Yes, Doctrine Divides

2 Timothy 2:1-7 (NKJV)
¹ You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. ² And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. ³ You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. ⁴ No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. ⁵ And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. ⁶ The hard-working farmer must be first to partake of the crops. ⁷ Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things.

The quote “Mission unites but doctrine divides” is a kind of truism that may not stand the test of careful consideration.  It holds two things in conflict that must be in harmony. To act without a clear understanding of how one should act is to react thoughtlessly.  

It is true that many Christians divide over their differing understandings of the word of God. This is sad and often unnecessary. It reflects the finite nature of our capacity to understand infinite truths. John Calvin either coins or cites the maxim “finitum non capax infinitum” or, in English, What is finite (our minds) cannot comprehend what is infinite (God’s thoughts). This does not negate Divine self-revelation (The Bible) but makes it necessary. If we say the message of the Bible cannot be understood, then we say that God’s purposes can be blocked. If God desires that we understand the core of His meaning and purpose for His Creation, then God will accomplish this act of communications. He sends us His Spirit to lead us into all revealed truth.

The Scriptures themselves claim a divine source as Paul teaches plainly when he says that a Scripture is inspired by God or God-breathed. He also claims that these writtings have worth and are essential for teaching both doctrine and morality. This means that the biblical truths trump all other conflicting claims found in the culture. 

There is a rampant resurgence of the age old posture of agonistism. Even from our evangelical pulpits and books we hear and read the teaching that God’s ways are unknowable. Some teach it is a perfect book left with utterly imperfect humans to understand. It is taught by others that the Bible is a flawed record of the human endeavor to explain what cannot be known. It reflects only the values of a given culture in a given time. The Church collected these writings and made them to be more than they really are. The Church, in the past, handed down truth claims that were date stamped to expire.  They may have been useful for their times but are useless in ours.

While I was in a liberal seminary, we studied “Paul’s Theology” and “John’s Theology” and the theologies found in the four literary sources of the “Books of Moses.” These sources, called J, E. P, D each had their own purposes for writing what they wrote. For example, there are two versions of the Creation account. Classical doctrine and Jesus himself teaches that Moses wrote both accounts for different purpose. Genesis 1:1-2:4a teaches the cosmic outline and 2:4b to end of the second chapter teaches a human centered perspective.

 

Biblical Criticism (Modern Biblical Scholarship) teaches that the first account of Creation comes from the Priestly writer or tradition written during the Exile to bring order out of chaos, while the second account was taught by a writer called J for entirely different reasons. This is called Source Criticism. Some teach that the J documents come from a very long oral tradition of story telling. 

More damning to biblical authority than Source Criticism is Form Criticism. Form Criticism considers the “life setting” of a particular biblical document. They will also find examples of similar stories found in other religions of the time. In the Creation Stories or myths, these scholars will compare them to the Babylonian Creation myth that has a dragon being torn apart to create the material world. The early Hebrews develop their own stories to counter the religions around them.

 

In the New Testament they will connect the Resurrection stories with similar accounts of Emperor Worship. The Church invented the Resurrection stories to counter these stories. They also consider the agricultural religions where the “Invincible Sun” returns (rises) in greater force each spring. The Sun is simply replaced by the Son. All the miracle stories are mythological retelling of similar stories in contemporary forms of various religions. 

Feminist Biblical Scholars uses Critical Scholars to demonstrate the bias against women found throughout the Bible. For them, most of the Scripture is a singular polemic (propaganda) aimed to convince the culture that men are naturally dominant and women rightly submissive. They view the biblical stories through the lens of “gender politics.” Most Feminist scholars practice what they call the “Hermeneutic (interpretation) of Suspicion.”

 

The same holds true for all Liberation based scholars, including Gay Liberation. Many homosexual advocates view the Bible as a weapon used to maintain the domination of a heterosexually dominated culture of hatred. The more moderate homosexual will try to find a narrative in the Bible that demonstrates a God who blesses all forms of two people loving one another and being sexual. To do this, they must encounter biblical passages that testify against this claim of sexual inclusiveness.  

Consider all this critical “scholarship” and political movements in light of what Scripture claims about itself: that it comes from a single Divine source. You can see that all our divisions stem from two radically different set of assumptions about Biblical Authority. Some evangelicals cut this tangled knot by reducing the Bible to its social ethics regarding our care for the poor. They set the truth claims found throughout the Biblical witness aside in order to find common cause with all religions and the most liberal expressions of Christianity. From thus comes the well worn truism – “Mission unites while doctrine divides.”