“Now, the end goal of our exhortation is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”

(1 Timothy 1:5)

What is the opposite of useless speculation, mythologies, and heterodox teachings? It is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Heterodox theology produces a heterodox life; a true faith produces a life marked by Christian love and a peaceful conscience.

The problem that many people face, though, is what constitutes true faith? Truly, every person who calls themselves a Christian preacher would describe their own beliefs as true, yet so many of these views are not consistent with the Bible. Furthermore, when compared to views held by other “Christian” teachers and denominations, they often have views that are irreconcilable with one another. So, how do we resolve these differences in the hopes of practicing a true faith that produces a true Christian life?

The first part of that answer rests in the Scriptures. The Bible is the ultimate authority by which all faith and practice is to be judged. And, it should be said here that we are not talking about isolated proof-texts, but the consistent teaching of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. If you cannot support a view from clear Biblical exegesis, you cannot hold that view to be Christian. Furthermore, if there are passages that seem to be inconsistent with each other, one must always interpret the unclear references by the clear passages in the text. This is how we let the Bible speak for itself.

Yet, what if it is a matter that the Bible does not address directly? For example, should we baptize infants? Should believers worship on Saturday or is Sunday the Christian Sabbath? What is the right way to articulate the Trinity or the dual-nature of Christ? There are answers to all of these questions and more, but to find these answers, we must consult the documents produced by the historic Christian Councils. To borrow the words of Vincent of Lerens, the Canons produced by these Councils help us to understand what has been consistently held by Christians at all times and in all places. These Canons are not inspired, and thus they can never supersede Scripture and are always to be under the judgment of Scripture, but they provide us with a body of case-law by which we can understand how the Christian is to live with a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

The Romanists and the Eastern Orthodox place too much weight in these documents, in some cases, elevating these Councils to the level of Scripture. Yet, the protestants often ignore these documents for fear of being confused with the Catholic and Orthodox. So long as you recognize that these documents are human documents given as helps and guides to the church, you need not fall into either error. So long as you recognize that these documents are always to be judged by Scripture, which is our absolute standard, you won’t be misled by the errors of application that show up in a number of these councils. Yet, if you ignore them, you rob yourself of the wisdom that God has given to the church and you will find yourself in danger of useless speculation.

Loving one another in the church is a product of being unified in the Truth of the Word. It does not work the other way around.