001 Essentials (Redone)

If you do an Internet search for "Essential Christian Doctrines" you will get back a wide diversity of answers. Some list only a few doctrines while other lists may contain more than 100 doctrines. When we say "essential" what do we mean? The list essential for salvation is very short indeed. The lists for Historical and Traditional Christian Orthodoxy are longer and the list for Denominational Orthodoxy is longer still. How can we differentiate between which doctrines belong in which list? Why does it matter?