1 Reading Scripture and Developing Doctrine For Christian believers, no one captivates the attention, moves the affections, or stirs the imagination like Jesus of Nazareth. He is the visible display—the perfect icon—of the inexhaustible love and power of an invisible God (Col. 1:15). What we know of this Jesus we have read in the writings of the New Testament. These first-century texts are the gateway to Christ, the “primary sources” on which we base our historical, theological, and practical beliefs about him. Through the theologically flavored biographies, ecclesial missives, and dream- like visions contained within, we can get to know him and get a glimpse of the impact he had on his earliest followers. Yet nowhere do the texts that reveal him reduce their description of him to a systematic description or an orderly set of facts. Nowhere does the New Testament resemble a question-and-answer catechism. New Testament writers attribute to him many names: “Messiah,” “Lord,” “Savior,” “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” “King,” “the image of the invisible God,” “the Head of the church,” “the firstborn from the dead,” “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” “the Good Shepherd,” 25 IN DEFENSE OF DOCTRINE “the True Vine,” and many others. But no one of these titles or metaphorical descriptions fully encompasses his significance for Christian belief and practice. While our words can never exhaust the embarrassment of riches that comes with knowing Christ, believers do need a shorthand way of describing him, a way of talking about him “on-the-go.” As an evangelical concerned with sharing the gospel or of Jesus evangel Christ, I want to tell everyone I can about his person and work in the most effective way I can. Whether I am preaching a sermon or engaged in personal evangelism, I need a concise way of talking about him that does not feel like an extended seminary curriculum on the historical Jesus and New Testament Christology. As invaluable as that kind of extended treatment may be, I don’t always have the time or the patient hearing that such a detailed description would require. I need to “cut to the chase,” to get to the main point. I need a way of expressing the historical and theological meaning of Jesus’ life and mission for those who do not have a comprehensive background in the religious and political history of early Judaism. In sharing the good news of Jesus, I need to get to the matter of Jesus is and who people should care. why So how do I give a contemporary and concise expression to the message of the Bible in terms that they can understand without oversimplifying the complexities and nuances of the historical record or without diminishing the theological richness of the biblical witness? The short answer is . Doctrine (from the Latin term doctrine , meaning “teaching”) is doctrīna the verbal articulation of Christian . Doctrine is an expression of “what we believe” in summary beliefs statements, most often appearing in the form of propositional statements. As New Testament scholar N. T. Wright aptly describes them, the doctrines expressed in Christian creeds and theology function like 26 READING SCRIPTURE AND DEVELOPING DOCTRINE “portable narratives.” Doctrines are like the biblical story packed in a suitcase, ready to go. They consciously tell the story—precisely the scriptural story!—from creation to new creation, focusing particularly, of course, on Jesus and summing up what Scripture says about him in a powerful, brief narrative (a process that we can already see happening within the New Testament itself). When the larger story needs to be put within a particular discourse, for argumentative, didactic, rhetorical, or whatever other purpose, it makes sense, and is not inimical to its own character, to telescope it together and allow it, suitably bagged up, to take its place in that new context—just as long as we realize that it will collect mildew if we leave it in its bag forever.1 As the portable expressions of biblical teaching, “doctrines” or “doctrinal formulations” are not synonymous with revealed ideas or the inspired teachings of the Bible. Biblical authors certainly model the practice of doctrine for us with . Doctrines, as I use the term in this book, are biblical doctrine primarily and postcanonical expressions of the content of Christian belief shaped by particular historical and interpretations of Scripture conceptual frameworks. Though they take their shape and substance from Scripture, doctrinal constructs are not necessarily semantically or conceptually identical to the particular teachings expressed by biblical authors. The Holy Spirit may have “fixed” the meaning or substance of biblical texts in the process of inspiring biblical authors, but the articulation of that substance in postcanonical Christian doctrine is an ongoing process. , a term derived from the Greek terms , meaning Theology theos “God,” and , meaning “word” or “reason,” describes the broad logos category of disciplines committed to explicating these Christian 1. N. T. Wright, “Reading Paul, Thinking Scripture,” in Scripture’s Doctrine and Theology’s , ed. Markus Bockmuehl and Alan J. Bible: How the New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), 64. 