03.14. "Sound Doctrine."

"Sound Doctrine."

Readers of what are called the Pastoral Epistles--the three letters in which Paul gives advice to Timothy and Titus. his youthful helpers in the Gospel--will have noted how there appears in each of them a word which Paul nowhere else uses. We have frequent mention of "sound" doctrine. This word occurs eight or nine times in these three short epistles. In 1 Timothy Paul refers to a number of grievous sins, as "contrary to the sound doctrine" (1 Timothy 1:10). A man who "teacheth a different doctrine" than the apostolic one and who "consenteth not to sound words" is condemned (1 Timothy 6:3). Timothy is exhorted to "hold the pattern of sound words" (2 Timothy 1:13). "The time will come" when men "will not endure the sound doctrine" (2 Timothy 4:3). A bishop must be able to "exhort in the sound doctrine" (Titus 1:9). Reproof must be given to unruly men and vain talkers "that they may be sound in the faith" (Titus 1:13). Titus has to speak "things which befit the sound doctrine" (Titus 2:1), so that aged men may be "sound in faith" (Titus 2:2). In his doctrine he is to show "sound speech, that cannot be condemned" (Titus 2:8).

Doctrinal preaching. The word "doctrine" is not a popular one. Only to a less degree than the word "dogma," it seems to repel. To call a man a "dogmatic" person is but one way of condemning him. To say that one preaches a "doctrinal" sermon would generally be regarded as adverse criticism. Yet the apostolic message was a most definite and dogmatic one, and the need of "sound doctrine" was insisted on by the apostle. There is a common modern antithesis between the preaching of Christ and the delivering of a doctrinal sermon. That distinction could hardly have meaning for the apostle. There is no possible preaching of Christ without the preaching of doctrine. All that the writer or reader of this knows of Christ comes from doctrine. "Doctrine" simply means "teaching," and the difference between one preacher and another in his utterances regarding Christ is not that the one gives doctrine while the other does not, but is a difference in the quality of the doctrine or teaching that is given.

He who reads the New Testament will see that doctrine is important. We have made unwarranted separations. Some say that conduct, not faith, is what counts for most. But conduct is rooted in faith, and what a man really believes in his heart finds an issue in his life. God would not have given a revelation of himself at the length he has in the Scriptures if it did not matter what a man believes. It is true that a faith which does not issue in a godly life, which does not manifest itself in works of beneficence and mercy, is worthless and dead. But it is also true that the real faith in the heart of a man determines what his actions will be. We wish to believe truth, and not error. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." So long as this word of the Saviour stands, so long will it he imperative to give careful attention to doctrine. "Take heed to thyself, and to thy teaching," wrote Paul to Timothy; "continue in these things; for in doing this thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee."

"Sound" in the faith.

One of our most familiar expressions is that which is given in praise to a speaker whom we call "sound." He is "sound in the faith," we say; or, he gives "sound doctrine." What do we usually mean by this? That he is an orthodox believer; that he accepts the revelation God has made; that he is free from "critical" or "modernist" tendencies. All this is to the good, and it may be useful to have a word like "sound" to serve as a label. There is no doubt that to Paul and his fellow apostles it was most important that the divine revelation should be accepted. Paul declared that "he received of the Lord" the things which he spake; and that he spoke "not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth." There was a sacred "deposit" of truth which he urged Timothy to "guard." Some heretics made "shipwreck concerning the faith." Christians were urged to "contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints."

While we are compelled to make it clear that the sacred truths of the Christian religion come to us as a deposit to be jealously guarded, yet we must also point out that it was not simply orthodoxy which Paul had in mind when he wrote of "sound words" or "sound doctrine." It has been easy for some to think that when Paul wrote of "the form of sound words" he meant something like a modern church creed, that by conformity to which a man’s faith or utterances might be tested. But it was not so. In the ancient church there were no formularies such as are found to-day. The creeds were a later growth, and Paul referred neither to them nor to any mere safeguard of orthodoxy. The word "sound," which Paul uses, had not for him or his readers such associations as are common to-day. A comment from Alexander Maclaren will help to make Paul’s meaning clear: "’Doctrine’ conveys to the ordinary reader the notion of an abstract, dry, theological statement of some truth. Now, what the apostle means is not ’doctrine’ so much as ’teaching’; and if you will substitute ’teaching’ for ’doctrine’ you will get much nearer his thought; just as you will get nearer it if for ’sound,’ with the meaning of conformity to theological standard, you substitute what the word really means, ’healthy,’ wholesome,--health-giving, healing. All these ideas run into each other. That which is in itself healthy is health-giving as food, and as a medicine is healing. The apostle is not describing the teaching that he had given to Timothy by its conformity with any standard, but is pointing to its essential nature as being wholesome, sound in a physical sense; and to its effect as being healthy and health-giving. Keep hold of that thought, and the whole aspect of this saving changes at once."

It is interesting to note that the word Paul uses in every case except Titus 2:8 ("hugiees") is employed in Luke’s Gospel and in 3 John 1:2 in the sense of being whole or made whole physically. The word "hugiees" employed in Titus 2:8 is found in each of the four Gospels and in Acts, in all of which it is translated "whole" and is used of physical healing. Of New Testament writers only Paul uses either word in a figurative sense. It is interesting to see how in his old age the apostle adopted this striking metaphorical form of speech. It is one of the key words of the Pastoral Epistles.

Weymouth and Rotherham depart from the usual translation with its somewhat misleading associations. The former has a rich variety of expressions: "wholesome teaching," "wholesome instruction," "sound teaching," "healthy language" "robust in their faith." Rotherham uses the word "healthful"--"healthful" teaching, discourses, instruction-and the phrase "healthy in their faith."

"Healing, because it makes holy."

Maclaren points out that in the pastoral epistles Paul gives a long catalogue of things "contrary to the health-giving doctrine," and adds: "If the ordinary notion of the expression were it, that catalogue ought to be a list of heresies. But what is it? A black list of vices--’deceivers,’ ’ungodly,’ ’sinners,’ ’unholy,’ ’profane,’ ’murderers,’ ’manslayers,’ ’whoremongers,’ ’man-stealers,’ ’liars,’ ’perjured’ persons. Not one of these refers to aberration of opinion; all of them point to divergences of conduct, and these are the things that are contrary to the healing doctrine. But they are not contrary, often, to sound orthodoxy. For there have been a great many imitators of that King of France, who carried little leaden images of saints and the Virgin in his hat and the devil in his heart. ’The form of sound words’ is the pattern of healing teaching, which proves itself healing because it makes holy."

It is the message of "the glorious Gospel of the blessed God" which is wholesome and healing. Orthodoxy in the best sense is therefore implied in Paul’s advice to Timothy and Titus; for there are not two ways of salvation; there cannot be two Gospels. "If you change the ’pattern of health-giving words, you lower the health of the world," writes Alexander ’Maclaren. "If you strike out from the ’pattern of health-giving words’ the truth of the incarnation, the sacrifice on the cross, the resurrection, the ascension and the gift of the Spirit, the ’health-giving words’ that you have left are not enough to give life to a fly." So even in the ordinary sense one has to be "sound" in the faith. In our own experience we have found the healing power of the Gospel, and now, as in love we proclaim the message, we would recognise its wholesomeness and health-giving power. It is healing and wholesome, for it is the message of him who came to be the great Physician of men, and who said, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life."