Upon This Rock: The Nature of Doctrine from Antifoundationalist Perspective

By Robert Lewis Fossett and Joel P. Okamoto

Nearly thirty years ago, George Lindbeck wrote his seminal and highly influential work The Nature of Doctrine. Since that time, there has been no serious attempt at moving beyond the problems he lays out, in particular the problem of foundationalism. Upon This Rock is not merely a response to George Lindbeck's important work; it is an attempt to show how theology and religious discourse can truly move past the particular problems posed by foundationalism--the assumption of and search for so-called objective and universal standards--by looking at just one important discussion within the field: the modern discussion on the nature and function of doctrine. Upon This Rock offers an account of doctrine--an account that includes such topics as the authority of Scripture, biblical interpretation, and the role of the Church and the nature of her doctrine, among others--that moves the Church past the problems of foundationalism and back to her one true rock: Jesus Christ, her Lord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Jun 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781621897477

Robert Lewis Fossett

Robert Fossett (PhD, Concordia Seminary) is Senior Pastor of the historic First Presbyterian Church of Greenville, AL, a founding congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America.

Book preview

Foreword

This book is abstract. It deals primarily with accounts of the nature and function of Christian doctrine, not with particular Christian teachings. This book is involved. It includes both a subtle critical analysis and a detailed constructive suggestion. This book is wide-ranging. It reaches into anti-formalism in literary criticism and anti-representationalism in philosophy to articulate a typology for and criticism of contemporary accounts of doctrine, and it brings together views and insights from the ancient church, the Reformation, modern philosophy, and recent thinking on the Trinity and the Word of God to develop and substantiate its own account of Christian doctrine.

But for all these things, this book is also quite simple. For all the places he goes and for all the sources he reaches, the author, Rob Fossett, has a simple objective: to show that Christian doctrine is properly and clearly understood as a thoroughly Christian work—made by Christians for Christians in faithful service to Christ the Lord.

In this way, Fossett is at odds with the theme and approach of George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine, the most influential contemporary account of Christian doctrine. Of his own book, Lindbeck said: The theory of religion and religious doctrine that it proposes is not specifically ecumenical, nor Christian, nor theological (George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984] 7.) Lindbeck’s account of doctrine came out of his long experience in ecumenical discussions. This experience showed him that usual accounts of doctrine were inadequate to understanding what was actually going on, and he sought an account that would be adequate. But he approached the task of developing a theory of religion and doctrine with the assumption that it cannot be ecumenically useful unless it is nonecumenically plausible (ibid., 8). Fossett, however, argues that not only the contents but also the nature and uses of Christian doctrine can be understood as grounded in a very particular conviction: Jesus is Lord. For him the hymn captures perfectly the sense: The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.

This hymn, moreover, alludes to the most important difference between him and Lindbeck and also Kevin Vanhoozer and Anthony Thiselton, with whose proposals on doctrine Fossett also deals. This difference lies in the ways they engage so-called foundationalism, which is the project that seeks to guarantee our knowledge, meaning, and truth on foundations or grounds that are indisputable. Foundationalism does not refer to any reliance on a foundation, but to reliance on a special kind of foundation—one that guarantees objectivity or neutrality. Lindbeck, Vanhoozer, and Thiselton acknowledge that foundationalism is a central problem for theology, including the conception of doctrine. They deal with this problem in significantly different ways (these differences explain Fossett’s choice of these writers), but each makes a turn to theory.

Theory in this case is a term adopted from Stanley Fish for "a ‘method,’ a recipe with premeasured ingredients which when ordered and combined according to absolutely explicit instructions . . . will produce, all by itself, the correct result (Stanley Fish, Anti-Foundationalism, Theory Hope, and the Teaching of Composition," in Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989] 343). Theory is more than some generalizations or rules of thumb distilled from careful study, backed up by good results, and consistent with other concerns, interests, and positions. Theory is some kind of algorithm.

The attraction of theory for understanding the nature and function of doctrine is the same as for literary studies: it promises a way to ascertain meaning and direction that may claim to be objective or neutral, and for this reason call for universal agreement. To be sure, this may work in reverse or negatively: a theory may formally rule out objectivity or neutrality and therefore may promote relativism. For example, Lindbeck’s rule theory of doctrine is a theory of this negative sort, formally ruling out an abiding first-order use. This gives him hope for agreement in doctrine without giving up on a formulation. (Vanhoozer makes a turn toward theory in the way he argues for the authority of the Scriptural canon, and Thiselton in the way he argues for the use of general hermeneutics.) But in any case, the promise of theory lies in objectivity and neutrality.

