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.”