You have probably heard the phrase “doctrinal tiers” at some point if you have been involved at Church for any length of time. Each Church I have attended in both my childhood and adult life have either mentioned doctrinal tiers or explicitly included them on their Church website. Suffice to say, at some point in your life I have no doubt you will encounter doctrinal tiers if you attend a Bible-preaching Church.
But what are “doctrinal tiers?” Is it a helpful concept? Are there any problems with using it? And is there a better way to solve the same problems doctrinal tiers tries to solve? In this post, I want to answer each of these questions and, in particular, propose an alternative to doctrinal tiers which I call “doctrinal uncertainty.”
What are doctrinal tiers?
Doctrinal tiers are a means to categorize different Bible doctrines in order of importance, orthodoxy or necessity of belief. The number of tiers, what each tier contains, and how the tiers are used varies from person to person and from Church to Church. I have seen them formulated as a pyramid and as a target. Essentially, doctrinal tiers is a way to answer the question “what doctrines and biblical interpretations can Christians disagree on and yet still be considered orthodox in their theology?“
Knowing what Biblical doctrines are essential to be considered saved and orthodox and what doctrines are “secondary” is a vital and practical distinction to make. And that is really all the tiers are: a method of categorization. It is a way of saying “this set of biblical beliefs you must hold to in order to be considered Christian, but these other issues, while important, have varying valid, orthodox interpretations.”
Generally “first tier” issues are the foundational doctrines of the gospel:
- Who Christ is
- What the nature of Sin is
- What is the gospel
- How is one saved
And so on. In contrast, secondary or tertiary doctrines include:
- Infant baptism vs. believers’ baptism
- The various eschatological interpretations
- Views on Church structure
And others. From these lists, it is clear the first set deals with doctrines essential for saving faith while the second list deals with different practical matters of Church life and the interpretation of difficult passages.
Now, the concept of doctrinal tiers is important and helpful to a degree. By knowing where the lines of orthodoxy are drawn, Christians can contend for “essential” issues and agree to disagree on other issues. However, there are several problems with the doctrinal tiers model.
Issues with doctrinal tiers
1. Who decides how many tiers should their be and why?
This is a common problem I see when I read about doctrinal tiers: there is no “standard” for how many tiers one creates. Many Churches I know of have either two or three tiers. If you have two tiers, you divide up doctrines between necessary for orthodoxy and doctrines which Christians can disagree on. The three tier model adds another category, typically on doctrines which affect Church practice.
But hypothetically, one need not stop at two or three tiers. Why not four? Five? Ten? At some point the categories end up losing their usefulness, but I think this highlights an issue with the doctrinal tiers model: there is no limit to which you can categorize doctrines by degree of importance. As soon as you open the door for “ranking” doctrines so to speak, there is no reason you have to stop at two or three levels. This can create a situation where some doctrines are seen as “unimportant” simply because they are in a lower tier. Eschatology is a great example: I have met many people who refuse to study the topic because it is “less important.”
2. Who or what decides what doctrine goes in what tier?
This becomes more of a problem the more tiers you add to your model. Who decides which doctrines are essential and which can be safely disagreed upon? For the most part, Christians agree doctrines related to Christ and the gospel are tier 1. But what about different view on God’s providence in salvation? For some people, this is closer to a tier 1 issue than to other people.
Additionally, many of the tier 2 or 3 doctrines in Scripture have a direct relation to tier 1 doctrines. For example, your understanding of the doctrine of baptism (tier 2+) is not independent from what you believe about the gospel (tier 1). And as mentioned above, your view of God’s sovereignty in salvation (most of the time tier 2+) is integral to what you believe about the work of Christ on the cross (tier 1).
The issue with doctrinal tiers is someone has to sort all this out in a way that is not arbitrary. But if you examine what different Churches put into different tiers, you will find enough variation to call into question the process of how the doctrinal tiers are developed. Not every Church agrees with what doctrines goes into what tiers. How then does one discern what the “right” tier is to put a doctrine into? Without some objective or explicitly Scriptural process to decide what doctrines go into what tier, the decision potentially becomes arbitrary.