Fossett recognizes Fish (and others like Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels) are right that relying on formal theory is confused. Theory in literary studies is not just impractical because one cannot gather data reliably enough. It is impossible, because such theories already depends on the particular and the local that they claim to transcend.

The same can be said about theory in studies about Christian doctrine. This is one reason Fossett calls for an antifoundationalist account of doctrine. This does not discredit everything Lindbeck, Vanhoozer, and Thiselton have done. Fossett himself appreciates much of their work and adopts some of it for his own work. But the way each depends on formal theory means that none of their accounts can be made to work with a patch or a replacement or an addition. Rebuilding is called for.

In Fossett’s own account, we find that his attraction to antifoundationalism is theological. We see that he is not so much against foundationalism, against theory, or against hermeneutics as he is for confessing Jesus as Lord and in reflecting this confession in our theology. Accordingly, his own account of doctrine depends on Christological accounts of the Scriptures and the Church.

Indeed, Christology explains his interest in antifoundationalism. An antifoundationalist account of anything is one that recognizes that its foundations are debatable, open to challenge and rejection. Openness to challenge and rejection also characterize a Christological account of anything, including the Scriptures, the Church, and doctrine, because Jesus Christ himself was rejected and crucified. It stands only because God raised Jesus from the dead. A good deal of contemporary theology does not follow through on this conviction, and this fact explains a lot of the modern appeal of foundationalism among Christians. They should know better. At any rate, Rob Fossett does, and, more than anything else, this explains the consistency and persuasiveness of his account of Christian doctrine.

Joel P. Okamoto

Acknowledgments

This book was originally my doctoral dissertation (though it has been edited to read a little better) and as with any work of a book-length magnitude, there are many people worthy of thanks. First, I would like to thank my parents, Lamar and Elizabeth Fossett, who have been active supporters of my life at every step. They raised me to love Jesus and they have not failed to continually show me their love and grace. For this, I will be forever grateful.

I would also like to thank my home congregation of First Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is through the leadership and influence of the pastors and elders of this congregation that I endeavored to enter seminary in 1998. First Presbyterian Church has funded, in some measure, all of my graduate degrees and was the biggest single contributor to my campus ministry at St. Louis University in the beginning of my pastoral ministry. Would that all students be so blessed to have as generous a home church as First Presbyterian of Chattanooga.

Trinity Church of Kirkwood, Missouri (PCA), hired me with the full knowledge that I was somewhat early in the writing process of this work. I am deeply thankful for my pastor and older brother in the faith, the Rev. Chris Polski, and the men on the session of the church for allowing me the freedom and time away to work on this project, in particular over the last months leading up to its initial completion as a dissertation. Without Rev. Polski’s patience and generous offer of study leave this project would still remain unfinished and I would be without a PhD.

I owe a great deal of thanks to many of the faculty at Concordia Seminary for their kindness and patience in teaching this dullard of a Presbyterian. I am grateful for Dr. Charles Arand and Dr. Timothy Saleska and their willingness to interact with this work and give helpful feedback. I am also very grateful for the numerous conversations with Dr. Kent Burreson over the years, in particular our talks on liturgical theology. No one professor did more to make me feel welcome among the Lutheran community than Dr. Burreson.

I have had many great teachers throughout my life, but no one greater than Dr. Joel Okamoto. This work is a testament to his grace as all of the best ideas contained in this work are his. Dr. Okamoto is the rare teacher who parts with his best material so that his students will have something useful to say. What is good in this book is a testament to his teaching; what is worthy of the fire is a testament to my own skill. I will be forever grateful for Dr. Okamoto’s sharp mind, insightful questions, and never ending patience with me. I count myself blessed to call him my teacher, friend and older brother in the faith.

Though I have put years into this project there is no one who has sacrificed more for it than my wife, Meg. Without her patience and willingness to take this path with me, this project would never have happened. While I have spent years discussing and writing about formal theology, my wife has lived and taught Jesus to our two boys, Sawyer and Maxwell and soon to be third child. In my view, her theological work has far out matched mine and I am the better for it.

Abbreviations

BC The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000.

Ap Apology of the Augsburg Confession

LC Luther’s Large Catechism

FC Formula of Concord

SA Smalcald Articles

SD Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord

ESV English Standard Version of the Holy Bible (all Biblical references are ESV)

WCF The Westminster Confession of Faith. 3rd ed. Atlanta, GA: The Committee for Christian Education and Publication, 1990.

