0 I reserve the right to modify the process by methods both willy and nilly.
1 This is not Van Til presuppositionalism. This is presuppositionalism-lite, of the form "Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so."
2 There is some overlap within the list. God's Holiness, for example, can be said to encompass many of his attributes.
3 As I have written elsewhere, God's transcendence is an often ignored attribute. But you will get immutability and omnipresence wrong (and possibly make further shaky derivations) if you base them on Aristolelian philosophy instead the the scriptural teaching that God is outside of time and space (God's immensity).
4 I could have used the Apostle's creed, but I think the Nicene is perfect. Note that the Nicene Creed, written by smart men, contains about 150 words, and the Westminster Confession of Faith (which I shouldn't have to say, but I will: I love it!) also written by smart men contains about 12,000 words. Note that the number of errors in documents written by smart men is, to first order, proportional to the number of words they write. You do the math. That is why a binding statement of faith should be small, and a classic confession of faith (WCF or LCF 1689) should supplemental but not binding.
5 Roughly speaking, I view the 2nd tier doctrine as very important, but upon which we can agree to disagree and maintain Christian fellowship. Also roughly speaking, differences here lead to different denominations. They are derived from the first tier. People often try to prove these doctrines but they can't. Be very careful of fallacious proofs at Tier Two and below. Especially popular is the wrongheaded slippery slope, where a denial of a 2nd or 3rd tier doctrine is said to lead, inevitably, to a denial of the gospel.
6 Everyone looks for their sweet spot. We have to guard against legalism and antinomianism. However the acceptable path is wide here, not narrow. A church that allows alcohol consumption is not apostate, at least not for that reason, nor is one that prohibits alcohol consumption, at least not for that reason. (One of them, however, is wrong.)
7 These are doctrines like impassability, which to a first approximation everyone agrees that it is a doctrine but nobody agrees on exactly what it means. That is characteristic of many 2nd tier doctrines, and after 2000 years if we can't agree on what impassibility (as one example) means, then that is a good sign that we should not elevate one specific view of the doctrine as cardinal, and should probably establish the least common denominator.
8 What was said in footnote 7 for impassibility applies here as well. To the extent that a doctrine of salvation is consistent with the 1st tier, it should be treated as acceptable. Calvinism and Arminianism may not want to share a house, but they can both live in the same city.
9 Yeah-- we are commanded by Jesus to baptize. The fact that he did not provide details should not be taken to mean he forgot or didn't have time to spell them out--it should be taken to mean the details are not important. There are two main traditions for baptism, and both are fine. If you think God can only dispense grace via one mode exclusively, or if you think God cannot dispense grace at all, you are placing God in a box in which he doesn't place himself.
10 There is biblical social justice consonant with Imago Dei. The most frequent violation is victim-blaming of women who have been assaulted by church members or abused by their husbands. Show many any church leader who will go to the mat with misplaced piety that the text in the bible on divorce is not just literal but also complete, and common sense generalization has no place, so that even a wife who is physically and sexual abused must try to reconcile with a "repentant" spouse, and I'll show you, with concrete counter-examples, a church leader who will apply the "literal and complete" hermeneutic only when it is easy and it suits him. (As an aside, my equally amateurish hermeneutic is simple: The Bible is meant to be read intelligently.)
11 The compatibility of science and scripture is tier 2, not tier 3. Those who deny it, or make science the enemy, or proudly proclaim that they don't care what science has to say, are denying General Revelation. Don't do that.
12 Third tier doctrines are great fun to argue about, but should be even less likely to cause divisions. Roughly speaking, most of these are differences found even within a healthy local church. (And in fact their absence might be the sign of an unhealthy church.)
13 This one, Church Government, is possibly 2nd tier. Tough call. I place it here, at least for now, because there are, for example, Baptist churches with indistinguishable doctrine across the board except for some being elder led and some being deacon led.
14 The writers of the historic creeds understood. God created the heavens and the earth--on this we must agree. But the how or the when--well the creeds, like the bible itself, is silent about those details, and so we should treat them as unimportant. (Isn't that obvious?)
15 Similarly the writers of the historic creeds understood what was important: He will come again to judge the quick and the dead, but wisely silent on the details of how history will come to an end.
16 Church discipline is a strange topic. Churches preen about what a big deal they make about it, and how they apply Matthew 18. They ignore the fact that Matthew 18 applies to a very limited case, that of personal enmity between believers. None of the actual cases of discipline in the New Testament give any indication of following Matthew 18. Rather they appear to follow a much simpler process: if a member is living in unrepentant sin, excommunicate him. I place it here because as long as churches are tossing out, for example, members adopting an adulterous lifestyle, they are fine. You do not have to follow Matthew 18 where it does not apply, and where by explicit biblical example it is not followed. And there no examples of disciplining members who stop coming. Even weirder are churches that attempt to use church covenants as legal documents and attempt to enforce violations of those covenants, especially in terms of disciplining members who leave. That not only has no biblical precedent, it is illegal.
17 Obviously "proof" does not mean the same as it does in mathematics. It is less rigorous than that, but more rigorous that secular philosophical proofs. The latter is due to the fact that not only does the theologian use the same axioms of logic that secular philosophers use, but there is a richer set of presuppositions for the theologian. I would define proof this way: If you take an intelligent and reasonable atheist (like the kind they used to make, back in the day) and say: accepting these presuppositions arguendo, do you agree these doctrines logically follow? That at least 95% would agree: yes that doctrine, given your absurd presuppositions, does indeed follow, albeit a form of garbage in, garbage out. (Intelligent and reasonable atheists tend to be snarky.)
18 See references 6-9 on this wiki page.
I'm glad that creation and eschatology are 3rd tier.
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