50 Key Concepts in Theology

Doctrine
The agreed or authorised teachings of a church.
In the course of history, all sorts of theological ideas are suggested and
discussed, but not all these ideas attain the status of doctrines. Doctrines are
those theological beliefs that form the official teaching of a church (the word
‘doctrine’ literally means ‘teaching’). Doctrines express orthodox belief and
may take the form of creeds, confessions, statements and catechisms.
The very notion that the Church should codify its teaching in doctrines is
problematic. Jesus offers his teaching mostly in the form of stories and does
not seem very interested in definitive statements of belief. Furthermore, Jesus’
message concerns a way of living, loving and forgiving that feels out of
keeping with dogmatic teaching. Tolstoy, for example, argued that it was
‘ridiculous’ to fix the Christian message in abstract doctrines, when
Christianity is really a way of living life in relationship with God.
Yet churches have inevitably been obliged to develop doctrines to define
their identities. Even apparently non-doctrinal denominations (such as the
Quakers) have practices and structures that reflect implicit doctrines. Indeed,
the idea of a church without any doctrines whatsoever is unimaginable.
But the process of turning the mostly narrative texts of the Bible into
doctrines has been a fraught business. St Paul complained of schisms in the
church in Corinth, and disputes over what the Church should be teaching have
continued ever since. Arguments over the major doctrines of the Christian
faith – such as the Trinity and the nature of Christ – were not ‘settled’ until
the fourth and fifth centuries. There are, at a conservative estimate, 35,000
Christian denominations world-wide, each claiming to have the truest
doctrines.
To insiders, denominational divisions are clearly of great importance. But
from the outside, the differences between the denominations can appear petty
and technical. Consequently, doctrinal disputes often bring the churches into
public disrepute, because outsiders simply cannot understand why the issues
matter.
The traditional conception of doctrine is what could be called the
‘propositional’ view that doctrines are absolute theological pronouncements
from which there can be no deviation. This makes all discussion of doctrine a
win–lose contest where only one party can be right, since it follows from the
‘rightness’ of one party that the other must necessarily be wrong. There is no
possibility of more than one correct view of the truth, and once fixed, the

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doctrine must be defended for all time. This is why the Roman Catholic
Church waited until 1992 to change the doctrinal position that it had taken in
1633 on Galileo’s astronomical theories.
In practice, of course, doctrines have changed over time, with new
doctrines being added to the body of teaching, and with others being amended
(see ‘Atonement’).
In recent decades theologians have been re-thinking the status of
doctrine, particularly in the light of twentieth-century developments in the
philosophy of language. Wittgenstein, in particular, argued that language does
not merely describe the world or express our ideas: all language is embedded
in a ‘form of life’ and cannot be understood apart from the cultural milieu in
which it is used. Taking up Wittgenstein’s ideas, George Lindbeck (The
Nature of Doctrine, 1984) has proposed that orthodoxy is expressed in the
complete life of the Church and not simply in its doctrinal formulae.
Doctrines operate like rules that help us to define and organise the ‘form of
life’ of any particular church.
John Milbank (Theology and Social Theory, 1990) has gone beyond
Lindbeck to suggest that doctrine cannot be abstracted into rules but is the
complete mythos or lived-narrative reality of the Christian faith: both the
story of Jesus and the ongoing history of the Church. The principal weakness
of Milbank’s approach is that the Christian mythos comes in more than
35,000 versions, and he provides no criteria for determining which is most
true. Indeed, if Milbank were to provide criteria, he would have to concede
that Lindbeck is correct in insisting on doctrinal ‘rules’.
A more satisfactory modern understanding of doctrine has been offered
by David Tracy (The Analogical Imagination, 1982; Plurality and Ambiguity,
1987), who accepts that there will be many valid versions of Christianity and
argues that doctrine is constituted by the conversation about what he calls ‘the
religious classic’. Tracy uses the word ‘classic’ to mean a religion’s governing
text, idea, ritual, event or person. In the case of Christianity, the ‘classic’ is the
story of Jesus.
When we look at the debates and controversies that have made up, and
continue to make up, the history of doctrine, Tracy’s view has a ring of truth
about it. Christian doctrines aren’t handed down from the heavens but are the
result of conversations and arguments about what constitutes the true faith.
THINKERS
Hans Frei (1922–88 ) inspired the New Yale School of theology by

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thinking of doctrine in narrative terms (Theology and Narrative, 1993).
Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) was a powerful liberal critic of
dogmatic Christianity. He argued that the earliest Christians were concerned
with a way of life, and that doctrinal belief was the result of Greek influence
in Christian theology: ‘in its conception and construction [doctrine] is a
product of the Greek spirit on the soil of the Gospel’ (The History of Dogma).
Vincent of Lérins (?–?450) described the ideal of true doctrine as ‘what
has been believed everywhere, always, and by all’ (
Commonitorium
II.3). In
reality, of course, this ideal has never been realised.
Bernard Lonergan (1904–84) saw doctrine as a process of evolution and
exploration in understanding divine mystery, arguing that the process of
human understanding was not merely cerebral, but involved the full range of
human experience.
John Henry Newman (1801–90) argued in his Essay on the Development
of Christian Doctrine (1845) that inconstancies in the teaching of the Church
could be explained by taking an evolutionary view of the history of doctrine:
‘The highest and most wonderful truths, though communicated to the world
once for all by inspired teachers … have required … longer time and deeper
thought for their full elucidation.’
Karl Rahner (1904–84) argued that Christian doctrine must be rooted in
our common experience of being human: ‘no doctrine of God is possible any
more without a doctrine of man, no theology without anthropology.’
Ian Ramsey (1915–72) argued in Religious Language that the basis of
doctrine lies in ‘disclosure’ situations.
Leo Tolstoy (1879–1910) complained that ‘religious doctrine is professed
in some other realm … disconnected from life’ (A Confession, ch. 1).
Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) argued that the message of Jesus was ethical
rather than doctrinal: ‘We are no longer in the business of fixing permanent
dogmas from an inspired Bible. Instead, we formulate teachings which
express the essence of Christian piety.’
IDEAS
The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: a ‘new’ doctrine,
controversially adopted by the Roman Catholic Church in 1950, that the
Blessed Virgin Mary was taken, body and soul, straight up to heaven after her
death.

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Catechesis: the teaching of the Church in its practical form.
Didache (pronounced ‘did-ee-kay’): the Greek term for ‘teaching’.
Dogma: the absolute teachings of a religion. Some theologians prefer to
differentiate doctrine (the expression of theological truth) from dogma (the
making of absolutist claims).
Heterodoxy: beliefs and arguments that are at variance from the Church’s
official teaching.
The Magisterium: the official body in Roman Catholicism that decides
the true teaching of the Church.
Orthodoxy: the official version of Christianity.
Scepticism: the tendency to doubt all dogmatic claims.
BOOKS
George Pattison, A Short Course in Christian Doctrine (SCM, 2005)
Colin Gunton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine
(CUP, 1997)

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