Reformed, Book Reading, Apple Loving, Beverage Snob, 23 Year-Old Husband, In Need of Grace.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Book Review: Doctrine by Mark Driscoll
When you’re thinking of a fun book to read, I doubt the first thing that comes to your mind is a systematic theology. Essentially a systematic theology is the conglomeration of Christian beliefs into a coherent, logical set that sets out to explain Christianity in it’s entirety. Or as wikipedia puts it… “systematic theology is a discipline of Christian theology that attempts to formulate an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the Christian faith and beliefs.”
Sounds fun, right?
Well, while it is generally the rule that only seminarians and theology geeks like me read this stuff, their content is quite valuable to all that belong to the faith. One of my favorite systematic theologies in the past few years has been Wayne Grudem’s, which weighs in at a measly 1291 pages, and may or may not require a PhD in order to be properly understood. This is not a book I recommend for the casual reader. It is dense, it is long, it is technical.
And then along comes Mark Driscoll.
In his book, Droctrine: What Christians Should Believe, he essentially puts together a systematic theology that everyone can read. It is dense and theologically rich, but Driscoll writes everything in a very sermonic/pastoral tone. He isn’t writing to academia or for scholars, he is writing for you and me, which is a nice change. Weighing in at 463 pages with 2000+ footnotes, this isn’t a quick read, but it’s one of those books you read through once to get your bearings and then you revisit it for clarity.
As far as content is concerned, Driscoll is spot on as usual and holds strong to his theological convictions without hesitation. The book also follows the standard format of a systematic theology (God, Man, Church) but with the standard Driscoll twist. The chapters break down like this:
1. Trinity: God is
2. Revelation: God Speaks
3. Creation: God Makes
4. Image: God Loves
5. Fall: God Judges
6. Covenant: God Pursues
7. Incarnation: God Comes
8. Cross: God Dies
9. Resurrection: God Saves
10. Church: God Sends
11. Worship: God Transforms
12. Stewardship: God Gives
13. Kingdom: God Reigns
So… very basic layout, but also unique in that Driscoll ties each chapter to an action that God performs, which I like. Chapters 7-9, are mostly borrowed from Vintage Jesus and Vintage Church, but with a lot of additional content for this platform. Another nice touch that Driscoll adds to this is in every chapter he and his co-author, Gerry Breshears, answer common objects to the doctrines and beliefs they are advocating. It’s always nice to read something, have a question about it, and then on the next page an answer is already waiting for you.
Would most Christians want to read this book? Not necessarily.
Should they read this book? Yes.
Why? Because a lot of Christians, including myself, 1) don’t always know what they believe 2) why they believe it and 3) what basic Christian doctrines are. And this book helps solve all of those problems with ease. While this isn’t as easy and light-hearted as Driscoll’s first two books, it is still quite easy to read and is written for everyone. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about Christianity, Christian or not.
If you’d like to pick up a copy, WTSBooks has it for $15 and it can be found here. Wether you read this book topically or from front to back, it will be an invaluable resource to your spiritual development.
Later in the storyline of the Bible, we learn that Jesus did in fact come to save people from their sins. He did this by becoming the one who succeeded where he first Adam failed. He died in our place for our sins and rose for our salvation. Amazingly, God not only judged sin in righteousness but then bore its penalty himself as an act of love, he offered forgiveness and reconciliation by grace even though he is the offended person against whom we have all sinned. In so doing, he remains perfectly perfect, and we are more wicked than we ever feared yet more loved than we ever hoped.
Simply, when Scripture is rightly interpreted, it is ultimately about Jesus as God, our Savior, the object of our faith, forgiver of our sins, and giver of eternal life. Therefore, to correctly interpret scripture you will need to connect its verses, concepts, and events to Jesus.
Unless Jesus is the central message of the Scriptures, many errors abound. The most common is moralizing. Moralizing is reading the Bible not to learn about Jesus but only to learn principles for how to live life as a good person by following the good examples of some people and avoiding the bad examples of others. That kind of approach to the Scriptures is not Christian, because it treats the Bible like any other book with moral lessons that are utterly disconnected from faith in and salvation from Jesus.
We see then how greatly Christian doctrine helps the raising up and comforting of the weak consciences; which treat not of cowels, shavings, rosaries, and such-like toys, but of high and weighty matters, as how we may overcome the flesh, sin, death, and the devil.
Martin Luther, Commentary on Galations 5:17
