Raw Revelation: The Bible They Never Tell You About by Mark Roncace

Author:Mark Roncace [Roncace, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2012-11-22T18:30:00+00:00

COURSE 4

DOCTRINE

Our fourth course is a heavier one in the sense that we move from the realm of stories about God and Jesus to the arena of theology and doctrine. We go from narrative to philosophy; and we transition from what the Bible says to what it does not say. The rawness, of course, remains because of the ambiguity and difficulty that we continue to encounter.

Christians typically assume—and you know what they say about assuming—that most of our basic beliefs about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, salvation, sacraments, Satan, and the second coming are spelled out lucidly in the Scripture (which, by the way, does not have any edict against alliteration). Preachers tend to bake it that way. But the simple fact is the Bible contains no systematic teaching on any of these subjects. It presents no single, straightforward view on these matters which are so essential to our faith. Church leaders, however, are happy to perpetuate our erroneous assumptions because once we begin to understand the complex history of some of our fundamental tenets, we may have all sorts of new questions. So it’s easier to keep feeding us the simple answers in which the complexity has been sifted out.

To be sure, the Bible has been an important element in shaping our beliefs, but it certainly has not been the sole, or even primary, one. That is because the Bible is not a doctrinal treatise. It does not contain the creeds. Men like Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas wrote systematic theological treatises; and Ecumenical Councils like those at Nicea (351 A.D.), Constantinople (381 A.D.) and Chalcedon (451 A.D.) developed the creeds.

The problem is that most Christians don’t know much about—or perhaps have never even heard of—these men or these Church Councils. And who can blame them? How exciting can it be to read through page after page of guys named Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Athanasius who are using words like “homoousios”? True, these church fathers go by only one name, which is nice and trendy, but they need better monikers, like Elvis, Beyoncé, or Bono. So since nobody knows about them, it’s convenient to pretend that everything we believe is articulated right there in the Bible. But, in fact, many traditional Christian beliefs are only hinted at in Scripture or dealt with indirectly, if at all. Thus it took many arguments and hundreds of years for our tradition to figure out exactly what we believed. To put it generously, many of our basic beliefs are loosely based on the Bible, but like a movie “based on a true story,” there is a lot of embellishing, filling in gaps, and creative and imaginative interpretation—which is fine, as long as we recognize that.

Tracing the development of our beliefs deepens our appreciation of our heritage; it helps us see that current teaching is the product of years of tradition, influenced by many different people. It was not handed down from God since the beginning. There has not been one static Christian doctrine or creed from time immemorial.

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