Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Gavin Ortlund (Protestant) on how to Rank Doctrines in Terms of Importance

  

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)