Disappearing Doctrines

[Johann]

Disappearing Doctrines
Written by Mike Gendron.

The Disappearing Doctrine of the Evangelical Church

This newsletter is often used to correct the false doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church but in this issue we will address the disappearing doctrine of the Evangelical Church. Many professing Christians now think it doesn't really matter what you believe, as long as you label it Christianity. Their only test for becoming a Christian is a simple acceptance of Jesus as a historical figure. In our post-modern church, doctrine is out and tolerance is in. We are told that for the sake of unity, doctrine should not be tested or contested. We are not supposed to draw any definitive lines or declare any absolutes. Doctrinal and moral issues which were once painted black and white, are now seen as gray. The state of the church is now in a state of confusion.

Paul forewarned us that this would happen when he wrote: "The time will come when they [the people in the church] will not endure [tolerate] sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths" (2 Tim. 4:3-4). When "Christians" turn to popular teachers who tickle their ears with messages on self-esteem and self-improvement, they are also turning away from God's word. Without a steady diet of Scripture, they will not hear sound doctrine and therefore be unable to discern truth from error. Ultimately, they will not know if they are following Jesus Christ or his adversary.

Without discernment, the 21st century church is headed for serious trouble because the enemies of the Gospel are more shrewd and cunning than we are. What the Body of Christ needs now are soldiers of the Lord who are committed to battle for truth! Let us look at some of the cause for the lack of discernment in the evangelical church.

Decline of Biblical Preaching

What has happened to pastors who preach the whole counsel of God? Churches that once taught the Bible verse-by-verse are on the endangered species list. We receive letters from our subscribers all over the world who cannot find them. We have also witnessed this first hand as we listen to sermons on church web sites. It appears pastors today are more concerned with popularity, church growth, methodology, psychology and meeting felt needs than biblical doctrine. Pastors are teaching less and less from the Bible which ultimately calls people to trust in the words of men, instead of the word of God.

Three Kinds of Preachers

In one category are teachers who faithfully preach the whole counsel of God. They exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict (2 Tim. 4:2; Titus 1:9). These men are devoted to seeking the approval of God over the approval of men (Gal. 1:10).

In the second category are teachers who cater to desires of men (2 Tim. 4:3). These teachers are dangerous, not because of what they say, but for what they don't' say. They purposefully avoid the offense of the Gospel for fear it will make people uncomfortable. Whenever preachers avoid the Word of God, believers don't get discernment and "seekers" don't get saved. We see an example of this type of preacher in Joel Osteen, the pastor of one of America's largest churches located in Houston. In a June 20th interview on Larry King Live, he was asked if atheists go to heaven. He replied, "I'm going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell". When asked where Jews or Muslims go without trusting Jesus, he replied, "I'm very careful about saying who would and wouldn't go to heaven; I don't know." Rather than unashamedly respond with the power and exclusivity of the Gospel, Osteen chose to remain silent so that no one would be offended.

The third category is made up of false teachers who secretly introduce destructive heresies and malign the way of the truth (2 Pet. 2:1-2). These teachers deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting and the undiscerning (Rom. 16:18). Without discernment, listeners will not be able to distinguish between who has been sent by Christ and who is a mouthpiece for Satan.

Wooing the World into The Church

Proponents of the church growth movement have developed attractive gimmicks and techniques to invite the world into our churches. Their thinking is this: "If we can get the world to like us, maybe they will like our Savior." Their approach to post-modern ecclisiology has been labeled "seeker-friendly" or, more profoundly, "sinner-friendly." Jesus is being disguised to make Him and His Gospel "less offensive" to seekers. Their goal is to make sinners feel comfortable by giving them what they want instead of what they need. Their strategy is to throw soft balls at non-Christians rather than challenge and confront their unbelief with convicting truths from Scripture. As the goats are being entertained with this nonsense, the sheep of the Shepherd are being deprived of His Word.

We must ask where does God's word tell us to woo the world? Did not Jesus say, "The world ... hates Me because I testify that its deeds are evil" (John 7:7)? James wrote: "Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4). Church history confirms this and we should learn from the past. The churches and de¬nominations which made friends with the world began a downward slide into apostasy. By trying to woo the world, they had to compromise their preaching, tolerate sin and immorality and abandon nearly every doctrinal position they once held.

Those who remain faithful to the Gospel will be an offense to the world because the Gospel is inherently offensive. Christ Himself is offensive to all who reject the truth. He is "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense" (1 Peter 2:8). The message of the cross is also a stumbling block and foolishness to those who are perishing (1 Cor. L 18; Gal. 5:11). Tragically there are multitudes who profess Christ but cannot articulate the Gospel's basic elements. What is left for the church if it can't communicate the only message that brings forth life?

The decline of doctrine (and ultimately the ability to discern) occurs in our churches when anyone of three things take place. First, when drama and entertainment become more important than preaching the word. Secondly, when the pastor's goal becomes "making people happy instead of holy." You know this is taking place when he shifts his sermons from "this is what God says" to "this is what I think people want to hear." Thirdly, when the pastor spends more time addressing "felt needs" over "spiritual needs." Eventually these churches become filled with gullible people who believe their lovable pastor is speaking for God. Might they consider a quote from A. W. Tozer who said: "Gullibility is not synonymous with spirituality. Faith keeps its heart open to whatever is of God, and rejects everything that is not of God."

Tolerance Has Replaced Absolute Truth

Some Christian leaders are calling for the church to adapt to the new generation by eliminating all absolutes. They are saying that we can no longer proclaim absolute truth. Truth is now said to be subjective and in the eye of the beholder. Needless to say, this is producing a Christian faith void of doctrine but full of confusion. Tolerance and acceptance of other faiths is now firmly established within Christianity. We are called to be tolerent of everything except absolute truth. This tolerance is being used as a platform for unity with the Roman Catholic Church. Some evangelicals would rather have a counterfeit unity based on tolerance than authentic spiritual unity based on truth. Anyone who stands in their way is labeled divisive or troublesome.

Warnings Are Being Ignored

There are numerous warnings in Scripture that tell us the church will be bombarded with perverse teachings, empty philosophy; vain deceit, speculations, lying spirits, worldly fables, false knowledge, doctrines of demons, destructive heresies, myths, falsehoods, traditions of men and worldly wisdom. Jesus and Paul warned of false prophets who would come in as wolves in sheep's clothing not sparing the flock (Mat. 7:15; Acts 20:29). We must do as Jesus and the apostles did and warn Christians of these destructive influences which are weakening the church and bringing shame to the precious name of our Savior!

Spiritual Immaturity

When sound doctrine is replaced with shallow teaching made up of humorous stories and opinions, you will find spiritual ignorance and biblical illiteracy in the pew. New babes in Christ will have difficulty growing in the grace and knowledge of their Savior when pastors do not preach the whole counsel of God. When the Word of God is not being faithfully taught, people will not hear truth. And if they don't hear truth, they will be unable to discern God's way from man's way, truth from error and right from wrong. We must all become more and more discerning because no man is infallible and no preacher is beyond the possibility of doctrinal error. We must always be ready to reject what is false and hold fast to what is true. As disciples of Jesus we must be known for what we're, for as well as what we're against.

