It may seem very attractive to see Jesus as some sort of projection or validation of our own standards and aspirations. Yet if we allow that Jesus has authority simply because he echoes what we happen to believe to be right, we are setting ourselves above him in judgement. It is our own concepts of morality, our own standards (wherever they come from) that are judging him. And all too often those standards are little more than the prejudices of our own culture. By judging Jesus in this way, we lock ourselves into our own situation. We are prisoners of our culture, unable to see its limitations. We are unwilling to accept criticism from outside it. If Jesus echoes our own values and aspirations, we gladly accept his support; if Jesus should happen to challenge them, we dismiss him, or choose to ignore the challenge.
Jesus is thus denied any possibility of transforming us by challenging our presuppositions. We are reluctant to hear him when he does not echo our own liberal voices. (The rush to 'contextualise' or 'relativise' Jesus where he seems to conflict with modern values is an interesting illustration of this process.) If Jesus has any authority in this way, it is simply as a passive echo of our own ideas and values.
It is for this reason that doctrine is of central importance. Christianity does not assert that Christ has authority on account of the excellence or acceptability of his teaching; rather, the teaching of Christ has authority and validity on account of who he is - God incarnate. The object of Christian faith is not the teachings, but the teacher. The New Testament provides ample justification of this point; throughout his writings, Paul begins by making doctrinal affirmations, and then proceeds to draw moral conclusions. Doctrine comes first; moral and religious principles follow. For example, the doctrine of the resurrection leads to an attitude of hope in the face of adversity; the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ leads to an attitude of humility on the part of believers; the doctrine of the reconciliation of believers to God through Christ leads to a plea that believers should be reconciled with one another.
The inevitability of doctrine
In fact, the identity and significance of Jesus can only be spelled out in doctrinal terms. 'We cannot go on treating and believing in Jesus Christ in a way in which it would be wrong to treat and believe in another man, without a theory of his person that explains that he is something more than man' (Charles Gore).6 It is doctrine which explains why and how Jesus' words and deeds have divine, rather than purely human, authority. It is doctrine which singles out Jesus Christ, and none other, as being God incarnate. Quite contrary to the Broad Church liberals of the nineteenth century (who believed it was possible to uphold the religious and ethical aspects of Christianity, while discarding its doctrines) and their spiritual heirs of today, the authority of Jesus' moral and religious teaching thus rests firmly upon a doctrinal foundation.
This point was made clearly and prophetically by William Temple. Writing against the 'Religion without Dogma' movement in 1942, he declared that:
You would hardly find any theologian now who supposes that Christian ethics can survive for half a century in detachment from Christian doctrine, and this is the very last moment when the church itself can come forward with outlines of Christian ethics in the absence of the theological foundation which alone makes them really tenable. Our people have grown up in a generally Christian atmosphere, and take it for granted that all people who are not actually perverted hold what are essentially Christian notions about human conduct. But this is not true.7
(Temple then goes on to illustrate this point with reference to the rise of Hitler and Stalin in the 1930s.) Although many liberal and radical writers of the 1960s suggested that Christian ethics could be divorced from doctrine, and maintain an independent existence, the wisdom of
Temple's words is once more apparent. As recent writers such as Oliver O'Donovan have insisted, distinctive ethics (whether Marxist, Christian or Buddhist) are dependent upon world-views, which are in turn shaped by doctrines, by understandings of human nature and destiny.8
Liberalism seemed to me to teach that doctrine was superfluous. Yet I gradually realised that liberalism had its own doctrines. The economist J. M. Keynes came across similar attitudes among industrialists and politicians. 'We're practical people who have no need for abstract theories about economics,' they declared. Yet these people, Keynes scathingly remarked, were little more than the unwitting slaves of some defunct economist. Their allegedly 'practical' outlook actually rested upon unacknowledged economic theories. They lacked the insight to see that what they regarded as obvious was actually based upon the theories of some long-dead economist.
Liberalism, I realised, itself rests upon quite definite doctrinal foundations, despite allowing itself to be represented as an anti-doctrinal movement. The study of doctrine is thus profoundly liberating, as it exposes these hidden doctrinal assumptions. Every version of Christianity that has ever existed rests upon doctrinal foundations; not every version of Christianity has grasped this fact. The genuine question of importance is quite simple: Which of those doctrinal foundations are the most authentic and reliable?
How is the 'cross' good news?
