Never To Be Separated

Why Doctrine and Devotion Must Never Be Separated by Ray Ortlund, Jr.

Doctrine + Devotion

The Bible calls men today to lead in their churches and in their homes through both doctrine and devotion.

What is “doctrine”? The word simply refers to biblical teaching. So no man should fear this word. You can ponder the Lord, by his grace. But if you resist theological thinking, that mentality itself is teaching something, and what it’s saying is really bad doctrine.
What is “devotion”? This word simply refers to heartfelt feeling. So no man should look down on devotion. You can love the Lord, by his grace. But if you resist devotional feeling, that feeling itself is captivating your heart with really bad devotion.

But if your Christianity is both doctrine and devotion, both head and heart, and increasingly so as you grow and mature, then you are truly following the Lord.

Here is where the Bible takes us: All doctrine should be devotional, and all devotion should be doctrinal. This is the full-orbed kind of Christianity that we see everywhere in Scripture.

Sometimes men come from a background where doctrine was under-emphasized, and now they are excited about learning and growing and thinking and understanding. Good! But as you grow, don’t lose devotion. If you have doctrine without devotion, you will become proud, hard, aloof, and superior. And the gospel-team will lose yardage because of you.

One or the Other Just Isn't Enough

Sometimes men come from a background where devotion was under-emphasized, and now they are excited about worship and prayer and sharing and feeling. Good! But as you grow, don’t lose doctrine. If you have devotion without doctrine, you will become self-indulgent, gullible, vulnerable, and shallow. And the gospel-team will lose yardage because of you.

But if you have doctrine with devotion and devotion with doctrine, both head and heart, if your thinking is tenderized with great love for the Lord and your love strengthened with great thoughts of the Lord, you will become a well-rounded, balanced, wise, formidable, attractive man whose influence is the very influence of Jesus himself. And your life will be a touchdown for the team.

Which emphasis do you need to add to your Christianity right now? Are you growing deeper in doctrine and knowledge and insight and understanding? What significant books have you read in 2015? Not just dipped into but read. From cover to cover. And are you growing deeper in devotion and enthusiasm and passion and energy? What tears have you shed in 2015—tears of joy, of longing, of repentance, of worship? Not just a twinge of feeling but ravished by the glory of the Lord. Personal meltdown.

The Bible is God’s primary mechanism for deepening every one of us every day in both doctrine and devotion.

Who Is Orthodox

An "oldie but goodie" article by Michael Patton - Six Views on What It Means To be Orthodox

Have you ever been called a heretic? Have you ever had someone say that your faith is “unorthodox”? Have you ever wondered what it meant to be “orthodox”? No, I don’t mean Greek Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox. I am talking about orthodoxy which carries the meaning of “straight or right teaching and worship.”

The answer is not easy. For some people, “orthodoxy” is a shallow word meaning that you agree with them. For others, it means you agree with their particular denomination or local church confession. For many, it is a meaningless heavy handed designation that should no longer be used.

What does it mean to be orthodox in your beliefs?

There are really six primary views that I find represented in the church today. I am going to try to explain these views using both established and original terminology....

Read it all at the link.

Like It or Not, You Are A Theologian

Are you a theologian? Of course you are! Do you have a systematic theology? Of course you do! The only remaining questions are how good of a theologian you are, and how orthodox your theology is.

The excerpt below is from "The Myth of Non-Theology and Neutrality" by Lisa Robinson

As I observed a few discussion threads over the past few days on Christian topics, a theme tends to emerge. Some Christians disdain any mention of theology, doctrine or hermeneutics. You’ll get one pitted against each such as theology vs true faith or doctrine vs scripture. A typical statement goes like this that one person told me – “theology and doctrine has its place but that is not the substance of our faith.” Of course this is a ridiculous statement..

Every Christian has a theology, a set of doctrine and a hermeneutic. Everyone!

Theology is whatever we think about God.

Doctrine is what we believe that theology teaches.

Hermeneutics is how we interpret what theology teaches.

If you say the substance of your faith is Jesus Christ, then you have to come to some conclusions about what that means, who he is and how you arrive at your conclusions. This is the task of theology and without it, you have no reasonable basis to come to any conclusions about the Christian faith.

This also supposes that you have some way of interpreting the facts about the Christian faith. From a Protestant perspective, this presumes that one is basing their understanding on the Bible, recognizing that it is the testimony of Jesus Christ cover to cover, breathed out by God to give us his word through the pens, personalities, and literary style of 40 authors (2 Tim. 3:16-17).  The problem then is not knowing what it is and believing that we have complete neutrality when approaching the Bible or using other means to determine our faith. We all have some way of formulating what we believe and why we believe it.....

