I put “of creation” in parentheses, because the question might be answered in similar ways for other doctrines. What follows is a short quote from a book, Creation: The Christian Doctrine by Edward W. H. Vick, my company is about to release. I’m doing a number of “final” things on it right now. This caught my eye.
The Christian doctrine of creation is not simply an explanation of the origin of the universe. It holds that God is transcendent and free, that the creatures are contingent and free, that the ongoing world of history and events in the world are purposive, that within that human history the purpose of creation is being revealed, that the Redeemer is the Creator. It also teaches that the creation reaches its fulfilment at the end, at the eschaton.
All statements of faith are statements about God and his activity.
Christian statements about God are at the same time statements about Jesus Christ.
The Christian doctrine of creation results from addressing these questions: What is the meaning and significance of Christian faith? How are we to understand that faith? What is entailed in the fellowship with God that constitutes Christian faith?
Note that Dr. Vick continues in great detail. The whole book is a bit over 130 pages (it may vary by a page or two once formatting is complete), and is intended as a companion volume to Creation in Scripture by Herold Weiss.
I’ve often said that I think people who become angry when their beliefs questioned are actually less confident of those beliefs, rather than more so. But that’s a pretty broad and inadequate statement, I think.
I was discussing this with my wife recently, and we were wondering why neither of us get annoyed with people who question our faith, when some folks we know do. In an extreme case, I recall talking to a young man at a book show who responded angrily to my book What’s in a Version?. For him, the KJV was the one and only word of God, and you could see the tension creep in at the very thought that anyone might question that fact. As the discussion progressed, it became clear that for him, faith would collapse should this one doctrinal position prove false.
In our discussion, I recalled my own departure from faith after I received my MA. I claimed unbelief, but as I processed things, I eventually (nearly 12 years later) came to the realization that I did, in fact, believe. The belief wasn’t something one would call Christian faith, and it was limited, but having shed most doctrinal positions, I found myself believing still. In exploring that, I returned to some doctrinal positions I had held previously, but not to others.
I think the question here is just what is the object of my faith. If I, like that young man, would find my world unraveling if one could prove that the KJV wasn’t the one and only true word of God, is my faith in God or in the doctrine? Now the KJV-Only position is an extreme example, and I do believe many KJV-Only advocates are guilty of bibliolatry, but it’s very easy, I think, for us to place our personal preferences, and even our correct doctrines, ahead of God.
For example, T. C. Moore suggests that the Gospel is the Messiah and not the doctrine of justification by faith (HT: Political Jesus). While I accept the doctrine of justification by faith (though not with all the definitions some Calvinists place on it), I would agree. The doctrine tells us something about the object of faith. Thus I could be convinced that I had misunderstood something about the doctrine without it making me question my faith in Jesus.
On the other hand, I want to avoid the idea that doctrine, or the content of our beliefs, doesn’t matter. What I believe about Jesus is important, at the same time as I place my faith in Jesus and not in what I believe about Him.
Let me compare this to marriage. I love my wife. I could describe this as adequate. She, and not some one of her attributes, is the object of my love. I know that she is a great organizer, a great caregiver, that she loves and prays for our children and grandchildren, and that if the budget is short she’ll give up something she wants before something that the children, grandchildren, or I would like. It’s important that I know these things about here. They’re true.
But I don’t focus on those things to the neglect of the person. I could be out every night telling people about those things, while neglecting my wife, herself. But more importantly, what happens when she displays weakness? My love doesn’t change. But if what I loved was merely a list of characteristics, it might.
The two elements are a package, but I do believe that if the focus, the object, of our faith and trust is right, we will have much less fear of examining the various things we believe about that person. There is no single string you can pull to make my faith in God disappear.
So pull away at those strands. I’ll enjoy the discussion! Maybe we’ll both learn.
C. Michael Patton presents Textual Criticism in a Nutshell, though what he means more precisely is New Testament textual criticism in a nutshell.
It’s quite a good introduction giving a feel for the types of variants and why they might occur, and also why we might prefer not to call them “errors” considering that some are intentional, and some are stylistic variants and so forth.
I would note only one caveat–I think he is a bit optimistic on how much impact the few substantial variants would have. I recall one correspondent who noted that of course variants in the New Testament text made no difference on doctrinal issues, since we don’t truly base our doctrines on the Bible in any case. That’s also overstating the case, in my view.
Certainly there is a great deal more in the church’s doctrinal statements than is in the texts themselves. I regard this as a good thing. I think the church was supposed to grow and that the doctrinal statements express the church in that process. At the same time, they did take care within their approach to the study of texts, to provide some basis in scripture.
We would hardly have the debates we do about some variants if there were no doctrinal issues. Thus it is good to realize that while the support orthodoxy may be strengthened or weakened by particular variants, there are no smoking guns that say “that doctrine is wrong,” or “this other doctrine should have been there.” It’s more a matter of the weight of textual support for the elements of doctrine.