This point became increasingly clear to me as I reflected on the question of why Christianity can be said to be good news. I found the importance of this question to my pastoral work becoming ever more evident during my time in the parish. Time and time again, my regular parish visiting suggested that people had real difficulty in understanding how the death of a man two thousand years ago could be good news for them today. The liberal vocabulary of the cross began to seem rather pathetic to me, as it so obviously failed to gain a hearing.
Now, it had been drilled into me that liberalism was relevant to the modern world, where evangelicalism was not. Yet liberal approaches to the cross seemed an irrelevance in my parish ministry. It is not good news if a man, after a life of self-giving and care for his fellows, should be harried, tortured, mocked and finally executed in a triumphant display of barbarity. It is no gospel if this man reveals the love of one human being for another, far far away and long long ago.
It becomes good news, however, if it is the Son of God himself who gives himself in order that we might come to newness of life. It becomes good news if these events are interpreted in terms of a sufficiently high profile of identity between Jesus and God, such as that set out by the doctrine of the incarnation. The cross is good news because it proclaims the reality of the love of God to the world. It points to Jesus Christ upon the cross, and declares, 'God loved the world this much' (see John 3:16). The death of Jesus Christ upon the cross is therefore only good news if it is interpreted in a certain way.
Doctrine defines how the cross of Christ is to be interpreted. To put it another way, it provides an interpretative framework for understanding the events of Calvary. Doctrine aims to explain what it is about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which is good news. It aims to explain and justify the vital connection between the 'there and then' of Calvary and the 'here and now' of our own situation. It is an interpretative bridge between history and faith, between the past and the present. It relates the events of Calvary to our own experience, interpreting the latter in terms of the former.
Doctrine and the mind
Doctrine also represents a natural outcome of human inquisitiveness and intelligence. Human beings are rational creatures. They ask questions - questions like: 'Why?' As
Plato stressed, there is a natural human desire to 'give an account of things'. Why are we being asked to accept the teachings of Jesus Christ? Why is he singled out among other human beings? This need to make sense of things applies equally to matters of Christian faith. For example, the crucifixion and resurrection are things which need to be explained. Why did they happen? What do they mean? In his 1891 Bampton Lectures, delivered at Oxford University, Charles Gore pointed out that this natural human inquisitiveness has its religious outcome in doctrine:
Christians found themselves treating Jesus Christ, believing in Jesus Christ, as they had never treated or believed in any other man . . . Because they were rational they must have asked themselves 'Why do we treat Jesus Christ in this exceptional manner? Who is he to be so treated? What is his relation to God whose functions he exercises? Why are we not idolaters if we yield him such worship?' They must have asked these questions because they were men endowed with reason, and could not therefore go on acting without giving some account of their action.9
Doctrine is nothing other than the attempt of rational believers to make sense of every aspect of their experience of Jesus Christ. If conversion involves the mind as well as the soul, doctrine is its inevitable outcome, as the believer brings his or her mind to bear on the implications of faith. To be a thinking Christian is to be aware of the need for, and importance of, doctrine.
Doctrine thus attempts to make explicit the implicit assumptions of faith. For example, faith believes that we have been saved through Jesus Christ; doctrine asserts that this belief implies that Jesus must be both God and man if this is to be possible. Doctrine is basically the outcome of taking rational trouble over the mysteries of faith. To prohibit this rational reflection in order to develop a 'Christianity without doctrine' is to deny Christians the right to think about their faith. Doctrinal reflection is the product of a passionate search for truth, combining intellectual curiosity and honesty.
To be concerned about doctrine is not to be obsessed with petty matters; it is to be aware of the enormous responsibility placed upon us, as we try to grasp exactly what God is like, and what that might entail for our hearts and minds. Doctrine matters because God matters - and because we matter to God. If God has taken so much trouble to enter into our pathetic and sinful world, the very least we can do is to be attentive to him. Doctrine is the outcome of a caring and committed attentiveness on our part to God telling us about himself.