In closing we must recognize that all truth sets itself against error. Sound doctrine divides and confronts, it judges and separates, it reproves and rebukes and it exposes and refutes error. It leads us from the broad way to the narrow way (Matt. 7:13-14). It commands us to submit to God and resist the devil (James 4:7). It exhorts us to discern between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error (I John 4:6). It demands that we turn away from evil and do good (I Peter 3:11). It tells us that our ways are not God's ways, nor are our thoughts His thoughts (Isa. 55:8). It warns us against exchanging the truth of God for a lie (Rom. 1:25). It guarantees that the righteous shall be blessed and the wicked shall perish.

True Christians cannot continue to tolerate or ignore Satan's wicked schemes to weaken the Church. We must stand firmly on sound doctrine, heed the biblical warnings and live passionately for the truth so that Jesus Christ will be glorified and His church will grow in holiness and strength.

 

[Clifford]

Lost your Doctrine? Then you might need to read this.

How We Find the Doctrines

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. 1 John 2:18–21

I call your attention to that particular statement because it does present us with the exact context in which we must consider another general point before we come to deal with the particular doctrines which are taught in the Bible. We can summarise the position we have arrived at like this: the ultimate goal of our quest is a knowledge of God. We are not interested in doctrines merely as doctrines, but simply as they bring us to know God. The supreme ‘end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever’ (The Shorter Catechism).

The problem, therefore, is: How are we to know God? By our own efforts we cannot arrive at God. God must reveal Himself, and in His infinite grace and kindness He has done so, not only in creation and in history and in providence, but supremely in this book which we call the Bible. And then we went on to consider some aspects of inspiration. We took a very general view of it, and saw that it could be divided up quite naturally into certain groupings.
Then that in turn led us to the question: Can we rely upon this book and its proffered revelation? We considered that, and came to the conclusion that the Bible is a divinely inspired book. We saw that the Bible itself teaches what is known as the doctrine of verbal inspiration. We therefore accept it as full and final and infallible in all matters of faith and practice.

‘Very well,’ says someone, ‘having done all that, why don’t you start by immediately taking the first great central doctrine—the doctrine of God?’
But I cannot do that, and I will tell you why. The problem that arises at the moment is this. ‘Now,’ you say, ‘here is a book that contains these doctrines that are essential to a knowledge of God.’ Very well, I take my Bible and I open it, but I do not find that the Bible is just a collection of stated doctrines. There is a lot of history here, a great deal about kings, princes, births, deaths, and accounts of marriages, and so on. If the Bible were just a collection of doctrines plainly stated, there would be no difficulty at all, and all that we would have to do would be to find page one, then look at the first doctrine, expound it and consider it together.

But the Bible is not like that—merely literature. We do not go to the Bible in that way. The question, therefore, arises: How are these doctrines to be found in the Bible? How is one to discover them? Now that is no idle question, as I think I can show you very easily. But it is never enough to say, ‘I am not interested in doctrines. I’m a Bible person. Let these clever people argue about doctrines if they like; you give me the Bible and I am satisfied.’ That is a very foolish, indeed, a ridiculous, statement to make, because people who come to the Bible must believe something as the result of reading it. The question is: Are they believing what they ought to believe?

Most of the cults which are so prominent in the world today claim that they are based upon the Bible. ‘Of course,’ they say, ‘we believe everything that the Bible says; our teaching is based upon it.’ Indeed, you will find that some of these people appear to know their Bibles very well. So it is no use just saying to them that you do not believe as they do because you believe the Bible. We must know how doctrine is to be found in the Bible if we hope to deliver these people in any way at all, if we are anxious to make them true Christians and to bring them to a real knowledge of God. We must be in a position to explain to them where they go wrong and where they are not biblical, and to help them to understand the source of their error.

Now you notice that in the early Church that very position obtained. There were a number of people in the Christian Church all claiming to believe the truth, but some, says John, had left them: ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us’ (1 John 2:19). They were guilty of error and of heresy somewhere or another.

As it was in the days of the early Church, so it is still, and there never has been a time when it has so behoved God’s people to know what they believe, and why they believe it, as at this present hour. So how do we arrive at a knowledge of these doctrines? What are we to do? Given that we have the book which we now believe is authoritative and divinely inspired—God’s oracles, God’s word, God’s truth, revealed in a unique way—how do we find the doctrine that is in it? Now it seems to me that the best thing we can do is to consider the three main propositions which will guide and help us in this matter.

The first we will have to deal with, whether we want to or not, is the place that reason, understanding and intellect have in these matters. I admit that this is a very difficult subject. But it is vitally important and we must have some clear ideas in our minds as to what our position ought to be with respect to this. We already touched upon it in a very general way in our introduction. The point we then established was that by means of reason alone no one can arrive at God. The intellect is insufficient. ‘The world by wisdom knew not God’ (1 Cor. 1:21). That is a fact which can be proved. And you notice, incidentally, how all these clever people in the world today are, one after another, now becoming ready to admit that people, who were so highly regarded during the post-war period, are confessing the utter inadequacy of the human mind and reason, and confess the need for something beyond it. But now I am rather anxious to emphasise this same general concept in a slightly different manner. So I put it to you in the form of a number of propositions.

The first thing we must do, in view of all that we have seen together, is agree to grasp the Bible as our full and final authority in all matters of revelation. Having seen that we cannot get anywhere without the Bible, then the obvious thing to do is to say, ‘Very well, I accept the Bible. I don’t know anything apart from it. I have no knowledge of God apart from what the Bible tells me. I may theorize, and other people may do the same thing, but I really do not know anything apart from what I find in this book.’ So the first decision we must make is that we are going to be, as John Wesley put it, men and women ‘of one book’. Here is my only source, my only authority.

But I want to underline this and even to emphasise it still further. I must submit myself entirely to the Bible, and that will mean certain things. First, I start by telling myself that when I come to read the Bible and its doctrines, I am entering into a realm that is beyond the reach of my understanding. By definition, I shall be dealing with things that are beyond my power to grasp. The very idea of revelation, in and of itself, I suggest to you, must carry that implication. We are going to try to know God, and to study the doctrine concerning Him, and it must be the case that these truths are beyond our understanding. If I could understand God, I would be equal with Him. If my mind were able to apprehend and to span the truth about God, then it would mean that my mind is equal to the mind of God, and that, of course, is altogether wrong.

For instance, in our next lecture we hope to be dealing with the doctrine of the Trinity. Now there by definition is a doctrine that no one can possibly understand, but let us agree to say that before we come to the doctrine. Let nobody think, however, that this means committing intellectual suicide when we take up the Bible. It simply means that we recognise that there is a limit to reason. We agree with the great French mathematician and philosopher, Pascal, that the supreme achievement of reason is to teach that there is an end and a limit to reason. Our reason takes us so far and then we enter into the realm of revelation, where God is graciously pleased to manifest Himself to us.

