Does Doctrine Make a Difference?

by T. C. Pinckney                                                                                           Vol. XIV, No. 3, March 2001

Amid the Baptist controversy you may hear someone imply or even ask explicitly, "What difference does doctrine make, anyway? We all worship the same God. Can't we all get along and just work together?" There are some fundamental flaws with that line of reasoning, too many to deal with all at once, but I will address it in part.

The most basic error in that approach is that we do NOT all worship the same God. Oh, we may use the same name to refer to Him. We may all be organized in groups we call "Baptist" churches. There may be wide overlap in the hymns we sing, the organization of our church bodies, and the terminology we employ. But these things are merely the outer shell.

No one would maintain that the makeup a lady applies or the clothing she chooses is the "real" her. Her clothes, her makeup do reflect a certain amount of information about her, but the real person resides in the heart, the soul, and the actions that spring from that soul. Even so, I Samuel 16:7 says, "But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart."

Clearly, we should judge neither people nor churches by external appearances but rather by what resides in their hearts ... and for churches that is doctrine. Let's look at just one example of a doctrinal difference: the varying belief between liberals and conservatives about the Virgin Birth.

In a statement quoted in the journal Christianity Today, 5 August 1983, Dr. Cecil Sherman, then a pastor, later the first national Coordinator of the "Cooperative Baptist Fellowship", and currently teaching at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, said, "A teacher who might also be led by Scripture not to believe in the Virgin Birth should not be fired. ... It [the Virgin Birth] is in two Gospels, but not in two others.. ... Did Mark and John make a mistake by forgetting to list it? If the Virgin Birth is desperately important, [Mark and John] must have erred." On the other hand, every prominent conservative Southern Baptist will affirm the Virgin Birth.

Is there any real significance to this clear difference of belief?

Absolutely! If Jesus was not the result of the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary, he was not "fully God, fully man." He might have been a very good man, a kind man, a loving man, and an excellent example to all other men, but that would be all he could be. He could not have been divine.

And unless Jesus were fully God as well as fully man, he could not have suffered infinitely; therefore, he could not have taken on Himself the sins of all mankind past, present, and future. Unless he did take all sins upon Himself, repentance and faith in Him could not result in salvation, our being washed completely clean from our sins and thus made acceptable to enter God's kingdom. Instead, we would have to rely upon our own merit, not on His sacrifice. Yet even were I able to be completely perfect from this moment till the end of my life (which, of course, is impossible) I would still be barred from the immediate presence of God because of even one past sin. Is there anyone who has never told a lie? I have yet to find anybody who will so claim. Without Jesus' cleansing sacrifice, everyone deserves hell.

So we readily see that the Virgin Birth is not some esoteric principle of interest only to fuzzy headed theologues, but has immediate, vital, eternal significance for every human being. And what some would like to term an irrelevant doctrinal difference makes all the difference in this world and the next.

Now let's look at some quantified differences in results, differences that spring from the impact of a change in theology. Historically Southern Baptists have had as a matter of prime interest the Foreign (now International) Mission Board, so we will look at the IMB as our example. First, the background.

Conservative Southern Baptists first won a (slim) majority on the trustee board of the International Mission Board in June 1987. Annually that majority grew, and gradually policy and personnel changes were instituted. No one was fired, but a number of executives and some missionaries felt uncomfortable enough with the changes that they retired or left to take other jobs. (Of course, others who were happy with the changes reached retirement or were God-called to other positions of service during these years also.) As with any major change, there was a transition time before the new policies took effect. What has happened subsequently?

                                                1990          1993          1996          1999

New churches overseas:                        2,019         2,304         4,748

Baptisms overseas:         208,381    262,758     283,247    363,703

New missionaries:                  414            498             590            902

Volunteers:                           9,703          9,886       15,398       25,807

When understood to be the very Word of God, without error, God-breathed, and God-preserved, biblical doctrine does make a difference. No longer can anyone excuse a failure to witness with the specious arguments that the Bible is simply the "record" of man's search for God, that the authors were "prisoners of their times and cultures", that everyone is free to interpret the Bible in any way he wishes -- even to denying the Virgin Birth, the resurrection, or that adherents of other religions (or no religion) are bound for hell. When we accept the Bible as God's inerrant Word, the missionary impetus becomes terribly urgent.

That urgency is now strong among us, and the results are evident in many ways including the figures cited above. Praise God that Southern Baptists through their tithes, through their missionaries, through their volunteers were used by God in 1999 to help rescue 155,322 more souls from hell than we did in 1990.

Doctrine does make a difference, an eternal difference.