Good article - Read it all at the link.

5 Tips (Part 2)

Part Two from Five Tips for Finding Your Theological Balance by Derek Rishmawy:

Finding your theological balance indeed can be difficult, so here are five tips for those of us still in process.

1. Read your Bible like crazy.

You can't know the Scriptures too well. And by "knowing the Scriptures" I don't just mean the canon-within-a-canon you've chosen for yourself out of three Pauline epistles and a Gospel, or from the books of Matthew and James. Get a few prophets, Old Testament narratives, and even some Torah in there. God gave us 66 books to reveal himself, so ignoring bits will inevitably leave you off-balance. Get this one wrong and the rest won't matter.

2. Read more than one theologian.

Focusing on that one pastor or thinker to the exclusion of others is a recipe for imbalance. As a limited, fallible human, your hero will be myopic somewhere. Expand your horizons. Read outside your tradition a bit. Wander outside your century. Who knows what gems you'll find?

3. Read the key irenic, broadly focused theologians.

Every theologian has hobby-horses and pet issues, but some are well known for their controversies and others for their broad, even-keeled treatments of issues. Look for those theologians who are widely consulted even across traditional boundaries. If there's a Methodist or Catholic being quoted by a Reformed theologian, like Thomas Oden, go ahead and pick him up.

4. Read the key polemical theologians.

I've recently set myself the task of reading some key theologians in the early church controversies: Ireneaus against the Gnostics, Athanasius against the Arians, Cyril against the Nestorians, Augustine against the Pelagians, and so forth. These teachers demonstrated an ability to defend or preserve some necessary tension—some holy imbalance—in the faith. The ability to defend one issue clearly is often a sign of a good grasp on the whole.

5. Read about more than one subject.

This one should be obvious, but if you fixate on one issue, no matter how central it is, you'll have balance issues. It's okay to give sustained attention to interesting or key subjects, but if I've only ever read about the cross and never the resurrection or the ascension, I'll have a skewed view of Christ's person and work. What's more, narrow reading usually obscures a fuller understanding of the couple of subjects I do study since every doctrine is only meaningful within the framework of the whole.

I could easily list more, but the point is, don't be that drunk guy falling off his horse. Study widely, read deeply, and constantly check yourself against the whole of Scripture. Do that, and you may just begin to find your balance.

More Than A Feeling

From Crossroad Junction

Truth Doesn't Change

"The soundest and safest Christian reflection consists in "what you have received, not what you have thought up; a matter not of ingenuity, but of doctrine; not of private acquisition, but of public Tradition; a matter brought to you, not put forth by you, in which you must not be the author but the guardian, not the founder but the sharer, not the leader, but the follower."

-- Vincent of Lerins, quoted in Christopher Hall, Learning Theology with the Church Fathers (Intervarsity, 2002), 27.

 Hat Tip:  The Gospel-Driven Church: And So Beware Innovation:
 

Sailing With Wind and a Deep Keel

"Large spiritual passion with small doctrinal understanding is large sails and tall masts on a tiny boat in high winds. It will dart wildly over the surface for a hundred yards. Then one wave, or one crosswind, will bring it all crashing into the unforgiving sea.

Give as much attention to enlarging the depth of your ballast as you do to the height of your sails.

Of course, if you are a sixty-ton flat-surfaced barge, with a broken engine, pray for God to give you sails and wind."
            -John Piper:

Hat Tip:  Large Sails and Little Ballast « Already Not Yet:

Beams & Motes Regarding Doctrine & Life

"We rightly repudiate the common view that doctrine does not matter so long as one is upright in life; but if we let our reaction drive us into the opposite extreme of supposing that one's life does not matter so long as one is theologically 'sound' ('a good Calvinist,' we say), then the beam in our own eye will be worse than the mote in our brother's."

--J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan View of the Christian Life (Crossway 2010; repr.), 108-9

( A very good book, BTW)


Hat Tip: Strawberry-Rhubarb Theology: Packer: Doctrine, Life
 

Practical Counsel for Theological Growth

Want to grow in Theological knowledge?  Want to see your small group grapple with some deep truth?  Here's some advice from Ray Ortlund (in an interview with Joe Thorn):

"What advice would you give to the average Christian who loves Jesus and the church, but needs to grow theologically?"

