Whose doctrine is it?

I see it has been 22 days since I last posted to this blog. No reason or excuse other than just taking a mental break. I haven’t been motivated with anything to share, actually.

But for the last couple of days I have been thinking about something that I want to explore, and so I will invite you along as I set upon the exploration. I am just now beginning to gather my thoughts and resources. I don’t know where it will lead me, so if you have input I’ll be happy to hear it.

I just now turned commenting back on. If I get negative or antagonistic comments I’ll either turn them back off or limit them to certain addresses. If you are far right in your theology please drift off somewhere else. I will not debate or even listen to you. Sorry, but I have that privilege.

I want to explore the idea, form and power of doctrine. This came about as a result of a conversation I had about 6 months ago. I will quote the comment here as best I remember it.

“Why would you go to a church that doesn’t teach a doctrine you agree with?” (Sorry for ending the sentence with a preposition, I quoted the person verbatim.)

I wrote a several page response to the first part of that statement but reduced it to the statement “Why do I go to church?”

I didn’t publish that because I never finished it to my satisfaction. I did come to the basic succinct conclusion, however, that I go to church to be challenged in my walk of faith and in my knowledge of scripture.

But to pick up the second part, and the intent of the original question, I decided to explore this idea and understanding of doctrine. I believe the word is very often misapplied in Christian lingo.

We could spend considerable time on Christian lingo that is often total nonsense to people who were not raised in a Christian environment. I think Christians use way too much lingo and need remember that the specialized words and phrases within the church are not always understood by the people outside the church.

But that aside, and left for another day, I wanted to look into the word DOCTRINE and see how it is used by theologians, biblical scholars and writers, and sacred text researchers.

I found this entry on dictionary.com for starters:
doc-trine  noun
1. a particular principle, position, or policy taught or advocated, as of a religion or government: Catholic doctrines; the Monroe Doctrine.

2. something that is taught; teachings collectively: religious doctrine.

3. a body or system of teachings relating to a particular subject: the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

Next I looked at dictionary.com’s list of synonyms:

article, article of faith, attitude, axiom, basic, belief, canon, concept, convention, conviction, credenda, creed, declaration, dogma, fundamental, gospel, implantation, inculcation, indoctrination, instruction, position, precept, pronouncement, propaganda, proposition, regulation, rule, statement, teaching, tenet, tradition, universal law, unwritten rule.

Looking at Wikipedia for doctrine I found this entry:

Doctrine (Latin: doctrina) is a codification of beliefs or “a body of teachings” or “instructions”, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system. The Greek analogy is the etymology of catechism.

Often doctrine specifically connotes a corpus of religious dogma as it is promulgated by a church, but not necessarily: doctrine is also used to refer to a principle of law, in the common law traditions, established through a history of past decisions, such as the doctrine of self-defense, or the principle of fair use, or the more narrowly applicable first-sale doctrine. In some organisations [sic], doctrine is simply defined as 'that which is taught', in other words the basis for institutional teaching of its personnel about its internal ways of doing business.

The word doctrine is used 51 times in the KJV. 21 of those times it was at the hand of Paul, unless further research determines that Paul may not have had full authorship of 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and Hebrews.

If you study the Pauline writings at any length you will find that he often seemed to twist the words of Jesus and very egregiously add his own slant to the words of Jesus. Paul puts into rules things that Jesus never spoke of. Paul set forth boundaries and restrictions that would have made Jesus wonder if he, Paul, had left his senses.

I won’t go into the differences in opinions of Paul here, you can explore that yourself, but I will remind you that Paul never met Jesus. Paul never heard Jesus. By his own admission he was an apostle born out of season, i.e. after Jesus had ascended to the Father. He didn’t mean he was physically born after Jesus’ ascension, he meant he came to faith in Jesus after Jesus’ ascension. But scholars are in unison in believing Paul never met or heard Jesus.

So Paul takes some very tough liberties with statements he is hearing third person.

Back to doctrine.

It is my opinion that the word doctrine, in its simplest and base form, is a person’s or an organization’s basic tenets for functioning and conduct.

Taking that one more step in the context of this entry, a church’s doctrine should be nothing more than that taught by Jesus if that church is going to claim to be Christian.

No if you want to claim to be of Paul then your doctrine should follow Paul’s ideas, concepts and boundaries for functioning and conduct.

I believe every person must establish, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, their own functioning and conduct boundaries which will not have conflict with the teachings of Christ, because Christ and the Holy Spirit are two parts of the one Trinity.

It is further my belief that a church that completely echoes your personal doctrine only does so because instead of establishing personal doctrine you have simply adopted the church’s doctrine as your own.

Dangerous.

My opinion.

A meager beginning to a deep topic. I will, as I have the energy and time, explore this further. The comments of those invited to this blog are welcome.

Bruce