THE DOCTRINE OF DOCTRINE

By R. K. McGregor Wright

Does the Bible make correct teaching, or orthodoxy, necessary for the progress of the Christian life? If so, how necessary is it? 

I will argue the case in favor of sound doctrine on the basis of New Testament teaching alone. The Old Testament supporting data is vast and must await its own study, but it only strengthens the argument. We will address two questions: 1) how does the New Testament present the doctrine of doctrine, and 2) what is the relationship between doctrine and life? 

The Problem

We live today in the most privileged and free civilization in the history of the world. We have total freedom of worship and evangelism. Never before in Christian history have we had so much of this world’s goods at the disposal of the saints of God. We have every imaginable advantage of education, time, and resources. We have libraries and millions of books including great collections of reformational texts of theology, Bible exegesis, commentary, and sermons. 

Most people attending Christian churches seem to function as if somehow sincerity will always do instead of truth.

Despite more free time than ever to spend how we wish, however, the average evangelical Christian still cannot explain to a Jehovah’s Witness why he or she believes in the Trinity; the average Calvinist cannot explain to an Arminian the “mortification of sin”, and the average Protestant cannot explain to a Catholic how justification is distinct from sanctification. I spent from 1976 to 1985 in one of the largest and most innovative Baptist churches in our area. During that time, I never heard one sermon on the relationship between the Trinity and worship; I never heard one sermon on the dominion of sin or grace; never one sermon on even such a fundamental commonplace as the security of the believer, and nothing on the reliability (let alone the inerrancy) of the Bible. 

As a result of this neglect, there are fewer and fewer people in the pews who even expect to find any ­connection between correct doctrine and correct practice. There seems to be an assumption that doctrinal orthodoxy is really just “a head trip” and is not necessary for defining correct practice. Most people attending Christian churches seem to function as if somehow sincerity will always do instead of truth. This assumption leads to:

The head vs. heart heresy

It is very common in these days of rich sources of books and of religious freedom to hear talk of a mysterious gap supposed to exist between the “head” and the “heart”. The assumption, of course, is that the mind or intellect is the “head”, while our faith resides in something called the “heart”. It is possible, therefore, to have “head knowledge” without “heart knowledge” and so to miss out on the reality of faith. Likewise, a mysterious gap is also supposed to exist between “theory” and “practice” which we are somehow unable to bridge. People who ask too many questions are admonished to “be practical”. Their problems, somehow, should be solvable by their having the right kind of experience rather than by their getting their questions answered from learning correct Biblical doctrines and believing the Bible’s truth. Rather, current thought suggests people find solutions for their problems through understanding their emotions, improving relationships, obtaining counseling, making a new commitment, or getting to know God better. Human problems, people think, cannot be resolved through doctrine since “mere theory” is not “practical”. 

Some even suggest that there really are no “answers” in the end, since the ultimate questions dissolve at last into mysteries. True Christian maturity, some say, is measured by our commitment in the face of final paradox rather than by any kind of knowledge. People who want “answers” are just immature, that’s all!

This article will not refute these absurdities as completely as they deserve. It will, however, respond that specialists in comparative religion widely recognize Christianity, as compared with all forms of modern irrationalism, to be by far the most intellectual religion of all. The New Testament puts a heavy priority on the regeneration of the intellect, and both Testaments make clear that the term “heart” means the seat of the intellect, the mind, the capacity to reason. 

We are to solve all our problems, therefore, by first allowing the Bible to change our minds about the truth, then by learning what God’s answer is to our problem, as God defines and explains both problem and answer in His Word. The spiritual breakthrough comes when in humble dependence on God’s mercy we accept His account of the matter and obey what He tells us to do about it. The results of this obedience are predestined to be successful and to meet infallibly the need of the believer sooner or later. The Bible calls this process “making disciples”, and the primary method of disciple-making is by something called “teaching”, a noun synonymous with “doctrine”. Jesus set forth the priority of “teaching” in the Great Commission recorded in Matthew 28:19-20.

We must conclude that Scripture is teaching an extremely important subject which we may call “the Bible’s doctrine about doctrine.”

The word “teach” occurs twenty times in the Gospel of Matthew alone, and the same book calls Jesus the Teacher about ten times. In the entire New Testament, the two nouns for “teaching” and “doctrine” occur over fifty times, while the verb “to teach” occurs over ninety times. The word “teacher” appears at least fifty-eight times. Half a dozen other related words appear on another twenty occasions. A total of over 240 references to teachers teaching doctrines occur in the New Testament alone. We must conclude that Scripture is teaching an extremely important subject which we may call “the Bible’s doctrine about doctrine.”

