A Most Prized Doctrine?

If i asked you tonight what the most prized doctrine of your faith was, what would you say? God, salvation, man? If you had asked me the same questions a few years ago I think i probably would have had to first clarify what you meant by doctrine and then probably would have vehemently stuck to salvation being the most key doctrine of my faith.

But yet over the past three years my opinion has changed...three years spent studying have convinced me that the most important doctrine of my faith is not salvation, its not my doctrine of God, its not my doctrine of man but my doctrine of scripture.

This may seem like a radical statement and may lead some of you to think that I have lost all common sense I may or may not have had but allow me to explain. I have come to the conclusion that our doctrine of scripture underpins every other doctrine we have:

GOD: Fundamentally how can we know what God is like if he has not revealed himself to us in scripture? Sure we have general revelation such as the Psalmist speaks of in Psalm 8, but yet as Paul reminds us that revelation on its own leaves men without excuse but yet it can never lead to salvation.

I have seen some spectacular sights in my time, times when nature has taken my breath away, Table Mountain in South Africa being probably the most notable, and yet Table Mountain in all its splendour can't reveal God's holiness to me, it can't reveal God's plan of salvation, it can only reveal a part of God to me. Yet in Scripture we have God revealed in so much more detail (and yet amazingly we still only scratch the surface of who God is).

MAN: How do we explain evil in the world? Is God just mean and capricious? Are some people just bad while others seek to live a good life? In scripture we get the most complete doctrine of man, that they are made in the image of God, that they are fallen and sinful. That they are made for a purpose. None of this is accessible purely from looking at a man or woman on the street.

SALVATION: Only in scripture is it revealed to me how I as a sinful fallen human being can be made right with this God. I can't figure this out on my own, left to my own devices I have no hope of right relationship with God. Yet thats why the gospel is such good news because it does hold out that hope of relationship restored.

Why does all this matter though? Well everywhere we look, even in many evangelical churches the doctrine of scripture is under attack:

Paul didn't really mean that. 

That was in the Old Testament when people related to God in a different way. 

There are cultural differences here that we just can't appreciate. 

Yet all of this undermines any of the doctrines which we hold to be true, because only as God has revealed Himself to us in His word can we be sure that we are building on solid ground. If we remove the stability of God's revelation we are in danger of building our whole theology on jelly, with insecure foundations which will one day give way.

Whats the most important doctrine to me? My doctrine of scripture because everything else is built upon that...