But now I am anxious to emphasise the second point. It means that we must accept truths where we cannot understand them and fully explain them. Not only must we agree that we cannot, of necessity, understand everything, but also, when we come up against particular doctrines and truths, we must accept them if they are in the Bible, irrespective of the fact that we can or cannot understand them. Now I rather like to think of faith in that way. I am not sure but that the best definition of faith we can ever arrive at is this: faith means that men and women decide quite deliberately to be content only with what they have in the Bible, and that they stop asking questions.

You can tell very soon if a man is a true man of faith or not. Just listen to him. Some people are always asking questions: ‘But I do not see this, and I cannot understand that.’ But faith means that we are content to be shut up to this book, and that we say quite readily, ‘God has revealed everything He wants to reveal, and everything that is good for me to know is in the Bible. If it is not in the Bible, I am content not to know it.’ Bear that in mind, for instance, when you are discussing the problem of evil—how it entered into this world. The Bible does not tell us why God ever allowed it, and therefore if you take the faith position, you will not even ask questions about it. You are just content to say, ‘I do not know; the Bible doesn’t tell me, and I know nothing beyond what the Bible does tell me.’ This is a most important principle.

But let me go on to elaborate it a little more by putting it in this way: there is nothing that we must avoid so strenuously as the constant temptation to mix philosophy with revelation. Now you may think, some of you, that this does not apply to you. ‘I am not interested in philosophy, I have never read a book on philosophy in my life,’ you say. But, my dear friend, that does not mean that you are not a philosopher! We are all philosophers. You should not confine the term philosopher to people who make it their business or their duty in life to study or to teach it. Everyone who has an opinion about anything is automatically a philosopher. And I think I can show you in a minute that every one of us is not only a philosopher, but that we are always getting into trouble because we philosophise too much. So I am warning everybody against this danger of mixing philosophy with revelation.

Now this is the way in which we do it. We are ready at all times to reject certain doctrines, or, perhaps, if we do not actually reject them, we hesitate to believe them, though they are clearly taught in the Bible. We do this because we cannot understand them, or because we cannot explain them, or because they do not seem to fit into our scheme of things. Quite often when you confront people with a specific statement from the Bible, instead of saying, ‘Well, I am prepared to believe that though I do not understand it,’ they say, ‘But, if that is right, then how can God be a God of love?’ or something like that. The moment they speak like that they are speaking as philosophers, and I think that if you examine yourselves you will find it is something that you do quite frequently.

Indeed, I am afraid that those of us who are evangelical are very often guilty of being most inconsistent at this point. We argue with a so-called modernist and we say, ‘Fancy! He doesn’t believe in miracles, and he doesn’t believe in the supernatural, because he says he cannot understand a miracle’—and we denounce that. Yes; but sometimes when we come up against some of these great terms, which you will find in the first chapter of Ephesians, like predestined and elect according to the foreknowledge of God, we evangelicals begin to say, ‘Well, if that is right I don’t see how God is fair,’ and so on.

But that is exactly the same thing as your modernist friend was doing with regard to miracles. We see it very clearly in his case because we happen to be all right on the question of miracles. But when it is a doctrine we do not take to so readily, we use exactly the same argument as the modernist who brings out his philosophy. So this is something that must apply to all of us. I must not hesitate to believe a doctrine because I cannot fit it in; neither must I reject a doctrine because I cannot understand it. If this is the truth of God, and the thing is clearly taught, then I am to accept it whether I understand it or not.

Then one final point I would put under this heading is this: we must never allow ourselves to be governed by our own logic or by our own desire to have a perfect system. It is a danger to which we are all exposed. We instinctively like to have a complete system; we do not like gaps or ragged edges. It is again because we are all philosophers. It is because the philosopher always wants a complete whole, wants to be able to understand everything, wants to be able to state everything, and we are all like that. The danger is, you see, that we press our own logic and our own schemes to a point which goes beyond the teaching of the Scripture. At that point we are again guilty of sin and of error. We must give full weight to every statement of Scripture. We must never minimise one or ignore it in order that our scheme may be complete.

I could give you many illustrations of that. There are people, for instance, who have always been described as hyper-Calvinists, and that is their trouble. They go beyond the Scripture and are driven by their own logic and by their own arguments, and they claim things which cannot be demonstrated from the Scriptures. They are so anxious to have a perfect scheme that they fall into that very subtle and dangerous trap.

So, then, the ultimate thing which we would say under this heading would be this: we must submit ourselves not only to the authority of the book, but also to the guidance, the inspiration and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. I should never read the Bible in exactly the same way that I read any other book. If all I have said about it is true, then I must come to it realising my inability, realising that any natural capacity I may have is not enough here. I must see that spiritual things must be understood in a spiritual way, and therefore I should start always by asking God by the Holy Spirit to enlighten me, to illumine me, to keep me from error and subtle dangers and to lead me into all truth. Then, having done that, I come to my Bible; and, with a mind which already knows its limits, and which is thus enlightened by the Holy Spirit, I begin to discover the doctrines of the Bible.

Very well, then, that brings me to my second main heading, which is the method by which one arrives at the doctrine. Again, I would remind you that the Bible is not a mere collection of doctrines, and as we now come to seek our doctrines in the Bible, it is not going to be a mere matter of stringing a number of texts together. Some people seem to think that this is the way. Having discovered a number of statements about a given matter in every part of the Bible, they give you a string of texts and leave you at that. Now that is not the way to arrive at the doctrine, because patently that is not going far enough.

Rather, I suggest we should do this: we do collect our texts; we discover every statement that we can find in the Bible on a particular subject. Then, having gathered them together, and having collated them, we proceed to discover the doctrine which lies at the foundation. That is what we are concerned about. Here are these various statements. What is the doctrine they are propounding? What are they telling us? What is this basic something that is common to all these statements? That is our doctrine.

Now as we do that, there are certain rules which must be observed most carefully. First of all, let us look at a number of general rules. Here is the first. Any doctrine that we claim to believe from the Bible must always be clearly found in the Bible. It must be capable of demonstration from the Bible. If I cannot prove to you that the doctrine which I hold is found in the Bible, or that the Bible proves it or demonstrates it, then I must reject it.
Let me give you some illustrations of what I mean. You will find, as we have seen, that people come to you saying that they believe the Bible. Then they propound their doctrines to you, and you ask: ‘But where did that doctrine come from?’

‘Ah,’ they will tell you, ‘someone once had a vision or a message.’ You are familiar with such statements. But what I would emphasise here is that we must say that we are not prepared to accept any such statement. We do not care who says it, nor what marvellous experiences that person may have had. It is quite immaterial to us if it cannot be proved and established in and from the Scripture.

But wait a minute—I am not only referring to the cults. This is our evangelical reply, for instance, to the Roman Catholics. You see, they come and tell you certain things. ‘But,’ you say, ‘I don’t find that in the Scriptures.’

