Why study christian doctrines

Every day, at some point and in some way, we'll try to make sense out of our lives. Some will dig through the mound of artifacts from our past, looking back on their journey and trying to figure out "if only" they had or hadn't done this or that. Others will endlessly toss around their current situations, locations and relationships, evaluating certain responses compared to others. Still more will gaze into the future, hoping to somehow divine what's to come and prepare themselves for it.

Chances are, you've probably done all three already today. Or, if you're reading this in the morning, it won't be long before you do. Every human being has constructed a superstructure of life assumptions that functions as the instrument they use to make sense of life. It can be the result of a combination of things, such as upbringing, education, life experiences, and personality traits, but we all look at life through this interpretive grid. I want you to stop and write down that sentence.

If there's only one thing you take away from this long article, it needs to be this concept. It's crucial that you become more conscious of the vibrant mental activity that so influences the choices you make, the words you speak, and the things you desire. You and I don't act out of instinct like the rest of the creatures in the animal kingdom.

We don't do what we do because of what we're experiencing in the moment. Rather, we think, speak, and act based on the way we've thought about and interpreted what we're experiencing. Social experiments have proven this time and time again. If you place three different people in the very same situation, they can have three remarkably different reactions. Because each individual has interpreted that situation through their personal thinking grid. The God who designed you to be a thinker is the same God who inspired the writers of the Old and New Testaments to pen his truths.

God hardwired us to view life through an interpretative grid, and he also gave us his Word to shape that grid. The Bible is a book, filled with doctrine, that defines what is good, right and true. A loving Creator gave it to his dependent creatures so they would know how to properly make sense out of life. Or, to phrase it differently, the Bible is the tangible result of the "Meaning Giver" explaining foundational truths to the "meaning makers" he created.

Every person who has ever lived exists in desperate need of the unfolded mysteries that make up the content of Scripture. Without it, we wouldn't know how to think about life. We wouldn't know for sure if what we knew was true, and we wouldn't know if what we thought we knew was good and morally right! Volumes may approach perceived boundaries if their excellent engagement with Scripture deserves a hearing. We seek fresh understanding of Christian doctrine through creatively faithful engagement with Scripture.

To some fellow evangelicals and interested others today, we commend the classic evangelical commitment of engaging Scripture.

To other fellow evangelicals today, we commend a contemporary aim to engage Scripture with creative fidelity. The church is to be always reforming—but always reforming according to the Word of God. The classic evangelical aspiration has been to mirror the form, not just the content, of Scripture as closely as possible in our theology.

That aspiration has potential drawbacks: It can foster naive prooftexting, flatten biblical diversity, and stifle creative cultural engagement with a biblicist idiom. Thus in Theology and the Mirror of Scripture we propose a rubric for applying biblical theology to doctrinal judgments in a way that preserves evangelical freedom yet promotes the primacy of Scripture. At the ends of the spectrum, biblical theology can 1 rule out theological proposals that contradict scriptural judgments or cohere poorly with other concepts, and it can 5 require proposals that appeal to what is clear and central in Scripture.

In between, it can 2 permit proposals that do not contradict Scripture, 3 support proposals that appeal creatively although indirectly or implicitly to Scripture, and 4 relate theological teaching to church life by using familiar scriptural language as much as possible.

This spectrum offers considerable freedom for evangelical theology to mirror the biblical wisdom found in Christ with contextual creativity. Yet it simultaneously encourages evangelical theologians to reflect biblical wisdom not just in their judgments but also in the very idioms of their teaching.

We do not promote a singular method; we welcome proposals appealing to biblical theology, the history of interpretation, theological interpretation of Scripture, or still other approaches. We welcome projects that engage in detailed exegesis as well as those that appropriate broader biblical themes and patterns. Ultimately, we hope to promote relating Scripture to doctrinal understanding in material, not just formal, ways.

As noted above, the fresh understanding we seek may not involve altogether novel claims—which might well land in heresy! Again, in Theology and the Mirror of Scripture we offer an illustrative, nonexhaustive rubric for encouraging various forms of evangelical theological scholarship: projects shaped primarily by 1 hermeneutics, 2 integrative biblical theology, 3 stewardship of the Great Tradition, 4 church dogmatics, 5 intellectual history, 6 analytic theism, 7 living witness, and 8 healing resistance.

While some of these scholarly shapes probably fit the present series better than others, all of them reflect practices that can help evangelical theologians to make more faithfully biblical judgments and to generate more creatively constructive scholarship.

The volumes in the SCDS series will therefore reflect quite varied approaches. They will be similar in engaging one or more biblical texts as a key aspect of their contributions while going beyond exegetical recital or descriptive biblical theology, yet those biblical contributions themselves will be manifold.

Beyond existing efforts to enhance understanding of themes and corpora in biblical theology, then, we hope to foster engagement with Scripture that bears on and learns from loci, themes, or crucial questions in classic dogmatics and contemporary systematic theology. Series authors and editors will reflect several church affiliations and doctrinal backgrounds. And again, the more you know of God, the warmer the heart behind your worship and the deeper the expression of your worship.

His knowledge of God led directly to worship of God. Finally, doctrine leads to safety. It protects the church. When you know doctrine, you are able to defend your church from those who would want to lead it astray. A church that cares little for doctrine, and a church without people who know and love doctrine, is a church that will necessarily be blown and swayed by every wind and wave of doctrine.

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Toggle navigation. Reviews Latest Reviews By Category. Subscribe by email Receive every article in your inbox by subscribing below. If we view the Christian life as one of merely loving Jesus and loving others, at the expense of understanding theological truths, we are ill-equipped to guard the doctrine that has been handed down to us. Consider this recently published survey from Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research. That such basic elements of the Christian faith could be misunderstood by significant portions of Christians displays a shocking ignorance of biblical doctrine.

Having a firm grasp of correct doctrine prevents us from adopting false doctrine. Doctrinal study grounds our morality in the truth of Scripture and enables us to live God-honoring lives. It also allows us to articulate our beliefs in a consistent and biblical manner. Studying doctrine allows us to live out the Christian faith with clarity, confidence, and consistency. Yes, doctrinal truths are often presented with unfamiliar and complicated terminology. Even so, it is important to take the time to understand what the Bible teaches about salvation Soteriology , Christ Christology , the church Ecclesiology and other essential doctrines.

These topics are not reserved for the academically minded. These truths have been entrusted to all believers and we have a responsibility to understand and preserve them. Ready to begin studying Christian doctrine? This will help you learn concise, historical statements of the faith.

To dig deeper, consider studying the London Baptist Confession of Faith.