Nothing too complicated...

I have tried elsewhere to show the distinction between essential Christian doctrine and nonessential things that we may debate, without our debate becoming grounds for division. I think I am right in saying that those things necessary to salvation are the essentials; beyond those essentials, there are wholesome practices and beliefs that help us along the narrow path. We may debate such secondary matters: we may argue which practices, what beliefs, are most helpful.

But there is a simpler test for nonessentials. Something very complicated offered as an essential of the faith isn't one. Saving faith is possible to simple people. The gospel is accessible to people without much intellectual sophistication, and even to children.

If we reject some or other group of fellow Christians because we have made some long-winded argument they do not accept, it must be we are making a mistake, because the gospel is not a  complicated matter. Someone being a part of the miracle of salvation is not a matter of subtle reasoning or complicated proofs.

Complicated arguments about the gospel are incommensurate with the matter they discuss. They are certainly ruinous to Christian unity, as history shows us. I lump them together as, at best, nonessentials; they may touch upon essential matters but are not those essentials: those are much simpler.

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