what we need to believe

In A Heretic's Guide to Eternity Spencer Burke tries to promote the idea that right beliefs are unnecessary for salvation.

For most of my Christian life, I have heard people say that it is not enough to do good works or care for the world. There has to be faith in Jesus - which usually means assent to a set of presuppositions. But actually, the apostle Paul said it is good works without love - not good works without a belief system - that are empty and worthless.

I'm saddened for people like Burke. I can only presume this kind of thinking stems from hardened heart that has only interacted with a pharisaical type of Church. That is, I see Burke's thinking as an equally wrong over-reaction to an opposite wrong. As a believer in love with Christ and His Church I see where people (and especially organizations) have missed the mark but I cannot conclude that belief is unnecessary (Jn 14.6).

I like Michael Wittmer's diagram here for thinking about what is necessary, what cannot be rejected, and what is simply beneficial.

• Sinners need Regeneration
• Regeneration requires the Holy Spirit
• The Holy Spirit uses Truth

In the Institutes of Christian Religion, John Calvin wrote:

For by a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God's face, shines; and that we in turn may embrace the Spirit with no fear of being deceived when we recognize him in his own image, namely, in the Word. ... Therefore the Spirit ... has not the task of inventing new and unheard of revelations, or of forging a new kind of doctrine ... but of sealing our minds with that very doctrine which is commended by the gospel.

Wittmer writes:

Contrary to what some postmodern innovators believe, those who reject these foundational doctrines of Christian faith cannot be saved, no matter how swell they are and how well they behave. Being good is not good enough. We must know and believe something - the basic fact about salvation - to be saved.

He is exactly right. Postmodern innovators, in a reaction to the legalist pharisees of our day, have over-reacted so far in the opposite direction that they have come full circle and ended back in a works based heresy.

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