In Defense of Doctrine

Don: Doctrine is derived primarily from Scripture. Jesus hinted at a potential danger with doctrine:

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me;…” (John 5:39)

Mankind so easily embraces doctrine as being the key to eternal life, but true doctrine is the teaching of Jesus:

‘This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far away from Me.
‘But in vain do they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’ (Matthew 15:8-9)

But it is a part of the human condition to manufacture doctrine from our precepts. We cannot live without doctrines that define the world around us and define our view of God. We would rather be wrong than uncertain, and have no hesitation in defining God, in analyzing God, and in speaking for God. All faith groups do this, and indeed have done so over the ages.

It would be shocking for many if not most of us to discover that God views things differently than our doctrines. Jesus spoke of this:

“The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore, all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments. They love the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues, and respectful greetings in the market places, and being called Rabbi by men. But do not be called Rabbi; for One is your Teacher, and you are all brothers. Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven. Do not be called leaders; for One is your Leader, that is, Christ. But the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Matthew 23:1-12)

Jesus made the point over and over, that so much of what we ascribe to God is in fact our made-up doctrine. As such, it can be erroneous, misguided, and divisive. Nevertheless, I think there is a legitimate defense for doctrine. It seems there are times when faith is in need of guidance. For example, children who are just learning about God, and those adults in stage 1 faith (see here for a discussion of stages of faith) whose worldview and faith construct is chaotic, seek and need clearly defined parameters by which to escape the chaos and order their lives and their religious thinking. Rather than a transcendent God, they see a combined legislator, judge, and executive—they see someone who brings order out of chaos.

For them, doctrine is a necessity, naturally and easily embraced, and overwhelmingly reassuring. It is reproducible on a bumper sticker: “God said it, and that’s good enough for me.” Doctrine is the bedrock of their faith. The slightest questioning of their doctrine, or the Scriptural interpretation on which it is based, is deeply unsettling, heretical, and to be resisted with violence if necessary. They see it as standing up for God. Theirs is a doctrine that defines, discloses… and divides.

It is difficult for most people to see doctrine as a means to an end and not as an end in itself. But there comes a time in the faith journey of many when their doctrine no longer answers the questions being asked of it. Its simple answers, which once satisfied and reassured, no longer work quite so well. Doubt creeps in, and faith is questioned. This is the greatest challenge for the faith community of the church. Can it be overcome? If so, how? If not, why not?

Jesus told the Rich Young Ruler who asked what he should do to earn eternal life:

“… if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not commit murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; Honor your father and mother; and You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man *said to Him, “All these things I have kept; what am I still lacking?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But when the young man heard this statement, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.

And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?” And looking at them Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:17-26)

There is apparently something about our beliefs, doctrines, or what we hold to be “truth” that is qualitatively and quantitatively different from Jesus’s admonition to put our money where our mouth is. In this story, the keeping of the Commandments as doctrine was clearly not difficult for the Rich Young Ruler, because his worship was more about his own beliefs and behavior than about God’s, than about the mission, behavior, and teaching (doctrine) of Jesus. That doctrine included, as expressed in the quote from Matthew 23 above, that a ruler—a leader—must become a humble servant. But that would earn him the certainty of eternal life.

Can a faith community develop a doctrine of humble certainty? Are humility and certainty mutually contradictory, or does humility require a doctrine more “progressive”—more ready to change with new understanding? Throughout the gospels, Jesus never once talks about belief in something; only about having faith in Him. So why do we cling so tenaciously to our doctrines in worship? Can a faith group embrace both those in stage 2 faith, who need a doctrine of certitude, and those in stage 3, who want to question the group’s doctrinal certitude? And can stage 4 faith people, who celebrate the mystery of God and seek enlightenment of it, be included as well? To put it another way: Can certainty, skepticism, and mysticism be combined in a single, cohesive, faith community?

Jay: There is no doubt that Man seeks certainty. But God’s realm is uncertain. We have no hope of understanding it, and therefore cannot be certain about it. Is it possible to have a faith community that does not cling to certainty? Once certainty is introduced, it brings strictness and discipline with it.

