Christian Doctrine

A Guide for the Perplexed

Geoff Thompson

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780567673336
• eBook ISBN: 9780567673350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Geoff Thompson addresses multiple questions concerning Christian doctrine in an engaging narrative, beginning with an in-depth discussion of the origins of doctrine in the various catechetical, polemical and apologetic pressures that the church encountered as it sought to articulate and teach its confession of faith in Jesus Christ. In providing an overview of some of the classic and historically influential doctrinal projects, Thompson employs ten case studies that illustrate the overlapping influences of tradition and contexts-both ecclesial and cultural-on doctrinal discourse. Thompson takes the reader from those historical and paradigmatic case studies into some of the great contemporary debates about doctrine, including those which have been shaped by the critique of doctrine associated with the European Enlightenment as well as the challenges and contributions of theologians of the majority world. He pays particular attention to the influence that these diverse cultural, ecclesial, and academic contexts have had upon the shape and content of particular doctrines. This leads into an engagement with George Lindbeck's seminal The Nature of Doctrine, as well as the more recent proposals of Kevin Vanhoozer and Christine Helmer. This guide concludes by developing the idea of a Christian social imaginary as the framework for holding together doctrine, practice, truth, diversity, and context.

CHAPTER 1
THE ORIGINS, FORMS, AND FUNCTIONS OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

A working definition and its challenges

What is Christian doctrine? Let me propose the following as a working definition: Christian doctrine is communally recognized and authoritative teaching of the Christian community about Christianity’s beliefs and practices. This definition is at once complicated by the diversity of the Christian community, the processes by which any given teaching is communally recognized, and the nature and extent of its authority. It also begs the question of just how doctrine performs this teaching role. These are all issues that will claim our attention as this book proceeds. For now, they can be put to one side and, for brevity, the working definition will be condensed to: communally recognized authoritative teaching. To begin the initial explorations of this topic, consider the following three statements:

Doctrine divides, service unites.¹

The history of Jesus of Nazareth was and is the crucible of Christian doctrinal possibilities. Whatever the ultimate external reference of Christian doctrine might be, its proximate external referent is this history.²

Doctrine is not identical with any existing text—whether it is that of specific theological formulae, or that of a specific theological system; or that of the Church’s creed, or even the text of the Bible. Pure doctrine is an event … All the conclusions of dogmatics must be intended, accepted and understood as fluid material for further work.³

“Doctrine divides, service unites” had significant currency within the twentieth-century ecumenical movement. Another version of it has enjoyed a certain popular currency in some strands of liberal Protestantism: “doctrine divides, experience unites.” Both versions state the obvious: that doctrine has, in fact, been associated with church division, especially among Protestants. Particular doctrines (e.g., the doctrines of justification, Scripture, or baptism) have functioned as fault lines along which various Christian communities have separated themselves from others. The existence of such slogans point to the fact that in many quarters, doctrine is treated with suspicion; it is a problem to be overcome. This both reflects and is reinforced by the fact that “doctrine” is certainly one of the heavier words in the Christian lexicon. Yet doctrine is inevitable. Indeed, particular doctrines, in the form of convictions and beliefs, lie behind the privileging of either service or experience in the slogans just considered. Indeed, neither “service” nor “experience” are either univocal or self-interpreting terms. To invoke them against doctrine is only to open up layers of other doctrines about both service and experience.

If doctrine is divisive, is the working definition of doctrine offered above actually something of a phantom? Is it the case that doctrine is not “communally recognized, authoritative teaching” after all? The answer has to be nuanced. Even as one group separates from others on the basis of, for example, a particular doctrine of baptism, that doctrine simultaneously unites the group separating itself from the others. On the other hand, over time doctrine can again become the point of the reunion of those same Christians as both groups come to some new understanding of baptism that they can affirm together. In other words, doctrine’s relationship to community and unity is complex and dynamic. Indeed, this complexity is the reason for using the adjective “communally recognized” rather than (the more usual) “communally agreed” in the definition of doctrine offered in the opening paragraph. Doctrine can perform its community-binding function even if there are differing levels of agreement within a given community about particular doctrines. Within a given community, those who dissent from that community’s doctrine do so acknowledging in the very act of dissent that what they are dissenting from is recognized as authoritative. By itself, such dissent does not constitute grounds for exclusion from the community.

