NICK RIVKIN: Where Do We Get Our Doctrine From?

FILE: DOG8.WMV

NICK RIVKIN: Where do we get our doctrine from?

DR. JOEL OKAMOTO: Thanks for your question. And really I

can answer that in a couple of different ways.

Now, if you're asking about, you might say, the source of our

doctrine, then there's an obvious answer. It's the Bible.

Remember once again the example of Biblical theology. That

expression. We can use the term in this way. Our church really

has, our church teaches, a truly Biblical theology. And that

means that its theology, its doctrine, its thinking and speaking

is taken from and tested against the Bible.

Now, let me go on and ask an obvious follow-up question.

Namely, why the Bible? In other words, why do we hold that the

Bible and the Bible alone should be the source and the norm for

our teaching? What makes the Old and New Testaments the pure

and clear fountain of Israel, as the solid declaration says?

Now, an obvious answer to that obvious question is the Bible

is the word of God. But if you were to ask them why do you call

the Bible the word of God, very often, at least in our circles,

the answer is because they're inspired. They have the Holy

Spirit working through the prophetic and Apostolic writers.

They have the Holy Spirit as their author.

Now, these answers are true and these answers are important.

But they may not be very helpful if the question, why the Bible,

is an honest one. If the issue actually is an urgent one.

After all, you'd have to then show that the Bible really is

inspired. And if the status of the Bible itself is in question,

then quoting the Bible about itself, like all scriptures, every

scripture is God breathed, is unlikely to be persuasive. The

Bible doesn't appear to be inspired. It bears no

incontrovertible marks of divine origin. Then what?

You might say that the belief in the inspiration of the

scriptures is an article of faith. It's something that can't be

proven and it simply has to be believed in. Now, certainly the

person who acknowledges Biblical inspiration does hold this as

an article of faith. But acting like this suggests that our

belief in the Bible rests on very thin grounds and it suggests

an entirely arbitrary choice. And if the Bible is held to be

authoritative on no stronger grounds than apparently either an

inner experience or purely personal choice, it makes our

doctrine, which it's supposed to be drawn from and based on and

normed by the Bible, indistinguishable from a purely human

invention.

That, of course, is a very precarious place on which to be

found standing.

So why the Bible? Well, a more sound answer, if actually the

status of the Bible is in question, will be found if we consider

not only the Bible's origins, but the Bible's function. In

other words, if we ask, what is God's purpose for the Bible? Or

how can we discern the Bible's purpose? Why has God given us

the Bible? If we pursue that line of thinking, then the grounds

for understanding the Bible as the word of God, as authoritative

for our faith in life, becomes much more clear to see.

Now, what St. John says in his gospel can rightly be said

about all of scripture. About the entire Bible. These things

are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the

Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Now, how do we get to that? Well, as Christians, we are

people who acknowledge and believe in Jesus as the Christ and as

the Son of God. And we know that we have life in his name. And

how did that come about? It depends, of course, from person to

person. But in general, as Christians, we all acknowledge that

God is our creator and that we are responsible to him and that

from him and out of his grace we have forgiveness for our sin.

We have from him life, even though we face death, we have

salvation, even though we face evil.

Now, for different people, different parts of this one

confessional will be important for you. But the general story

is that we live under -- we live under a God to whom we are

responsible and that we have forgiveness, we have life, we have

salvation, through and in the name of Jesus Christ his Son.

But how do we get to that point? What was it? How was it

that we were brought into this relationship? Well, that was

through other people. In my case, it was my parents who brought

me as a baby to be baptized and raised me in the Christian

faith.

For others, for instance, my wife, who was an adult convert,

it was someone, a friend, and -- but no matter when you came to

faith, when you are brought into the family of God, it was by

way of the people of God. In other words, God was active in his

people to make a people. "Once you were not a people," we read

in I Peter. "Now you are the people of God. Once you were not

shown mercy, but now you have been shown mercy."

Now, in this people in the church, what do they live

according to? They live according to the word of God. And what

is the rule and the norm for their practices, for their life,

for our life? We call that the Bible. We hold the Bible to be

authoritative because it truly teaches us about God, about his

will, about his works, about his promises. And seen in this

perspective, that the Bible is a basis and the Bible is the

touchstone for coming to know God, for coming to understand God

and his will, for hearing God's promises, it is on that basis

that we find the Bible is authoritative and then what the

scriptures have to say about themselves has -- has a place.

That they are not just what people have said, people have

written, the witness people have come into contact with God, but

they themselves are -- the scriptures themselves, that is, are

God's own doing, God's own work. Now that becomes intelligible.

Now that becomes credible.

So that's why the Bible. It is rooted then in God's work of

salvation. Not just for the world but for our salvation. It is

that from which we know about God. It is on the basis of

scriptures that we can be sure about the promises of God. And

in that then we will follow the scriptures also wherever they

lead us.

So where does our doctrine come from in that respect? The

Bible. Of course, I just mentioned about the people of God.

And another way to answer your question, where does our doctrine

come from, is from other people. Mom and dad. The people I

went to church with. A neighbor. A television program. Yes,

it is God who speaks to us. Yes it is God who directs us. But

God works, as Lutherans like to say, through means. God works

through people. God works through the church. And so another

way to speak about this, where does our doctrine come from is,

in broadly speaking, the church. It's important to see that

because our doctrine does not drop out of heaven any more than

the Bible dropped shrink wrapped out of heaven, and our

doctrines are not, as it were, self-evident to anyone who has --

who comes across it. It works itself out in the life of -- of a

community. Now, when I teach courses, typically I ask students

at the very beginning, what church do you call home? And I ask

on a regular basis. Now, if this is what we believe, if this is

what we hold, if this is a sensible Biblical confessional

conclusion, then what does the church look like that believes

this?

My point in bringing this out is that how a church lives, how

it speaks, how it acts, how the people of a church interact with

each other and towards the world does a great deal to shape not

only what doctrines we believe in but how we regard them, how

they shape our own loves. Now, there's not necessarily only one

way to do these things, but it helps to explain some of the

differences among people who, themselves, are all faithful and

yet sometimes quite different. And so that's why it's important

to recognize that another answer to your question is it comes

from the people of God. It comes from the church.

Now, however, you could also regard your question, you could

take your question to be something like this. What occasioned

our doctrine? Theology is always an occasional activity.

Theology comes about because there's a reason to do that. And

the doctrines of the church, especially the dogmatic

formulations, have arisen because there was a reason to do so.

We talked about that a little bit earlier. Perhaps there was a

controversy. Perhaps there was confusion. Perhaps there was a

new issue. And then the scriptures were examined and the

Christians discussed it and some kind of consensus, hopefully,

was reached. On some things, of course, there is no consensus

still among -- among Christians. We have that right now in the

church around the world with regard to, for instance, the

sacrament of the altar. Or about baptism. Say infant baptism.

In some respects, your position on the Lord's Supper, your

position on baptism, these mark you out. In other words,

these -- these are touchstones for a particular position. And

so to better understand our doctrinal position and to better

understand the positions of others, it can be helpful to

recognize the circumstances in which doctrinal differences,

doctrinal formulations came about.

So I hope you find those helpful answers to your -- what I

think was probably a fairly simple question.

(End of DOG8.WMV.)