Doctrine

The pattern of sound teaching

‘Doctrine’ simply means teaching. The New Testament word is didaskalia (διδασκαλία), often translated ‘teaching’ or ‘doctrine’. The church born at Pentecost "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer" (Acts 2:42), and Paul charges Timothy:

Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching you have heard from me, with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 1:13

John Wesley glosses the phrase as "The model of pure, wholesome doctrine" Wesley, and Matthew Henry adds: "It is not enough to assent to the sound words, but we must love them" Matthew Henry. Doctrine is never theory alone. "Pay close attention to your life and to your teaching," Paul writes (1 Timothy 4:16), and he speaks of "godly teaching" (1 Timothy 6:3). He also warns that "the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine" (2 Timothy 4:3).

The church's confession

From early on the church summed up the teaching of Scripture for those being baptised, and these summaries grew into creeds such as the Apostles' and the Nicene. After the Reformation the churches taught doctrine through confessions of faith and catechisms. The Heidelberg Catechism, asked what a Christian must believe, answers:

All that is promised us in the Gospel, which the articles of our catholic, undoubted Christian faith teach us in sum.

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 22

In the fifth century Vincent of Lérins wrote that doctrine may grow, as a child grows into an adult, but must never be changed into something else Vincent of Lérins, Commonitory. The church has often had to state its doctrine more exactly when false teaching arose. Teaching that contradicts Scripture and overturns the heart of the gospel it called heresy; right teaching faithful to Scripture, orthodoxy.

Where the traditions differ

The Catholic Church calls dogma the doctrine that the Magisterium has defined as divinely revealed, binding on all the faithful Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Orthodox give particular weight to what the seven ecumenical councils defined. The churches of the Reformation place their confessions under Scripture and test them by it. Presbyterians and Lutherans receive their confessions as the church's standard. Baptists have written confessions too, such as the Second London Confession of 1689 Second London Baptist Confession, but usually present them as declarations of shared faith rather than creeds imposed on the conscience.

Evangelicals often distinguish the weight of doctrines. The heart of the gospel, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, salvation by grace, is held together, while questions on which faithful Christians read Scripture differently, such as the mode of baptism or the millennium, should not divide them. The saying "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity" is often attributed to Augustine, but many scholars trace it to a seventeenth-century Lutheran writer. See also How can I tell a heresy or cult? and the lesson The Reformed confessions.