"Here’s one way to jump in. Pull some friends together, everybody buy a copy of Driscoll and Breshears’ Doctrine, and work through it together. Check out the small group suggestions on pages 437-450. Read it slowly. Embrace the difficulty. Look up every word you don’t understand. Mark up your copy with questions and highlights. Get mad if you have to. But pray to God for clarity, and he’ll give it. As you read, keep checking it against the Bible, examine what your friends say too, and don’t let go until you really know what you believe. You will never be the same again."

This book is definitely on my wish list!

Hat Tip:  Justin Taylor:

Life and Doctrine - No Separation

This article by Time Keller is over a week old, but I just got around to reading it and it is GOOD!  I'm referring to "There’s No Escaping Doctrine, but Handle it With Care" at The Gospel Coalition Blog:

Keller is commenting on a sermon by David Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the book Walking with God: Studies in 1 John (Crossway, 1993). The message deals with the tension between emphasizing doctrine over life experience or vice versa.

On the Danger of promoting experience over doctrine, Keller says:

"So when you say, “I don’t care about doctrine, it’s how you live that matters,” you are ironically promoting the doctrine of justification by works. You are proposing that what God really wants is a good life. The response can be similar when someone claims that it doesn’t matter which religion you belong to, because all religions are alike and no one should be held to a particular doctrine of God. Yet that assumes that God is not holy, and that he does not hold people responsible for how they live. In other words, to say, “No one should be held to a particular view of God” is to assume and promote a particular view of God. To say, “Doctrine about God doesn’t matter” is itself a statement of doctrine about God — and therefore it does matter! So Lloyd-Jones concludes: “It is no use your saying, ‘We are not interested in doctrine; we are concerned about life’; if your doctrine is wrong, your life will be wrong” (p. 23; italics added).

On the danger of promoting doctrine over experience, he says:

However, whenever Lloyd-Jones takes up the importance of doctrine, he always points out that there is a danger on the other extreme. He speaks of some Christians and says, “There is nothing they delight in more than arguing about theology” and they do this in “a party spirit” (p. 24). One of the signs of this group is that they are either dry and theoretical in their preaching, or they can be caustic and angry. They have “lost their tempers, forgetting that by so doing they were denying the very doctrine which they claimed to believe” (p. 24). In short, ministers who go to this extreme destroy the effectiveness of their preaching. What is the cause of this? Lloyd-Jones answers that they have made accurate doctrine an end in itself, instead of a means to honor God and grow in Christ-likeness. “Doctrine must never be considered in and of itself. Scripture must never be divorced from life” (p. 25).

That is some good and wise commentary.

Update:  There is a Tim Keller Wiki resource page!

History of Heresy - A Book review

I recently read the newest book by Alister Mcgrath, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. Here's a link to a very good summary and review of the book by Kevin DeYoung,who says:

"Heresy, says McGrath, has been “sprinkled with stardust” because a (largely mistaken) notion of heresy fits the cultural mood (p. 1). Orthodoxy is thought to be pedestrian and reactionary, nothing more than the theology of the conquerors, who, no doubt, oppressed those whom they arbitrarily deemed heterodox. Heresy, on the other hand, is exciting and liberating, a subversion of authoritarianism and a vindication for victims of the past. The accomplishment of this book is that McGrath patiently demonstrates that this assumed narrative is terrifically misguided. Heretics were sometimes more patriarchal, more ascetic, and more authoritarian than their orthodox rivals. The good guys weren’t always so bad, and the bad guys weren’t always that good. Somebody tell Dan Brown."

I recommend the book.

The Good News of the Trinity

The "Threeness" is everywhere!

"Everywhere you look you can trace a trinitarian structure to Christian truth and Christian living. At creation the Father creates through his Son, breathing his Spirit into humanity. At the incarnation, the Father sends the Son into the world in the power of the Spirit. In divine revelation, the Father reveals through his Word (his Son) whose revelation comes to us in the Spirit-inspired word of God (the Bible) and speaks to our hearts through the illumination of the Spirit. We pray to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. The church is the people of God, the body of Christ and the community of the Holy Spirit. We have assurance because of the electing love of the Father, the finished work of the Son and the confirming witness of the Holy Spirit. ‘We live, move and have our being,’ says Robert Letham, ‘in a pervasively trinitarian atmosphere.’ Walter Kasper calls the Trinity ‘the grammar’ of salvation. The Son works for us and the Spirit works in us in fulfilment of the Father’s will."

Tim Chester- Theology Network - Doctrine of God - The Good News of the Trinity

The Gospel in A Christmas Carol

Yesterday I wrote about the words of the Christmas Carol “Hark, The Herald-Angels Sing” as a mini course in Biblical Theology, and a summary presentation of the Gospel.

