# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1959_S43
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

DOCTRINAL ESSAY 43

5:12) and of “the elementary doctrines of Christ” (Hebr. 6:1).
Among these he lists “instruction about ablutions, the laying on
of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment”
(Hebr. 6:2). These items he regards to be essential in what he
calls “the laying of a foundation of repentance from dead works
and of faith toward God” (Hebr.6:1). The writer then exhorts
his readers to progress to maturity in Christian knowledge and
understanding, and he censures them: “Though by this time you
ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the
first principles of God’s Word” (Hebr. 5:12). The same writer
speaks also of a “confession” which his readers had made, most
probably at the time when they were baptized. Therefore he en-
courages them: “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith with-
out wavering” (Hebr. 10:23). Thus it appears that already in the
early church the fundamental aspects of Christian doctrine had
been singled out and compiled in a kind of formal statement. It
appears also from Paul’s admonition to the Ephesians that they
be “no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with
every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14), that Paul assumes the ex-
istence of a body of doctrine in which the Ephesian Christians
had been instructed. Also from Paul’s introduction to his Epistle
to Titus, “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to further the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the
truth” (Titus 1:1), it appears inescapable that Paul is presuppos-
ing a substance of Christian doctrine with which those to whom
he had brought the Gospel had become acquainted. Paul’s concern
was to “further their knowledge of the truth.” When we recall,
finally, as we indicated above, that such terms as “faith,” “truth,”
the combination “truth and faith,” and even the bare term “Word”
oftentimes parallel the term “doctrine” and refer specifically to
what Christians were taught to believe, then it appears that already
in the apostolic church there was a body, a substance of divine
truth which was “taught” not only by the apostles but also by
“teachers” appointed for this special task in the congregations.

At this point misunderstandings can arise and have arisen.
The content of divine doctrine is never merely a body of informa-
tion to be grasped and assimilated by the Christian’s intellect,
stored away in his memory or his subconscious like most knowl-
edge which we acquire day after day in secular matters. There-
fore divine doctrine is not another philosophy, however superior
it might be to other philosophies. Nor is divine doctrine a kind
of ethical system analogous to other ethical systems. As such it
is sometimes regarded. In particular the Ten Commandments and
the Sermon on the Mount are held aloft by people who have no
use whatever for God’s revelation in Scripture of Himself and of