Here is the article on the Stand to Reason web site.
Excerpt:
The six essential doctrines would be: the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, the bodily resurrection, man’s fallenness and guilt, salvation by grace through faith by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, and belief that Jesus is the Messiah. And you have a seventh doctrine that strikes me as a functional necessity, that is the ultimate authority of Scripture without which none of the other truths can be affirmed or asserted with confidence.
By the way, it’s really important that people know these doctrines because many Christians are quite kind-hearted and they end up not being very careful about drawing distinctions between truth and falsity because they don’t want to disagree. I understand that. But if you were really kind-hearted then you would be honest and straight-forward with people about the demands of the gospel on their lives. The demand of the gospel is that you believe particular things to be true. It’s not just a matter of mere belief, as if these are just some incidental details of theology that you might happen to be mistaken about. And if you just happen to be mistaken, why should you go to hell because of that?
You don’t go to hell because you just happen to mistake a doctrine. You go to hell because you have broken God’s law. It is very critical to understand that. God only judges guilty people. People get judged by God not because they mess up on their theology but because they are guilty. People who are guilty get condemned. That’s it. There is a way to get around that but you’ve to know a couple of particular things that are true before you can take advantage of the forgiveness God offers. That’s where the essential doctrines come in.
He’s writing from a Calvinist perspective, which I don’t entirely agree with. But I don’t see anything wrong in that minimal list. I get very annoyed with theologians who are not philosophically trained and good at apologetics. You can trust Greg, he has to argue about these things all the time, so he isn’t stuck in a bubble like most pastors and ministers.
By the way, I’ve met him several times, and I’ve chastised him about his Calvinism all the way through the standard rebuttals and objections, so don’t e-mail him and chastise him again, because I’ve already done it, and thoroughly.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Maybe I should email him to encourage him in his Calvinism instead… ;-)
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haha, nothing wrong with a good Calvinist around lol.
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[high five] ;-)
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Calvinism FTW
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I’ve been over this subject a number of times over the years, but have yet to see anyone of substance (as Greg clearly is) who agrees with me. Maybe I’m just totally off-base, or maybe everybody else isn’t thinking it through.
We need to make a distinction between 1) which doctrines one must believe to BECOME a Christian and 2) which are ‘essential Christian doctrines’.
Essential Christian Doctrines
This is usually discussed in debates over whether Mormons (or JW’s, liberals, left-handers) are Christians are not. This an important apologetic topic. This includes things like the authority of Scripture, the Trinity, bodily resurrection, and so on. This looks a lot like Greg’s list above and, you might agree, is NOT about “being” a Christian, but about the essential doctrines of CHRISTIANITY.
To Be Saved
This is something entirely different. It’s best expressed with a question: “Which doctrines do I have to GET RIGHT to be saved?”. Nobody in their right mind would suggest, for example, that a clear understanding of the Trinity is a prerequisite to salvation. I think it’s clear that one can reach out to God and be saved by Him without having first been led into a Biblically-accurate understanding of the virgin birth, salvation by grace through faith, the deity of Christ, and so on.
From where I stand, there are only TWO things you must GET RIGHT to BECOME a Christian:
1. You must believe that God exists, and
2. You must believe that God rewards those who seek Him.
I’m all for proper apologetics, of course. As a teacher, I probably spend more time on basic Christian doctrine and on apologetics than on anything else…but I think most people miss the boat on this one. I’m open to correction. Can anyone think of anything else that everyone MUST GET RIGHT before God will save them?
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I think he is talking about what every Christian should believe after some period of time.
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Dear WK:
There does seem to be a disconnect between your post ABOUT his article, and his article itself. Koukl wrote about the kinds of things that make up the Christian faith, but your title doesn’t seem to match that:
Greg Koukl lists 6 things you have to believe to be a Christian
I don’t like being nitpicky, but sometimes it’s necessary. Your title suggests that he meant either:
1. You can’t BECOME a Christian unless you believe these 6 things, or
2. You can’t REMAIN a Christian unless you believe these 6 things.
That’s not really what he wrote, of course…but the discussion is very often framed in exactly those ways. Your title is misleading, and falls squarely in the category of “I wrote it, but didn’t really mean it”. I sincerely appreciate what you do here, and wrote not to criticize, but to clarify.
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