By Greg Gilbert

Excerpted from this article at 9 Marks.

In recent years, a number of books have been published that urge Christians to rethink a traditional understanding of “doctrine.” The discussions surrounding this question are many and varied, and they take place on every level of theological sophistication. At the highest levels, the questions probe whether doctrine is even possible given postmodern ways of thinking: How capable are we of formulating any objective statements at all, given that we are all products of a culture? Is the idea of propositional truth even valid? Does the Bible contain doctrine as we have defined doctrine in the past?

These types of questions have begun to filter down into more popular works as well, so that they are becoming a part of the collective evangelical consciousness. At the more popular level, though, they are not articulated in terms of whether objective, propositional doctrines can exist in a postmodern world. They are stated like this: if I want a Christianity that is authentic, real, textured, and alive, can I possibly have that within the narrow constraints of a structured system of doctrine?

A growing number of books argue that the solution is to do away with the system altogether. Christians need to recognize, the argument goes, that the notion of a solid, objective doctrinal framework is a hold-over from the Middle Ages, or from the sixteenth century at best. There is no well-defined system of doctrine, and there doesn’t need to be. Christianity is more beautiful, more compelling, if we don’t try to clarify it and define it. To insist on this doctrine or that set of propositions is stultifying and restrictive. Better to leave the faith more mysterious, more open to interpretation, more free for people to arrive at their own understanding of the Christian faith.

One author to call for such rethinking is Rob Bell, who devotes a chapter of his book Velvet Elvis to the idea of doctrine. In the chapter he calls “Springs,” Bell paints a picture of a child jumping on a trampoline. He draws an elaborate—and initially compelling—analogy between that trampoline and the Christian faith. Doctrines, Bell says, are like the springs of the trampoline. They are necessary, but they are not the point. Far from it. No child who jumps on a trampoline thinks about the springs, and he certainly doesn’t call his friends to come and stare with him at the springs. No, he calls them to jump. He calls them to climb up on the canvass and leap and flip and fly . . . and live. No one argues about the springs of a trampoline. No one is excluded from jumping because they do not understand how the springs work. The point is the jumping, and the springs play only a secondary role in accomplishing that one main goal.

So it is, Bell argues, or at least so it ought to be, in the Christian life. Far too many Christians have placed far too much emphasis on the springs—on the doctrines. And in the process, they have made the gospel of Christ a cold, metallic, and logical thing, instead of the breathing, moving, adapting, living gospel that Christ taught and the apostles preached.

As I said, this vision of a living, jumping Christianity is compelling at first. In fact, we should not be too quick to dismiss what Bell is saying. So far as it goes, he’s right: The doctrines of Christianity are not the final and ultimate end. The doctrines point us to Christ. They help us to savor and love him more, and to understand better what God has accomplished in him. In this regard, Bell’s analogy is helpful.

But Bell actually pushes his playful analogy further. Consciously or not, he ultimately calls us to re-think the nature of doctrine more radically than is suggested by the affirmation that doctrines are not ends in themselves. As it turns out, the individual springs on Bell’s trampoline are expendable. You don’t like one spring or another? Alright, just disconnect it and keep jumping. It’s possible you’ll lose a little bounce, but on the whole, you ought to be fine. For example, people jumped for thousands of years, he says, without the “spring” of the Trinity. It was added to the trampoline later. And what about the Virgin Birth? What would happen if that spring were disconnected? Could you still jump? Bell implies that you probably could.

That kind of thinking throws the entire gospel up for grabs.

But is this really how we are to understand the role and place of doctrine? If so, the doctrines of the gospel have become something (or rather somethings) that can be tweaked and rearranged, connected or detached, depending on one’s own preferences and sensibilities. Bell’s analogy was fun at first; but as he continues to press it, it becomes evident that saying that the doctrines of the gospel are just so many springs on a trampoline fails to observe how all those doctrines are inter-related with one another, how they all fit together, how they grow into and out of one another and form one integrated whole. It makes the doctrines of the gospel unrelated, unconnected, isolated, individual bits. It robs them of their organic beauty.

No analogy is perfect, but people used to talk about the “body” of Christian doctrine. It strikes me that the analogy of a “body” is much than a trampoline. For one thing, a body can’t be divided into pieces. It’s not a collection of bits. Each part affects and is affected by all the others, and the result is an integrated and organic whole in which the many are and act as one. Moreover, no part of the body is expendable. You can’t decide that you don’t like this or that part and simply disconnect it.

Finally, a body is not designed simply to lie dead and immobile on the ground. It is meant for living—for allowing a person to walk and run, to touch and see and smell and taste and hear. In short, a body allows a person to engage with the world around him.

All of this is true of the doctrines of the gospel. Understood rightly and framed within the entire storyline of the Bible, the gospel is a perfect and beautiful whole. It is not merely a set of isolated statements; it is a story in which every part contributes to and is inseparable from the whole. Therefore, you can’t simply remove one element of that story and expect it to stay the same. Above all, the gospel is not meant to lie dead, cold, and hard on a sheet of paper. It is meant for…living. The story of what God has done in Christ, the narrative of how he has redeemed and is redeeming the world, is meant to lead us to know him, to worship him, and to be reconciled both to him and to other people.

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September 2006
Greg Gilbert

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