{"id":58102,"date":"1996-09-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1996-09-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/faithful-gets-doctrinal\/"},"modified":"1996-09-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1996-09-01T00:00:00","slug":"faithful-gets-doctrinal","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/faithful-gets-doctrinal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Faithful Gets Doctrinal"},"content":{"rendered":"

We live out interesting paradoxes. We announce blatantly to the world that we have answers to the human sickness. Then we press for lifestyle conformity and doctrinal orthodoxy codified into stale axioms that stifle the very ideas we pronounce as divine. The creative Christian life and thought scares the jeewillingers out of Bible college deans and popes alike. Kenneth Scott Latourette says that once Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire the faithful got doctrinal, conformist, and creedal and sent the church into 1,000 years of uncertainty. … Martin Luther got the movement unstuck when he rediscovered grace. Then conservatives codified God and liberals deified humans and gummed it up again.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3592,3671,3712,4089,4186,4365,5177],"tax_ctp_topics":[378,384,386],"class_list":["post-58102","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-christian-life","tax_ctp_tags-confrontation","tax_ctp_tags-creativity","tax_ctp_tags-grace-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-humanism","tax_ctp_tags-liberalism","tax_ctp_tags-tradition"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"\nThe Faithful Gets Doctrinal - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/faithful-gets-doctrinal\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Faithful Gets Doctrinal - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We live out interesting paradoxes. 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