Don: Last week it was asked whether parents of students attending Andrews University would rather their children graduated with strong faith or with strong belief in church doctrine.

Donald: Perhaps it depends what we are certain about. We can be certain of love for Christ, but that is different from being certain about aspects of doctrine. The fastest growing church in America is non-denominational, non-doctrinaire, therefore clearly the absence of doctrine, of structure, of certainty is not unattractive to some people. Our more established churches tend to be skeptical of such groups, thinking that theirs is a “watered-down” religion for yuppies, lacking depth. But I don’t know enough about them to make that judgement. I don’t know if it is possible to be humble and certain about eternal life.

Kiran: Hunger for doctrine may stem from fear of rejection by God for not knowing the Truth. The understanding that God loves all of us unconditionally, that He saves all sinners, and that serving one’s fellow Wo/Man is all God asks of us, removes that fear and thereby diminishes the power of doctrine, though doctrine might serve some good initially.

Jay: When talking about “certainty,” do we mean certainty that God exists? That we will all be saved? No matter what we do, God loves us nonetheless. I think we all realize this. What, then, is the point of doctrine? Perhaps it is not so much about our relationship with God than it is about improving our ability to develop our relationship with our fellow Wo/Man. Our Seventh Day Adventist doctrine emphasizes our capacity and our willingness to serve our fellow Wo/Man. This sense of service is what I think the parents of Andrews students want their children to come away with when they graduate, and I think it is what Andrews provides. I think most faith communities could use their particular doctrines in this way, but tend not to. They tend to make their doctrines about the relationship with God, or about defining individuals’ identity with the group—is one in or out? They are divisive. The power of doctrine can be wielded for good or evil.

Kiran: In the struggle for civil rights, many respected preachers in the US used Scripture to justify slavery:

As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another. (Leviticus 25: 44-46)

Others quoted Scripture proclaiming the equality of Wo/Man. Now we are having just the same discussion about gender orientation and so on. It is very confusing, but doctrine seems rather to hinder than to help progress in such matters. Nobody today would try to justify slavery, but at the time, it seemed justifiable.

David: When the Bible itself is the doctrine, then clearly there are problems in its contradictions. One wonders how, in light of the clear statement in Matthew 23 (cited earlier):” Do not call anyone on earth your father; for One is your Father, He who is in heaven” the Catholics rationalize their Pope, their Papa, and their numerous lesser “holy fathers” in the priesthood.

We are hardly the first to tackle this problem. The Universalist movement, now called Unitarian, seems to have made the best stab at dealing with the issue by extracting the wisdom rather than the words of Scripture and leaving it to the individual believer to accept it as “doctrine” according to his or her personal conscience and experience. There is no institutional doctrine (excepting, perhaps, “There shall be no doctrine!”) and this seems to me to be the only solution to the problem of contradictory Scripture. Doctrine based on contradictory Scripture is, almost by definition it seems to me, indefensible.

Doctrine may be something that helps in one’s relationships with one’s fellow doctrinaires, but not at all those of contrary doctrines: Christian vs. Moslem, Catholic vs. Protestant, Sunni vs. Shia. The rare shining examples of brotherly love among these contradictory doctrinaires are islands that serve only to highlight the squalid sea of hatred in which they float. Doctrine divides, and that is indefensible. By my reading of the gospels, Jesus seems to agree.

Don: The Jehovah’s Witnesses would rather die than accept a blood transfusion, which is prohibited by their doctrine. It is an extreme example of the power of doctrine. Are such prohibitions a legitimate role for doctrine?

Anonymous: Do we keep doctrines out of love? What is the reason for us to keep a doctrine?

David: If we do it because we are looking for certainty for ourselves, are we not being selfish?

Jay: Potentially it is for what people think of as a way to love God—and to be loved in return. “If I follow this doctrine, God will love me.”

Kiran: … And “If I don’t, God will destroy me.”

