If you have a doctrinal statement, do you believe it represents truth?

Of course you do, or you wouldn’t believe it.

Your Doctrinal Statement is Not the Truth

But we must be careful. While truth can be found in doctrinal statements, they themselves are not the source of truth. They point and witness to the truth, but are not themselves “the truth.”

Let me put this another way. Everybody  who has a doctrinal statement believes that their doctrinal statement accurately represents the teaching of Scripture. But since not all doctrinal statements agree, this means that not all doctrinal statements accurately represent the teachings of Scripture. Some points on some doctrinal statements must be wrong, and we must not be so arrogant to think that our chosen doctrinal statement is 100% accurate, while everybody else is in error.

It should be pointed out that the same goes for Scripture. When we say that our doctrinal statements just follow the teachings of Scripture, what we really mean is that our doctrinal statements follow our understanding of Scripture. Yet our understanding of Scripture may not be the actual teachings of Scripture in every case.
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If doctrine is not the tie that binds churches together in unity, what is?

Love

In his letters to the Corinthians, Paul corrects numerous practical and doctrinal issues within the church. But at one point, in the middle of dealing with the divisive doctrine of spiritual gifts, and after begging with the Corinthian believers to live in unity with one another, he shows them the key to unity.

The key to unity, says Paul, is not doctrinal precision or even ethical perfection, but love. Though 1 Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings, it has very little to do with the love between a man and a wife, and everything to do with how a church can function as the Body of Christ. The secret is not spiritual gifts, but love. The secret is not prophecy, or preaching and teaching, but love. The secret is not accurate knowledge of theology and faith that moves mountains, but love. The secret is not abundant generosity to the poor, or becoming a martyr for the faith, but love.

Without Love, Theology is Worthless

What does this mean for our churches? It means that how we treat one another and what we do for our neighbors matters more than what we write down on our doctrinal statement. Sure, right believing is important, but according to Paul, all the doctrine and theology in the world is worthless if we do not love.

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In a previous post, I listed three ways doctrinal statements can be helpful. They can help us understand Scripture, let people know what to expect in our churches, and help guide leadership decisions.

If you develop a doctrinal statement for these reasons, I would urge you to keep the the statement as basic as possible.

The length and complexity of a doctrinal statement is directly proportional to the amount of control, power, abuse, and disunity within the church that the doctrinal statement creates.

Do you really need that point about “Seven Day Creationism”? Or the paragraph about the Tribulation and the Millennium? Is the section on Tongues and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit really necessary? Must you really explain that the Five Points of Calvinism are the true Gospel as taught by Paul? Is it really that important to clarify that women and homosexuals are not allowed to be pastors in your church?

About ten years ago, when I started this website, I included a doctrinal statement on it. I updated and tweaked it until about 2007. Then I forgot about it. Just for kicks, I went and looked at it the other day, and while I still agree with almost everything on it, I decided to follow my own advice and radically simplify it.

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Despite how hard I have been on doctrinal statements in recent posts, I do think there are several good uses for them. Here are three:

Doctrinal Statements provide a guiding hermeneutic.

In some ways, doctrinal statements are a summary of the doctrinal conclusions that Christians of the past have drawn from Scripture. They tell us what various groups have thought were key ideas from the Bible. In such a way, they can provide a guide for us in our own study. If we believe that the Holy Spirit has helped guide Christians of the past to know and understand the truth of Scripture, then doctrinal statements can help us in our own understanding and interpretation of Scripture.

For example, most doctrinal statements include the idea that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Therefore, we must be extremely cautious about any teaching to the contrary, for nearly all Christians throughout church history have held to this belief. Similarly, other points from doctrinal statements often represent key teachings from Scripture and can help guide our own study into Scripture, keeping us within the doctrinal boundaries of Christians from the past (See The Shape of Sola Scriptura for more on this idea).
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Despite the fact that Christians create creeds to protect the church, creeds and confessions often have the opposite result. Creeds kill the church. They are a bullet to the brain of church creativity and unity.crea

Creeds Kill Creativity in the Church

We kill the creativity and liberty of others by scaring them into conforming to our creeds and doctrinal statements. Some of the best exegetical and theological work that has ever been done in the history of the church was done in the early centuries of the church before there were all the creeds and confessions to rein people in. Origen, for example, may have been one of the most creative Bible scholars the church has ever seen, and he came up with some great interpretations of Biblical texts. But he also came up with outlandish ideas, which were later condemned as heresy by the church. As a result, people barely study Origen, because they are afraid of being outcast for reading and studying a “heretic.”

Similarly today, Pastors and professors who develop a fresh way of understanding a biblical text are often afraid to share it with others, due to the theological backlash they are sure to receive. Bible College and Seminary students want to graduate, and so they also are discouraged from researching in new directions, and challenging the status quo in the understanding of some biblical texts. The doctrinal statement of the school restrains their desire to learn, study, and think for themselves.
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