Theological error does not arise from a vacuum. It is nearly always the product of a faulty hermeneutic, a flawed method of approaching and interpreting the sacred text. Before we can properly dissect the specific doctrinal errors of the “Reformed Fringe” podcast regarding the nature of God and Christ, we must first address the methodological poison from which these errors spring. Their entire project is built upon a foundation of anti-confessionalism, a self-conscious and prideful rejection of the historical, Spirit-guided consensus of the church in favor of a novel and supposedly “unbiased” reading of Scripture. The theological errors of “Reformed Fringe” are the direct result of a flawed hermeneutic that self-consciously rejects the authority of the church’s creeds and confessions—the “pattern of sound words”—in favor of a novel, individualistic approach to Scripture that inevitably leads to heresy.

The Rejection of Confessional Authority

The hosts of “Reformed Fringe” betray their methodological starting point in their very name and posture. Though they claim the title “Reformed,” their approach is anything but. The Reformed tradition has always been a confessional tradition, understanding that the Holy Spirit has not left the church in the dark for two millennia, only to now reveal the “true” meaning of Scripture to a few enlightened individuals. The great confessions, such as the Westminster Standards, are not placed above Scripture, but are received as faithful summaries of Scripture’s teaching, hammered out through intense, prayerful, and corporate study of the Word over generations. The confessions themselves establish this principle, stating that the “supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined…can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” (WCF 1.10). They serve as subordinate standards and guardrails, protecting the church from the very sort of novel speculations that Van Dorn and Moffitt champion.

This anti-confessional bias is a hallmark of the “Naked Bible” theology popularized by the late Michael Heiser, whose influence on Van Dorn is explicitly acknowledged. This approach claims to read the Bible free from the “biases” of creedal and confessional constraints (see Flemming 2022). In practice, however, no one reads the Bible in a vacuum. By casting off the received wisdom of the church, one does not become unbiased; one simply becomes a slave to the biases of one’s own time, one’s own culture, and one’s own speculative imagination. They have exchanged the tested and proven consensus of the church catholic for a private interpretation heavily influenced by the pagan cosmologies of the Ancient Near East.

The Biblical Mandate for Confessionalism

This rejection of confessional authority stands in stark contrast to the biblical pattern. The Apostle Paul does not encourage Timothy to embark on a quest for novel theological formulations. Instead, he commands him, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (2 Tim 1:13–14 ESV). This “pattern of sound words,” this “good deposit,” is the apostolic doctrine, the core of the Christian faith. The task of the church is not to reinvent it, but to guard it, teach it, and pass it on faithfully. This principle has deep roots in church history, seen clearly in the concept of the “Rule of Faith” (regula fidei) articulated by early fathers like Irenaeus, who used this summary of apostolic teaching as the key to interpreting Scripture and refuting heresy. The creeds and confessions are the church’s historical fulfillment of this sacred duty.

Furthermore, the Scriptures themselves contain creedal summaries and confessions. The Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 (“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one”) is the foundational confession of Israel. The early church’s confession, “Jesus is Lord” (Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3), was the touchstone of Christian identity. These are not exhaustive theological treatises, but they are authoritative summaries of non-negotiable truth. To dismiss the church’s subsequent efforts to summarize and protect the faith against heresy, as codified in the Nicene Creed or the Westminster Confession, is to dismiss the very method the Bible itself employs.

The Danger of Novelty

When Van Dorn and Moffitt claim that we must use “biblical language” and not “morphed language” (Van Dorn and Moffitt, “What ‘No Other Gods’ Doesn’t Mean,” 42:25), they sound pious. But what they mean is that we must abandon the precise theological terminology—homoousios, Trinity, hypostatic union—that the church developed under the guidance of the Spirit to protect the gospel from the very sort of errors they are now reintroducing. They wish to drag the church back into the murky waters of the second and third centuries, before these crucial definitions were settled, so that they can redefine terms like elohim and “monotheism” according to their own novel system.

This pursuit of theological novelty for its own sake is a grave danger. Scripture warns against those who will “accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim 4:3–4 ESV). The “Reformed Fringe” project, with its focus on speculative cosmology, a pantheon of gods, and a re-engineered Christology, is a textbook example of wandering off into myths. I understand the drive to novelty, but I also understand its profound dangers. It is precisely because of this that I have committed myself to trying to be the most vanilla version of Confessional Reformed theology there is; safety is found not in the fringe, but in the center of the faith handed down to us. Van Dorn and Moffitt have abandoned the safe harbor of confessional orthodoxy for the treacherous open sea of private speculation. Before a single one of their doctrinal errors is even examined, their entire project is disqualified by its flawed and unbiblical method. True reformation, as John Calvin and the other Reformers insisted, is never a call to novelty, but a call to return to the old paths, to restore the ancient faith from its corruptions and align with the faith once for all delivered to the saints, as it has been faithfully summarized and guarded by the church throughout the ages.

Bibliography

Flemming, Travis. “Deep Conversation with Michael Heiser-Naked Scripture, the Supernatural, and Scared Evangelicals.” Apollos Watered, October 24, 2022. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN4G9YqxWJc.

Van Dorn, Doug, and Jon Moffitt. “What ‘No Other Gods’ Doesn’t Mean.” Reformed Fringe, September 1, 2025. Podcast audio. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reformed-fringe/id1673785890?i=1000724369041.