The doctrine of doctrine in the New Testament

For convenience, we will concentrate on the Pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, with only a few illustrations from elsewhere. The two New Testament words for doctrine may be considered synonymous for our purposes and occur in these three epistles seventeen times. The verb appears another six times. A term meaning “able to teach” appears twice, and “teacher” three times. There are therefore at least twenty-eight passages in these letters alone which will show how important Paul thought doctrine to be. They may be classified as those passages (a), commanding or exhorting us to teach and be taught, and we shall refer to these as positive passages, and (b), those verses that warn against false teaching and teachers, which we shall call the negative verses. Following the Bible’s pattern of giving us the “bad news” first followed by the “good news” to address the problems, we shall consider the “negative” verses first.

Negatively

To begin, certain verses contain repeated warnings of the damage done by false doctrine. The very first occurrence of the word “doctrine” in these epistles warns Timothy to resist false doctrine by proper instruction of those involved in teaching it (1 Timothy 1:3). Anything incompatible with the apostolic deposit was to be actively resisted. According to 1:10-11, this deposit covers moral matters in essential harmony with the ethical content of the Old Testament Law, since the Old Testament was the first Bible of the early Church. Everything else is “contrary to sound doctrine.”* In 4:1, specific teachings are described as “doctrines of demons,” including forbidding Christians to marry, and spiritual vegetarianism. Paul traces much false doctrine to demonic influence in other epistles also (see Genesis 3, Ephesians 6, 2 Corinthians 4:4; 1 Corinthians 10:20; Romans 1:21-32. Cf. also Revelation 9:20-21).

In 2 Timothy 4:3, Paul introduces the final end-time apostasy as being the result of a turning away from sound doctrine to a multiplicity of popular teachers who tell the people what they want to hear and substitute mythology for divine revelation. Myths are exactly what the Bible does not contain, according to Peter (2 Peter 1:16).

In Titus, likewise, Paul warns us of those who wreck whole house-churches with false doctrine, while generating both revenue for themselves and damnation for their hearers (1:11). He says (1:9) that a key responsibility of a Christian leader is to challenge and refute false doctrine from anyone who presents it. Elders are to be active in opposition to these things and ever vigilant against them. There is no mistaking Paul’s attitude here; by exhortation (by actively challenging error when presenting the biblical alternative) and by reasoned argument (intended to convince opponents), sound doctrine is to prevail. The dreadful alternative is suggested in verses 10-16, that those deceived will be rendered useless for good works. This connection between good doctrine and good works is not surprising when we recall Jesus’ words about good trees bringing forth good fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). 

Apologetics and evangelism

At this point we must consider the relationship between reasoned argument and evangelism. Christians today unfortunately tend to accept the artificial distinction between “preaching the Gospel” and “doing apologetics”. Evangelism and apologetics are usually treated as separate subjects in Bible College or seminary curricula, and this division has determined our modern practice. Consequently, many people thank God for His gifts of Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer, and Cornelius Van Til and assume that less intellectual, non-seminary trained Christians need not worry about apologetics. After all, you can’t argue someone into the kingdom…

The New Testament answers this evasion of responsibility with bold instruction and examples. 

First, apologetics is an essential part of the Gospel. All the evangelistic speeches in the book of Acts contain apologetic arguments based either on the Old Testament prophecies and Jewish history, or on recent events such as the coming of Christ. Read Peter’s speeches in 2:14-40, 3:12-26, and 4:8-12, or read Stephen’s in 7:2-53 or Paul’s in 17:22-31. These demonstrate only some of the apologetic material in New Testament preaching. The mere idea that someone called “Jesus of Nazareth” is in fact the long-promised Messiah who has come at last is the basis of the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Jesus’ Messianic identity can be established only by understanding whether or not He fulfilled specific Old Testament prophecies and shadows. 

Second, 1 Peter 3:15 and Jude 3 command the task of defending the faith, and almost every New Testament document we have illustrates this task. Most of Paul’s epistles contain arguments against various errors of his own day. Apologetics is therefore not an option but an integral part of the apostolic mandate to evangelize the nations. Its constant neglect in the local church is simply disobedience to Christ as the Logos of God. Many Bible-believing churches preach and pray for revival but habitually present only half the Gospel or less, and they offer no reasoned arguments for its truth.