Introduction

The Modern Discussion on Doctrine

The Unique Role Doctrine Plays for the Church

Let’s begin with an obvious question: what is doctrine? In the beginning of his monumental history of doctrine, Jaroslav Pelikan notes that the definition of doctrine has changed over time and is often easier to describe than to define. Nevertheless, he begins his work by saying this about doctrines: What the church of Jesus Christ believes, teaches, and confesses on the basis of the word of God: this is Christian doctrine.¹ In their simplest forms, doctrines are the confessions, teachings, or attempts at articulating or reflecting upon Christian beliefs about the Triune God as presented in Scripture. But Pelikan’s definition, while accurate as far as it goes, is too broad for the purposes of discussion. Part of the confusion—and therein the difficulty in defining doctrine—occurs because distinctions are not often made between particular types of religious claims, whether they be confessional, ethical/imperative, teachings, commentary, expositions, good ideas, or personal reflections.

Borrowing from William Christian,² Paul Griffiths identifies three basic types of religious claims. The first kind of claim is a claim about the setting of human life, which is most often a description about the environment in which we find ourselves and live our lives.³ This kind of religious claim is an attempt to classify a particular part of a setting of human life or as in the case of Christianity, the entire setting of human life (e.g., all of creation as God’s creation or a statement like Jesus is Lord). The second kind of religious claim attempts to classify or define the nature of humans (or particular sets of humans) as the inhabitants of a setting. An example might be classifying all of humanity as sinful or perhaps isolating one particular people as a chosen group (e.g., Israel of the Old Testament, the Church). The third kind of religious claim is a claim about the proper conduct of human life [which] is typically put in the subjunctive or imperative mood, and requires, recommends, or suggests some pattern of action.⁴ An example of this would be the Ten Commandments or the ethical imperatives of the book of James.

A religious claim however, is not necessarily a doctrine; it could simply be a teaching, a reflection or even a good idea. For example, take two different and popular Christian claims: Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day and you should read your Bible everyday. The first claim is not merely a teaching about Scripture, but is bound up with the identity of Christianity. To reject the claim Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day is to reject a claim that is foundational for Christianity. The second claim, however, can be rejected by a Christian and that person can still be considered not only part of a particular Church, but a person in good standing—though others may disagree (and some vehemently so).

While some Christian teachings can be accepted or rejected, doctrine is categorically different because assent to it is required for membership in the community. As Pannenberg argues, doctrines have a legally binding quality to them because they function as the explicit identity markers and rules of the Church.⁵ "We believe in this Jesus, not that one." Taken as a whole, doctrine is one of the chief ways the Church demarcates herself from every other social group and it is unique to her identity.⁶ Again, an obvious question to be asked is a simple one: why? Why does doctrine play such a central role in articulating the Church’s identity and determining her membership? Why not some ritual or a sacrifice to be performed or perhaps a chant to be recited or a vow spoken in front of witnesses?

In Matthew 16, after having miraculously fed thousands of people on two occasions, healed countless numbers of ailing people, walked on water, and battled the religious leaders of his day, Jesus steps back from the multitudes following him and asks his disciples to assess the crowds. Jesus asks, Who do they say that the Son of Man is? The disciples answer, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Jesus then puts the question directly to the disciples, Who do you say that I am? Peter speaking for the group answers, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus’ response to Peter’s simple confession is staggering:

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Peter’s confession is arguably the highest confession a Christian can make: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

But still, we may ask, what does the confession mean? Many Jews in the first century had hoped for the coming of the long-promised Messiah and, as the crowds in Matthew’s account demonstrate, many linked Jesus to Yahweh by calling him a prophet. But as Peter would soon learn, to confess Jesus as Lord, to confess him as the long-promised Messiah, is to confess him as the crucified and resurrected Son of God. It is this Jesus, the crucified Messiah—as later preached by this same Peter and the apostles and handed down through subsequent generations of the Church—that we must confess and not some other Messiah. The reason for this is that confessing Jesus to be the crucified and resurrected Son of God is an issue of life and death because we are pledging our lives—we are binding ourselves to his rule and care—to this Messiah and not some other. As Jesus’ response to Peter shows, this confession is no small thing, and we best be getting it right.

Concern for confessing Jesus correctly is related closely to what Frances Young argues about the genesis of doctrine in the early centuries of Christianity. She points out that Christianity is the only major religion to set such store by creeds and doctrines.⁷ She continues, Other religions have scriptures, others have their characteristic ways of worship, other have their own peculiar ethics and lifestyle; other religions also have philosophical, intellectual or mystical forms as well as more popular manifestations. But except in response to Christianity, they have not developed creeds, statements of standard beliefs to which the orthodox are supposed to adhere.⁸ When we compare Christianity with other religions we see similarities when it comes to having particular sacred rituals, explanatory narratives or myths about the world, saints or heroes that have shaped whatever culture or geography in which a particular religion finds its home. But unlike other groups that delineate their community by particular practices, ethnicity, or geography, Christianity has been uniquely concerned with orthodoxy, with right belief. While the history of Christianity manifests a wide variety of practices, ethnicities, languages and locations, no matter where the Gospel has gone there still remains an emphasis on the truth of the Church’s claims about the world and her God. Distinctions are made between true and false beliefs and whether a person is in or out of the Church is determined largely (if not entirely) by adherence to orthodox doctrine, in particular, doctrines about Jesus.