Here is a list of Bible Doctrines I found in the words of this song after just a quick perusal.

1. Divinity of Christ: “hail, the incarnate Deity”
2. Christ’s Pre-Existence: “the everlasting Lord”
3. Kingdom of God: “the new-born King”
4: Kenosis - Christ’s humbling of Himself: “Mild he lays his glory by”
5: Incarnation: “hail, the incarnate Deity, pleased as man with man to dwell”
6: Virgin Birth of Christ: “offspring of a Virgin's womb”
7. Christ’s Righteousness: “the Sun of Righteousness”
8. Christ as Savior: “now display thy saving power”
9. Reconciliation: “God and sinners reconciled”
10. Christ’s Victory over Satan: “bruise in us the serpent's head”
11. New Birth: “born to give them second birth.”
12. New Nature in Christ: “ruined nature now restore”
13. Eternal Life: “born that man no more may die”
14. Being in Christ: “now in mystic union join, thine to ours and ours to thine”
15. Resurrection: “born to raise the sons of earth”

Can you find more?

Think about all the people who do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior who will be listening to and singing this song over the next two weeks. What an opportunity to share with them the Gospel! Lord, open our eyes to see the openings before us.

Theology Course in a Christmas Carol

I've been meditating on the words to one of the best loved Christmas hymns: Charles Wesley's "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing." There is an entire course in Biblical Theology, a summary of Bible truth, in the words to this Carol.

Hark, the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King,
peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled.
Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
join the triumph of the skies;
with the angelic host proclaim,
'Christ is born in Bethlehem.'
Hark, the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King.

Christ, by highest heaven adored,
Christ, the everlasting Lord,
late in time behold him come,
offspring of a Virgin's womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see:
hail, the incarnate Deity,
pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Hark, the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King.

Hail, the heaven-born Prince of Peace:
hail, the Sun of Righteousness.
Light and life to all he brings,
risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
born that man no more may die,
born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give them second birth.
Hark, the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King.

Come, Desire of nations, come,
fix in us thy humble home;
rise, the woman's conquering seed,
bruise in us the serpent's head;
now display thy saving power,
ruined nature now restore,
now in mystic union join
thine to ours and ours to thine.
Hark, the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King.

How many Gospel doctrines can you find in these words? I'll give my summary tomorrow.

Antidote for Astounding Ignorance

Are Christians really this ignorant? Apparently we are, according to these George Barna statistics quoted at The Constructive Curmudgeon: Not Loving God with all our Mind :

"Although a core teaching of the Christian faith is the divinity and perfection of Jesus Christ, tens of millions of Christians do not accept that teaching. More than one-fifth (22%) strongly agreed that Jesus Christ sinned when He lived on earth, with an additional 17% agreeing somewhat. Holding the opposing view were 9% who disagreed somewhat and 46% who disagreed strongly. Six percent did not have an opinion on this matter.

Much like their perceptions of Satan, most Christians do not believe that the Holy Spirit is a living force, either. Overall, 38% strongly agreed and 20% agreed somewhat that the Holy Spirit is “a symbol of God’s power or presence but is not a living entity.” Just one-third of Christians disagreed that the Holy Spirit is not a living force (9% disagreed somewhat, 25% disagreed strongly) while 9% were not sure."

What should be our attitude regarding this astounding revelation of ignorance. I agree with John Schroeder, who writes:

"What I find most fascinating is that there are many, many people out there that will look at those statistics and damn such people for eternity. Yet, if we sum up these statistics what we learn is that a large portion of the church has little or no theological understanding. So I look at such statistics and conclude that the church is doing a lousy job of teaching its members.

But more than that, if we do pronounce such people as damned, it seems to me we send them away when a better response would be to draw them in and try to teach them.

It seems to be that when Christ was among us, He did not spend His time amongst that that already had all the answers - the Pharisees and their ilk, but rather with those that were searching for the right answers. What's more, when Jesus was amongst us, He saved His condemning words for those that did have all the answers.'

Dogma and Drama

“We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine — ‘dull dogma,’ as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man — and the dogma is the drama. . . . This is the dogma we find so dull — this terrifying drama which God is the victim and the hero. If this is dull, then what, in Heaven’s name, is worthy to be called exciting? The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore — on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certifying Him ‘meek and mild,’ and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”

~ Dorothy Sayers, quoted by Michael Horton in The Gospel-Driven Life (Grand Rapids, Mi.; Baker Books, 2009), 63-64.