Third, Acts records the methods of the apostles as they carried the gospel to the world. Consider the verbs used in 17:2 (reasoned with them), 17:17 (disputed…daily), 18:4 (reasoned and persuaded), 18:11 (teaching), 18:13 (persuaded), 18:19 (reasoned), 18:28 (convincing), 19:9 (disputing daily), 19:26 (persuaded), 19:33 (defended himself)—and these are from a mere three chapters.

Paul links apologetics consistently with evangelism in both his writings and his practice. In Philippians 1:7 he describes his own work as being “the defense and confirmation” of the gospel. Clearly in the apostles’ minds, apologetics is for unbelievers a defense of the truth, and for believers a confirmation of the apostolic message already accepted as true.

We must conclude from even so brief a survey that the apostles argued with unbelief as well as preached to it. They expected their arguments to convince at least some hearers, and they saw both proclaiming and defending the gospel as two sides of the one coin of evangelism. There is no disjunction here between the head and the heart; gospel truth is to be addressed to the mind.

Positively

The Apostle Paul identifies himself as “a teacher of the gentiles in faith and truth” (1 Timothy 2:7) and indicates that at that time he was not allowing women to teach or to arrogate teaching positions to themselves over the existing leaders. Apparently despite such a male-dominated society as we know the ancient world to have been, Christian women were bypassing the orderly procedures of church administration by rejecting the all-but-universal male leadership. He warns that these women must learn the same way the men did, Let the women learn, he says, “in quietness and full submission”(2:12, NIV) and not usurp authority over the men in teaching positions. The warning example of Eve transgressing because of false doctrine deceiving her is to be noted. A woman cannot teach anyone unless she is capable of teaching (3:2), and she cannot teach without first learning. Therefore, “let the woman learn” is a mandate roughly equivalent to “educate your women for doctrinal leadership also,” and is in harmony with Jesus’ radical answer to the Jewish refusal to teach their women the Law, when he accepted Mary as a student disciple “at his feet” (the traditional privilege of a male student), warning Martha that her sister had chosen “the better part” which would never be taken away from her (Luke 10:38-42). Paul agreed with Jesus’ attitude, apparently. 

In chapter 4, verses 6, 11, 13, and 16 are an interesting group. In order to be a good minister, Timothy is to be “constantly nourished” (NASB) on good doctrine in harmony with the apostolic deposit. The alternative again is “fables” or myths. Verse 10 rebukes idolatry, since we serve the “living God,” the ultimate preserver of all people, and especially the Savior of believers. This truth, he says, we must teach. In verse 13, the (public) reading of the Scriptures was vital for the life of churches in which so many were illiterate. Exhortation, then, involves presenting the challenge of the truth and “the doctrine.” Only by taking heed to the doctrine (v. 16) can both the teacher and the learners (i.e. disciples) be kept safe. 

Elders may spend most of their time “teaching the word” (5:17) and are therefore to be paid “double honor”. The epistle closes with three verses (6:1, 2 and 3) in which it seems that “our doctrine” can be blasphemed as well as “the name of God,” as a result of unworthy lives. These things, he says, we must “teach and exhort.” Paul sees teaching and challenging the faithful as two sides of the one coin of properly communicated truth for a growing church. In verse 3, Paul equates his own teaching with the words “of our Lord Jesus Christ” as “the doctrine conforming to godliness.” Those who “advocate a different doctrine” are motivated by pride and other sins which, he warned, will eventually “plunge [them] into ruin and destruction” (verses 4-9). 

Second Timothy is, if anything, even stronger. Again, Paul opens the subject (1:11) by identifying himself as an apostle sent to announce the Gospel “according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus.” In 2:2 the word anthropoi behind the word “men” means “people”, human beings in general, and cannot be restricted to males. It links up with the mandate to educate women in 1 Timothy 2:11 and is a collective mandate to educate Christian leadership in doctrine, thus preparing them to teach. In 2:24 God’s servants are warned not to be “macho”(yes, that’s the Greek word!) but to be gentle, patient, “apt to teach.” The word for this is didaktikos and means “having a didactic or doctrinal emphasis.” 

The inconsistent and hypocritical believer is no challenge to heathenism! A godly consistency in which life is controlled by truth is a terrible affront to the false autonomism of unbelievers, and they cannot leave it alone.