‘Of course not,’ they reply, ‘but we have our tradition; revelation did not stop at the end of the New Testament canon—the truth has been received directly from God since then. The Apostolate and the apostolic understanding have continued, and we therefore argue that the Church and her tradition and her teaching are of equal authority and value with the Scriptures.’

And again we say a firm and resolute, No! We do not care what authority a teaching may claim for itself. If it cannot be proved from Scripture, we reject it.

And we say exactly the same thing, of course, to any claim for any doctrine which may originate from human ability or understanding. Take, for instance, the Roman Catholic doctrine about transubstantiation. Roman Catholics teach that as the result of the action of the priest, the very bread at the Communion Table has been turned into the literal body of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘But,’ you say, ‘it still looks like bread!’

So they reply, ‘Of course it does,’ and then they bring in their philosophy, by which they tell you that there is a difference between the substance of a thing and the accidents. What they mean by ‘accidents’ are qualities like colour and texture. And they say that the substance has been changed but the accidents remain the same. A marvellous bit of philosophy! But we do not accept any doctrine, however subtle and clever the explanation may be, if we cannot find it in the Scripture itself, or prove it from the Scripture.

But let me go on to a second point. Our doctrine must be exclusively scriptural. Not only must we reject all doctrine that has patently come from outside the Scriptures, but we must not even accept a doctrine that is partly scriptural and partly something else. It must be pure, unadulterated Scripture. This is another most important point in view of the constant tendency of philosophy to creep in by the back door.

Then the third point I would make under this heading is that the doctrine must be plain and clear in the Scriptures. May I introduce you to a technical term. I am trying not to do this, but this is a great term—one that was used by our Protestant fathers. They talked about the perspicuity of the scriptural doctrine, by which they meant that true scriptural doctrine is always plain and clear. Scripture itself emphasises that everywhere. It presumes it.

We often make a great mistake when we come to study the Scriptures because we do not stop to remind ourselves of the type of people for whom they were written. It would have saved a lot of ink and a lot of trouble if everybody who became an expositor of St Paul’s epistles had reminded himself, before he started expounding, that the epistles were not written to students or to professors of doctrine at Oxford and Cambridge, but to slaves, and to common, ordinary people! ‘Not many wise men … not many noble, are called,’ said Paul (1 Cor. 1:26). It was to such people that the epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians and so on were written; and it is because we forget this that we get into difficulties. When St Paul wrote these epistles he took it for granted that the people to whom he was writing would understand them. They did not have these learned professors to expound them. No, no. He was writing to them that he might teach them, and he knew that they would understand. This is what the fathers meant by the perspicuity of the Scriptures.

Now that is why I am afraid that sometimes I express a certain amount of impatience with people who always seem to base their doctrine on the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word. In the light of what we have just said, that, of necessity, must be wrong. We should be able to arrive at the meaning of the doctrine from the text of the passage. So I would put it like this: we need no special authority to guide us in these matters. The apostle John says that we have no need of teaching in that sense because of this anointing. ‘Ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie …’ (1 John 2:27). So we reject the Roman Catholic suggestion that ordinary people are not fit to be reading their Bibles and that only the Church can truly expound it. No, we say that these documents were written to people like ourselves, and we and they were meant to understand them.

In the same way, we disclaim altogether the idea that there is any absolute need of some special philosophy or linguistic understanding, or knowledge of any other language in order to understand these matters, as long as we are given a plain and accurate translation. So I say again that we reject the Roman Catholic teaching.

We also reject much of the theology of the last one hundred years because it has been mostly philosophical theology. And we reject many types of theology that are very popular at this present time, because before you can understand them you have got to understand the special meanings given to the words ‘history’, ‘time’ and ‘myth’. You have to be clever and philosophical, and by definition this must be wrong. We can trust to the plain teaching, we believe in the perspicuity of scriptural doctrine.

Those, then, are my general rules, so now we turn to the particular. Now that we have collected our texts together, what do we do about them? Well, you will find that there are two main things we have to do. Sometimes it is quite a simple matter to deduce the doctrine from the statements. You just look at the statements, and you say, ‘That quite inevitably means so and so.’ That is deduction—you draw out the meaning.

But there is another method, and that is called ‘induction’. Take for an example of induction the doctrine of the Trinity. You will not find the doctrine of the Trinity stated either implicitly or explicitly anywhere in the Bible. But you will find that there are references to ‘God the Father’,—‘God the Son’, and ‘God the Holy Spirit’—and, having come across these statements, you say to yourself, ‘Now I adduce the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is one and three Persons. That is not deduction, it is induction. You are building up the doctrine from certain statements. So you arrive at your doctrine by the two processes of deduction and induction.

Let me give you some simple, practical points. We must never found our doctrine on just one statement in the Bible, still less on part of a statement. There are people who have gone wrong because they have done this, sometimes even relying on half a verse. They forget the other half because this is the one that suits them. That is something we must never do.

And the other rule is that we must never arrive at any conclusion from Scripture which makes us contradict something which is stated in Scripture. We must always compare Scripture with Scripture. We must be ‘workmen’ who are ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’ (2 Tim. 2:15). That is a scriptural exhortation. So if I have arrived at a doctrine, and then find that something else clearly stated in the Bible is contradicted, then I know that my doctrine must be wrong. You see the importance of doing what we did in the last lecture, the importance of establishing the doctrine of verbal inspiration, of saying that all this book is God’s book? The Bible is one great message. It always forms a complete whole, so that never must one point contradict another. It is amazing to notice in the history of the Church how some of the chief heresies have arisen because great men have forgotten that simple rule.

But now I have to deal with one final question. ‘In view of all that you have been saying,’ you say, ‘surely every Christian should be able to agree with every other Christian about every single biblical doctrine? And yet,’ you add, ‘there is nothing so plain and clear as the fact that there are differences among Christians. What have you to say about that?’

Well, I just want to make a number of comments. Why are there these differences of opinion? The first reason is that people will persist in falling into the various errors that we have already enumerated. They drag in their philosophy, or they base their doctrine on one text or on half a text, or on something like that. If people will do these things, there must be differences of opinion, because some of us will refuse to do that, and therefore you have two schools of thought without going any further.

But then there is another cause for such differences. There is always this tendency on our part to start with a theory, and, having started, we try to force Scripture into our theory. I have already referred several times to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. That is surely the essence of the Roman Catholic errors. Having postulated a given Church and a given order, everything has to be forced to fit into that scheme. They do not base all their doctrine upon the Bible. They claim that some doctrine has come to them from outside the Bible, and that what is given is equal to what is found in the Bible.

This, again, is not something that applies to Roman Catholics only. It is just as applicable to many Protestants. If you start out with a particular theory about free will, or something like that, then I assure you that you will get into difficulties about certain biblical doctrines. We must be careful that we do not come with preconceived ideas and prejudices and philosophical theories. This is a very prolific cause of trouble and disputation.
Another way in which people arrive at these differences is that very often they elaborate their theory on details about which we cannot be certain. Now if you want an illustration of that, let me mention the word ‘prophecy’. Perhaps this is the greatest danger where this subject is concerned. When we study prophecy we tend to elaborate on details about which no one can be absolutely certain. People say, ‘I am certain,’ and then out comes the theory. But if we cannot demonstrate the points from the Bible, we have no right to elaborate a theory.