Jay: … Which is antithetical to a God of love and grace and goodness who loves us all regardless of what we do. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more than He already does. To be of any value, a doctrine must leverage something else—it cannot leverage God’s love. But I think doctrine can leverage something else, and can be of value. Our Seventh Day Adventist  doctrine of keeping the Sabbath, for example, may not make God love us any more than He already does but it serves to recharge our batteries and to provide time for self-reflection, time for family, and time for serving others. In reducing or even removing the fear of death, our doctrine about the state of death potentially increases our capacity to serve our fellow Wo/Man. Such doctrines have value but they do not provide a “certain” way into the kingdom of heaven. Jesus made the point when he talked about the narrowness of that way—”the eye of the needle.” The only certainty, which is part of the doctrine (the teaching) of Jesus, not of man-made doctrine, is that we can’t get through it on our own, without the help of Jesus.

Kiran: I can’t speak for others but in my case, I kept Sabbath for a long time because I feared negative consequences if I did not. Now, I have come to view the Sabbath as the day we celebrate God’s grace. I certainly didn’t celebrate God’s grace before. All I did was worry and fear. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, both sons had relationship issues with their father. One thought his bad deeds would make his father abandon him. The other thought his good deeds would make his father love him more. But their deeds, good or bad, had no bearing on how much father loved both his sons. So why should I worry? With this new understanding, I am able to celebrate God’s grace in a new way. Instead of worrying about my acceptance, I want to be accepting of others and be part of my Father’s effort to reach out to His prodigal sons.

Donald: We want to be confident that we will be on the right side of God at the end of this life, so that we can continue on into the next. To be on His right side means being found faithful to Him. How does doctrine affect that? A majority of people in the world live in poverty, yet we really don’t see them. They are seldom right on our doorstep. When they are, we are required to be kind to them and if we are, we are then perceived as being on the right path to God. But being merely kind is the least we could do. Isn’t that superficial? Allegiance to our doctrine seems to allow us to be superficial, whereas allegiance to our Savior demands much more of us.

Jay: What does it mean to be found faithful?

Donald: To me, it means that when confronted with suffering every day I share, express, and try to reflect what God’s character does for me in my life.

Jay: That is what I think doctrine can help us with, by equipping us with the tools—the devices, the capacity, the mental readiness—to do those things and to love our fellow Wo/Man, provided that we don’t let the doctrine be divisive, which it can so easily become and in fact has tended to be throughout history. We can stimulate love without division. We do it routinely when raising our children, so why can’t a church do the same in “raising” the congregation?

David: Doctrine may appear to provide certainty over things which essentially are only cultural constructs. I am thinking, for example, of constraints/prohibitions (or not) on slavery, homosexuality, blood transfusions, and so on. I don’t see what these have to do with spirituality. It seems to me that the spiritual certainty most sought, and which turns out to be the most elusive, is the certainty of life after death, which must hinge on belief in God. And it is is certainty about the existence of God that is truly the hardest thing for us to attain. If we do attain it, the next hardest to grasp is Jesus’s message of salvation for all as a result of God’s love. The elder brother of the prodigal son failed to grasp it and therefore refused to accept it. Aren’t we all more or less as mystified and miffed as the elder brother by the father’s apparent lack of discrimination between his faithful son and his unfaithful son? Our human way is very much in favor of discrimination in such a case, but we are must remember that our way is not God’s way.

It is impossible for us to accept these articles of faith—the existence of God, salvation for all—because we cannot prove them with certain knowledge, so we invent doctrines that remove our need for proof by the simple expedient of ordaining them to be true. I agree that doctrine can be made to have some value, but as a foundation for belief in God and salvation, to me it is shifting sand.

Kiran: But if it were not for doctrine, I might not be here, today, discussing it!

Jay: I agree that it is barking up the wrong tree to think that doctrine alone cannot improve our relationship with God, and it cannot increase God’s love for us. But it has the potential to improve our relationship with our fellow Wo/Man. However, we tend to use it more with our relationship with God in mind. I think Jesus warned us about this.

Chris: What if doctrine was not about certainty for us? What if it was not about us, but about our fellow Wo/Man, or about God? Scripture says:

If anyone … does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. (1 Timothy 6:3-5)

Doctrine is not bad in itself, but in how we use it, what our purposes are. If it is for our own gain, our own salvation, then it is not for our fellow Wo/Man. But if it is for our fellow Wo/Man, then Scripture assures us it will be to our benefit. So there is a doctrine that is there for us to model, but we cannot model it perfectly, so we must depend upon God’s help.