In verse 3:10 Paul notes that the consistency of his doctrine and his life is part of his exemplary Christian leadership. This consistency is what it means to “live godly in Christ Jesus,” and he adds that we can expect it to bring on persecution. The inconsistent and hypocritical believer is no challenge to heathenism! A godly consistency in which life is controlled by truth is a terrible affront to the false autonomism of unbelievers, and they cannot leave it alone. A “form of godliness” is fine, but “the power thereof” is an irritant to unbelief (3:3-7). 

The classical spot for the doctrine of doctrine is 2 Timothy 3:16. “All Scripture is God-breathed,” says Paul, and as a result is profitable for doctrine. This term is then expanded by the rest of the verse into reproof (telling us when we are wrong), correction (telling us the right alternative), and instruction in righteousness (or ongoing discipleship training, paideia or education). The purpose is then described as being “in order that the anthropos of God may be properly equipped, totally and completely equipped or furnished with a view to every good work” (my paraphrase). 

There could be no more comprehensive statement of the perfect sufficiency of Scripture than this influential verse in 3:16. When it comes to the place of doctrine in the life of the believer, it’s sola Scriptura all the way! The alternative is the disaster outlined in 4:3, in which relativistic mythology replaces sound doctrine, as in modern liberal theology and New Age mysticism. 

Paul sums up Timothy’s task in 4:2, as “Proclaim the Word, be on the spot every chance you get, since all seasons are in season. Reprove sin, admonish the sinner, challenge to godliness. The method is by patient and persistent doctrinal teaching, and nothing less will do” (my paraphrase). 

In the letter to Titus, Paul expands on the need for doctrinal leaders. In 1:5-7, he notes that he has ordained elders in every city to be overseers (episkopoi). They are to hold fast to the faithful word of doctrine (v. 9) in order to challenge and convince contradictors through sound doctrine. In 2:1 “sound doctrine” is the foundation of life for elders.

Paul began in 1:5-7 to explain the basic qualifications for generic leadership. The leaders are then related by their overseer status to the younger women and men to whom they minister. It is particularly mentioned that teaching is part of an older woman’s ministry (2:3-4). In 2:6-7, the younger men are warned to be uncorrupt in their doctrine. In 2:9, slaves are to decorate the Christian doctrine by their godly lives, in view of the blessed hope of Christ’s coming, towards which we are all moving (12-13). In verse 14, God is said to be the ultimate teacher of his children, educating them (paideuo) toward a consistent holiness.

And all this is in the Pastoral Epistles alone!

The necessity of sound doctrine and the teaching of the prophet, priest, and king

The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is the agent of God’s regenerating of the human soul, effecting this change through the Word of God (John 1:12-13, 3:5-8, Titus 3:5, James 1:17-18, 1 Peter 1:21-25, etc.). The process of renewing the soul into the image of Christ continues all through the believer’s life until its consummation in the very presence of Jesus Himself (see John 15:3, 17:17, Romans 12:1-2, 1 Corinthians 2:9-16, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, 4:4, etc. concluding with 1 John 3:2). 

When Adam and Eve fell, they lost the ability (but not the responsibility!) to act as God’s vice-regents over creation. God created them in his image to function as His prophets, priests and kings. As prophet, Adam was to hear God’s word of interpretation, part of which He revealed by speaking to Adam directly, and, assuming God’s interpretations to be true, Adam was to extend that interpretation to all of creation as he encountered it. Today, the believer’s epistemology, or interpretation, presupposes God’s exhaustive knowledge and responds in faith to it. The realm of the prophet is truth, knowledge, exhortation, and proclamation. His exhortation and proclamation are based on God’s special revelation of truth and knowledge found in Scripture, not on his own reasoning. When Adam and Eve made themselves instead of God their ultimate reference-point and began interpreting their experience through their own understanding, beginning with the serpent’s promises of autonomous knowledge akin to God’s, they automatically failed as God’s vice-regents in the realm of interpretation; they failed as prophets. 

Likewise, our first parents failed as priests. They should have represented God to each other, and each other to God. When Adam saw that his wife was encountering false doctrine, he should have acted as her prophet and challenged the heresy involved in the false worldview Satan was offering. Likewise, Eve should have prophetically challenged Satan’s word as being inconsistent with God’s prior interpretation. Neither of them challenged the heresy they heard. Nor did either Adam or Eve go to God to intercede as priest in the realm of ethics, thereby obediently responding to God in righteousness. They both rejected responsibility for the other. We might note incidentally that the presupposition of autonomy (or free will) which Satan offered did not lead to a sense of responsibility, but rather undermined it.