3. Is there a strong textual basis for doctrinal tiers?
A final critique of the doctrinal tiers model is the Bible generally presents itself as a unity of truth. What I mean by this is Scripture does not label its own doctrines or order them from “most important” to “least important”. Rather, the Bible is presented as God’s revelation to man as a whole. Moreover, doctrines are developed from synthesizing a wide variety of Biblical literature: poetry, prophecy, narrative, epistles, etc. Very rarely does Scripture explicitly say a certain doctrine takes priority over a different doctrine, such as ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church) being in a “higher tier” than eschatology (doctrine of end times).
There are two potential exceptions to this general rule. The first is the Bible puts an enormous emphasis on God’s plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. All other doctrines throughout the different literature forms of Scripture build and point to this central reality. Therefore, one could say the doctrines of Christ & the gospel are in a tier or a class of their own.
The second exception is those portions of Scripture which seem to elevate certain moral commands over other commands. Examples of these would be when God says “I desire mercy not sacrifice” in the Old Testament or when Jesus says the Pharisees neglected the weightier matters of the law. This seems to imply a priority placed on the moral commands of Scripture over and against the ceremonial commands.
These two exceptions, however, are insufficient textual evidence for the doctrinal tiers system. Doctrinal tiers as a model does far more than merely emphasize the importance of the Gospel and it deals with whole Biblical doctrines rather than Biblical commands. Therefore, it could be said there is little internal evidence that one can form tiers of doctrines from the text of Scripture. In fact, the internal witness of Scripture seems to lead readers more towards trying to unify the doctrines of Scripture rather than categorize them in order of importance.
An alternative: doctrinal uncertainty
So, while doctrinal tiers is not a terrible or useless concept, it has its problems and the question must be asked if there is a better way forward. I think there is: rather than talking about doctrinal tiers, Christians should instead use a concept I will call “doctrinal uncertainty.” What do I mean by “doctrinal uncertainty?” There are certain doctrines in Scripture that are clearer and require less interpretation and synthesis than other doctrines. To use a previously referenced example, building out a doctrine of the Church is easier than synthesizing an entire eschatology.
The difference between doctrinal tiers and doctrinal uncertainty is how you group together different doctrines. With doctrinal tiers, you group doctrines by how important they are or how necessary they are to be considered orthodox. Doctrinal uncertainty, on the other hand, orders doctrines by how clear the Biblical text is on any given doctrine, how much interpretation is needed on the part of the theologian to synthesize a doctrine, and how likely it is for any given two people reading their Bible to come to the same conclusion on a doctrine.
Therefore, a doctrine such as the Gospel is less uncertain because the amount of times Scripture expounds/describes the Gospel and the clarity with which the text speaks about it. By contrast, a doctrine such as “gifts of the Spirit” has more uncertainty because there are less texts which address the topic, some of the texts are open for multiple interpretations, and the wide variety of interpretations which exist on the topic.
The doctrinal uncertainty model orders doctrines not by an arbitrary or semi-arbitrary selection by a pastor or theologian. Rather, it looks at where the doctrine came from, what texts are synthesized to reach a given conclusion, and asks “how clear and certain is this conclusion? or are there other other valid, orthodox interpretations?” Therefore, the question of infant baptism vs. believers baptism is framed not in terms of “this is a doctrine which is not essential to the faith” but “this is a doctrine with which there is uncertainty and therefore there are several valid conclusions.”
What are the sources of doctrinal uncertainty? Or to put it another way, why do different orthodox Christians come to different conclusions with the same text of Scripture? I think there are three main sources of doctrinal uncertainty.
