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Doctrine and Doctrine ...

Tuesday, Nov 26, 2013. When it comes to biblical doctrine, you could call the ground “challenging”. The New Testament asks us to keep to good and sound doctrine in our teaching. But there are many theologians, many Christian churches, and many Christian groups, which have their own version of this “sound doctrine”.

Churches and Groups …

The biblical core teaching is rather clear and not disputed among Christians: In Jesus God comes to us. He is one with the father and the Holy Spirit. He is God, who became human and lived with us. Jesus died at the Cross, to take the sin of the world (=all what separates us from God) onto himself, such that everyone who believes in him, shall have open access to the Holy God, shall have eternal life in him. He was risen on the third day, and is building his community of people of faith today, to live in truth, faith, love and hope.

The core teaching is not disputed among Christian believers. However, unfortunately not everyone who is in some Christian church necessarily stays with this teaching.

1) Theologians and scholars have developed all different kinds of reading and understanding of the bible - up to the opinion that it does not tell us much about Jesus at all and that Jesus died and never rose from the dead (only in some spiritual way). That is also some kind of doctrine, which you will find. It is not what the New Testament calls “sound doctrine”. It does not help you and does not lead you to God. The Apostle Paul has made this point pretty clear (1 Cor 15).

2) On the other side of the spectrum, you find the Christian groups which believe that their particular version of understanding is the only way to go, where their understanding can be extreme and very conservative, even leaving the ground of sound faith at all. We need to be quite careful, not to mix up clear doctrine with a narrow minded understanding of the gospel. Paul strongly resisted this type of approach (1 Tim 4).

The dispute about doctrine is no invention of our modern time. Doctrine has always been disputed, in ancient times, during the ministery of Jesus, and when the apostles built up the early church. Today, we can be lucky about this, since many of the disputes are reflected by the discussions in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. We can learn from the apostles how to deal with different opinions and different teaching.

Sound Doctrine …

What is the key feature of sound doctrine? It is searching for the heart of God. It is following the heart of God, drawing the right consequences and putting it into action. Let us listen to a discussion which Jesus had about doctrine:

1 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: 8 “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” (Matthew 15, 1-9)

This discussion takes place between people who all want to be believers! That is an important observation. But the Church here, represented by the Pharisees, has set up rules which contradict the idea which God has about how humans should treat each other. Taking care of father and mother is one of God's priorities, not the funding of the Church as an institution!

Jesus is rather sharp here in his reaction. “Their heart is far from me”! Let us take this as an encouragement, to search his heart, with all what we do, with our thinking and reading, with the way we teach and how we treat each other - in the church and everywhere we go! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts