On Doctrine
January 17, 2018
I used to think I understood unity.
I'm not a public speaker. My mouth dries up, my heart pounds, my mind goes blank, and I get this weird involuntary-swallow-mid-word-thing going on. Truly, there aren't many things I fear more than speaking in public. I tell you this in order to communicate how passionate I was about unity in the church: I actually got up and spoke about it once.
In front of actual people.
John chapter 17 includes what is commonly referred to as Jesus' "High-priestly Prayer". I read that prayer, read about how Jesus prayed for our unity, and I (rightly) recognized that this was a very important thing - something so vital that in Jesus' last hours, he prayed fervently that it would be so.
Doctrine draws clear lines, as indeed all statements of truth must: one must engage with them, must agree or disagree. In fact, to go even deeper, the question of doctrine must begin with the question of objective truth: Is there such a thing, and also, can it be known? This idea of mine that doctrine was bad led to a fuzziness, a blurring of some of the boundaries of truth. As unity became more important, as love seemed to mean just going along and not judging an idea as right or wrong, I became more and more open to teachings that deviated from the Word.
So what changed my thinking on this? Well, things in my church changed. I had never really paid a lot of attention to what was going on behind the scenes in church, but as I interacted with my friends who were in leadership roles, and as I noticed a lot of our materials and ideas started coming from one particular new source, my curiosity was piqued. What was this church and who was this teacher that we were suddenly deriving our materials and teachings from? I didn't know who any or the big name preachers were, aside from maybe Billy Graham or James Dobson - I'm not even sure I could have recognized a name like Joel Osteen - but as I looked into it all, I became concerned. Something was "off". The philosophy driving it all didn't seem right, but I couldn't easily put my finger on what was wrong. I started to dig, started to read the Bible trying to find answers, trying to find some guidance, some truth, a fixed point from which to get my bearings...some sound doctrine. It seemed that suddenly, as the future direction of my church and the people in it hung in the balance, this doctrine thing became more personal, more, though I hate to use the term...relevant.
As I encountered things that legitimately caused me concern, and found Biblical texts that spoke to those topics, I was then faced with the conundrum of what to do. I believed I had found truth, and that what we were pursuing was in opposition to that truth. Here the proverbial rubber met the road. I wrestled and wrestled, and I stuffed it down, but it would sneak back up. I knew the motives and the hearts of the leadership were in the right place, so wasn't that enough? Was I to be this divisive person, nitpicking and judging by pointing out our error? What about love and unity?
But then, what if I said nothing? Wouldn't any consequences of our continuing down that road then be resting on my shoulders? If I knew there was a drop of poison in the cup but let you drink it without speaking up, would it be love to say nothing? And what about pride? Wasn't it arrogant to think that I could have arrived at the truth?
In all of this, I came to believe that love and truth are not opposed to one another. Love does not require a diminishing of the truth, and neither does truth come at the expense of love. So often a questioning of ideas or methods is seen as a questioning of the person, motives, or heart. One can love a person while simultaneously challenging their beliefs.
Similarly, unity and doctrine are not opposites. To bend doctrine in the name of unity is in reality not true unity, or at least not true Christian unity, but only a facade. We dare not seek unity in Christ, the Word incarnate, at the expense of the very Word He gave us. In fact it is a shared holding to sound doctrine that truly unites us.
As I began to see how sound doctrine is derived from Scripture alone, and saw how all teachings interconnect, I saw how each doctrine has a profound effect on how we live our lives, how the church operates, what our services look like, where our emphases are, and so on. Even something as banal as how we dress for a church service can be affected by what we believe about why we gather, what happens when we gather, what we believe God's disposition is towards us, and so on. Things that on the surface seem insignificant, when you drill down deep, are frequently based on a doctrine, which can then be held up to the Bible and recognized as being in accord with it, or not. As when going on a journey cross-country, if at the start your compass is off by a degree or two, by the time you reach the end you will find yourself far off course...so it is also with doctrine.
I mentioned that I was starving for doctrine, and indeed, after seeing how important it is as a framework for life and a guard against pitfalls, I became almost ravenous for it. I was like a starving man, stumbling upon a vast table in a field, filled to overflowing with mouth-watering foods. I was searching for truth, and finding it was like finding gold. My priorities changed, and as I realized that the church I was now in held different beliefs, I was again faced with the conundrum of unity. The differences, I realized, were too great to overcome, and with new eyes I searched for a church I could indeed be unified with. What programs they had didn't matter, what the building looked like, what their music sounded like, how warmly I was or wasn't greeted...it all didn't matter. What truly mattered above all else in a church was unity in doctrine, derived soundly from the Scriptures.
Praise God, He provided one.
-M
I used to think I understood unity.
I'm not a public speaker. My mouth dries up, my heart pounds, my mind goes blank, and I get this weird involuntary-swallow-mid-word-thing going on. Truly, there aren't many things I fear more than speaking in public. I tell you this in order to communicate how passionate I was about unity in the church: I actually got up and spoke about it once.