Sources of doctrinal uncertainty
1. Different interpretations of specific texts
Certain texts have ambiguous language which lends itself to two or more valid interpretations. Of course, Scripture must be compared with Scripture to choose a single meaning, but any ambiguity in a text introduces uncertainty to your exposition. A good example of this is the beginning of John 3:16. Many English translations say “For God so loved the world…” Certain translations, however, say “God loved the world in this way.”
Why the different translations? Because the Greek word houtos can either refer to a degree or a means. The first translation “For God so loved the world” would therefore mean “God loved the world to this great degree.” The second translation would mean “The way or means in which God has shown love to the world is…” The point here is not to argue for one of these or the other; you can do that in your own study. The point here is the language used in the verse introduces uncertainty.
Different interpretations of language in certain texts is one source of doctrinal uncertainty. Oftentimes, when part of a doctrine is based primarily on a few verses, this uncertainty can become significant if any of these verses uses ambiguous language. When two different Christians choose two different interpretations of an ambiguous verse, they may come to different conclusions on a doctrine.
2. Different synthesis of the data
This is probably the most common source of doctrinal uncertainty. Maybe all the texts you are studying are crystal clear. However, building a doctrine involved synthesizing those texts into a coherent statement on whatever topic you are trying to study. Sometimes, it is uncertain how certain verses fit together. This uncertainty in synthesis leads to uncertainty in the doctrine itself.
This is one reason why eschatology is possibly the most uncertain of doctrines: Christians continue to disagree on the topic because synthesizing all the passages which discuss eschatology is incredibly difficult and lends itself to several valid interpretations. Additionally, many of the individual texts use ambiguous imagery. The reason Christians should not divide over eschatology isn’t because it is a “second level” doctrine per se. Rather, eschatology has so much uncertainty built into it that dividing over it would be foolish compared with dividing over a clearer doctrine such as Christ and the gospel.
A quick look at the different doctrines many people put into the “second or third tier” of the doctrinal tiers system shows that most of these non-first tier doctrines are the ones which have more uncertainty around their synthesis of the Biblical data. Examples are eschatology, Church government, covenant theology, and so on. They are not second tier in the sense of less important than other doctrines. Rather, they have more uncertainty when interpreting all the Biblical data on the topics.
3. Different historical conclusions of the Church
There are certain doctrines which the Church has generally agreed upon for hundreds of years. These doctrines generally have less uncertainty then other doctrines. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity was expressed so clearly in the early Church, that there has been little deviation in interpretation among Bible believing Christians since then. However, other doctrines have always been interpreted differently throughout the history of the Church. If you are dealing with one of these doctrines, you will find uncertainty among the historical conclusions of the Church.
Many “second tier” doctrines are those which the Church throughout history has disagreed upon. I think one of the reasons God’s sovereignty in salvation (i.e. Calvinism vs. Arminianism) is often delegated as “second tier” has nothing to do with it’s importance. Rather, it is an issue that has long been debated throughout the history of the Church. This historical uncertainty leads causes current Churches to adopt a “don’t divide over this issue” stance.
Conclusion: doctrinal tiers vs doctrinal uncertainty
Both the concept of doctrinal tiers and doctrinal uncertainty are useful for understanding and categorizing the Bible’s teaching. They can, in fact, both be used together; one does not need to exclusively use one or the other. Christians must understand what Scripture teaches clearly about salvation and the Gospel while realizing certain texts are more difficult to interpret. Both doctrinal tiers and uncertainty are methods to get at this distinction.
However, while tiers are helpful, I think doctrinal uncertainty is in many cases a better concept to highlight. Doctrinal uncertainty captures not just the difference in relative importance of doctrine, but also the difference between how clearly Scripture presents a doctrine. Doctrinal uncertainty is inherently more focused on the text of Scripture itself. In this way, doctrinal uncertainty is an attractive alternative to doctrinal tiers when dealing with the question of why Christians disagree on some interpretations of Scripture and which interpretations are within orthodoxy.
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