Life and Doctrine

Ned Stonehouse quotes from one of Machen's letters, "[Christianity] was certainly not a way of life as distinguished from a doctrine, or a way of life expressing itself in a doctrine, but it was a way of life founded upon a doctrine. It was founded more especially upon a proclamation of something that happened. The primitive Church proclaimed the happening after the first great act in it had occurred; Jesus proclaimed it by way of prophecy, but the primitive Church and Jesus were alike in proclaiming an event," then providing this additional thought:- "He [Machen] had shown that the experience of men was not the foundational fact of the Christian gospel but what God had accomplished once for all in Christ, and that Christian experience is essentially the response which men through the Holy Spirit make to the proclamation of these glad tidings" (Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen - A Biographical Memoir, 349).

Christian Teaching

"Doctrine must be taught formally in the home, but it is also caught while hearing stories and receiving instruction at the table and the bedside. Christian teaching must be a life style not an event. Diligence is paramount if any success is to be expected" (Donald W. Schanzenbach, Faithful Parents - Faithful Children: Why We Homeschool, 6).

The same could be said regarding the Lord's Service: doctrine must be formally taught by the Liturgy and through sermonizing, but it is also "caught" at the Table. Liturgy is a life style, not a bare fact or event.

Christian Faith As Prayer

"So Lord, Teach Us presents the Christian faith not as a set of beliefs but rather as a prayer that you must learn to pray. Along the way, we will discuss doctrines, but Christian doctrines are like prayer, a set of practices. The doctrines are meant to help us pray, "Our Father. . . ." This book is shaped by the Lord's Prayer because the prayer is a mark of the journey called Christian. The prayer names the danger you will face as well as providing the help--the necessary skills--you will need for negotiating the dangers of the journey. Christianity means conflict. We never forget, as we pray, that the one who taught us to pray in this way was crucified" (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life, 15).

God Revealing Godself: The Heart of All Theology

"[A]t the heart of all theology for Luther is God and how one knows God; or perhaps better said, one must start all theology with understanding how it is that God reveals Godself" (Thomas J. Davis, This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, 58).

Enjoying Doctrine

Spurgeon describing how "wise men deal with the great doctrines of the gospel" -- "they will not make them the themes of angry controversy, but of profitable use. To fight over a doctrine is sorry waste of time, but to live in the quiet enjoyment of it is the truest wisdom" (Ed. David Otis Fuller, Spurgeon's Sermon Illustrations, 32).

Doctrine and Morals - Worship and Worldview

According to Scripture, Christian worship and Christian worldview are pop riveted together by the Holy Spirit. "But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23-24).

Lex orandi est lex credenda et agenda. (The rule of prayer is the rule of belief and of action.) Worldview (i.e., beliefs, morals, actions, etc.) flows from worship. Worship determines worldview. This means you cannot have Christian morals (truth) without Christian worship (Spirit-led-doctrine-and-practices). A society that attempts to separate the two is doomed.

Consider this lengthy excerpt by John Piper (quoting William Wilberforce) on the relationship between Christian doctrine (worship) and Christian morals.

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"William Wilberforce is famous for his lifelong, and finally successful, battle against the African slave trade. It stunned me, when I recently read his one major book, A Practical View of Christianity, that his diagnosis of the moral weakness of Britain was doctrinal.

The fatal habit of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight, and as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment (A Practical View of Christianity, ed. Kevin Charles Belmonte (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), p. 198).

"Even more stunning was the fact that Wilberforce made the doctrine of justification the linchpin in his plea for moral reform in the nation ...

...RESULT FROM THE MISTAKEN CONCEPTION ENTERTAINED OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY. They consider not that Christianity is a scheme "for justifying the ungodly" [Romans 4:5], by Christ's dying for them "when yet sinners" [Romans 5:6-8], a scheme "for reconciling us to God--when enemies" [Romans 5:10]; and for making the fruits of holiness the effects, not the cause, of our being justified and reconciled (Ibid., p. 64. The SMALL CAPS is his emphasis.).

"... Many public people say that changing society requires changing people, but few show the depth of understanding Wilberforce does concerning how that comes about. For him the right grasp of the central doctrine of justification and its relation to sanctification--an emerging Christlikeness in private and public--were essential for the reformation of the morals of England" (John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ, 24-26).

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Enjoying the Sweetness of Trinitarian Life

What happens when a Church cannot produce Teachers or Doctors who toil faithfully in word and doctrine? What happens to a Church when it produces systematic theologians who cannot adequately communicate (demonstrate) and expound the doctrine of God's triunity? What happens when a Church fails to hand down the deposit of sound doctrine originally handed down to her?

The short answer: The Church falls away. She goes into exile. She dies. Like the lyric from Unite by the O. C. Supertones,

O yeah, I got a beef with the fence-sitters
Tares among the wheat, the cop-outs, the quitters
Cut from the branch fruitless, no good,
Only one use and that's firewood
Pay no mind to the generation line
Forsake your sect and be color blind
The problem's not Hollywood, the problem's not Washington
The problem's a weak divided church of schismed Christians

Thankfully, the Church is the bride of the Resurrected Christ. In Christ, there is life on the other side of death, even doctrinal death. The Triune God is the Lord of Life and the members of the covenant participate, enjoy, and partake of the sweetness of the Trinitarian life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Van Til: Christian Metaphysics

"So I point out that the Bible does contain a theory of reality. And this theory of reality is that of two levels of being, first, of God as infinite, eternal, and unchangeable and, second, of the universe that is derivative, finite, temporal and changeable. A position is best known by its most basic differentiation. The meanings of all words in the Christian theory of being depend upon the differentiation between the self-contained God and the created universe" (Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (4th Edition by P&R Publishing, 2008), 237).

Van Til: Doctrine of Salvation

"... Christ must subdue us in order to give us knowledge. But this subduing of us by Christ is done through his Spirit. It is the Spirit who takes the things of Christ and gives them unto us." ...

"For this reason we must observe at this juncture that the Spirit who applies the work of Christ is himself also a member of the ontological Trinity. He would have to be. Unless he were, the work of salvation would not be the work of God alone. If God was to be maintained in his incommunicable attributes [the attributes of God that cannot be communicated or gifted to objects or persons in the universe; e.g., the aseity of God, immutability of God, omnipresence of God, etc.], the Spirit of God, not man, had to effect the salvation of man. The only alternative to this would be that man could at some point take the initiative in the matter of his own salvation. This would imply that the salvation wrought by Christ could be frustrated by man. Suppose that none should accept the salvation offered to them. In that case the whole of Christ's work would be in vain, and the eternal God would be set at naught by temporal man. Even if we say that in the case of any one individual sinner the question of salvation is in the last analysis dependent upon man rather than upon God, that is, if we say that man can of himself accept or reject the gospel as he pleases, we have made the eternal God dependent upon man. We have then, in effect, denied the incommunicable attributes of God. If we refuse to mix the eternal and the temporal at the point of creation and at the point of the incarnation, we must also refuse to mix them at the point of salvation" (Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of The Faith, 40).

Function of Doctrine

"The function of doctrine is to make Christian prayer as difficult as it ought to be" (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer & the Christian Life, p. 22).