Teaching True Doctrine is a Moral Responsibility

Doctrine and Ethics

Which is more important: right belief or right action?  We have all heard this question asked countless times.  Usually, this question is asked by people who then confidently answer that right action is obviously more important; therefore, right belief, right theology, does not matter.  After all, people can have true beliefs while living like hypocrites, can’t they?  Therefore, many argue, doctrine is just irrelevant speculation; all that really matters is ethics: how you live.

This denigration of theology and the importance of orthodoxy has become increasingly prevalent in modern Western Christian circles.  People are less and less interested in doctrinal disputes, and denominational differences have become less important.  There may be some value in recognizing that disagreements over minor points of doctrine should not be a source of major, acrimonious conflict.  But, overall, this trend of downplaying the importance of true doctrine is deeply problematic, wrongheaded, and disastrous.

One of my major themes on this blog has been to repeatedly emphasize the fact that Christian ethics is (or at least should be) determined by our theology.  There is no self-evident morality.  Every worldview or religion has its own morality, and Christian morality, properly understood, is a theological morality, based in our theological beliefs about who God is, what God has done for us in Christ, and the identity we now have in Christ.  The foundations of a genuine Christian morality are theological: the cross of Jesus Christ, the Church community (the body of Christ), and God’s New Creation.  

Older Christians are often alarmed to see the frequency with which younger Christians fail to live in conformity to traditional Christian ethics.  But they are merely seeing the inevitable result of raising young Christians to believe that Christian faith is centered on a subjective personal relationship, rather than being centered on objective theological truth.  Without correct theological beliefs, we cannot have correct ethical beliefs, because we cannot have a right understanding of what is truly good and valuable, and thus how we should live.  If Christians have a shallow understanding of Christian theology, then it is no surprise that they would fail to understand and live in conformity with the Christian ethical beliefs that are based on that theology.

The question of whether right belief or right action is more important is a pointless and absurd question.  Right belief and right action are equally important, and, in fact, are inextricably interconnected.  A surgeon who has false beliefs about human anatomy can never be a good surgeon, no matter how skilled they are at surgical technique.  Conversely, a surgeon who has perfect knowledge of human anatomy, but lacks fine motor skills, can never be a good surgeon.  Right belief and right action must function together in order to bring about good in the world.  

It is possible for someone to have orthodox beliefs (or at least claim to have orthodox beliefs) while being a hypocrite who never acts on those beliefs.  But a heretic who zealously acts on false theological beliefs which they sincerely believe to be true will always do more harm than good to the cause of Christ.  Both orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right action) must function together for the Church to faithfully carry out its mission of advancing God’s Kingdom.  

In reality, the division between doctrine and ethics is an artificial, modern division which would puzzle most ancient Christians.  As theologian Stanley Hauerwas puts it, “Once there was no Christian ethics simply because Christians could not distinguish between their beliefs and their behavior.  They assumed that their lives exemplified (or at least should exemplify) their doctrines in a manner that made a division between life and doctrine impossible.”^[1]Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016), page 22.  All genuine Christian ethics is theological, and all genuine Christian theology is ethical in nature.  Doctrine and ethics cannot be separated.

The Ethics of Doctrinal Teaching

The secular ethical discourse of our society restricts ethics to the horizontal plane of human society, while relegating any kind of relationship with God to the category of “religion.”  For Christians, on the other hand, our relationship with God stands at the center of what we believe to be genuine morality.  And this means that doctrine, what we say and teach about God, falls within the scope of morality.  

Imagine that a man claims to love his wife, but he hardly knows anything about her, or he has all sorts of false beliefs about her.  Would anyone accept his claim that he loves his wife?  Of course not.  In fact, if a man claims to be married to a particular woman, but everything he says about her is false, we would rightly wonder if he was really married to her at all.  In order to love someone, you must know them.  In order to have an intimate relationship of mutual love, you must know someone deeply.  

Christians are supposed to love God and to be in a covenant relationship with Him.  This means that we must know God.  We must know the truth about who God is and what God has done for us.  A person who has seriously heretical beliefs about God and/or how God relates to us shows that they do not know God.  And if they do not know God, they cannot love God.  And if they do not love God, then they cannot act in a genuinely ethical manner.

One of the central ethical tasks of the Church is to evangelize: to tell the whole world the Good News about what God has done, is doing, and will do through Jesus.  As Christians, one of our primary moral duties is to make God’s glory known to the world, and to bring honor and fame to His Name.  This, of course, requires that we speak truthfully about God to the world.  If we speak untruthfully about God the world, then we bring dishonor on His Name, which is a serious moral failing.  If a man spreads false rumors about his wife around town, then he is certainly not loving his wife.  If the Church spreads falsehoods about her Lord in the world, then she is certainly not loving God.  We have a moral responsibility to tell the world the truth about who God is and what God has done for the whole world through Jesus.  

Fulfilling this moral responsibility to speak truthfully about God requires, of course, that we first know the truth about God.  This means that all Christians have a moral responsibility to learn theological truth as far as they are able.  If a Christian speaks untruthfully about God to the world, they cannot plead innocence on the basis of the fact that they did not know any better, since they should have known better; they should have taken the time to learn the truth instead of being negligent.  All Christians should be theologians in the sense of knowing about God and His acts and having that shape their worldview and their way of life.  Not all Christians need to know all the details of Christian theology, but we should all know at the very least the basics of Christian dogma and doctrine.  This pursuit of theological knowledge is not an exercise in irrelevant speculation, but a fundamental moral responsibility.

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