Similarly, they fell in the realm of ontology, or being, not presupposing the Creator-creature distinction that underlies holiness of one’s being. In making themselves, rather than their Creator, the reference point for meaning, they lost both the ability and the authority to act rightly as vice-regents or kings under God over the creation, for they were now servants of another (Romans 1:25 and 6:16). 

…the qualities of holiness (our being, or ontology), righteousness (our actions, or ethics), and truth (our interpretation, or epistemology) are being renewed in us daily through the redemptive activity of the Word, thus restoring us as kings, priests, and prophets in these three realms. Only through regeneration can we recover these attributes.

Just as humanity lost the offices of prophet, priest, and king through Adam and Eve’s sin, however, Christ recovered them for believers. The image of God lost in Adam is available to us through redemptive regeneration (Ephesians 4:24, Colossians 3:10, 2 Corinthians 3:8 and 4:4, Romans 8:29 and 12:1-2) in Christ who is Himself the Image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3). These verses show how the qualities of holiness (our being, or ontology), righteousness (our actions, or ethics), and truth (our interpretation, or epistemology) are being renewed in us daily through the redemptive activity of the Word, thus restoring us as kings, priests, and prophets in these three realms. Only through regeneration can we recover these attributes.

Theory and practice, doctrine and life

We have seen how sound doctrine helps to fit us for the tasks of prophethood, priesthood, and kingship. These offices are the models for our obedience towards God by which we create and influence culture. God’s redemptive reign is manifested on earth to the extent that believers develop a redemptive culture or civilization. The Christian Church is the pilot plant for the coming Kingdom. The Church is to the world redemptively what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be to the rest of the Earth before the Fall. Just as Adam and Eve were to be obedient in fulfilling their mandates as prophets, priests, and kings in governing the whole earth to subdue and rule it, so the believer is to bring all of life and culture under the lordship of Christ. All culture, whether economics, politics, arts, or the sciences, and every thought must be made captive to the Lord Jesus (2 Corinthians 10:5). Jesus is Lord of all of life.

It seems, then, that in the Christian vision of reality, all theory has an effect in practice, and all practice, whether true or false, is the practice of true or false theory. It is impossible, therefore, to function as a believer at all without sound doctrine.

There is no escaping the tremendous weight with which Paul freights this doctrine of doctrine. It is a major theme in these last letters he wrote, and we should give them the same consideration we do to the “last words” of Jesus in the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20. These aspects of the Pastorals should be compared with the advice Paul gave the elders when leaving Ephesus for perhaps the last time, in Acts 20:17-38. He warned the Ephesian leaders that they were to expect false teachers to rise up “from among your own selves,” “not sparing the flock.” The parallel with the same warning of Jesus in Matthew 7:15 is unmistakable. 

In view of the radical revolution proceeding apace among Evangelicals in the matter of the Incommunicable Attributes of God at the hands of the Free Will theists, and of the lessons of history in the matter of Socinianism, it is quite appropriate for us to insist on the absolute necessity of sound doctrine. With the Apostle Paul, we must “not shrink from declaring…the whole purpose of God,” (Acts 20:26-27). Only then will we be “innocent of the blood of all men.” Attention to this remarkable Pauline language was never more needed than it is at this hour. †

*Editor’s footnote: This “essential harmony” of the New Testament with the Old Testament does not mean that the Old Testament laws are still authoritative for new covenant Christians. (see Romans 10:4, Galatians 3:23-25; 1 Timothy 1:6-7; Titus 3:9.) What it means is that the New Testament Christians had only the Old Testament Scriptures available to them, and the New Testament writers were revealing how sound doctrine and living by the Spirit equip believers to experience the righteousness of Christ which the Old Testament law foreshadowed (see Colossians 2:16-17). While the New Testament describes the fulfillment of the Old Testament law, the Testaments are in “essential harmony” in their revelation of God’s eternal morality and grace.

R.K. McGregor Wright was born in Australia in 1940. After teaching in high schools in Adelaide, he left to study in England and then came to America in 1970 to do a ThM at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the area of apologetics. While studying there, he met his wife Julia from Tennessee. During ministry to international students in Denver, he completed a PhD in historical theology. In 1996 his book No Place For Sovereignty (InterVarsity Press) was published. At present he is writing and developing a Bible-teaching ministry in East Tennessee. (Update: Dr. Wright went to be with the Lord in 2012.)