From: dzeigler@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Daniel R Zeigler)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Baptismal Hair-Splitting (Was Re: And what *is* a Christian?)
Date: 3 Sep 92 03:54:13 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University

Dear Mark:

I appreciate your concern about my apparent softness on doctrine.  Maybe I can
"un-muddy" the waters a bit.

"Doctrine" simply means "teaching."  And teaching, as you have said, is of
great importance to the Christian walk.  Teaching is one of the four (or five)
gifts God has given the church for *unleashing* the power of all the other
gifts so that the church may grow up into the head, Christ (see Eph 4).  There
is a healthy teaching, as Paul reminds Timothy and Titus, that equips people to
live Godly lives.  And we know from the words of Jesus himself that there is a
false teaching that bears recognizably bad fruit.

So let us appreciate and benefit from healthy teaching!  Let us, as Paul
instructed, "hold on to what is good, and avoid every kind of evil."  And as
John admonished, let us not "believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see
whether they are from God."  My own transformation is at stake.  Even more
importantly, the maturing of the Body into the fullness of Christ is at stake!

However, to many of us "doctrine" implies a codified, systematized body of
accepted teaching.  There are a number of such systems out there; Christians
have never been able to agree on one.  To help me keep my perspective, it helps
me to remember that there *is* a spiritual reality out there for me to
experience.  The scriptures are an inspired record of insights about how men
and women of God stepped into that reality.  Systematic theologies, whether
written or oral, are an abstract and artificial categorization of the
Scriptural teachings.  I'm not knocking systematic theologies, really; we all
have one of our own in our heads.  But each system is manifestly imperfect.  It
is two steps away from the actually reality it is trying to describe.

My goal is to step into the reality of Christ myself.  I use the Scriptures as
a checkpoint as I walk in Christ.  I use my notions of healthy doctrine to try
to help others do the same.  But I try never to make my systematic theology a
sacred cow.  I try to maintain a healthy disrespect for my own fallibity!

In dealing with others, I look for the unity of the Spirit Paul mentions in Eph
4.  This unity, remember, we need not create, only maintain.  In discussing how 
to test the spirits, John mentions that (1) the Holy Spirit always acknowledges 
that Jesus came in the flesh, and that (2) the spirit of the world speaks from 
the viewpoint of the world--and that the world listens to it.  So if I sense in 
a professessing Christian a Christ-centeredness and an aversion to the 
viewpoint of the world, I assume that a unity of the Spirit exists.  Then we 
can do what Paul goes on to describe in Eph 4: *equip* each other until we
reach a unity of the faith.  Unity of the Spirit is a starting point we are
given by God's grace; unity of the faith is a destination we reach by using the
Spirit's gifts and power--in an atmosphere of humility, love, and forebearance.

Regarding the baptism issue:

I attempted to suggest with the Gaius story that two people could experience 
the reality of the Lord in the same way, but describe that experience in 
different terms.  Some of the descriptions might be a whole lot more accurate 
than others, but the reality of the experience is crucial.  If we can learn to 
discern that reality, then we can look past the differing doctrines and 
recognize the unity of the Spirit.  If we can recognize that unity, then we can
begin equipping one another into a unity of the faith.  As we walk together on 
that journey, our limited understandings of what we've experienced in Christ 
can expand and come into a sharper, more accurate focus.

Does that help?

Love in Jesus,
Dan