Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. – 2Ti 2:15
Sceptics sometimes point out to Christians that things like “Trinity” and “rapture” are nowhere to be found in the entire Bible. In a sense, they’re right. “Trinity” is not a Bible passage, it’s a doctrine. There’s no Bible book, even Bible chapter whose subject of discuss is “Trinity”. In fact, if we observe, the existence of God is taken for granted in the Bible. The inspired writers speak of His existence as an already established fact. No Bible book has “God” as its subject; so if you want to know about God – His existence, His power, His attributes, etc. – you will have to read through all of the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, to get it.
This is where Doctrines (in the modern sense of the word) come in handy. A Doctrine does the hard work of combing through the Bible to find – from the words of different authors and through different stories – all references to a particular topic; and from that collection, create a comprehensive picture.
Take angels for example. No Bible book or even chapter has angels as a topic. Any time we see “angel” in the Bible, something (or someone) else is the subject being talked about and angels are only mentioned because they happen to be part of that particular story. Nevertheless, a good theologian can gather all such incidental references and use them to develop a holistic doctrine of angels (which is actually how we get “Angelology”J).
In this sense, doctrines are similar to scientific Theories. The World we live in did not come with a user manual explaining how things work. So it’s left to Man to observe and posit explanations of what he sees around him in nature. It is from these observations that we get things like the “Theory of Relativity” in physics, the “Big Bang theory” in astronomy, the theory of “continental drift” in geology, and so on.
This understanding of “Doctrine” is vital as it will help us in proper study of the Bible and will eliminate the much confusion that some Christians have over doctrinal matters.
[TO BE CONTINUED…]
More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.
GREG ELKAN