In front of actual people.
John chapter 17 includes what is commonly referred to as Jesus' "High-priestly Prayer". I read that prayer, read about how Jesus prayed for our unity, and I (rightly) recognized that this was a very important thing - something so vital that in Jesus' last hours, he prayed fervently that it would be so.
"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me."
(John 17:20-23)
Just outside of town, there is a spot where there are two Baptist churches, directly across the road from one another. I used to drive by there, and every time feel a sadness for such division. How could two groups of people - within the same denomination, no less! - be so unwilling to unite, that they would choose to sit on opposite sides of the road, in separate buildings, rather than bury the hatchet and join together? The truth is, I knew/know nothing about how that situation came to be, and the scenario in my mind - of a schism that resulted in half of them storming across the street to set up shop - is by no means the truth of the matter (and in fact is unlikely to be the real story behind it). Yet, it contributed in my mind to something I'd come to believe: doctrine divides.
I would look at the world of Christianity, see all the splinters and infighting, the divisions and hard lines, and it irked me. Think of all of the good we could do if we could just major on the majors, and not let all these unimportant differences separate us. We'd be a vast army - a united front - instead of a bunch of rag-tag groups wasting energy fighting against themselves rather than waging war on the true evils in society. Weren't we called to love? How is love demonstrated when we refuse to budge on these doctrines we hold to so staunchly? In my mind, the whole thing reeked of pride.
Certainty seemed to me to be the antithesis of humility.
Certainty seemed to me to be the antithesis of humility.
The fact is, I didn't really even know what "doctrine" was. All I knew was that it had a kind of musty, stiff vibe to it, and was easily lumped into another thing I thought of as the enemy of unity: "religion". Doctrine and religion were the things the intellectual people in dusty offices and leather chairs mused over, shut off from the real world, hiding behind empty rituals and fancy outfits, devoid of emotion and vitality. These were the culprits, the ones driving the wedge between the rest of us, pitting denomination against denomination, making mountains out of mole-hills. If they'd come down and join us in the trenches, they'd see that the rest of us would really rather focus on being loving over being right.
I didn't care about doctrine...that is, until I realized I was starving for it.
So what is doctrine, actually? Teaching. Seriously. It's really that simple. (Here's Mirriam-Webster's definition.) Everything we teach people or are taught is essentially a doctrine. In fact, saying that "doctrine divides" ironically is itself...a doctrine.
We all have doctrines we hold to, whether we realize it or not. To quote Rev. Jonathan Fisk in this video, "The question is not, 'Do you have doctrine?', 'Do you have teaching?', 'Do you have something you actually believe?' The question is, 'Is it true?' Or is it another doctrine than the one which God has given you to believe with His Word? How can you believe in a God who speaks words, and not think that knowing what those words are and clinging to them is actually important?"
Doctrine draws clear lines, as indeed all statements of truth must: one must engage with them, must agree or disagree. In fact, to go even deeper, the question of doctrine must begin with the question of objective truth: Is there such a thing, and also, can it be known? This idea of mine that doctrine was bad led to a fuzziness, a blurring of some of the boundaries of truth. As unity became more important, as love seemed to mean just going along and not judging an idea as right or wrong, I became more and more open to teachings that deviated from the Word.
So what changed my thinking on this? Well, things in my church changed. I had never really paid a lot of attention to what was going on behind the scenes in church, but as I interacted with my friends who were in leadership roles, and as I noticed a lot of our materials and ideas started coming from one particular new source, my curiosity was piqued. What was this church and who was this teacher that we were suddenly deriving our materials and teachings from? I didn't know who any or the big name preachers were, aside from maybe Billy Graham or James Dobson - I'm not even sure I could have recognized a name like Joel Osteen - but as I looked into it all, I became concerned. Something was "off". The philosophy driving it all didn't seem right, but I couldn't easily put my finger on what was wrong. I started to dig, started to read the Bible trying to find answers, trying to find some guidance, some truth, a fixed point from which to get my bearings...some sound doctrine. It seemed that suddenly, as the future direction of my church and the people in it hung in the balance, this doctrine thing became more personal, more, though I hate to use the term...relevant.
As I encountered things that legitimately caused me concern, and found Biblical texts that spoke to those topics, I was then faced with the conundrum of what to do. I believed I had found truth, and that what we were pursuing was in opposition to that truth. Here the proverbial rubber met the road. I wrestled and wrestled, and I stuffed it down, but it would sneak back up. I knew the motives and the hearts of the leadership were in the right place, so wasn't that enough? Was I to be this divisive person, nitpicking and judging by pointing out our error? What about love and unity?
But then, what if I said nothing? Wouldn't any consequences of our continuing down that road then be resting on my shoulders? If I knew there was a drop of poison in the cup but let you drink it without speaking up, would it be love to say nothing? And what about pride? Wasn't it arrogant to think that I could have arrived at the truth?
