Why Heart Disease And Traumatic Head Injuries Should Be Avoided
When advocating for correct Biblical doctrine there will
always be that one person who responds, “We are not saved by pure doctrine. You are a doctrinal Pharisee advocating for a
salvation by works.” This refutation
brings up a very valid point. Does
doctrine matter and if it does, how much doctrine must be pure if one is to
remain a Christian?
Dr. Robert Kolb in his book The Christian Faith presents an excellent metaphor that helps us
understand the serious threat that incorrect doctrine has upon Christian
thought. His metaphor of the human body also
allows us to understand that even though incorrect theology is destructive, it
does not necessarily result in one becoming apostate. Finally, his metaphor assists us in understanding
that the question, “How much doctrine must be pure if one is to remain a
Christian,” is simply the wrong kind of question to ask. He states,
Some people define biblical
teaching as a series of topics. Like
pearls on a string, these topics are all roughly of equal importance for
them. If we conceive of doctrine in this
way, we could say that losing any one pearl has about the same effect on the
whole of biblical teaching as losing any other pearl. Some people could say that you dare not lose
any pearl if you are to be dressed for the host of the heavenly banquet. Others could say that as long as you have a
pearl or two left on the string, you are ready to be received at his table.
Others conceive of biblical teaching
as a wheel, with a hub and spokes and rim.
They suggest that wheels cannot exist without hub and rim and some
spokes, but other spokes may be broken without immobilizing the wheel.
Neither of these metaphors
adequately describes the nature of biblical teaching. It is better to compare the doctrine of the
Scripture to a human body. The body of
doctrine cannot exist if Christ the head is decapitated. It dies without the heart of our understanding
of how we become right with God pumping away—although the heart, the doctrine
of justification, may be partially diseased and still pump, it is true. This was evident in the medieval church,
where preachers put a high but false premium on good works and still pointed people
to Christ’s saving blood. We see this in
contemporary Christians who empathize the contribution of our own personal
decision in coming to Christ and still try to cultivate trust in his grace.
If an arm, the doctrine of Baptism,
for example, is severed, the body may be able to survive. But it may hemorrhage and die. If the leg of the doctrine of the church
become paralyzed, the body may survive, but it will be crippled at best, and it
may fall down in a heap and crack the head, too.
So the question, “How much doctrine
must be pure if one is to remain a Christian?” is simply a wrong kind of
question. The whole of our conveying of
biblical teaching needs to be accurate and on target—both because believers
need to know what God wants us to know and because God’s Word is true. Nonetheless, sinful doctrinal error does not
always break our relationship with the Lord even though it makes it more
tenuous.[1]
Applying this metaphor to a contemporary example we can derive
that one who embraces the tenets of the Church Growth Movement should not
automatically be considered an unconverted pagan outside the Christian faith,
but rather a person who walks with a serious limp due to their doctrine of the
church (i.e., leg) being influenced by inflated anthropological assumptions. Consider another example, a person who
embraces decision theology from the old Semi-Pelagian American Revivals of the
nineteenth-century is not necessarily one who is completely lost, but one who
tragically has heart disease (i.e., heart of justification is infected with
free will theology). Thus, these
examples are not necessarily people who specifically reject Christ as the head
or promote decapitation. These examples
are not necessarily people who reject Justification or celebrate heart
disease. Rather, they are individuals
whose body of doctrine is unknowingly ill in some areas and possibly healthy in
other areas. They are individuals who
are at risk of a heart attack and traumatic head injury. They are at risk of losing
justification due to their free will theology infecting the heart. They are at risk of the doctrine of Christ
being traumatically struck due to their faulty anthropological assumptions weakening
the leg; a leg that may give out causing the whole body of doctrine to
fall.
Furthermore, this metaphor also helps in showing the motives
of those advocating for pure doctrine. Otherwise
stated, those advocating for pure doctrine are not advocating for works
righteousness by doctrine, but are fighting against false theologies that damn,
distort, and poison a person’s body of doctrine. They are not advocating pure theology to meet
a certain doctrinal purity quota for a salvific payout, but rather are promoting
purity of doctrinal truths for the health of God’s saints.
Finally, this metaphor helps us understand why correct
theology matters. It matters because it
is indeed important to guard Christ and the doctrine of Justification. It matters because it is indeed important to
take note of false theology within secondary doctrines that can advertently and
inadvertently impact the head (i.e., Christ) and heart (i.e., Justification).
As a closing point, this metaphor allows us to consider this
subject within a compassionate pastoral framework, a framework that causes one
to assess a person’s error in light of its seriousness and location in the body
of doctrine, which then allows one to assess the proportional corrective response
that is needed.
[1]
Robert Kolb, The Christian Faith: A
Lutheran Exposition (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1993), 13-14.
To access a PDF Teaching Sheet on this article, CLICK HERE.
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