Doug Wilson says some very helpful things about getting major issues and minor issues the right way around in theology.
Specifically, how sad – and how serious – when people take a minor issue (one on which we may quite respectably agree to disagree) and turn it into a major issue (one on which we do not have the latitude to disagree). As Wilson argues, at that point the issue has to become a major one on both sides. It is a major issue to mis-classify a minor issue as major.
We need reminding of this in the UK very badly indeed. I hear too many instances of good, faithful ministers of the gospel dismissing one another as inadmissible, as ineligible for partnership, because of some minor issue on which they do not agree.
There are two ways in which a minor issue can be turned into a major issue. The first is if one party thinks the issue is major, so the other party dismisses them. The second is if both parties think the issue is minor, but one party mistakenly thinks that the other party regards it as major and so dismisses them for turning the issue into a major one. At that point, irony kicks in, as it is the dismissers who had in fact raised the stakes by treating it as a major one.
If fragmentation of that kind is too widespread, I must take every step to guard against it myself, always taking the time to explore issues of disagreement carefully and giving as much latitude as possible.
No: This country desperately needs to hear the historic gospel “proclaimed afresh” (as the Anglican ordinal puts it) in this day and age. There are lines that have to be drawn; there are major issues. We must be clear what those are, otherwise it ceases to be the gospel we hold out. However we cannot afford to take minor issues, issues where we should delight to work with each other in spite of them, and think of them as major. We also need to take great care before we claim that someone else is turning them into a major issue, because that is a serious claim to make.
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