"Believing right doctrine will no more save you, than doing good works will save you." ~Charles Spurgeon
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| Charles Spurgeon |
Let it be said from the outset that what Spurgeon says here is true. But let us also move on to what Spurgeon did not mean by it. To be blunt, Spurgeon was not downplaying the vital importance of right doctrine. I'm pretty sure all he was trying to say is that we are saved by grace alone.
Suffice it to say, I am in no way endorsing the Calvinistic Baptist theology of Charles Spurgeon. But it is very safe to say that Spurgeon himself was very strict in his doctrinal stances.
However, to the postmodern mind, Spurgeon's statement ends up meaning something entirely different. They see this statement and read it to mean: See? Even Spurgeon was not a hard core doctrine preacher! Even he saw that all we need to do is love Jesus, no matter what we believe!
They will say: diversity in belief within the church is a good thing, even to the point of accepting beliefs that are not anywhere close to orthodox Christianity. This is why men and women like Tony Jones, Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, and Rachel Held-Evans have a big following and platform for their ideas within supposed Christian circles. Namely, these folks wave around the Name of Jesus and also think right along with our culture in a postmodernist fashion. In other words, people now days in the United States, being thoroughly postmodern, relate to these teachers and understand them.
It's also why sect and cult leaders of the past have found there way into mainstream Christianity. Ellen G. White (Seventh Day Adventism), Aimee Semple MacPherson (Four Square Pentecostalism), and to a far lesser extent, Charles Taze Russell (Jehovah's Witnesses), and even Joseph Smith (Mormonism) all find footing within mainstream Christianity. One needs to look no further than the mainstream Christian acceptance in some circles of Glenn Beck (Mormon) to see this. It's why rank heretics like Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, and Bill Johnson are treated as mainstream Christians. We suck at doctrine, and the postmodernism of the culture tells us that it's OK.
To the modern (properly: postmodern) mind, these voices are prophetic. They speak in vague terms and never claim anything as absolute truth. That is exactly what our culture values: Acceptance of everything and anything in the name of love.
Here is what they miss: Jesus Himself, the God-man whom they claim as their Savior, said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life..." (John 14:6) Jesus states that HE IS THE TRUTH.
OK, so technically they don't miss that. But they do go on to say that we can't know anything with certainty, and so on and so forth. Thus we ought to be accepting and tolerant of other views; even welcoming them into fellowship. The end result is a melting pot (or a salad bowl) or all sorts of heterodox and heretical beliefs welcomed as things that are acceptable and even embraced in Christianity. Hence, men like McLaren can write a volume such as A Generous Orthodoxy, where much of everything is redefined to be orthodox Christian teaching, at the whim of McLaren.
Let's exaggerate this a little bit and flesh it out to it's logical conclusion. Let's back up to the Council of Nicaea in the early 300s A.D.
The major discussion at Nicaea was the deity of Christ. Arius, on one hand, posited that although Christ is God, He is not as much God as the Father, who created Christ. To wit: Christ is the first created being. Arius was condemned as an heretic in a way that our postmodern friends would never do today. The Council decided with Orthodox Trinitarian theology, and as a result years later, the Nicene Creed was formulated, which had its basis in the Council of Nicaea.
The culture we live in today very much so assumes the validity of postmodernist thinking. It's not cool to say someone else is wrong. It's the height of intolerance and arrogance, they say, because you're claiming to know absolute truth, and you can't claim that, because you don't know anything for sure.
You know what makes a perfect bedfellow with postmodernist thought? Here's a hint: It's a belief that rejects the absolutes of truth altogether and says that science and culture create truths. It's called Atheism.
Postmodernist Christianity is nothing more than an attempt to keep Jesus as Savior, but read Scripture, and indeed all of life, through a philosophy that is a perfect fit for Atheism. This is why movements (or a conversation, as they put it) such as the Emergent Church will fail. It is grounded not in Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins; not in Scripture as absolute truth given to us by God, but in an Atheistic philosophy. What fellowship has darkness with light?
Right doctrine is vital. Why? Let me make it simple. Christ is the Truth and true doctrine points us to Christ. Heterodox and heretical doctrines do not point us to Christ. They point us to falsehoods that are not of Christ. Thus, they point us away from Christ.
Heterodox and heretical doctrines do not lead us to Christ. They lead us away from Him. If you don't believe what Scripture says plainly, then you are rejecting the Word of God in that manner, and thus pushing yourself further from Christ.
Christ is Truth, and we must hold fast to what is true about Him, revealed in the Word.
It's not about how we live and how much we accept as Christian. This is as unchristian of an idea as anything else you'll find out there. But it is subtle in that it seeks to retain Christ.
Right doctrine; the truth about Christ and the Truth who is Christ, drives right living. Another way to say this is that orthodoxy drives our orthopraxy.
So why are Lutherans a bunch of stodgy old doctrinaire codgers? Because we realize this to be true. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, as St. Paul said in Galatians 5:9.
So when someone comes at you with the whole tolerance spiel in reference to heterodox (or even heretical) doctrine, you can know that this is definitely not a Christian idea. It can only serve to deny Christ, reject the faith by pointing us away from Him, or to turn Christianity into a mess that resembles eastern mysticism and spirituality.
But it's not, and never will be, Christian.
Grace and Peace
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