Major versus Minor

On 3 October, Roger Olson said on his Patheos blog:

"I well remember when Jay Kessler, then head of Youth for Christ and president of Taylor University came to the college where I taught and decried this growing tendency among evangelicals to shoot at each other over relatively minor points of doctrine and practice... He was a powerful voice for moderation among evangelicals for many years, but either people weren't listening or he just didn't raise his voice loudly enough. But I know he was passionately opposed to this tendency to major in the minors..."

Roger has a point. We all get tired of people obsessing about what we see as minor or trivial issues. But the question worth asking is: "What are the criteria by which we can distinguish between 'major things' and 'minor things'?" Until we know that, we languish in a world where one evangelical's minor is another evangelical's major and vice versa...

Any suggestions?

As far as Christian doctrine is concerned, what do you think of Mohler's threefold scheme that starts with the most important doctrines and ends with the least important: (1) First-order doctrines (e.g. the deity of Christ, justification by faith); (2) Second-order doctrines (e.g. the meaning and mode of baptism); and (3) Third-order doctrines (e.g. premill, postmill and amill positions in eschatology)?

Also useful are Michael Patton's suggestions for distinguishing between essentials and non-essentials in doctrine.