Blair Williams’ February letter raises important questions: What is doctrine? Is it merely a set of humanly created propositions about an idea we call God? Is it a collection of statements, which must be slavishly adhered to in order to become or remain part of the “in crowd?” Is its expression an enterprise, which is forever doomed to failure because of our human limitations? Is it therefore time that we abandoned doctrine altogether?
While doctrine may be a word that leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths, it’s a word we really can’t avoid. As soon as we make any kind of statement about our faith, about God, or about our relationship with Jesus, we are expressing doctrine. Blair concludes his letter by saying that Christ’s saving grace transcends the clumsy attempts of men to define and package it. Yet that, in itself, is a doctrinal statement. It identifies Christ as important, points to grace as his gift, and lets us know that the purpose of that grace is salvation. Even the proposition that we can’t say anything more specific than that is a doctrinal statement — and a very absolute one at that. Unless we choose never to think or speak about God, doctrine is something that we simply can’t avoid.
Assuming that we’re unwilling to pursue the route of silence concerning our faith (to say nothing about never thinking about it), we need to ask ourselves the question, “How do we arrive at our doctrine?” or, more to the point, “How do we know what we can say about God?”
The short answer is that we can say what the Bible says. Christian faith is grounded in revelation: we know God only because He has made himself known to us. When we speak about Him, we’re not simply guessing but echoing — if we speak from Scripture. Anything else, however, leads us into speculation. That is the answer that our denomination is committed to, and which every teaching and ruling elder has said he or she accepts.
Can we then say that our various doctrinal statements must be slavishly adhered to? Not if we’re true to our heritage. For one thing, we know our theological formulations can come loose from their mooring in Scripture. The Reformation was a response to that. That’s why, as a denomination, we’ve said that our test for any doctrinal statement must always be the Holy Spirit speaking in Scriptures. As well, we need to recognize that our formulations are not the same as the revelation from which they’re derived. Have you ever made a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy? Our doctrinal statements are our attempts to summarize what we find in Scripture. That means they are always approximations.
To whatever extent they are grounded in Scripture, however, we can say that they are accurate and reliable approximations. They aren’t to be adopted unquestioningly, but they can only be accurately tested against the original from which they are derived. Luther had it right when he said that, unless he could be convinced from Scripture of the wrongness of his statements, he would not recant: “Here I stand!” And here our denomination stands as well.
