Necessary Beliefs

It has been a little more than 10 years since I decided to practice my faith to the point of inconvenience in which I allowed it to take hold of my thoughts and actions. Since then I could not count how many people through the years have claimed beliefs masked as Christianity but were unsupported by any form of valid Christian authority. It was during those years I came to the understanding that I cannot trust what a man says or has said to direct me in my faith. I must rely on Scripture and the reasonable interpretation of such. Beyond the authority of Scripture we are left to our interpretations, hopefully through the Holy Spirit’s guidance we can test to know what ought to be followed and what ought to be discarded. Not to discount the teachers of the day, there are many gifted teachers doing God’s work, my first and foremost litmus test when considering a given message is if it is founded in Scripture or not. If so, it is taken with authority of possibly being the proper view of God’s Word, if not it cannot be taken with any more weight than one man to another.

In retrospect, as I consider the manner I approached the doctrine of Faith to be followed I am thankful that thus far I have not adhered to an unscriptural doctrine before my pursuit of understanding Christian doctrine began in Germany. It started as learning the rational and secular defenses for Christianity known as Apologetics, but upon the Introduction I learned it was really basic evangelical theological doctrine, much of which is necessary to be established “a priori” to understand the Bible and God as the Bible describes him to be. I have not yet been confronted with a set of doctrine that I disagreed with that has been established as necessary beliefs, the vast majority of the material presented I never considered as topics of issue or contention, such as: God’s simplicity, necessity, impassibility, unity, or immateriality just to name a few. In the volume I recently completed those traits listed are among 28 other necessary traits which encompass the God of the Bible.

If someone approached me 3 years ago and claimed I must believe those traits of God to be a scripturally faithful Christian, I would have laughed at them and questioned their seriousness, sanity or both. I most certainly would’ve questioned their faith and sincerity of knowing Christ. Christianity has been packaged in so many ways to be more “marketable” for lack of better words. I theorize the more evangelistic in nature of the ministry the more simple the message will be packed. Reasonably so, it is likely unnecessary that someone acknowledge God’s immutability before they are personally introduced to Jesus. I grasp the need to summarize the Christian Doctrine such that a layman can understand it; I don’t think a better summarization is done by the Gospels. However, the Gospels are often too complex to actually understand and for further evangelistic purpose they are carved even more to get to a message something along the lines of “We are all sinners, sinners go to Hell, God forgives sin, confess your sins to be saved”. I have previously expressed thoughts on the Prayer of Salvation and the potential detriment I think it offers to a life of authentic faith.

I find myself being much closer to the person claiming that one must believe X set of doctrines to be an authentic Christian. Without becoming Pharisaical where does that leave me? I do not regret learning the doctrine of what I have bonded my life to; in fact knowing the deeper understanding of Christian doctrine has further strengthened my faith immensely. I recall describing my worldview to a friend a while ago as a buckyball, a C₆₀ molecule that has been described as flexible as a rubber but as strong as a diamond. I chose this description based on the molecular configuration, because every atom is interconnected. My understanding of the sciences has already strengthened my assurance that Christianity is true, understanding the doctrine is one more area to reinforce my faith, so much so I can hardly call it faith. I know Christianity to be true better than I know 2+2= 4.

I understand my faith is vastly different from those around me because of my personal relationship with Christ, the experiences I have had, my willingness to accept truth, and the empirical knowledge I have. Just as every friendship is an individual relationship, so too every person’s faith is at the individual level. I do not dare to claim one must fully understand orthodox systematic theology of the evangelical Christian faith. The danger I am more aware of, if one does not understand the essential doctrines of the faith they claim, there are serious issues that may arise.

The most important, how does one know the God they claim to have a relationship with, is the God of Christianity? If one denies that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God the implications from such a seemingly skeptic claim quickly pile into a web of heresy or blasphemy. If the Bible has errors and is still the Word of God, then God makes mistakes, if God makes mistakes then he is not Truth, if God is not Truth, then he is not perfect, if God is not perfect, then he is not omniscient, if he is not omniscient, he cannot be God. This is one simple example of many that can be formulated from orthodox evangelical Christianity. Each “if” statement can be used to counter a number of paths to prove the existence and rationality of Christianity. Consider the example provided, only expand the “if” “then” to 28 necessary qualities and see how interesting that becomes. That is how a simple claim of skepticism is only a logical deduction away from disbelief in the existence of God at all or at least the God of Christianity. My only rational answer to such a question is to depend upon the Holy Spirit’s guidance, but then it still refers, that if I consider the Trinity to be tritheism (there are three gods or three separate beings), modalism (God is one person that appears in different roles), or any number of doctrines apart from the Trinity that God is three persons with one nature, then how can one know the God they believe is the one that is?

The dangers from ignorance of doctrine I think are far greater than knowing too much doctrine without faith. Placing importance on doctrine is what lead the Pharisees astray, and Christ had strong words to those that claimed religion but not faith. I also think of any number of documentaries I have watched on the History Channel to represent the scholastic historical views experts give concerning the existence of Jesus, the origin of Christianity, the understanding of Heaven or Hell, or any number of topics of that order. I have yet to see an expert that offered a view that completely coincided with the scriptural account. Faith is the most important part of our relationship with Christ. However, there is an undefined level of understanding that I see necessary in understanding who the God we pledge to follow is. Or maybe this is a deeper meaning of what Christ meant when he said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and believed”.

Epilogue: It was almost humorous for me to read this, at this point in my life I did not even conceive the possibility of going to a Bible college. Yet, all of the content of this was addressed in my Theology I course.  Dr. Thoennes does a much better job that this blog though.