27 IN DEFENSE OF DOCTRINE doctrines or teachings. One such discipline, —the biblical theology study of the particular expressions of biblical doctrine found in the Old and New Testaments that gives specific attention to the arguments, historical situations, and nuances of individual units of text—has a crucial and proper role in the church and academy.2 In addition to biblical theology, there is also a need for systematic . Systematic theology or constructive theology is a discipline theology committed to articulating the message of the Christian faith in such a way that it addresses the particular questions and concerns that contemporary hearers may have along the way. Whenever we try to explain a biblical doctrine in our own words or relate it to a new situation, we have moved from biblical doctrine toward postcanonical doctrinal formulation. While the formal, academic discipline of systematic theology is a later historical development, the habit of developing doctrine in a way that is both orderly and germane to its context is an ancient practice. With their liturgical functions, creeds are by no means “systematic theologies” in the academic sense, but they did emerge as postcanonical attempts to articulate and express the meaning of Scripture for their contemporary audiences. For example, the fathers who penned the Nicene Creed (325/381) and the Chalcedonian Creed (451) proffered their own confessions or “portable narratives” in the fourth and fifth centuries in order to address particular questions pertinent the internal conflicts of the church. These developments were more than products of insatiable intellectual curiosity; they emerged in a context of devotion and prayer. As Thomas F. Torrance observes, “We have found in these centuries 2. The definitions of “biblical theology” are legion. Where two or three biblical scholars have gathered, there are probably five or six different ways to conceive of the nebulous task that is “biblical theology.” A recent, helpful introduction to these various models of biblical theology comes in Edward Klink III and Darian R. Lockett, Understanding Biblical Theology: A (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012). Comparison of Theory and Practice 28 READING SCRIPTURE AND DEVELOPING DOCTRINE a continuing tradition characterised by a deep intertwining of faith and godliness, understanding and worship, under the creative impact of the primary evangelical convictions imprinted upon the mind of the Church in its commitment to God’s self-revelation through the incarnate Son and in the Holy Spirit.”3 Yet in order to develop these creedal formulations, the theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries did take on the task of constructive doctrinal development in order to give fuller expression to their understanding of Christian revelation. As R. P. C. Hanson observes in his magisterial study on the Arian controversy of the fourth century, the “theologians of the Christian Church were slowly driven to a realization that the deepest questions which face Christianity cannot be answered in purely biblical language, because the questions .”4 While much of the are about the meaning of biblical language itself language of these creeds is puzzling to contemporary hearers with little or no interest in Greco-Roman metaphysics, these portable narratives were quite fitting to the particular intellectual climate in which they grew (a place so culturally saturated with Platonist and Neo-Platonist philosophical presuppositions that it could have been called “the Platonic belt”). The Nicene bishops describe Christ as being God, having the “same essence as the Father” ( ). They insisted that Jesus is homoousios not merely similar to God in his essence ( ). Christ is not homoiousios 3. Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 44. Church 4. See R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, (London/New York: T&T Clark, 1988), xxi. Hanson does distinguish between 318-381 genuine doctrinal development and doctrinal distortion. See R. P. C. Hanson and Reginald Fuller, The (London: SCM, 1948), 102. Hanson and Fuller (1915–2007) Church of Rome: A Dissuasive write, “Genuine development of Christian doctrine . has taken place only in the enunciation of certain formulae necessary to protect the original tradition of the Church from error. These formulae are only , necessary to salvation, in as far as points of controversy have been de fide raised to which they could be the only answer if the witness of the Bible to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ was to be maintained in its truth.” 29 IN DEFENSE OF DOCTRINE a created being who has “God-like” qualities.