By turning to the second of the quotations above, our attention is drawn to the relationship between doctrine and the history of Jesus. The quotation comes from Alister McGrath and its point is hardly contestable. If it wasn’t for Jesus there would be no Christian doctrine. Yet, as McGrath implies, the relationship between cause and effect is complex. Jesus himself left no written body of doctrine nor did he teach in a manner that would be recognized as “doctrinal teaching” according to the working definition introduced above. He taught; that goes without saying. Indeed, his teaching was one of the defining features of his ministry. But his teaching, focused as it was on the kingdom of God, was more cryptic and allusive than it was clear and organized. From the beginning, it lent itself to a variety of interpretations. Even more importantly, however, the Gospel records of Jesus’ teaching never present it as a self-contained phenomenon. It is framed, albeit in different ways in the various Gospels, by the narrative of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. This narrative is, in turn, framed by another context of interpretation: first-century messianic expectation and the various complexities of Israel’s inherited faith.

Placing Jesus’ ministry and identity in the context of Judaism’s messianic hope raises another significant issue regarding the relationship between Jesus and doctrine. The charge has been made that the Christian doctrinal tradition gradually let go of that Jewish framework and allowed the fabric of Christian teaching to be increasingly determined by its interaction with Greek philosophy during the second to the fifth centuries. The consequence, so it is said, has been the skewing of Christian doctrine to modes of discourse and substantive topics far removed from the concerns, not only of those who first proclaimed Jesus, but of Jesus himself. Herein lies the foundation of the further claim that Christian doctrine has privileged reason and conceptual systems over the narrative mode of the biblical and foundational Jewish-Christian witness to Jesus. These claims will be addressed at various points in this book.

Finally, in considering the third of the quotations above, words of Karl Barth, we encounter a claim that Christian doctrine is always provisional. Such a claim would at first seem to be in tension with the commonly held idea of the once-for-all character of Christian teaching; indeed, teaching that requires safeguarding (e.g., 2 Tim. 1:13-14; 1 Tim. 6:20). This is often linked, and formally so in the Catholic Church, with the idea of a “sacred deposit of the word of God which is entrusted to the church.”⁴ The language of “deposit” and “trust” contains resonances of stability and permanence. The notion of doctrine being “fluid material for further work” suggests, on the other hand, instability and an absence of clear or straightforward norms. Behind Barth’s remarks is a rather pivotal Christian conviction: to the extent that Christian doctrine seeks to refer to and to articulate claims about the God of Jesus Christ, it speaks of a living God who will always elude complete conceptual, narrative, or doctrinal description. Yet there is another edge, potentially a more problematic one, to Barth’s comments. He suggests that even more than simply limited, doctrine is revisable. This raises a question not only about how doctrine might be “authoritative” but also about the relationship of doctrine to truth and the historical context of its interpretation. On this, the following remarks of Christine Helmer are illuminating:

Truth is not diminished when it is understood in historical interpretation(s). Rather, being attuned to the historical brings truth into the medium of human intersubjectivity, where disagreement and explication, competing perspectives and various proposals—all are part of the process of its formulation … Doctrine exists—has always existed—in production, negotiated in discussion and debates.⁵

As a historical and intersubjective—or communal—phenomenon, doctrine is inevitably embedded in the realities of power. As Helmer goes on to say, “doctrine is shaped by the formation of concepts; and doctrine is always at risk of error, including or especially the error of mistaking power for truth.”⁶ To acknowledge the historical nature of doctrine is to acknowledge many of the issues that drive and sustain contemporary discussions about it.

These brief reflections already point to the many aspects of the complexity attached to the topic of doctrine. They will also have reinforced the fact that this book is not, as already intimated in the preface, an overview of various Christian doctrines. While specific Christian doctrines will be studied at appropriate points, the orientation of the book is much more to the very phenomenon of doctrine, its origin, character, and functions. Or to put the issue a little differently, what is the church called to do with doctrine? With what expectations and postures should Christians approach it as they encounter it in sermons, books, and liturgies? How is it to be developed and transmitted? How is it to be judged as true or false? Should it be judged as true or false? Is it to be the object of interpretation or is it itself a tool of interpretation? What is its relationship to both Scripture and proclamation? What roles does it play in prayer, praise, repentance, and acts of service and love? Answers to these questions are part of the answer to the question, “What is doctrine?”

Each of the questions just posed is complicated by the vast and seemingly irreducible theological diversity of the twenty-first-century world church. This phenomenon is itself complicated by two of the issues already mentioned in earlier paragraphs: the relationship of Christianity’s doctrinal tradition to Greek philosophy, and the power relations in the midst of which doctrinal work is inevitably done. The relationship with Greek philosophy is a particular concern for the churches of the majority world.⁷ They have often received the doctrinal tradition as so rigidly fixed in Western patterns of thought that it is an impediment to the non-Western enculturation of the Christian faith. In fact, the charge is even sharper. It is those very patterns of Western thought that are said to aid and abet the church’s complicity with colonization. With Western doctrine having the upper hand in the power differential between colonizing and colonized churches, Western doctrinal discourse is seen as a tool for delegitimizing local doctrinal developments. To engage these questions and issues is to engage some of the liveliest debates in contemporary theology.

