The Importance of Theological Triage
Deciphering different doctrines can be tricky, but it’s the goal of a Theological Nomad to learn to uncover and discuss theology with confidence! What if there was a reliable way to categorize doctrines in order of importance so that we could discuss them confidently and accurately? Enter Theological Triage! The idea of theological triage was recently popularized by theologian Dr. Gavin Ortlund in his 2020 book Finding the Right Hills to Die On: A Case for Theological Triage, and the idea has greatly impacted the way I think and talk about theology. In the medical world, triage is deciding which patients need the most urgent treatment. I did this in a first responder class once; its hard but necessary! In the theological world, triage is deciding which doctrines are of greater importance and deserve more urgent treatment. The importance of this task can be seen in the absence of it in the church as people argue and separate over doctrines that don’t matter and remain indifferent about those that do. This is exactly what we want to help the church avoid through Theological Nomad!
Dr. Ortlund separates doctrines into four categories based on their impact to the Christian faith. The first category contains essential doctrines, those which are necessary to believe to be a Christian and directly relate to the Gospel, the kind you might find on a statement of faith, for instance. The second category is filled with secondary but urgently important doctrines which people can disagree on and still be Christian, but that affect the way we live out our faith so much that those who believe differently may have a hard time practicing their faith together or could be headed for theological danger in distorting the Gospel message. The third order of doctrines are those that may affect the way we practice our faith in important ways but not to the extent that people who believe differently would need to go to different churches or divide over them. The last is a fourth level of “unimportant” doctrines which don’t affect the practice of our faith. This sounds like a great concept for deciding the importance of a doctrine and the need for agreement in different theologies, but how does it play out in reality? In reality, these divisions go a long way to promoting unity and open discussion, and to see how, some examples are in order!
To arrive at Christian unity, you must begin as Christians. To be a Christian, one must believe the first rank doctrines, truths that must be believed to be part of the orthodox, Christian faith. These are non-negotiable, essential doctrines which have been believed by all Christians since the beginning and should be defended without compromise because they directly relate to the truth of the Gospel. An example of a first rank doctrine would be the deity of Christ, since the belief that Jesus is God has been central to Christian faith since the beginning and it is essential to the message of the Gospel. Jesus claimed it, the church recognized it, and we believe it. If Jesus isn’t divine, His death for sins would have been ineffective, He would be unworthy of worship, and He would be liable to claims of falsehood. To believe in a Jesus who is not God is to believe in a Jesus who doesn’t exist and who cannot save, therefore, the doctrine of the divinity of Christ is non-negotiable to the Christian faith. To realize the importance of this doctrine and place it in the first level of doctrines means that if we encounter someone who doesn’t believe this doctrine, we are not able to enter a discussion about Christian unity because their beliefs are outside of the Christian faith. Recognizing that a doctrine belongs in this category is to say that it is a theological hill worth dying on.
A doctrine that falls into the second rank is one that greatly affects the practice of the faith to the point where people who believe differently might have difficulty doing ministry together or attending the same church and may be in serious error, but those on all sides of belief are real, true Christians. It is in these “urgent” doctrines that the push for unity is most necessary, because it is here where we can so easily push people away who disagree with us and refuse to engage in meaningful conversations. It might be uncomfortable to disagree about these important issues, but unity isn’t uniformity, and disagreements on doctrine shouldn’t isolate brothers and sisters from one another so long as it doesn’t jeopardize the foundations of the faith and the Gospel. A good example of a doctrine in this category might be egalitarian and complementarian church leadership, which deals with whether women can or can’t be involved in leading the church. Setting the hot debate aside, wherever your beliefs fall makes a huge difference in church practice and pastoral theology! Someone who doesn’t believe there is biblical support for female leaders would likely not be able to attend a church with a female pastor. Conversely, try going to a church as a woman who believes in female church leadership when the rest of the church doesn’t. You would constantly feel like you might not be able to exercise your gifts to the fullest. But just because disagreement over these beliefs might make it difficult to attend the same church doesn’t mean they should generate animosity towards each other, cause us to question people’s salvation, or start throwing around the label of “liberal” or “patriarchalist” (even though this sadly happens all the time). While these beliefs might lead to people attending different churches and conducting different ministries, they can also lead us to ask questions of one another, try to understand each other better, and make a concerted effort to be unified even in our differences. This is a challenge, but one worth embracing if we are going to reflect Christ through church unity.
The third category of doctrines is those which have important affects on Christian practice, but not enough that we can’t attend church and minister with people who believe differently than we do. Would it shock you to know that I would put the evolution/creation debate I mentioned in my first article in this category? What would be so different about two people who believe differently about creation that they couldn’t attend church together? If we aren’t looking at one another believing the worst and failing to understand each other…nothing should! I think this way about beliefs on end times, worship style and a host of other theological beliefs that might be important to us, but, within the larger church, they are not worth dividing over. The unity of the church is more important than everyone believing the exact same thing about third-level issues, and, as the church, we can and should be doing better at having open dialogue about these beliefs without dividing over them.
The fourth category needs only a brief mention, containing doctrines that don’t affect the way we live out our faith, like whether angels have wings (I don’t believe they do but that’s a discussion for another day!). These ideas are interesting to discuss, but don’t make much difference in the way we live our faith at the end of the day.
While I’m all for using these categories, there is an inherent danger in trying to categorize beliefs, namely that the matrix of ideas we call theology is complex and doctrines interact and overlap all the time. This system isn’t fool proof and isn’t perfect, but if the alternative is thinking everything that we believe is non-negotiable truth, never being open to understanding others or changing our minds, unity will remain an impossibility and humility will be sadly lacking. While we can’t be black-and-white in our categorization of all beliefs, that doesn’t mean categories aren’t helpful and that there aren’t clear examples of doctrines that fall into a certain category, like the deity of Christ in the essential, first category. For those beliefs that fall into the first category of essential, and even the second category of urgent beliefs, it is helpful to know when to stand our ground for truth or budge for the sake of unity. My final recommendation in all this? Go read Dr. Ortlund’s book for yourself and incorporate his or similar ideas into the way you assess theology. Theological Nomad exists for the purpose of helping people think better about theology in an attempt to find unity through the understanding we achieve when we dialogue about our beliefs, but to do that, we need to be able to sort out and discuss what we believe, recognizing in what areas we are free to agree to disagree and in what areas we need to stand firm for truth. This might be even more challenging than the medical triage I learned as a first responder, and the consequences can be just as serious. Theological triage is the best way that I have found to sort through the importance of doctrines, and I believe if you start using it in your thinking about theology, you will be blessed with greater clarity and a greater sense of understanding towards your brothers and sisters in Christ, an essential step to the goal of Christian unity that we all long to see.
Do you have a different way of thinking about the importance of theology and doctrines? We want to hear it! Leave a comment to join the discussion.