From time to time, I often hear two approaches from Christians to the idea of “doctrine”. The first is the elevation of doctrine to a point of identity. Church history is filled with stories like this, even at times leading to the worst of outcomes, like fragmented churches or war between countries. As sin affects the human heart at such a deep level, we can replace our identity with Christ with an identity of some certain doctrine. The effect is when we see a church building two blocks away from another church building both proclaiming the name of Jesus but with different labels, identifying their differences, proud to not be the “other”. On the other hand, the second view is to minimize doctrine, or diminish its importance. This might be motivated by the pragmatic approach, which boils all of God’s Word down to the lowest common denominator. I’ve heard phrases like, “doctrine divides, love unites.” The effect is often a truncated view of God’s word, and a shallow display of discipleship. Christians loose their interest in things like the church, the beauty of Jesus, and their faith remains infantile. This is often the beginning of the de-conversion story of walking away from obedience to Jesus in adulthood.

J. Gresham Machen, chair of New Testament Theology at Princeton Seminary, once remarked, “Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith.” I have noticed in my pastoral ministry that a third way, or approach, to doctrine is what often grows disciples into healthy spiritual formation. The third approach keeps the wonder and awe in the study of God and His truths. How? To quote Machen again, “Faith is indeed intellectual; it involves an apprehension of certain things as facts; and vain is the modern effort to divorce faith from knowledge. But although faith is intellectual, it is not only intellectual. You cannot have faith without having knowledge; but you will not have faith if you have only knowledge.” Machen is saying in effect, you must have facts to grow in faith.