There are all kinds of ways to distinguish
doctrines. In this book I suggest four basic categories. We could explore
subcategories as well, but this fourfold ranking should help as a starting
point:
· First-rank
doctrines are essential to the gospel itself.
· Second-rank
doctrines are urgent for the health and practice of the church such that
they frequently cause Christians to separate at the level of local church, denomination,
and /or ministry.
· Third-rank
doctrines are important to Christian theology, but not enough to justify
separation or division among Christians.
· Fourth-rank
doctrines are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry
collaboration.
In this book I consider the
Trinity, for example, to be a first-rank doctrine, baptism a second-rank
doctrines, and the millennium a third-rank doctrine . . . I suggest two
overlapping but distinguishable reasons why we should fight for first-rank
doctrines:
· Some
first-rank doctrines are worth fighting for because they mark a fault line
between the gospel and a rival ideology, religion, or worldview (as with the
virgin birth)
· Some
first-rank doctrines are worth fighting for because they constitute a material
point of the gospel (as with justification).
More simply: some first-rank
doctrines are needed to defend the gospel, and others to proclaim the
gospel. Without them the gospel is either vulnerable or incomplete. . . .
Ranking Different Doctrines
How do we determine how to rank
the importance of any particular doctrine? Erik Thoennes offers a helpful list
of criteria:
1.
Biblical clarity
2.
Relevance to the character of God
3.
Relevance to the essence of the gospel
4.
Biblical frequency and significance (how often in Scripture it is
taught, and what weight Scripture places upon it)
5.
Effects on other doctrines
6.
Consensus among Christians (past and present)
7.
Effect on personal and church life
8.
Current cultural pressure to deny a teaching of Scripture (Erik
Thoennes, Life’s Biggest Questions: What the Bible Says about the Things That
Matter Most [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011], 35-37)
A noticeable feature of Thoennes’s
criteria is the recurring interest in the overall effect of a doctrine—on
the doctrine of God (2), and on the gospel (3), and on other doctrines (5), on
the life of the church and individual Christians (7), and so forth. This
relates to an important theme of this book: that theological triage is not
primarily an intellectual exercise but a practical one. Theological wisdom does
not consider doctrines in the abstract, concerned mainly with technical
correctness. Instead, it considers doctrines in their “real life” influence on
actual people and situations and churches. . . . We must also remember that criteria
such as those in Thoennes’s list function in a cumulative, general way. It is
possible for a doctrine to be a first-rank doctrine without necessarily
meeting all eight criteria. For instance, the virgin birth is referenced in
only a few biblical passages (criterion 4), and yet it qualifies as a
first-rank doctrine. (Gavin Ortlund, Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The
Case for Theological Triage [Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2020], 18-19, 75-77)
