On Doctrine

A while back Gervase asked me a very astute question about the role of doctrine. I am still thinking about this, and I don't have a good answer yet. So in seeking to come up with an answer, I want to throw out a few ideas.

  1. I believe that doctrine really ought to be Biblical, and that the Bible is both necessary and sufficient for Christian doctrine.
  2. I recognise that this first idea itself is not Biblical, and in fact no understanding of doctrine is Biblical, because the Bible does not define a theory of doctrine, nor any instructions about how to adduce one. People might combine various verses together to define doctrine, but the act of combination is a human and not a Biblical one.
  3. So far I've said that (in idea 1) I want a Biblical understanding of doctrine but (in idea 2) I don't believe that I can get one because the Bible doesn't lay one out. So I have to start with some arbitrary choice to bootstrap this whole process, and idea 1 is as good an arbitrary choice as any.
  4. Idea 1 turns me off systematic theology; the Bible does not lay out a systematic theology or an exhaustive philosophical description of the character of God, and if we believe the Bible is sufficient, then we don't need to lay out these things either.
  5. Because of this, all doctrine we adduce from the Bible is provisional on our understanding of the Bible. In other words, doctrine is subordinate to exegesis. I have no time for commentaries where the converse is so obviously true.
  6. Instead of being systematic, the Bible's exposition of doctrine is typically narrative and pragmatic. Any "Biblical doctrine" must be a doctrine based on the Psalms, on Job, on Titus - on the Song of Songs - not just on Romans and Corinthians.
  7. When I say doctrine is pragmatic, I mean it. Biblical doctrine is for living. Even a doctrine like the second coming is always expressed in ethical terms - because Christ is coming back, live wisely. So if you can't live your doctrine, I'm not interested in it.
  8. Even supposedly big heavy doctrines - the soteriology of Romans and the Christology of Phillipians - are pragmatic, and the way you live out the doctrines expressed in both of these examples is through the unity of the Church. Because Jesus saves both Jews and Gentiles, the Church should live in unity; because Christ came as a humble servant, the Church should live in unity. So if your doctrine does not lead to church unity, I'm not interested in it.
  9. These two ideas lead me to be pretty ambivalent about most of the things that various Christian factions try to persuade me are important. (For instance, both Calvinism and Arminianism have little pragmatic utility and they certainly don't lead to church unity, so they're doubly useless as far as I'm concerned.)
  10. Of course this is a bit of a facile oversimplification and even I don't completely follow it. I believe the doctrine of the Trinity is massively important, even though I have no idea how to live that out.
  11. So I have criteria by which I am prepared to exclude doctrines, but none by which I include them. Hey, I'm OK with that; I said theories of doctrine had to be arbitrary.
  12. Because I think that doctrine should primarily be lived, I am not enamoured of the idea of teaching doctrine. In fact, it can be a very counterproductive thing to do. Nothing sucks the life out of a church like turning it into a philosophy lecture series. (I know that some people can teach doctrine in an entertaining and lively way, in the same way that some people can swallow razor blades without harming themselves. The fact that it's possible doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea.) In other words, orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy, demonstrating rather than teaching.

All of this is a long way of saying: if theology doesn't change your life, it isn't worth doing.

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