Another cause of trouble is that people will persist in taking as literal that which is obviously meant to be symbolical. For example, some time ago, I was travelling in a train and after a while I found myself involved in a discussion with a Roman Catholic. Of course, he inevitably brought me to this point: he said that surely the Bible says, ‘This is my body.’

I said, ‘But our Lord was there at the time; He obviously could not mean that the bread was His actual body when He was speaking in the body. It must be symbolical.’

‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘that is the trouble with you Protestants—you always say things like that. But you must take it literally.’
‘Very well,’ I said, ‘if you say that, this is what I say to you. Our Lord said, “This is my body which is given for you”.’
‘Yes,’ said the Roman Catholic.

‘Yes, but then,’ I said, ‘He went on to say, “This cup is the new testament in my blood.” He did not say the wine in the cup. He said, “This cup”. Are you telling me that He was referring to the cup in a literal sense?’

And, of course, he had to admit that he could not say that. ‘So,’ I said, ‘why not be honest enough to say that it is all symbolical? The cup stands for the wine, and the wine is the symbolic representation of the blood.’ If we once take as literal what is meant to be symbolic, we are bound to be in trouble.

But again let me remind you that this is not only true of Roman Catholics. Have not we known people who do this with a book like the book of Revelation, which tells us that all is symbolical? And has not there often been grievous trouble because people will take the symbols and deal with them literally? It is exactly the same procedure. So we must beware of this in every area.

Our Lord Jesus Himself had to tell some of His own disciples, ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life’ (John 6:63). He had been telling them that unless they ate the flesh of the Son of Man and drank His blood, they had no life in them. And they said, ‘How can we do this?’ They were materialising it, literalising it. He said, ‘My words are spirit; the flesh profiteth nothing.’

And lastly, of course, the thing to avoid above everything else is the party spirit. It is the greatest curse of denominationalism that we start with certain prejudices because we were brought up with them, and our fathers believed in them, and we say they must be defended at all costs. That is a terrible way to approach God’s truth. So let us pray to be delivered from the party spirit and the prejudices that are always characteristic of such a spirit.

So then, my next point is that there are certain matters in the Scriptures about which we cannot speak with finality. There are certain things about which equally good and capable men and women are not agreed and cannot agree. When we come to such matters, surely it is our business to say that we do not know. We cannot prove them, and we are content to wait until we arrive in glory and all things are made plain and clear to us. At the moment we see and understand in part, only ‘through a glass, darkly’ (1 Cor. 13:12). Our knowledge is not full. It is not final. Let us be content with the revelation that is given.

But there are certain doctrines about which we are and must be absolutely final, and they are the doctrines that are essential to the way of salvation. I am not referring to the mechanism of salvation. When you come to that you find good people often differing. I accept that. I am prepared to say, ‘I believe this and I am not prepared to believe that.’ And another man says, ‘All right—as long as we both agree about the way of salvation.’ When we come to this doctrine I shall emphasise these points further. But there must be no disputing about the person of Christ, about the miraculous and the supernatural, about the substitutionary death upon the cross and about the literal, physical resurrection. There is no argument there. This is final; this is absolute.

But with regard to all other matters, where we cannot be final and absolute, let us be sympathetic. Let us be tolerant. Let us admit our inability to prove, and let us together enjoy the great salvation in which we all participate, and look forward to the day when the hidden things shall be made plain, and we shall know even as we are already known.


David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

 

[Burdock]

Lost your Doctrine? Then you might need to read this.

How We Find the Doctrines

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. 1 John 2:18–21

I call your attention to that particular statement because it does present us with the exact context in which we must consider another general point before we come to deal with the particular doctrines which are taught in the Bible. We can summarise the position we have arrived at like this: the ultimate goal of our quest is a knowledge of God. We are not interested in doctrines merely as doctrines, but simply as they bring us to know God. The supreme ‘end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever’ (The Shorter Catechism).

The problem, therefore, is: How are we to know God? By our own efforts we cannot arrive at God. God must reveal Himself, and in His infinite grace and kindness He has done so, not only in creation and in history and in providence, but supremely in this book which we call the Bible. And then we went on to consider some aspects of inspiration. We took a very general view of it, and saw that it could be divided up quite naturally into certain groupings.
Then that in turn led us to the question: Can we rely upon this book and its proffered revelation? We considered that, and came to the conclusion that the Bible is a divinely inspired book. We saw that the Bible itself teaches what is known as the doctrine of verbal inspiration. We therefore accept it as full and final and infallible in all matters of faith and practice.

‘Very well,’ says someone, ‘having done all that, why don’t you start by immediately taking the first great central doctrine—the doctrine of God?’
But I cannot do that, and I will tell you why. The problem that arises at the moment is this. ‘Now,’ you say, ‘here is a book that contains these doctrines that are essential to a knowledge of God.’ Very well, I take my Bible and I open it, but I do not find that the Bible is just a collection of stated doctrines. There is a lot of history here, a great deal about kings, princes, births, deaths, and accounts of marriages, and so on. If the Bible were just a collection of doctrines plainly stated, there would be no difficulty at all, and all that we would have to do would be to find page one, then look at the first doctrine, expound it and consider it together.

But the Bible is not like that—merely literature. We do not go to the Bible in that way. The question, therefore, arises: How are these doctrines to be found in the Bible? How is one to discover them? Now that is no idle question, as I think I can show you very easily. But it is never enough to say, ‘I am not interested in doctrines. I’m a Bible person. Let these clever people argue about doctrines if they like; you give me the Bible and I am satisfied.’ That is a very foolish, indeed, a ridiculous, statement to make, because people who come to the Bible must believe something as the result of reading it. The question is: Are they believing what they ought to believe?

Most of the cults which are so prominent in the world today claim that they are based upon the Bible. ‘Of course,’ they say, ‘we believe everything that the Bible says; our teaching is based upon it.’ Indeed, you will find that some of these people appear to know their Bibles very well. So it is no use just saying to them that you do not believe as they do because you believe the Bible. We must know how doctrine is to be found in the Bible if we hope to deliver these people in any way at all, if we are anxious to make them true Christians and to bring them to a real knowledge of God. We must be in a position to explain to them where they go wrong and where they are not biblical, and to help them to understand the source of their error.

Now you notice that in the early Church that very position obtained. There were a number of people in the Christian Church all claiming to believe the truth, but some, says John, had left them: ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us’ (1 John 2:19). They were guilty of error and of heresy somewhere or another.

As it was in the days of the early Church, so it is still, and there never has been a time when it has so behoved God’s people to know what they believe, and why they believe it, as at this present hour. So how do we arrive at a knowledge of these doctrines? What are we to do? Given that we have the book which we now believe is authoritative and divinely inspired—God’s oracles, God’s word, God’s truth, revealed in a unique way—how do we find the doctrine that is in it? Now it seems to me that the best thing we can do is to consider the three main propositions which will guide and help us in this matter.

