even if the theology about Christ may be off-base.
This, of course, opens a whole new can of worms--one to which I haven't yet given enough thought. But let's open the can, anyway.
If a person can be saved even if they have bad theology (as I propose in all my wisdom and authority), does that mean that Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses can be saved? Or other theologies that might be branded heretical or cultic?
I don't have the answer to that....