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

Worth Repeating

I like the article by Chuck Colson in Christianity Today entitled Doctrine Bears Repeating

As one reporter noted, even when Christians know correct doctrine, they are afraid of speaking the truth for fear of offending others. What right have I to impose my beliefs on others? is a thought that shapes too many of us believers.

This is why J. I. Packer, on his 80th birthday, said that the greatest challenge of evangelicalism is to re-catechize our churches. More than ever, Christians need to be able to speak intelligently and courageously about the hope that lies within.

Personal faith is of course vital, but it is not sufficient. And yes, doctrine has often been taught so that it comes across as dry and dusty. But as Dorothy Sayers noted, once we grasp what Christian doctrines teach, "The Dogma is the Drama."

This is only an excerpt - the whole thing is good.

Lives Moulded by the Gospel

“The doctrines of the gospel are meant to mould us so that our lives begin to ’set’ in the likeness of Christ. We have made little or no impression upon the world, for the very reason that the gospel doctrine has made a correspondingly slight impression upon us. It cannot be overemphasized that men and women who have accomplished anything in God’s strength have always done so on the basis of their grasp of truth.”

- Sinclair Ferguson, The Christian Life (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1981), 8-9.

Hat Tip: Already Not Yet

Love Corrects the Abuse of Doctrine

Found a new blog this week by a guy named Michael Kelly called Forward Progress and liked this post on The Abuse of Doctrine (and I agree with it).

It seems like the study of doctrine in Christian circles is pretty polarizing. There are those churches who major on doctrinal issues, using classic Christian terminology and stressing the importance of knowing these key issues to faith; issues like justification, sanctification, predestination, foreknowledge - you know the drill.

Then there are those churches who would argue that kind of study does little to further real life change in the people. The people need something practical, something that’s going to help them hang onto their marriage, get through the recession, and parent their children. So they lean toward this “application oriented” strategy of teaching and preaching.

I think there’s a balance in the middle to be found, where one feeds the other and vice versa, but I also see how a group of people might find the study of doctrine antiquated, boring, and useless. And it’s because of the classic abuse of doctrine.

We have the tendency to use doctrine as nothing more than an arguing tool. We use it to be “right” in conversations, as a mark of spiritual superiority, or as a means of furthering our own arrogance which is already considerable enough.

In short, the fact that doctrine is falling out of favor in a lot of circles is because in a lot of circles doctrine has been abused.

It’s not supposed to be like that. Paul reminded Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:5 that “the goal of our instruction is love…”

Love. That’s the end of doctrine. Anything else is abusive.

Hat Tip: Vitamin Z

The Crust and the Core of Theology

Kevin DeYoung, co-author of Why We Are Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be writes below onThe Crust and the Core

If we are to be fruitful and godly Christians we need to have a theological core without being theologically crusty.

In desiring a theological core I don’t mean that all Christians must be bookish and given to intellectual contemplation. I mean that every Christian must be shaped from the inside out by a set of convictions about who God is and what he has accomplished in Jesus Christ. As Christians we should be animated (given life) and motivated (compelled to action) by a core of doctrinal truths–truths like God is loving, sovereign, and holy; God created the world and created it good; as a result of Adam’s sin humans are bent toward evil; Jesus Christ was God’s Son, begotten not created; Jesus suffered and died on the cross for sins and rose again on the third day; the Holy Spirit is God and fills us with power, enables us to believe, equips us with gifts, and bears fruit in our lives; the Bible is God’s word; Jesus is coming again to judge the living and the dead, and justification is by faith alone.

These truths need to be more than a set of beliefs we assume. They should be the lens through which we look at ourselves and the world. There are many Christians and churches that don’t deny any cardinal doctrine of Christian faith, but they still don’t have a theological core. They have, instead, a musty statement of faith they barely understand and hardly believe and wouldn’t dare preach. They are animated and motivated by politics, church growth, relational concerns and the like, but the gospel is merely assumed. “Yes, yes–of course we believe in the Virgin Birth, and the atonement, and the resurrection, and heaven and hell,” they say. But its all periphery, not core. It’s all assumed, not all-consuming. Theologically hollow congregations and pastors may like to think they will bequeath a gospel legacy to the next generation, but the truth is we only pass on what is our passion. New converts and new kids won’t think and live and love like mature Christians, let alone be able to articulate the Christian story, if our beliefs rest in a pamphlet and not in our hearts.

The above is some of what he said about the "Core." tomorrow I'll post what he said about the "Crust." The entire article is really good - I highly recommend you read the whole thing.