The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 3

In the last post, we continued to explore the implications of the example of the Sons of Issachar in First Chronicles 12:32, that of knowing “what Israel should do,” and what that example might mean for Christian artists.  (The other branch of the two-pronged example of the Issacharians was “understanding the times,” which equates to the need to understand our historical and cultural situation, so that we can effectively engage and change that situation for Christ, which we considered in some detail in past posts.)  Knowing what Israel should do translates into the necessity of knowing Scripture as the Divine Blueprint for what we are to believe and do as individuals and members of Christ’s Church.

In my last post, we looked at two main reasons that have kept today’s Church from truly knowing Scripture (e.g., laziness and content-rejecting doctrine), and in the post before that saw that we must view all things through the lens of the Bible, in order to gauge the worth of these things, so that we can know how to proceed in moving our culture toward obedience to Christ.  This is why Christian artists (like all Christians) must know God’s word as to both Its Content and Form, for both of these aspects of the Bible have important repercussions for Christian artistry.  This week, we will begin to look at the need to know Scripture’s Content (since the Bible’s Forms cannot be easily assessed except in light of Its Content), looking at Biblical Forms (God willing) in weeks to come.

In many circles of the Church today, theology is considered to be a bad word.  We are told by those who frequent these circles that theology is bad because it is much concerned with doctrine, which is thought to be only divisive, leading to argument and alienation between Christians who reach different conclusions about what various parts of the Bible mean.  Therefore, those in these circles teach, we should not involve ourselves with either theology or doctrine itself, since these things are held to take our focus off of Jesus Himself and our relationship with Him.  It is not unusual for those who believe this to adopt the slogan, “No creed but Christ; no law but love.”  Is this view valid (or even honest)?

It’s easy to see why people would adopt this belief (which is, humorously enough, a set of doctrines).  History is replete with doctrinal disputes between Christians which have been badly handled and which ended disastrously (generally because those involved in the disputes forgot to heed the biblical doctrines of humility and love for the brethren, sadly enough).  However, theology has contributed almost immeasurably more to the growth of the Kingdom than it has detracted from that growth.  How so?  Because of what theology and doctrine are, and what their function is.

Theology means “knowledge of (or about) God;” it is a system of interlocking doctrines about God and His Purposes that attempts to be consistent with Scripture.  A doctrine is simply a belief or teaching about something the Bible says.  Every person who is a Christian holds doctrines, since Christianity is defined by a set of beliefs the Bible teaches, and that Christians hold, about Christ Jesus:  who He is, what He has done, etc.

Paul the Apostle thought doctrine was very important:  he commanded that sound doctrine be taught by Church leaders (Titus 1:9, 2:1), that sound doctrine conforms to the Bible and was taught by the Bible (1 Tim 1:9-11; 2 Tim 3:16); he taught that we and those who hear it would be saved by heeding sound doctrine (1 Tim 4:13-16), and that we should follow his doctrine-teaching example, which he learned from Christ (1 Cor 11:1). Paul obviously had no problem with sound doctrine (though he was death on unbiblical doctrine (1 Tim 1:3-4, 6:3-5).  Christians are supposed to live by biblical doctrine. 

Theology is just an organization of doctrines that allows us to see how doctrines fit together in Scripture, so that we can more easily understand God in His Nature and in His Relationship with us and the world (and, of course, what He wants us to do in His world).  Theology was largely responsible for the making of the Western world into a Christian civilization; as biblical theology progressively loses its hold on our society today, our culture becomes increasingly anti-Christian.

In light of this, let us look at the slogan of today’s anti-theologians.  “No creed but Christ” seeks to drive a wedge between Jesus and creedal teaching, but all Christian creeds are only mini-theologies summing up the central biblical doctrines about God and His Salvation (the primary creeds being the Nicene, Apostles’, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian creeds, all based on creeds in Scripture such as the one in 1 Tim 3:16, and all of which sum up the essence of the Faith that all Christians hold common, which C.S. Lewis called “mere Christianity”).  Jesus cannot be known apart from the Revelation by the Spirit of the biblical doctrine about Him.  To seek to separate Him from His Own Teaching about Himself is suicidal.

They also say “no law but love,” and in this we see the practical need for theology even more clearly.  How do we know what love is?  By what the Bible defines it as.  What does Jesus say is the distinguishing mark of love for Him?  “If you love Me,” He says, “keep My commandments” (John 14:15, 23-24, 15:10).  How do we know His Commandments?  They are written in His Word, of course.  But there are many of them, especially when you consider that all Scripture is His Word and contains His Commands, both New and Old Testaments (2 Tim 3:16-17).  To relate those many Commands (some of which seem at first sight to contradict each other, though they don’t really do so) to each other, and to set those Commands in their proper context, both in their background and in their relation to Christ and His Purposes, is the function of theology.  To love Christ we must keep His Laws, and this requires an organized theological approach to do so effectively.

All Christians, because they believe doctrines, have some kind of theology, even if it is only a basic, poorly developed, and inconsistent one.  We are all responsible to develop our theologies so that they are increasingly consistent with the Bible.  This is not easy, requiring us to study the Bible (not just have a little devotional three minutes a day, or just listen on Sundays at church, though these things are also important), learning well what it says across the whole Book, how it relates part to part, working to remember these parts, paying serious attention to those whose gift is teaching, working to advance our knowledge of Scripture and how the Bible relates to all the areas of life (such as art).

This is important to us as artists because theological doctrines directly affect the content and form of our art.  Indeed, theology is (or should be) the ocean that we, as Christian artists, swim in.  We will begin next week (Christ willing) to examine how doctrine informs our artistic endeavors, as we seek to “know what Israel should do” in our day and time.