I’ve spent a fair bit of time pondering where the divide lies between orthodoxy and heresy, that divide famously defined by J. Gresham Machen as Christianity and Liberalism (whatever the latter happens to go by; it often assumes Christian names for its gods and churches). Al Mohler is the President of Southern Seminary; he thinks that abandoning a young-earth, six-day view of creation is a great gateway to apostasy. Others point, with more validity, to the cruciality of particular understandings of atonement and inerrancy and sufficiency of Scripture.
Machen himself, however, pointed to one great door through which so many enter, and I think this may be the grandaddy of gateways to another religion:
The truth is that liberalism has lost sight of the very centre and core of the Christian teaching. In the Christian view of God as set forth in the Bible, there are many elements. But one attribute of God is absolutely fundamental in the Bible; one attribute is absolutely necessary in order to render intelligible all the rest. That attribute is the awful transcendence of God. From beginning to end the Bible is concerned to set forth the awful gulf that separates the creature from the Creator. It is true, indeed, that according to the Bible God is immanent in the world. Not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him. But He is immanent in the world not because He is identified with the world, but because He is the free Creator and upholder of it. Between the creature and the Creator a great gulf is fixed.
J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Eerdmans, 1923), 62-3.
Go At A Walking Pace 
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