Errors of reasoning

If there is a progressive wing in the evangelical movement, the hosts of The Holy Post Podcast are on it. Led by Phil Vischer—the famed creator of VeggiesTales—the podcast provides listeners with heavy doses of “punching right” and “coddling left.” This much of their reputation is well-known, but last Thursday Vischer along with cohosts Skye Jethani and Kaitlyn Schiess stirred controversy online after posting excerpts from their larger discussion about the Nicene Creed.

Their affirmation of the Nicene Creed, however, wasn’t the problem. Rather, it was their doctrinal minimalism, which seemed to make way for LGBTQ affirmation. They write,

The label ‘heretic’ gets thrown around way too easily these days. If you profess the Nicene Creed & the Apostles’ Creed, you count as a legitimate Christian. Period. Christians will always disagree about important political & social issues and matters of doctrine. But at the end of the day, if someone affirms the essential truths outlined in the creeds, they are not heretics or apostates.

They do not specify the occasion for this post, but it appears amid a major backlash from Christians across the country against the candidacy of James Talarico for a Senate seat in Texas. Talarico has been campaigning as a professing Christian while also supporting the LGBTQ agenda, legal abortion, and a variety of other morally degenerate policies. The theological errors embedded in Talarico’s candidacy have been so profound that some have been labelling him a heretic.

We do not know if Vischer and friends were “subtweeting” this wider conversation. But we do know that they are showing their hand concerning debates about sexuality and gender identity. In their original discussion, Vischer complains that even though he affirms the Nicene Creed, people still insist that he should state his theological views on gender and sexuality. For critics, his affirmation of the Nicene Creed is not enough.

Jethani balks at the idea that “fundamentalists” would stand in judgment over a fellow believer’s views on sexuality and gender. After all, homosexuality and gender identity are merely “politics” and “social issues” and should not be elevated to the level of “creedal importance.” Schiess agrees and argues that the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds are about “foundational questions” of the Christian faith, not about lesser concerns such as “American politics” or “sexuality or gender identity.”

Jethani labels questions about sexuality and gender identity “non-essential doctrine” and says, “The stuff we’re wrestling with today are second order at best, maybe third, fourth, or fifth order. ... Are we going to have same-sex marriage ceremonies in our church? ... These questions do matter but they don’t matter on the cosmic level ... that the creeds were answering.”

Vischer and friends make several serious errors in their reasoning. First, the Apostles’ Creed calls for us to recognize Jesus as “our Lord” who will one day return “to judge the quick and the dead.” The Nicene Creed likewise confesses “one Lord Jesus Christ” who “shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.” The Creeds insist on the Lordship of Christ and His coming judgment, both of which have necessary implications for homosexuality and gender identity. The Holy Posters seems to miss this crucial connection.

Second, Vischer and friends also fail to define what a “primary issue” is in theological triage. A primary doctrine is one that makes the difference between being a Christian and not being one. The apostle Paul warns that the “unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God.” And among the excluded unrighteous are the “effeminate” and “homosexuals” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). If exclusion from Christ’s kingdom does not make sexuality a first-order issue, then what would?

Third, the hosts confuse what is necessary for orthodoxy with what is sufficient for orthodoxy. Is conformity to the Nicene Creed necessary for orthodoxy? Of course. But is the Creed by itself sufficient to for orthodoxy? Of course it is not. And it has been that way from the earliest days of the Christian Church. Pelagius, after all, affirmed the Nicene Creed, and yet he was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Ephesus in AD 431. His errors on other doctrines were enough to seal this judgment against him.

And so it is with homosexuality and transgenderism. These are not issues about which otherwise faithful Christians may agree to disagree. Transgender expression is an abomination (Deuteronomy 22:5). Unrepentant homosexuality and gay marriage are sufficient by themselves to keep people out of the kingdom and under the wrath of God (Ephesians 5:5-6). Telling people otherwise is to lay a stumbling block of the first order and comes with a judgment all its own (Matthew 18:7).