What makes doctrine and creeds unusual among Christians are not their existence in themselves, but how they function in determining group cohesion. All groups look to have some semblance of group unity or identity, but creedal statements and doctrines as markers of that community—as opposed to some sort of behavior or practice—is a Christian emphasis. Christians assumed early on that if you have the wrong belief,⁹ then you would also have the wrong practices.¹⁰ But it is deeper than this. Schmemann argues that fundamentally, the difference between Christianity and every other religion was the Church’s recognition that her ontology was located in Jesus Christ:

[The Church] is a cult which eternally transcends itself, because it is the cult of a community which eternally realizes itself, as the Body of Christ, as the Church of the Holy Spirit, as ultimately the new aeon of the Kingdom. It is a tradition of forms and structures, but these forms and structures are no longer those of a cult, but those of the Church itself, of its life in Christ. Now we can understand the real meaning of the patristic use of liturgical tradition. The formula lex orandi est lex credendi means nothing else than that theology is possible only within the Church . . . .

¹¹

What sets Christianity apart from other competing religions is that the Church’s doctrine and practice flow out of her relationship to and her worship of, the Triune God. Right relationship—which is predicated on being bound to the crucified and resurrected Jesus—leads to right practice, not the other way around.

¹²

Contrast this with the religious heritage of Judaism out of which Christianity grew. As Young points out, Judaism is not an orthodoxy, but an orthopraxy—its common core is ‘right action’ rather than ‘right belief’—Judaism was not the source of Christianity’s emphasis on orthodoxy and has formulated its ‘beliefs’ only in reaction to Christianity.¹³ This is not to say that we cannot find creedal or doctrinal statements in the Old Testament—the shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 readily comes to mind—or that we don’t find doctrinal statements about who the true God is and his claims on the world as his creation. We obviously can, but as the Decalogue and the context of the shema show, the emphasis is on right practice, not on right belief. Even with one of the clearest depictions of Jesus and his teaching and preaching, the Sermon on the Mount, we are hard pressed to find an emphasis on the role right belief should play in following Jesus. Similarly with the other books of the New Testament beyond the scope of the Gospels, creedal statements do not function in the way that they will come to function in the early centuries of the Church.

Take for example, 1 Corinthians 12:3, Jesus is Lord, which is widely regarded as one of the earliest Christian creeds. As Thiselton argues, the phrase functions to signify where the Church’s allegiance lies, but it also makes a claim about the way the world is, i.e., Jesus is the true Lord and God of all there is.¹⁴ This confession, Jesus is Lord, was first used in the context of worship (lex orandi) as a statement of personal commitment and only later did it become a way of delineating whether someone holds the right belief and thus is part of the true worshipping community. In other words, a shift happens—and it happens almost from the start—from asking to whom are you loyal? to the question, what do you mean by the phrase, ‘Jesus is Lord?’ Which Jesus do you worship, the crucified and resurrected Son of God or some other one?

Again, an obvious question is why? Why did Christianity develop in such a way that it not only emphasized right belief, sometimes over and against right practice, but also uniquely developed doctrines and creeds as tests of orthodoxy in contrast to not only Judaism, but to all other religions? While putting forth an answer to this question would be a book-length project in itself, we can say in general, that it was in the face of multiple and competing accounts of the world, humanity, and the divine—not unlike our own postmodern or pluralistic context in the West—that Christians felt the need to delineate their account from others.¹⁵ At root in the process was not only the delineation of the identity of the Christian God as opposed to other gods, but the exclusive locus of salvation that he offered through his Son Jesus, as evidenced later in the fourth century with the intense debates at Nicaea over Jesus’ relationship to Yahweh.

Nicaea, however, was not the beginning of this process. Already in the first century, the New Testament mentions struggles between true and false belief, let alone true and false interpretations, as evidenced in the warnings of Paul in Galatians as well as John in his epistles. In the second century, Ignatius warns various Churches to mind the authority of the bishops, as they are the true authorities over matters of doctrine and right belief.¹⁶ In the same century, Irenaeus rigorously defends right belief in Jesus against Gnosticism and its deviation from the message preached by the apostles.¹⁷ Though creeds and doctrines originated in the setting of worship, by the fourth century they had been adapted as tests of orthodoxy.

¹⁸

The conflict over the right account of Jesus did not remain isolated to the Church and other competing religions, it became a conflict of Christian account vs. Christian account as the history