Does Doctrine Really Matter Anymore?

Does Doctrine Really Matter Anymore? July 29, 2016

Photo Credit: Tim Abbott.
Photo Credit: Tim Abbott.

Truth seems like such an amorphous thing these days.

In the United States, the wife of a President who—for all intents and purposes—lied to the nation about his infidelity is up against a businessman cum politician who’s changed his mind about his own politics and policies enough times that he’s practically, at this point, running against himself.

Yes, there’s a video.

But truth wasn’t always such a difficult and flimsy thing to grasp hold of.

At the beginning of the Christian Church truth was something which informed the lives—and deaths—of the most passionate early Christians.

It’s difficult to imagine.

It’s difficult for us to imagine a time when points of morality, belief, and doctrine were firmly and resolutely decided upon.

Set.

Fixed.

Immovable.

But there were times.

In the Early Church these discussions and dialogues unfolded shortly after Jesus’s triumphant ascension to Heaven. The Early Church had to wrestle, quickly, with radicals like St. Paul—a Jew who had formerly been one of their chief persecutors, turned chief champion. And, suddenly, the sacrifice of Jesus was open for everyone—Jews and Gentiles.

The Early Church wrestled, likewise, with how to understand Jewish law in their New Covenant situation. At what’s widely understood by scholars to be the first-ever Church council, the apostles rule that all food is now “clean” for Christians to consume. The Jewish law had, with Christ, been fulfilled.

Likewise, in the epistles written by Paul, Peter, and John we see instruction, direction, and authoritative teaching being delivered.

In these times there was definitive truth to be had.

No one can reasonably argue that St. Paul’s attitude towards the churches at Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, et. al. was laissez faire.

To say he was stern with his corrective doctrine is, sometimes, an understatement.

And, respectfully, this is how Christianity continued as a movement for some time.

Bishops, first installed by the apostles themselves, appointed successors as the Christian world expanded and as these early Christians died, or were martyred. These bishops, conducting their authority as set out in the Pauline epistles, came together often to rule upon certain issues of faith, morality, and doctrine.

These discussions and decisions eventually, rather quickly, codified themselves into what we now know as the Creeds.

These early creeds like the Apostles’ Creed, attributed to the actual twelve apostles, and the Nicene Creed, explained exactly what Christians believed about Jesus, the Church, and the spiritual reality of the world.

The creeds helped to define Christian orthodox belief against movements like Gnosticism which sought to separate the body from the soul or Arianism which argued that Jesus was subordinate to the Father and a created being.

The creeds spelled out precisely what Christians believed so that there could be no mistake.

These creeds protected the orthodox beliefs of Christians from heretical movements which sought to place the “deposit of truth,” handed down by Jesus and the apostles, in a different camp altogether.

To the Early Church, then, to these first Christians and their successors who laboured over codifying and explaining exactly what they believed—doctrine mattered.

A thousand years later, the 16th century Protestant Reformation, spurred on by widespread corruption in the Church, challenged orthodox Christian teaching and, again, it was doctrine which became the focal point.

Doctrine concerning how the Christian is saved, what the Eucharist was, who was fit to be Pope, and how authority was understood.

Here, too, doctrine mattered.

So it begs the question: If doctrine was of the utmost importance to the Early Christians, and to the Protestant Reformers (and the Catholic Counter-Reformers), is doctrine still important today?

In other words, does it matter what we believe?

Well, this is where we must do the difficult work of trying to be “in the world but not of the world;” to separate ourselves out of our current laissez faire culture.

I came, personally, out of an Evangelical movement which held to certain core values (e.g., the divinity and humanity of Jesus, the Trinity) but provided a wide berth for personal beliefs.

I was drawn, like many before me, for reasons summed up in my favourite G.K. Chesterton quote of all time,

The Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

In the Catholic Church, doctrine matters.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it matters in many other circles too. Often, unfortunately, these Christian circles are often given the disparaging label of Fundamental. And, truthfully, religion which holds up particular doctrines as the be all and end all of everything—to the detriment of relationships, evangelism, and Christian love—are difficult to label as truly Christ-like.

But there must be a place for doctrine.

And doctrine must matter.

It is what helps us swim against the flow; to avoid becoming a slave of our age.

Because the Early Church wrestled for it; lived for it and died for it. Because the Christians who spoke and wrote and preached against ideas like Arianism and Gnosticism firmly believed that it mattered. Because our Christian forebearers, whether Catholic or Protestant, thought it important enough to forever fracture the Christian Church over it (and the Eastern Churches before that).

The stakes were high because doctrine mattered.

Living in what Pope Benedict XVI famously called the “dictatorship of relativism” it’s certainly difficult to come to terms with a religion that holds certain things to be absolutely true. A religion which produced creeds, for example, which plainly spell out our beliefs.

But I do not think—and neither do our Popes—that we’ve somehow evolved by coming to a juncture where “what we believe” doesn’t really matter.

This isn’t progress.

What we believe matters, because it mattered then.

It never stopped mattering.

As an Evangelical, I became Catholic because I came to believe in what the Catholic Church taught. I couldn’t remain Protestant because of my beliefs; because of doctrine.

To live rightly, to reflect Christ in our actions and attitude, and to love others exuberantly, these are important things. These, too, are things which the Early Christians died for. But these same passionate Early Christians—the great apostles and disciples—also died for doctrine, too.

We need to trust God, we need to love others, but we also, ultimately, need to try to get it right too.

Because doctrine matters.

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