Nature of doctrines
a. Theological constructs of particular
communities in a particular time
Christian
Theology is a critical works of believers as faith seeks understanding of God.
Anselm of Canterbury and Karl Barth summarized this as faith seeking
understanding. Christian Theology or Doctrine first appeared in the context of
the Roman Empire, where it sought to respond to the needs of Christian
communities in the turbulent atmosphere of Hellinistic and Roman Societies. As
a consequences theologians even today to identify Christian theology (doctrine)
with the earliest controversies and their results and their interpretations and
not with the struggle of local congregations as they face the challenge of
being Christians in the world. Yet, it was this struggle that marked the
earliest debates themselves. Historical distance has led to abstraction. Another
tradition defines theology as the effort of the church to meet the needs of the
faithful to live consistently with the gospel. Theology was tasked with problem
solving the intellectual puzzles of the intellectual critics of Christian
faith. To do this it needed to assume the methods of critics in order to
persuade them of the truth. The need to be carefully constructs about belief
and practices has led theologians throughout the history of Christianity to
examine the content of faith, its affirmation and profession I the context
within which its lived in their own particular time. The Approaches and
Contructs of Doctrine in the Patristic, Apostolic period and the Reformations
and Post Modernism is unique in their own time. The Patristic period is one of
the most exciting and creative periods in the history of Christian thought.
Many terms in doctrine were clarified and attended, the theological agenda and
many issues were sorted out and a series of doctrinal and practical issues came
under construction. Key Theologians deserved to be singled out for special
mentioned are- Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, Tertulian. Origen, The
Cappadocian fathers, Augustine of Hippo. Later, there is a continuous period of
immense importance in shaping the contours of Christian doctrine and theology
to explore with vigor for the extend of its development through the
ages-reformation, enlightenment and the agenda of Modernity to the present
systematic theology and final form. Noted Theologians to be single and mentioned
are- martin Luther, John Calvin, Karl Bath, Karl Rahner, John Macquarrie,
etc.
b. Contextually formulated and reformulated
Theology became
the study of God and his God activity. Therefore, theology began to assume more
meaning. God’s activities are purposive. God did not do things without
purposes; therefore theology also began to mean God’s purposes for doing
something.
Words assume
new meaning with the passages time. Although theology was initially understood
to mean the doctrine of God, the term developed a new meaning in the 12th and
13th Centuries as the University of Paris developed. A name had to be found for
the systematic study of the Christian faith. Under the influence Parisian
scholars like Peter Abelard and Gilbert, the Latin word theologia came to mean
the discipline of sacred learning. The scope of theology was enlarged. It
embraces the totality of Christian doctrine; not merely the doctrine of God.
After
enlightenment period a new dimension was added to the meaning of theology.
Theology came to mean study of religious belief of people. Theologian cannot
theologise with source. Theology is human affair. God did not send theology in
a readymade form. Every theological system is derived from some source. The
nature of a theology system or its peculiar configuration is determined by the
sources.
There is no
unanimity among theologian regarding the source and context of theology. Before
the Reformation there are two well spring for correct doctrine: (i) The Bible
(the Vulgate- the bible as they interpret) and (ii) The Apostolic Tradition,
handed down through the centuries.
John Wesley
argued that there are four formative factors for theology that has come to be
known as the ‘Wesleyan Quadrilateral’. They are: (i) Scripture- bible as
properly exegeted, (ii) Reason- Finding of science and human reasoning, (iii)
Experience- Sanctification, second grace individual or corporate and (iv)
Traditions. From this we can firmly states that Doctrine are contextually
formulated and reformulated.
c. Difference between
doctrine and dogma
Doctrine in theology (Latin doctrina;
Greek didaskalia, didachē) is a generic term for the theoretical
component of religious experience. It signifies the process of conceptualizing
the primal—often experiential or intuitive—insights of the faith of a religious
community in support of rationally understood belief. Doctrines seek to provide
religion with intellectual systems for guidance in the processes of
instruction, discipline, propaganda, and controversy. Dogma (Latin decretum,
Greek dogma)
has come to have a more specific reference to the distillate of doctrines:
those first (basic or axiomatic) principles at the heart of doctrinal
reflection, professed as essential by all the faithful.
This distinction appears in Christianity
in the New Testament,
in which didaskalia means “basic teachings” (as in 1 and 2 Timothy),
whereas dogma is used only in the sense of an official judgment or
decree (as in Acts 16:4) Later, however, many theologians of the early church
(including, for example, Origen,
St. Cyril of
Jerusalem, and St. Jerome) use
the term dogma in the sense of doctrine. In Eastern Christianity, the
theologian St. John of
Damascus popularized the term orthodoxy (literally “correct
views”) to connote the sum of Christian truth. In Western Christianity, the
great medieval theologian St. Thomas
Aquinas chose the phrase “articles of faith” to denote those
doctrines that are solemnly defined by the church and are considered to be
obligatory for faith. As late as the Roman
Catholic reformatory Council of Trent
(1545–63), doctrine and dogma were still roughly synonymous.
Most modern historians, however, have
stressed their difference. According to J.K.L. Gieseler,
a 19th-century German church historian, in Dogmengeschichte, “Dogma is
not doctrinal opinion, not the pronouncement of any given teacher, but
doctrinal statute (decretum) The dogmas of a church are those doctrines
which it declares to be the most essential contents of Christianity.”
A modern church historian, Adolf von
Harnack, sought to explain the rise of dogma in Christianity as the
specific consequence of an alien blend of Greek metaphysics and Christian
thought that had been rendered obsolete by Protestantism’s
appeal to scripture
and history. The German Roman Catholic dogmatician Karl Rahner’s contrasting
definition, in Sacramentum Mundi, points to a
perennial process: “Dogma is a form of the abiding vitality of the
deposit of faith in the church which itself remains always the same.”
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