The first we will have to deal with, whether we want to or not, is the place that reason, understanding and intellect have in these matters. I admit that this is a very difficult subject. But it is vitally important and we must have some clear ideas in our minds as to what our position ought to be with respect to this. We already touched upon it in a very general way in our introduction. The point we then established was that by means of reason alone no one can arrive at God. The intellect is insufficient. ‘The world by wisdom knew not God’ (1 Cor. 1:21). That is a fact which can be proved. And you notice, incidentally, how all these clever people in the world today are, one after another, now becoming ready to admit that people, who were so highly regarded during the post-war period, are confessing the utter inadequacy of the human mind and reason, and confess the need for something beyond it. But now I am rather anxious to emphasise this same general concept in a slightly different manner. So I put it to you in the form of a number of propositions.

The first thing we must do, in view of all that we have seen together, is agree to grasp the Bible as our full and final authority in all matters of revelation. Having seen that we cannot get anywhere without the Bible, then the obvious thing to do is to say, ‘Very well, I accept the Bible. I don’t know anything apart from it. I have no knowledge of God apart from what the Bible tells me. I may theorize, and other people may do the same thing, but I really do not know anything apart from what I find in this book.’ So the first decision we must make is that we are going to be, as John Wesley put it, men and women ‘of one book’. Here is my only source, my only authority.

But I want to underline this and even to emphasise it still further. I must submit myself entirely to the Bible, and that will mean certain things. First, I start by telling myself that when I come to read the Bible and its doctrines, I am entering into a realm that is beyond the reach of my understanding. By definition, I shall be dealing with things that are beyond my power to grasp. The very idea of revelation, in and of itself, I suggest to you, must carry that implication. We are going to try to know God, and to study the doctrine concerning Him, and it must be the case that these truths are beyond our understanding. If I could understand God, I would be equal with Him. If my mind were able to apprehend and to span the truth about God, then it would mean that my mind is equal to the mind of God, and that, of course, is altogether wrong.

For instance, in our next lecture we hope to be dealing with the doctrine of the Trinity. Now there by definition is a doctrine that no one can possibly understand, but let us agree to say that before we come to the doctrine. Let nobody think, however, that this means committing intellectual suicide when we take up the Bible. It simply means that we recognise that there is a limit to reason. We agree with the great French mathematician and philosopher, Pascal, that the supreme achievement of reason is to teach that there is an end and a limit to reason. Our reason takes us so far and then we enter into the realm of revelation, where God is graciously pleased to manifest Himself to us.

But now I am anxious to emphasise the second point. It means that we must accept truths where we cannot understand them and fully explain them. Not only must we agree that we cannot, of necessity, understand everything, but also, when we come up against particular doctrines and truths, we must accept them if they are in the Bible, irrespective of the fact that we can or cannot understand them. Now I rather like to think of faith in that way. I am not sure but that the best definition of faith we can ever arrive at is this: faith means that men and women decide quite deliberately to be content only with what they have in the Bible, and that they stop asking questions.

You can tell very soon if a man is a true man of faith or not. Just listen to him. Some people are always asking questions: ‘But I do not see this, and I cannot understand that.’ But faith means that we are content to be shut up to this book, and that we say quite readily, ‘God has revealed everything He wants to reveal, and everything that is good for me to know is in the Bible. If it is not in the Bible, I am content not to know it.’ Bear that in mind, for instance, when you are discussing the problem of evil—how it entered into this world. The Bible does not tell us why God ever allowed it, and therefore if you take the faith position, you will not even ask questions about it. You are just content to say, ‘I do not know; the Bible doesn’t tell me, and I know nothing beyond what the Bible does tell me.’ This is a most important principle.

But let me go on to elaborate it a little more by putting it in this way: there is nothing that we must avoid so strenuously as the constant temptation to mix philosophy with revelation. Now you may think, some of you, that this does not apply to you. ‘I am not interested in philosophy, I have never read a book on philosophy in my life,’ you say. But, my dear friend, that does not mean that you are not a philosopher! We are all philosophers. You should not confine the term philosopher to people who make it their business or their duty in life to study or to teach it. Everyone who has an opinion about anything is automatically a philosopher. And I think I can show you in a minute that every one of us is not only a philosopher, but that we are always getting into trouble because we philosophise too much. So I am warning everybody against this danger of mixing philosophy with revelation.

Now this is the way in which we do it. We are ready at all times to reject certain doctrines, or, perhaps, if we do not actually reject them, we hesitate to believe them, though they are clearly taught in the Bible. We do this because we cannot understand them, or because we cannot explain them, or because they do not seem to fit into our scheme of things. Quite often when you confront people with a specific statement from the Bible, instead of saying, ‘Well, I am prepared to believe that though I do not understand it,’ they say, ‘But, if that is right, then how can God be a God of love?’ or something like that. The moment they speak like that they are speaking as philosophers, and I think that if you examine yourselves you will find it is something that you do quite frequently.

Indeed, I am afraid that those of us who are evangelical are very often guilty of being most inconsistent at this point. We argue with a so-called modernist and we say, ‘Fancy! He doesn’t believe in miracles, and he doesn’t believe in the supernatural, because he says he cannot understand a miracle’—and we denounce that. Yes; but sometimes when we come up against some of these great terms, which you will find in the first chapter of Ephesians, like predestined and elect according to the foreknowledge of God, we evangelicals begin to say, ‘Well, if that is right I don’t see how God is fair,’ and so on.

But that is exactly the same thing as your modernist friend was doing with regard to miracles. We see it very clearly in his case because we happen to be all right on the question of miracles. But when it is a doctrine we do not take to so readily, we use exactly the same argument as the modernist who brings out his philosophy. So this is something that must apply to all of us. I must not hesitate to believe a doctrine because I cannot fit it in; neither must I reject a doctrine because I cannot understand it. If this is the truth of God, and the thing is clearly taught, then I am to accept it whether I understand it or not.

Then one final point I would put under this heading is this: we must never allow ourselves to be governed by our own logic or by our own desire to have a perfect system. It is a danger to which we are all exposed. We instinctively like to have a complete system; we do not like gaps or ragged edges. It is again because we are all philosophers. It is because the philosopher always wants a complete whole, wants to be able to understand everything, wants to be able to state everything, and we are all like that. The danger is, you see, that we press our own logic and our own schemes to a point which goes beyond the teaching of the Scripture. At that point we are again guilty of sin and of error. We must give full weight to every statement of Scripture. We must never minimise one or ignore it in order that our scheme may be complete.

I could give you many illustrations of that. There are people, for instance, who have always been described as hyper-Calvinists, and that is their trouble. They go beyond the Scripture and are driven by their own logic and by their own arguments, and they claim things which cannot be demonstrated from the Scriptures. They are so anxious to have a perfect scheme that they fall into that very subtle and dangerous trap.