To continue to get our bearings within these debates, the remainder of this chapter will focus on origins of doctrine, some of the forms doctrine has taken over the history of the church, and the functions it has performed.

The origins of doctrine: The proclamation of Jesus as Messiah

As noted above, Jesus did not bequeath a body of doctrine to his followers. Instead, Christianity and Christian doctrine developed through proclamation about him. The crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth was proclaimed to be Israel’s promised Messiah and came to be known and referred to as Jesus Messiah or, more commonly in Christian discourse, Jesus Christ.⁸ The very word, Christianity, bears within itself this messianic orientation. The way of responding to him that came to be known as Christianity depends on this affirmation of his messianic status and the willingness of the early Christians both to defend this conviction and to live with the many puzzles it generated. That there were diverse ways of interpreting this conviction and living it out is known to us through the corpus of Christian literature produced in the decades immediately following Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Recognizing this diversity is itself important in the context of the present discussion about doctrine, understood as “communally recognized authoritative teaching.” The New Testament literature bears witness to various and developing loci of authority. For this reason, it is important to look beyond specific references to “doctrine” in the New Testament. Indeed, in reference to Christian instruction, “doctrine” occurs only six times in the NRSV, that is, Eph. 4:14; 1 Tim. 1:3; 2 Tim. 4:3; Tit. 1:9, 2:1, and 2:10. In each case, the word translates one form or another of the Greek word didache, teaching. But the cognates of this word are much more frequent than the occurrence of “doctrine” in the English translation would suggest. Teaching and appeals to authority are a frequent concern of the New Testament writers. Yet the locations and sources of this teaching and authority are diverse.

All the various forms of authority evident in the New Testament are, in some sense, means of mediating the authority of Jesus himself, the Lord of the Christian community. Alongside experiences of his living presence, it was primarily mediated through the memory of his teaching as that was conveyed in both apostolic preaching and the emerging corpus of Christian literature. Apostolic authority was, however, a complicated phenomenon. It could be based on the commission of the risen Jesus to the disciples (e.g., Lk. 24:49, Jn 20:21, Acts 1:8), on being a witness to Jesus from his baptism to his resurrection (as in the case of finding a replacement for Judas), or a direct commission from the ascended Lord, independently even of any engagement with the earthly Jesus (as in the case of Paul according to Acts 9:1-19, 22:4-16, 26:12-18; and in Paul’s own words in 1 Cor. 15:8 and Gal. 1:1). Indeed, Paul’s own various claims to apostolic authority further complicate the picture of how Jesus’ authority was mediated. Paul appealed to his own imitation of Christ’s suffering (e.g., 2 Cor. 4:7-12), his reception of preexisting traditions received from other Christians (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:3), and his own innovative interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g., Rom. 4:1-25; Romans 9–11). In exercising this authority, Paul could distinguish between what was from “the Lord” and what were his own instructions (1 Cor. 7:10-12) as well as make appeals to “creation” (e.g., Rom. 1:19-20) and “nature” (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:14). Apostolic authority was not a blunt instrument, and its outworking of Christian teaching was a work in progress. This is especially evident in the movement the Christian community made toward its teaching on the matter of Gentile inclusion. Very little, if anything, in Jesus’ ministry actually prepared the nascent Christian community for the particular manner in which the question of Gentile membership presented itself.⁹ The teaching that Gentiles were to be included in the Christian community without first being initiated into the Jewish community was the cumulative result of the witness of the Spirit, the testimony of authoritative apostles, conciliar debate, and novel interpretations of the Hebrew Scriptures (see Acts 10–15).

The literature of the New Testament also bears witness to the emergence of authoritative, if undeveloped, local offices. There has been much commentary about New Testament references to the offices of bishop, deacon, and elder (e.g., 1 Tim. 3:1-13, 5:17-19; and Tit. 1:5-11). Some have argued that they represent the authoritative foundations for the later th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Copyright Acknowledgment
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 The Origins, Forms, and Functions of Christian Doctrine
• Chapter 2 Theologians and Doctrine: Context, Content, and Form
• Chapter 3 Doctrine in Crisis and Doctrine Renewed
• Chapter 4 Doctrine, Bible, and Truth
• Chapter 5 Doctrine and the Christian Social Imaginary
• Chapter 6 Conclusion
• Notes
• Recommended Reading
• Index
• Copyright Page