Dr. John Bergsma

We have to search through the entire word of God and put together a picture of the synthetic life of Christian discipleship, which includes a lot of things.

Think of the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus doesn't say if you fast, if you pray, if you give alms.

He says when you fast, when you pray, when you give alms.

So fasting, prayer, and almsgiving are a non-negotiable.

Repentance is a non-negotiable.

Baptism is a non-negotiable.

The Eucharist, the flesh and blood of Jesus without which we don't have life, that's a non-negotiable.

Faith is a non-negotiable.

Okay, there's a lot.

Um, you know, it's, it's, it's a holistic picture.

You know, we got to resist this temptation and try to just, oh, I want it boiled down to three things or five things or something.

Yeah, absolutely.

So

There's a formal aspect and then there's a material aspect, right?

The formal aspect is I have trouble submitting to the authority of the church and everything that she teaches, right?

And then the material aspect is there's three things that the person raises.

So we can deal with the formal aspect.

And if you wanna get into the material issues of those three things mentioned,

And then there's the distinction of Latria and Hyperdulia and so on.