So, then, the ultimate thing which we would say under this heading would be this: we must submit ourselves not only to the authority of the book, but also to the guidance, the inspiration and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. I should never read the Bible in exactly the same way that I read any other book. If all I have said about it is true, then I must come to it realising my inability, realising that any natural capacity I may have is not enough here. I must see that spiritual things must be understood in a spiritual way, and therefore I should start always by asking God by the Holy Spirit to enlighten me, to illumine me, to keep me from error and subtle dangers and to lead me into all truth. Then, having done that, I come to my Bible; and, with a mind which already knows its limits, and which is thus enlightened by the Holy Spirit, I begin to discover the doctrines of the Bible.

Very well, then, that brings me to my second main heading, which is the method by which one arrives at the doctrine. Again, I would remind you that the Bible is not a mere collection of doctrines, and as we now come to seek our doctrines in the Bible, it is not going to be a mere matter of stringing a number of texts together. Some people seem to think that this is the way. Having discovered a number of statements about a given matter in every part of the Bible, they give you a string of texts and leave you at that. Now that is not the way to arrive at the doctrine, because patently that is not going far enough.

Rather, I suggest we should do this: we do collect our texts; we discover every statement that we can find in the Bible on a particular subject. Then, having gathered them together, and having collated them, we proceed to discover the doctrine which lies at the foundation. That is what we are concerned about. Here are these various statements. What is the doctrine they are propounding? What are they telling us? What is this basic something that is common to all these statements? That is our doctrine.

Now as we do that, there are certain rules which must be observed most carefully. First of all, let us look at a number of general rules. Here is the first. Any doctrine that we claim to believe from the Bible must always be clearly found in the Bible. It must be capable of demonstration from the Bible. If I cannot prove to you that the doctrine which I hold is found in the Bible, or that the Bible proves it or demonstrates it, then I must reject it.
Let me give you some illustrations of what I mean. You will find, as we have seen, that people come to you saying that they believe the Bible. Then they propound their doctrines to you, and you ask: ‘But where did that doctrine come from?’

‘Ah,’ they will tell you, ‘someone once had a vision or a message.’ You are familiar with such statements. But what I would emphasise here is that we must say that we are not prepared to accept any such statement. We do not care who says it, nor what marvellous experiences that person may have had. It is quite immaterial to us if it cannot be proved and established in and from the Scripture.

But wait a minute—I am not only referring to the cults. This is our evangelical reply, for instance, to the Roman Catholics. You see, they come and tell you certain things. ‘But,’ you say, ‘I don’t find that in the Scriptures.’

‘Of course not,’ they reply, ‘but we have our tradition; revelation did not stop at the end of the New Testament canon—the truth has been received directly from God since then. The Apostolate and the apostolic understanding have continued, and we therefore argue that the Church and her tradition and her teaching are of equal authority and value with the Scriptures.’

And again we say a firm and resolute, No! We do not care what authority a teaching may claim for itself. If it cannot be proved from Scripture, we reject it.

And we say exactly the same thing, of course, to any claim for any doctrine which may originate from human ability or understanding. Take, for instance, the Roman Catholic doctrine about transubstantiation. Roman Catholics teach that as the result of the action of the priest, the very bread at the Communion Table has been turned into the literal body of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘But,’ you say, ‘it still looks like bread!’

So they reply, ‘Of course it does,’ and then they bring in their philosophy, by which they tell you that there is a difference between the substance of a thing and the accidents. What they mean by ‘accidents’ are qualities like colour and texture. And they say that the substance has been changed but the accidents remain the same. A marvellous bit of philosophy! But we do not accept any doctrine, however subtle and clever the explanation may be, if we cannot find it in the Scripture itself, or prove it from the Scripture.

But let me go on to a second point. Our doctrine must be exclusively scriptural. Not only must we reject all doctrine that has patently come from outside the Scriptures, but we must not even accept a doctrine that is partly scriptural and partly something else. It must be pure, unadulterated Scripture. This is another most important point in view of the constant tendency of philosophy to creep in by the back door.

Then the third point I would make under this heading is that the doctrine must be plain and clear in the Scriptures. May I introduce you to a technical term. I am trying not to do this, but this is a great term—one that was used by our Protestant fathers. They talked about the perspicuity of the scriptural doctrine, by which they meant that true scriptural doctrine is always plain and clear. Scripture itself emphasises that everywhere. It presumes it.

We often make a great mistake when we come to study the Scriptures because we do not stop to remind ourselves of the type of people for whom they were written. It would have saved a lot of ink and a lot of trouble if everybody who became an expositor of St Paul’s epistles had reminded himself, before he started expounding, that the epistles were not written to students or to professors of doctrine at Oxford and Cambridge, but to slaves, and to common, ordinary people! ‘Not many wise men … not many noble, are called,’ said Paul (1 Cor. 1:26). It was to such people that the epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians and so on were written; and it is because we forget this that we get into difficulties. When St Paul wrote these epistles he took it for granted that the people to whom he was writing would understand them. They did not have these learned professors to expound them. No, no. He was writing to them that he might teach them, and he knew that they would understand. This is what the fathers meant by the perspicuity of the Scriptures.

Now that is why I am afraid that sometimes I express a certain amount of impatience with people who always seem to base their doctrine on the meaning of a Greek or Hebrew word. In the light of what we have just said, that, of necessity, must be wrong. We should be able to arrive at the meaning of the doctrine from the text of the passage. So I would put it like this: we need no special authority to guide us in these matters. The apostle John says that we have no need of teaching in that sense because of this anointing. ‘Ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie …’ (1 John 2:27). So we reject the Roman Catholic suggestion that ordinary people are not fit to be reading their Bibles and that only the Church can truly expound it. No, we say that these documents were written to people like ourselves, and we and they were meant to understand them.

In the same way, we disclaim altogether the idea that there is any absolute need of some special philosophy or linguistic understanding, or knowledge of any other language in order to understand these matters, as long as we are given a plain and accurate translation. So I say again that we reject the Roman Catholic teaching.

We also reject much of the theology of the last one hundred years because it has been mostly philosophical theology. And we reject many types of theology that are very popular at this present time, because before you can understand them you have got to understand the special meanings given to the words ‘history’, ‘time’ and ‘myth’. You have to be clever and philosophical, and by definition this must be wrong. We can trust to the plain teaching, we believe in the perspicuity of scriptural doctrine.

Those, then, are my general rules, so now we turn to the particular. Now that we have collected our texts together, what do we do about them? Well, you will find that there are two main things we have to do. Sometimes it is quite a simple matter to deduce the doctrine from the statements. You just look at the statements, and you say, ‘That quite inevitably means so and so.’ That is deduction—you draw out the meaning.

But there is another method, and that is called ‘induction’. Take for an example of induction the doctrine of the Trinity. You will not find the doctrine of the Trinity stated either implicitly or explicitly anywhere in the Bible. But you will find that there are references to ‘God the Father’,—‘God the Son’, and ‘God the Holy Spirit’—and, having come across these statements, you say to yourself, ‘Now I adduce the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is one and three Persons. That is not deduction, it is induction. You are building up the doctrine from certain statements. So you arrive at your doctrine by the two processes of deduction and induction.

