{"id":2218,"date":"2011-07-27T06:53:09","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T13:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=2218"},"modified":"2011-07-27T06:53:09","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T13:53:09","slug":"the-beauty-of-the-christian-faith-introduction-the-nature-of-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2011\/07\/27\/the-beauty-of-the-christian-faith-introduction-the-nature-of-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beauty of the Christian Faith: Introduction: The Nature of Doctrine: Catholicism and Orthodoxy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m working on an adult curriculum titled “The Beauty of the Christian Faith.”\u00a0 It explores the basic elements of Christian faith as expressed in the Nicene Creed.\u00a0 I’ll be posting excerpts as they’re done.\u00a0 Here’s the seventh part of the introduction.\u00a0 Prior posts can be accessed through the Beauty of the Christian Faith Page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Doctrines:\u00a0 Second Order Statements Derived from the First Order Sources of Theology<\/h2>\n

Doctrines<\/em> are propositional theological statements that summarize claims to knowledge about God.\u00a0 A \u201cpropositional\u201d statement is simply a discrete statement of claimed fact, such as \u201cwater is comprised of hydrogen and oxygen atoms.\u201d\u00a0 Doctrines historically have been collected in summary statements such as creeds and confessions.<\/p>\n

The manner in which doctrines function as theological authorities is the subject of some debate among different types of Christians.\u00a0 The debate relates to the relationship between scripture and tradition and also to the nature of scripture in relation to doctrinal propositions.\u00a0 The next sections discuss how this relationship is understood in Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant traditions.\u00a0 You should understand, however, that there is considerable variety even within each of these traditions.\u00a0 The models discussed below are intended as broad and general illustrations of key themes and differences.<\/p>\n

Roman Catholicism<\/h3>\n

In general, Catholic Christians understand the teaching authority (\u201cMagesterium\u201d) of the Roman Church to provide the final interpretation of scripture, often in the form of doctrinal propositions stated by official Church councils or in documents issued or authorized by the Pope.\u00a0 Certain doctrinal propositions are part of sacred Tradition and, having been stated with the necessary authority, are irreformable.\u00a0 We can illustrate this relationship as follows:
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/a>As the key on the left indicates, scripture is understood in light of experience and reason and is authoritatively interpreted through the Magesterium (Tradition) in the form of doctrine.\u00a0 In a sense, doctrine in Catholic theology represents the point at which scripture, experience, reason, and tradition converge.<\/p>\n

Eastern Orthodoxy<\/h3>\n

Eastern Orthodox Christians do not make sharp distinctions between scripture, tradition, reason and experience.\u00a0 Many Orthodox theologians speak of all these sources together simply as \u201cthe Tradition.\u201d\u00a0 This does not mean that Orthodox thought simply equates reason and experience with scripture.\u00a0 For the Orthodox, scripture remains uniquely inspired by God.\u00a0 But Orthodoxy pictures scripture like the spinal cord of a living organism.\u00a0 The organism is an indivisible whole, which functions because its constituent parts work synergistically together.\u00a0 For the Orthodox, it would make as much sense to separate scripture from the life and experience of the Church as it would to cut the spinal cord out of a person.\u00a0 This relationship can be illustrated as follows:<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> This does not mean that the Eastern Orthodox churches exhibit a centralized structure under a single teaching authority, as is the case with the Roman Catholic Church.\u00a0 There are a number of different denominations that would fall under the banner \u201cEastern Orthodox,\u201d and in general, within these denominations local churches are accountable to regional Bishops, but not to any central over-Bishop or Pope.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m working on an adult curriculum titled “The Beauty of the Christian Faith.”\u00a0 It explores the basic elements of Christian faith as expressed in the Nicene Creed.\u00a0 I’ll be posting excerpts as they’re done.\u00a0 Here’s the seventh part of the introduction.\u00a0 Prior posts can be accessed through the Beauty of the Christian Faith Page. Doctrines:\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beauty-of-the-christian-faith","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-zM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}