Only a fool would imagine that doctrine pretends to state exhaustively everything about God in the form of human words. But words are the only means at our disposal to tell others about God, and about his nature and purposes. That means we must get those words right. It means taking care to use words responsibly. Doctrine aims to assist our talk about God, guiding us as we try to explain the gospel to outsiders, or gain a deeper understanding of it ourselves, or think through its implications for our society. To those who mutter darkly about doctrine getting in the way of the real business of life, it may be said that doctrine does not preclude, but informs, action. It forces us to think through what sort of action is most in line with the patterns God himself has set us, in the person of Jesus Christ and in the testimony of scripture. As church history makes painfully clear, not all the actions of the church merit the name 'Christian'. Doctrine aims to ensure that our actions do. There is far more to Christianity than doctrine. The Puritan slogan 'truth in life' has much to commend it. Doctrine affects life. It determines values, and thus actions. It is like the bones which give strength and shape to the human body. It is like the steel rods which reinforce concrete structures. Without doctrine, faith becomes shapeless, weak and vulnerable. Doctrine addresses, interprets and transforms human experience, in order that a dynamic, living and resilient faith may result. Doctrine inside the head is an irrelevance; life without doctrine is an impossibility-Doctrine and life complement each other - and are meant to complement each other. The doctrine of a loving God who became incarnate in his world gives rise to loving people, who aim to serve God in that same world. The doctrine of the forgiveness of our sins gives birth to a forgiving people, just as the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead brings into being a people of hope, who know their final destiny lies outside this world. Doctrine enables God's story to express itself in our story, and transform it. George Herbert's little-known poem 'The Windows' brings out this point rather well:
Lord, how can man preach the eternall word?
He is a brittle crazie glasse:
Yet in they temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, though thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glasse they storie,
Making ty life to shine within,
The holy Preachers; then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, and more doth win:
Which else shows watrish, bleak and thin.
Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring,
A strong regard and aw: but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the eare, not conscience ring.
Why doctrine? Because Christians think and act. That thinking and acting needs to be informed. Christianity is just too important to allow itself to be reduced to a 'watery, bleak and thin' set of ideas, or the shallowness and mind-lessness of unthinking action in the world. The rest of the essays in this volume aim to spell out how doctrine affects life. The purpose of this essay is to insist that doctrine provides a firm foundation upon which the Christian life may be built. And in a world plagued by superficiality, a firm foundation remains of essential importance.
<pNotes
1John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1977); James Barr, Fundamentalism (London: SCM Press, 1977).
2Some of these points are developed at greater length in my book Understanding Doctrine: Its Purpose and Relevance for Today (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991). For two more scholarly approaches to the same issue, see George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (London: SPCK, 1984); Alister E. McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
3Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1. 6. 2.
4This approach is vigorously defended in John Hick and Paul F. Knitter (eds.), The Myth of Christian
Uniqueness (London: SCM Press, 1987), which interestingly - failed to attract anything even approaching the same interest as John Hick (ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1977). For a vigorous scholarly refutation of the pluralism of this approach, see Gavin D'Costa (ed.), Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990).
5C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Collins, 1956), pp. 132-3.
6Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God (London: John Murray, 1922), p. 23.
7Letter cited in F. A. Iremonger, William Temple (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 490.
8Oliver O'Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1986).
9Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God, p. 22.
Questions for discussion
1.Can anyone be a Christian without believing something!
2.What are some of the uses of doctrine?
3.Why do some people find the idea of 'doctrine' very intimidating?
4.What would be the effect of eliminating doctrine from Christianity?
For further reading
JamesAtkinsonandRowanWilliams,'OnDoing Theology', in C. Baxter (ed.), Stepping Stones (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987), 1-20
Paul Avis, Ecumenical Theology and the Elusiveness of Doctrine (London: SPCK, 1986)
Hendrikus Berkhof, Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979) Charles Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God (London: John Murray, 1922)
C. S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?" In C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection, 1-21. (London: Collins, 2000)
Alister E. McGrath, Understanding Doctrine (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991)
Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction. 4th edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)
Alister McGrath, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (London: SPCK, 2009)
Dorothy L. Sayers, 'Creed or Chaos?', in Creed or Chaos? (London: Methuen, 1947), pp. 25-46
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005)
J. S. Whale, Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941)
Revd Dr Alister McGrath studied natural sciences and theology at Oxford and Cambridge serving as curate at St Leonard's, Wollaton, Nottingham. He is presently Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College, London, and head of its Centre for Theology, Religion, and Culture. He previously taught theology at Oxford University, serving both as Principal of Wycliffe Hall, and as Oxford University's Professor of Historical Theology. He has a particular concern for theological engagement with current cultural concerns, and has been a leading critic of the "new atheism". His next book, to be published in 2010 by SPCK, is entitled "Mere Theology: Christian Faith and the Discipleship of the Mind". It consists of eleven recent unpublished lectures (2007-9), several of which deal with the challenge of the "new atheism".
These posts are by guest authors for Fulcrum