Let me give you some simple, practical points. We must never found our doctrine on just one statement in the Bible, still less on part of a statement. There are people who have gone wrong because they have done this, sometimes even relying on half a verse. They forget the other half because this is the one that suits them. That is something we must never do.

And the other rule is that we must never arrive at any conclusion from Scripture which makes us contradict something which is stated in Scripture. We must always compare Scripture with Scripture. We must be ‘workmen’ who are ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’ (2 Tim. 2:15). That is a scriptural exhortation. So if I have arrived at a doctrine, and then find that something else clearly stated in the Bible is contradicted, then I know that my doctrine must be wrong. You see the importance of doing what we did in the last lecture, the importance of establishing the doctrine of verbal inspiration, of saying that all this book is God’s book? The Bible is one great message. It always forms a complete whole, so that never must one point contradict another. It is amazing to notice in the history of the Church how some of the chief heresies have arisen because great men have forgotten that simple rule.

But now I have to deal with one final question. ‘In view of all that you have been saying,’ you say, ‘surely every Christian should be able to agree with every other Christian about every single biblical doctrine? And yet,’ you add, ‘there is nothing so plain and clear as the fact that there are differences among Christians. What have you to say about that?’

Well, I just want to make a number of comments. Why are there these differences of opinion? The first reason is that people will persist in falling into the various errors that we have already enumerated. They drag in their philosophy, or they base their doctrine on one text or on half a text, or on something like that. If people will do these things, there must be differences of opinion, because some of us will refuse to do that, and therefore you have two schools of thought without going any further.

But then there is another cause for such differences. There is always this tendency on our part to start with a theory, and, having started, we try to force Scripture into our theory. I have already referred several times to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. That is surely the essence of the Roman Catholic errors. Having postulated a given Church and a given order, everything has to be forced to fit into that scheme. They do not base all their doctrine upon the Bible. They claim that some doctrine has come to them from outside the Bible, and that what is given is equal to what is found in the Bible.

This, again, is not something that applies to Roman Catholics only. It is just as applicable to many Protestants. If you start out with a particular theory about free will, or something like that, then I assure you that you will get into difficulties about certain biblical doctrines. We must be careful that we do not come with preconceived ideas and prejudices and philosophical theories. This is a very prolific cause of trouble and disputation.
Another way in which people arrive at these differences is that very often they elaborate their theory on details about which we cannot be certain. Now if you want an illustration of that, let me mention the word ‘prophecy’. Perhaps this is the greatest danger where this subject is concerned. When we study prophecy we tend to elaborate on details about which no one can be absolutely certain. People say, ‘I am certain,’ and then out comes the theory. But if we cannot demonstrate the points from the Bible, we have no right to elaborate a theory.

Another cause of trouble is that people will persist in taking as literal that which is obviously meant to be symbolical. For example, some time ago, I was travelling in a train and after a while I found myself involved in a discussion with a Roman Catholic. Of course, he inevitably brought me to this point: he said that surely the Bible says, ‘This is my body.’

I said, ‘But our Lord was there at the time; He obviously could not mean that the bread was His actual body when He was speaking in the body. It must be symbolical.’

‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘that is the trouble with you Protestants—you always say things like that. But you must take it literally.’
‘Very well,’ I said, ‘if you say that, this is what I say to you. Our Lord said, “This is my body which is given for you”.’
‘Yes,’ said the Roman Catholic.

‘Yes, but then,’ I said, ‘He went on to say, “This cup is the new testament in my blood.” He did not say the wine in the cup. He said, “This cup”. Are you telling me that He was referring to the cup in a literal sense?’

And, of course, he had to admit that he could not say that. ‘So,’ I said, ‘why not be honest enough to say that it is all symbolical? The cup stands for the wine, and the wine is the symbolic representation of the blood.’ If we once take as literal what is meant to be symbolic, we are bound to be in trouble.

But again let me remind you that this is not only true of Roman Catholics. Have not we known people who do this with a book like the book of Revelation, which tells us that all is symbolical? And has not there often been grievous trouble because people will take the symbols and deal with them literally? It is exactly the same procedure. So we must beware of this in every area.

Our Lord Jesus Himself had to tell some of His own disciples, ‘It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life’ (John 6:63). He had been telling them that unless they ate the flesh of the Son of Man and drank His blood, they had no life in them. And they said, ‘How can we do this?’ They were materialising it, literalising it. He said, ‘My words are spirit; the flesh profiteth nothing.’

And lastly, of course, the thing to avoid above everything else is the party spirit. It is the greatest curse of denominationalism that we start with certain prejudices because we were brought up with them, and our fathers believed in them, and we say they must be defended at all costs. That is a terrible way to approach God’s truth. So let us pray to be delivered from the party spirit and the prejudices that are always characteristic of such a spirit.

So then, my next point is that there are certain matters in the Scriptures about which we cannot speak with finality. There are certain things about which equally good and capable men and women are not agreed and cannot agree. When we come to such matters, surely it is our business to say that we do not know. We cannot prove them, and we are content to wait until we arrive in glory and all things are made plain and clear to us. At the moment we see and understand in part, only ‘through a glass, darkly’ (1 Cor. 13:12). Our knowledge is not full. It is not final. Let us be content with the revelation that is given.

But there are certain doctrines about which we are and must be absolutely final, and they are the doctrines that are essential to the way of salvation. I am not referring to the mechanism of salvation. When you come to that you find good people often differing. I accept that. I am prepared to say, ‘I believe this and I am not prepared to believe that.’ And another man says, ‘All right—as long as we both agree about the way of salvation.’ When we come to this doctrine I shall emphasise these points further. But there must be no disputing about the person of Christ, about the miraculous and the supernatural, about the substitutionary death upon the cross and about the literal, physical resurrection. There is no argument there. This is final; this is absolute.

But with regard to all other matters, where we cannot be final and absolute, let us be sympathetic. Let us be tolerant. Let us admit our inability to prove, and let us together enjoy the great salvation in which we all participate, and look forward to the day when the hidden things shall be made plain, and we shall know even as we are already known.


David Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Yes I agree one must watch their doctor and closely. Yes We all believe certain things, but why do you believe it? You have beliefs about many things. You have strong opinions about God regarding what He is like or not like, how much He is involved in your life or how little, and what He can or cannot do. You have serious views about marriage – you have thoughts about the role of the husband, role of the wife, submission, leadership in the home, and raising children.

You have convictions about things like what happens after life, what heaven and hell are like, the role of the Holy Spirit in your life and who Jesus is. All your thoughts and ideas about matters dealing with God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the church, God’s Word, the devil, the spiritual world, angels and the like make you a theologian. Whether we like it or not, every one of us is a theologian. We all have a set of beliefs. The question is, what are your beliefs based on? What is the foundation of your theology?