In all of this, I came to believe that love and truth are not opposed to one another. Love does not require a diminishing of the truth, and neither does truth come at the expense of love. So often a questioning of ideas or methods is seen as a questioning of the person, motives, or heart. One can love a person while simultaneously challenging their beliefs.
Similarly, unity and doctrine are not opposites. To bend doctrine in the name of unity is in reality not true unity, or at least not true Christian unity, but only a facade. We dare not seek unity in Christ, the Word incarnate, at the expense of the very Word He gave us. In fact it is a shared holding to sound doctrine that truly unites us.
"Our individual understandings may never reach perfection, but neither does our ignorance have the power to steal Christ's perfection from His meaning-filled words. One of the greatest arrogances of our age is the idea that since we each have the ability to misunderstand what God is saying, this therefore means that God can't really have the ability to say it [...]
"To say 'we all believe in Jesus so the other things do not matter' does not lift Jesus up. It casts Him down because it casts His teaching down. It replaces Him with a man-made tradition of hating tradition, under which no single word of His is safe. Once it has begun, one by one all the truths of Scripture will be rendered void, one by one relegated to the truthiness of the world and placed on the smorgasbord of half-believed religiosities until we welcome any false gospel with open arms but decry the scandal of the real Gospel's particularity as the greatest possible offense. By then, Jesus' crucifixion will have been quietly moved further and further from the center, an afterthought brought out on holidays as a nice story to remind us why we ought to be spiritual people and enjoy our freedom, until at last it is entirely gone with no one left who is religious enough to even notice.
"Against this folly, St. Paul cries to us from the depths of our history, 'I say it again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.' (Galatians 1:9)
"Alas, too many of us have already forgotten how to hear. 'Yes,' we say, 'but that is only your interpretation.'"
(from "Broken: 7 'Christian' Rules That Every Christian Ought to Break as Often as Possible" by Jonathan Fisk)
"Christians are captive to the Word of God and shaped by the teachings (doctrine) of the Word. To lose sight of Christian doctrine is to lose the pillar of our faith and summon troublesome alternatives. Keep in mind that the apostle Paul warned Timothy and Titus some seven times in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) to watch the sound doctrine of the Church, for a church and a Christian who do not possess sound doctrine are like reeds blowing in the ideological winds of the world. The Word of God, Christian doctrine, and practice are inseparable, and interdependent."
(from "Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?" by Matthew Richard)
As I began to see how sound doctrine is derived from Scripture alone, and saw how all teachings interconnect, I saw how each doctrine has a profound effect on how we live our lives, how the church operates, what our services look like, where our emphases are, and so on. Even something as banal as how we dress for a church service can be affected by what we believe about why we gather, what happens when we gather, what we believe God's disposition is towards us, and so on. Things that on the surface seem insignificant, when you drill down deep, are frequently based on a doctrine, which can then be held up to the Bible and recognized as being in accord with it, or not. As when going on a journey cross-country, if at the start your compass is off by a degree or two, by the time you reach the end you will find yourself far off course...so it is also with doctrine.
I mentioned that I was starving for doctrine, and indeed, after seeing how important it is as a framework for life and a guard against pitfalls, I became almost ravenous for it. I was like a starving man, stumbling upon a vast table in a field, filled to overflowing with mouth-watering foods. I was searching for truth, and finding it was like finding gold. My priorities changed, and as I realized that the church I was now in held different beliefs, I was again faced with the conundrum of unity. The differences, I realized, were too great to overcome, and with new eyes I searched for a church I could indeed be unified with. What programs they had didn't matter, what the building looked like, what their music sounded like, how warmly I was or wasn't greeted...it all didn't matter. What truly mattered above all else in a church was unity in doctrine, derived soundly from the Scriptures.
Praise God, He provided one.
-M
"But it is a strange thing that diversities and divisions should appear within Christendom. For the Christian Church has only one principle of cognition, namely, the Word of Christ, given by Christ to the Church through His Apostles and Prophets, only one source of the saving knowledge, therefore only one doctrine, one faith [...]
"What, then, causes the divisions in the Church? They are not the result of climatic influences, as some say, nor of racial differences, as others say. They are due solely to the fact that men arose within the Church and gained a following who did not continue in the Word of Christ's Apostles and Prophets, but proclaimed their own word and as a natural consequence impaired, or even wiped out, the diferentia specifica of the Christian religion, justification by faith, without the deeds of the Law. Divisions in the Apostolic Church arose because men refused to recognize the Word of the Apostles as the Word of God and offered the Church in place of the Word of God their own human notions. That is clearly stated by Paul in Rom. 16:17: 'Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.' ...The attempt to get rid of the Word of the Apostles and of the central teaching of Christianity, the doctrine of salvation by grace, has been and still is the sole cause of the divisions in the Christian Church."
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