Don: Could a faith group be built around that idea?

Jay: A non-denominational church might say it could.

Don: But even a non-denominational church is not doctrine-free.

Jay: Believing in Jesus Christ is a doctrine.

Kiran: Eschewing doctrine is a doctrine.

Don: How would one approach it?

David: My attraction to Daoism is that (to me) it presents no doctrine, no answers; only questions and mystery which (strangely) satisfy. That there is a Way is undeniable—to deny it is to deny existence itself; the Way cannot but be followed—unless one willfully steps off it.

Robin: Scripture keeps pointing back to the doctrine of Christ. Jesus was asked where he acquired all his learning. He replied:

“My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?” (John 7:16-19)

And Paul said:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. (Romans 16:17-18)

Then, 1 Timothy talks about being a good servant of Jesus and how they should instruct others so they too become good ministers, and not to rebuke youth, to honor those older than them, to honor widows, and even to honor the masters of slaves. So this is part of that doctrine as well.

For another example:

Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take them into your house or welcome them. Anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work. (2 John 9-11)

This doctrine was received by Jesus from the Father, so it is a doctrine of service, of love; not of debate and division—the kind of doctrine we tend to make. The doctrine of Jesus is pure, and any doctrine that does not align with it is impure.

Anonymous: To me, Scripture paints doctrine as necessary. Love and doctrine are connected. If Jesus is the end of the law, as asserted here:

Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4)

… then we must follow the law (doctrine) before we can get to Jesus and His doctrine. It is vital for people in stage 2 faith and for children. But if they take doctrine as an end in itself they will not progress. The law is supposed to lead us to Christ, and God is love. The story of the Rich Young Ruler shows us that we have to start at the beginning to get there.

I see the story of the delivery of Israel from bondage as an example. Israel represents the whole world, and the Israelite represents Everyman. In asking the Israelites to serve Him, God was asking all of us to serve Him in the same way. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love God, and the second greatest was to love Man. To get to those, you have to go through doctrine first, then you arrive at Jesus, who takes you the rest of the way. At that point, as he told the Rich Young Ruler, money is nothing. So the right doctrine comes gradually, smoothly. It is not our work, but when we see it it brings us closer to God and strengthens our faith.

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

The certainty we need is that God exists. Faith is the basis for that certainty. Looking at the whole picture, then, we see a wise and wonderful plan of salvation; a way whereby God leads his people—that is, the whole world—out of bondage, doubt, and fear and to certainty and love in its deepest meaning. We are just passing through this world on our way to the Promised Land, the kingdom promised by God, and I have faith in our doctrines and beliefs. I think it is wrong to be proud of our doctrines or to think that we are sole possessors of the Truth, but I do think we in our church may see more of the whole picture, or that we are less narrow-minded. This may be mistaken for pride, but I see it as simply the message of Scripture. We must start with doctrine, and we may go through doubt. We can’t put God in a box. We can’t define Him. All we can do is believe in His existence.

Don: Can we engineer a way through the stages of faith? Or is it just something that must take its own course?

Donald: Can we engineer a good marriage?

Kiran: My mother thinks she can! 😉

Donald: If love does not prevail, then any relationship, no matter how well engineered, is going to be difficult. This applies also to the parent–child relationship. It’s all about love, not engineering. But we do try to engineer a path, such as in teaching our children at home and in college in the ways we want them to follow.

* * *

Postscript by David: Is there any significance in the fact that Jesus omitted the first four Commandments, after being asked by the Rich Young Ruler very specifically “Which ones?” he was to follow to earn eternal life? Jesus omitted the first four Commandments:

1. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. Do not make idols.
3. Do not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

…but included the last six:

5. Honor your father and mother.
6. Do not commit murder.
7. Do not commit adultery.
8. Do not steal.
9. Do not give false testimony.
10. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Are there really only six Commandments that really matter, not ten?