Ortlund Finding the Right Hills to Die On

The Case for Theological Triage
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6745-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

In theology, just as in battle, some hills are worth dying on. But how do we know which ones? When should doctrine divide, and when should unity prevail? Pastor Gavin Ortlund makes the case that while all doctrines matter, some are more essential than others. He considers how and what to prioritize in doctrine and ministry, encouraging humility and grace along the way. Using four basic categories of doctrine in order of importance, this book helps new and seasoned church leaders alike wisely labor both to uphold doctrine and to preserve unity.

Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Seminary) is the president of Truth Unites, theologian-in-residence at Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tennessee, and visiting professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary. He is the author of several books, including Humility and Finding the Right Hills to Die On.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ortlund, Gavin

Leseproben

Introduction

There’s an old saying (I can’t remember where I heard it): “There is no doctrine a fundamentalist won’t fight over, and no doctrine a liberal will fight over.” Strictly speaking, that’s not quite fair to thoughtful liberals and fundamentalists. But we can probably recognize these two instincts. Most of us have a tendency in one direction or the other—to fight over doctrine too much or too little.

This book is about finding the happy place between these two extremes—the place of wisdom, love, and courage that will best serve the church and advance the gospel in our fractured times. In other words, it’s about finding the right hills to die on.

Albert Mohler has developed a helpful metaphor for this idea: theological triage.1 Triage is essentially a system of prioritization. It is often used in medical contexts. For instance, if you are a doctor on the battlefield, you cannot treat every wounded soldier simultaneously, so you must develop a process to determine which injuries you treat first.

Using the concept of triage in the context of theology assumes two things. First, doctrines have different kinds of importance. Some hills are worth dying on. Others are not. As basic as this might seem, plenty of people, either in principle or in practice, deny this—more on that in a moment. Second, triage assumes that the needs are urgent. You can spend more time fixing a broken arm when no one is hemorrhaging ten feet away. If you have neither a broken arm nor a dying man to attend to, you can give more attention to a chipped tooth or bad bruise. But the more demanding the issues, the more you have to make hard decisions.

Similarly, if souls were not perishing, if our culture were not seeming to escalate into a whirlwind of confusion and outrage, if the church did not have so many languishing needs—I suppose, if these were not the conditions we faced, we could do away with theological triage and work on every doctrine all at once. But the dire needs of the times require us to make strategic decisions of prioritization in order to be as effective as possible at pleasing Christ, serving the church, and advancing his gospel.

Now, everyone understands how important triage is in a medical context. Just think what would happen if you didn’t have triage! One person would lose a limb so another could have his arm set. In the worst scenario, one person would die so another could have a bruise bandaged.

But we often forget to think in the same way about theology. Sometimes we flatten out all doctrine—either because we want to fight about everything or because we want to fight about nothing. More commonly, we have some kind of functional theological triage, but we have not thought it through very self-consciously. As a result, it is determined reactively by our circumstances and temperament rather than proactively by Scripture and principle.

There are all kinds of ways to distinguish doctrines.2 In this book I suggest four basic categories. We could explore further subcategories as well, but this fourfold ranking should help as a starting point:

• First-rank doctrines are essential to the gospel itself.
• Second-rank doctrines are urgent for the health and practice of the church such that they frequently cause Christians to separate at the level of local church, denomination, and/or ministry.
• Third-rank doctrines are important to Christian theology, but not enough to justify separation or division among Christians.
• Fourth-rank doctrines are unimportant to our gospel witness and ministry collaboration.

In this book I consider the Trinity, for example, to be a first-rank doctrine, baptism a second-rank doctrine, and the millennium a third-rank doctrine (more about that later). An older term, borrowed from Greek, that roughly corresponds to category 4 is adiaphora, literally meaning “things indifferent.” In Lutheran and Puritan circles, this term was used to identify practices or views that are neither commanded nor forbidden by Scripture. An example of a fourth-rank issue is the musical instrumentation used in worship or the number of angels that exist. Fourth-rank issues might be practically relevant or intellectually stimulating, but they are not theologically important.

Not everything will fit neatly into one of these four categories, of course.3 But at least they provide a basic framework from which we can make further specifications and nuances as necessary.

You might be interested in this book if you have wrestled with questions like these:

• How do we pursue the realization of Christ’s prayer for the unity of the church (John 17:21) without disobeying Christ’s charge to obey all that he commands (Matt. 28:20)?
• What partnerships and alliances are appropriate among Christians of different denominations, networks, or tribes?
• What kinds of attitude and speech are most helpful in our interaction with those in the body of Christ with whom we have significant theological disagreements?
• What does it look like to handle, with integrity and transparency, personal differences of conviction that may arise with your church, boss, denomination, or institution?

Or, perhaps you can relate to one of the following fictional scenarios:

1. You are relatively new on the pastoral staff at a local church. In a particular song the congregation is accustomed to singing, you have a reservation about some of the lyrics. You wonder whether it’s a big enough deal to address and, if so, how soon in your time at the church you should tackle this, and what the process and communication should be like.

2. You have been working at a parachurch ministry for several years. As part of your contract, you have to annually reaffirm your commitment to the statement of faith of the denomination with which the ministry is associated. The statement of faith affirms a particular view of the end times that you had not studied much when you took the job, and you were happy at that time to affirm it. Over the years, however, you’ve grown unsettled about this view, and at this point you lean away from it, though you are not fully decided. You hesitate to keep studying it, for fear of landing in a place that threatens your job. In your conscience, you wonder at what point you need to communicate your reservations about this doctrine. Is it only when you have fully decided? If so, what does this process look like, and how do you go about it?

3. A group of churches in your community is putting on a joint service of worship and outreach. You have significant theological differences with some of the other churches participating, and you wonder whether you can take part with a good conscience. How do you decide what to do? And what does it look like to approach this situation with graciousness and humility without compromising your convictions?

4. You love listening to a particular Bible preacher on the radio. His sermons are both convicting and uplifting. But one day you learn that he speaks at conferences that have a “health and wealth” emphasis, and you start to notice aspects of his teaching that can be interpreted in this way. How should your perception of his preaching be altered (if at all) by his broader ministry associations? How clearly must his own teaching veer into a “health and wealth” gospel before you stop listening?

5. You are dating seriously and thinking about marriage. However, you and your companion hold different views on the proper expression of gender roles within a marriage. You have talked through the issues with other trusted Christians and studied the question with your prospective spouse, but the two of you have not reached a resolution. Should you break up? How should you think about your differences?

These are some of the scenarios I have in mind while I write this book, though what we arrive at will hopefully be more than a series of “how to” answers to questions like these. Instead, we are after a set of theological instincts that can guide us in various situations of real life and ministry. Thus, the variety of issues addressed in this book are meant to be illustrative, not exhaustive.

Some of the doctrines I’ll cover are ones I’ve personally agonized over, like creation and baptism. But I want to make it clear up front that my desire in this book is not to convert you to my view on these doctrines (really, I mean that). Rather, I’m trying to get at the whole way we go about theology, in both forming our convictions and then navigating life and ministry in light of them. I sincerely hope that this book will help you as you form your own convictions about how theological triage should function in your life and ministry.

I’m writing from an evangelical Protestant perspective, and I draw particularly from resources within the Reformed tradition. Nonetheless, the principles and topics covered here have a broad relevance, and I’d be delighted if Christians from other traditions, or non-Christians, found value in this book.

One note of caution: some of the most divisive issues among Christians concern not...