What is a "secondary doctrine?" Secondary doctrines are, by definition, not primary. That is, they are not required for salvation (such as repentance and faith, belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, belief in Jesus' bodily resurrection, etc.). Secondary doctrines are also not tertiary. Tertiary doctrines are those that are interesting to discuss, but are not worthy of dividing over (such as details related to eschatology).
Almost all Baptists believe that secondary doctrines exist and that we can/should separate over them. The most important secondary doctrine to most Baptists is, obviously, baptism.
I have come to the conclusion that secondary doctrines do not exist. All doctrines are either primary or tertiary (using the above system). Either a doctrine is required for salvation or we should not divide over it. Quite frankly, when we look in the scriptures we never find a doctrine that we are told to divide over. In fact, division is never even suggested.
Paul writes this in I Corinthians 1:10-13, "I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I follow Paul,' or 'I follow Apollos,' or 'I follow Cephas,' or 'I follow Christ.' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?"
Paul's emphasis is on the unity of the body. No exceptions are granted or suggested.
Keeping all this in mind, I encourage you to visit what I think is an interesting conversation about secondary doctrines at Between the Times, the blog of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (where I went to school).
In this particular post, a professor talks about baptism and secondary doctrines. First read the post and then look at the comments. In the first comment, I ask the professor for biblical justification for secondary doctrines. Specifically, I wanted to know where the bible even suggests that Christians should divide over doctrine.
Please know that I respect Dr. Nathan Finn a great deal. He is extremely knowledgeable and intelligent. That's why I asked him the question.
Dr. Finn responds to my question in the fourth comment. His answer focuses on understanding of the church in general and church membership in particular. The response in essence says that Baptists have a biblical understanding of the church while Pedobaptists do not; therefore, Baptists cannot unite with those of other understandings of church. Please take note that Dr. Finn does not provide any biblical justification. His answer is one of pragmatics.
I respond back in comment number seven once again asking for biblical justification.
Dr. Finn answers in comment number eight. He writes the following three things among others:
--"I’m sorry I cannot chapter-and-verse dividing over baptism."
--"The fact is Baptists and pedobaptists have DIFFERENT AND IRRECONCILABLE UNDERSTANDINGS of the nature of baptism and church membership."
--"Saying 'we shouldn’t divide' sounds very NT, but simply put, it regrettably isn’t feasible because of the very issue being debated."
--"The fact is Baptists and pedobaptists have DIFFERENT AND IRRECONCILABLE UNDERSTANDINGS of the nature of baptism and church membership."
--"Saying 'we shouldn’t divide' sounds very NT, but simply put, it regrettably isn’t feasible because of the very issue being debated."
I decided not respond again because I didn't see any benefit coming from it.
In writing this blog post, I'm not trying to bash Dr. Finn. What I am trying to do is ask an important question and see what the answers are. The key question is simply this, "Are there any doctrines over which followers of Jesus Christ should divide? "
In light of the general scriptural emphasis on the unity of the church, there had better by solid biblical evidence for division among believers if this is going to take place. Therefore, I twice asked the question, "What is the biblical justification for division?"
Please note that none of the responses provided biblical evidence. None.
All the responses dealt with what amount to pragmatic issues.
Should we really only be united with people that agree with us on issues like baptism and the church? I think not.
Dividing over secondary doctrines cannot be justified biblically, therefore we shouldn't do it.
8 comments:
Eric,
That was a good discussion. Thanks for being willing to ask the hard questions. Recently, I was reading a commentary on the book of Ephesians. The author was talking about Paul's exhortation toward unity. As application, he concluded, "We should be united with members of our local church." I think this is the big issue. We've replaced "church" as we find it in Scripture, with our definition of and identification with a local, organized group of believers. In this way of thinking, unity in the "local church" is necessary, while unity in the church is not.
-Alan
Alan,
Thanks. I agree with you.
Baptists have for so long focused on their own definition of church that they seem to have lost sight of what the church really is.
I noticed that Dr. Welty has now commented on the BTT post and addressed it specifically to me. Not surprisingly, he talks a lot about convictions about what the church means and real divisions stemming from this doctrine. Also not surprisingly, he didn't give any scriptural evidence for his position.
The idea of "local church" has stripped unity from the church.
Great thoughts. I'll take it a step further. I think unity of Christ's body should be a primary doctrine. Scripture is super clear that Christ's body is to be one. There is way more scriptural support for unity than there is for most issues the church has divided over.
But my brain hurts when I think of the implications of this. Should I separate myself from those who are OK with maintaining and promoting divisions? Likely not. But I need to recognize that seeking unity is an essential to my faith.
God bless!
Jonathan,
Thanks for commenting. Unity of the body certainly is very important. To be divisive is to sin; there's no other way about it.
I'm not prepared to call unity a first order doctrine, but you are correct that there is a great deal of evidence for it.
It certainly is difficult to know how long we should remain in a local body with those who reject biblical teachings about the church. I don't have the answer for that one except to say that any decision should be a methodical one.
I'm currently in the process of leaving a church (where I'm the salaried pastor) over differences about the church. Our leaving is amicable, but it is still leaving. What does that say about unity? I don't know for sure.
Eric,
I remembered that I wrote a post about unity and "theological triage" a few months ago. I thought you might like it: "Unity a 'first tier' doctrine?"
-Alan
Alan,
Thanks! I'm definitely going to take a look at it.
Eric,
I personally don't equate stepping out of an institutional church, with whom we hold drastically different views on function of the body, as division. If we continue in that "local church" we are still divided from all the other "local churches". By moving out of that environment, we move into a position from which we can easily interact with our brothers and sisters from all "local churches", or those outside the "local church". I used to find myself wanting to only fellowship with those "outside the camp", as we called it. I later found that to be as bad as the heresy I came from, obviously, and now realize that all members of the body are my brothers and sisters, and I should continually reach back to my brothers and sisters that are still stuck in the institutional morass. As I'm sure has been mentioned before, unity is a matter of the heart, and if we have a heart for each other, as fellow members of Christ's body, we will be compelled to tolerate doctrinal differences for the sake of maintaining fellowship.
Mark
Mark,
We are stepping away from the traditional church, but we are planning on staying in touch with our friends who remain. They are our brothers ans sisters in Christ. We want to be united with the full body of Christ instead of focusing on small local churches.
You said, "As I'm sure has been mentioned before, unity is a matter of the heart, and if we have a heart for each other, as fellow members of Christ's body, we will be compelled to tolerate doctrinal differences for the sake of maintaining fellowship." I agree completely.
Post a Comment