Biola's Doctrinal Statement is the official statement of beliefs to which the school is dedicated. It has not been changed since its first publication in 1912, but explanatory notes to the doctrinal statement have been added and updated occasionally. It was first published in the July 1912 issue of The King's Business, supplanting earlier doctrinal summaries such as the "Statement of Belief" in the 1908 Articles of Incorporation and the bullet-pointed Doctrinal Position which had been published on the masthead of The King's Business since January 1910.

It is worth noting that the old bullet-pointed Doctrinal Position was still published on the masthead of the July 1912 magazine, and it was probably not viewed as either a different version of the same statement, nor as being in potential disagreement with the new one. It seems to have been treated as different kind of statement of belief, impressionistic rather than definitive. The new 1912 statement, while not exhaustive, gives the impression of being more definitive and thorough.

Under the banner headline “Statement of Doctrine” and the words “Let my heart be sound in Thy Statutes” from Psalm 119:80, The King’s Business published these words:

"The Directors of the Institute have adopted a Statement of Doctrine which every officer and teacher will be required to sign once a year.
Money contributed to the Building fund will be held inviolate for the teaching of these truths.
Failure to insist upon the promulgation of these truths or the permission of teaching contrary to this statement of belief would constitute ground for suit for the reversal of the money contributed to the original donors or heirs."<ref> The King's Business Vol. 3.7, Jul 1912, P.167 http://www2.biola.edu/kingsbusiness/view/3/7/8</ref>

There follows the definitive doctrinal statement for Biola, identical with the statement still published on Biola's website and signed annually by all faculty.

The Text

I. The Bible, consisting of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, is the Word of God, a supernaturally given revelation from God Himself, concerning Himself, His being, nature, character, will and purposes; and concerning man, his nature, need and duty and destiny. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.

II. There is one God, eternally existing and manifesting Himself to us in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

III. Our Lord Jesus was supernaturally conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin Mary, a lineal descendant of David. He lived and taught and wrought mighty works and wonders and signs exactly as is recorded in the four Gospels. He was put to death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. God raised from the dead the body that had been nailed to the cross. The Lord Jesus after His crucifixion showed Himself to be alive to His disciples, appearing unto them by the space of 40 days. After this, the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven, and the Father caused Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the Church.

IV. The Lord Jesus, before His incarnation, existed in the form of God and of His own choice laid aside His divine glory and took upon Himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. In His pre-existent state, He was with God and was God. He is a divine person possessed of all the attributes of Deity, and should be worshiped as God by angels and man. "In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." All the words that He spoke during His earthly life were the words of God. There is absolutely no error of any kind in them, and by the words of Jesus Christ the words of all other teachers must be tested.

V. The Lord Jesus became in every respect a real man, possessed of all the essential characteristics of human nature.

VI. By His death on the cross, the Lord Jesus made a perfect atonement for sin, by which the wrath of God against sinners is appeased and a ground furnished upon which God can deal in mercy with sinners. He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse in our place. He who Himself was absolutely without sin was made to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. The Lord Jesus is coming again to his earth, personally, bodily, and visibly. The return of our Lord is the blessed hope of the believer, and in it God's purposes of grace toward mankind will find their consummation.

VII. The Holy Spirit is a person, and is possessed of all the distinctively divine attributes. He is God.

VIII. Man was created in the image of God, after His likeness, but the whole human race fell in the fall of the first Adam. All men, until they accept the Lord Jesus as their personal Savior, are lost, darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, hardened in heart, morally and spiritually dead through their trespasses and sins. They cannot see, nor enter the Kingdom of God until they are born again of the Holy Spirit.

IX. Men are justified on the simple and single ground of the shed blood of Christ and upon the simple and single condition of faith in Him who shed the blood, and are born again by the quickening, renewing, cleansing work of the Holy Spirit, through the instrumentality of the Word of God.

X. All those who receive Jesus Christ as their Savior and their Lord, and who confess Him as such before their fellow men, become children of God and receive eternal life. They become heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. At death their spirits depart to be with Christ in conscious blessedness, and at the Second Coming of Christ their bodies shall be raised and transformed into the likeness of the body of His glory.

XI. All those who persistently reject Jesus Christ in the present life shall be raised from the dead and throughout eternity exist in the state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment of anguish.

XII. The Church consists of all those who, in this present dispensation, truly believe in Jesus Christ. It is the body and bride of Christ, which Christ loves and for which He has given Himself.

XIII. There is a personal devil, a being of great cunning and power: "The prince of the power of the air," "The prince of this world," "The god of this age." He can exert vast power only so far as God suffers him to do so. He shall ultimately be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone and shall be tormented day and night forever. <red> The King's Business Vol. 3.7, Jul 1912, Pp.167-8 http://www2.biola.edu/kingsbusiness/view/3/7/8</ref>

Historical Background

Authorship

It is likely that R. A. Torrey single-handedly wrote the classic 1912 doctrinal statement, but it has not been proven this and more documentation is necessary to establish the origin of the statement. Some relevant sources to be investigated include the minutes from board meetings in 1912, which still reside in the office of the president, and Lyman Stewart’s personal correspondence, which is housed in the Biola library archives. Based on extensive reading of all of R. A. Torrey’s published works, it is possible to discern his tone of voice through the wording and content of the doctrinal statement. It might also be possible to link specific phrases from the doctrinal statement to the same phrases in Torrey’s earlier doctrinal writings, like his influential textbook used at Moody and Biola in this period, What the Bible Teaches. Most of the doctrinal statement succeeds in its goal of simply establishing the historic faith of the church expressed in traditional terms as the common creed of evangelical Christendom. Indeed, much of the doctrinal statement is directly scriptural language, and thus hard to trace stylistically to any other source. However, the doctrinal statement also has a recognizable literary tone, forged by King James English and Victorian platform oratory in the grand tradition, that comes through in certain telling phrases:

Man: “man, his nature, need and duty and destiny”

Jesus: “lived and taught and wrought mighty works and wonders and signs”
“exactly as is recorded in the four Gospels.”

The resurrection: “appearing unto them by the space of 40 days”

Atonement: “a ground furnished upon which God can deal in mercy with sinners”

The return of Christ: “God's purposes of grace toward mankind will find their consummation”

Sin: “the whole human race fell in the fall of the first Adam”

Heaven: “their spirits depart to be with Christ in conscious blessedness”

Hell: “conscious, unutterable, endless torment of anguish”

The church: “It is the body and bride of Christ”

The devil: “a being of great cunning and power”

The voice here is R. A. Torrey’s, the voice that traveled around the world in the first years of the twentieth century and ministered revival on a massive scale. Again, sole authorship by Torrey is a conjecture, not a documented fact.

Influences and Motivations

There is one aspect of the text that sounds more like Stewart than Torrey. It is, however, not in the doctrinal statement proper but in the introductory sentences: “Money contributed to the Building fund will be held inviolate for the teaching of these truths.” These words encapsulate a strategy for giving Biola financial incentive to stay committed to its doctrinal foundation. Stewart had spent many years as a Christian philanthropist who tried to give generously and strategically to a number of churches, ministries, and causes. He was repeatedly frustrated by the way his financial gifts could be misappropriated to build up institutions which wanted to tear down the doctrines he was committed to. Money that he tried to spend on renewing and reviving the denominations would end up furthering the spread of modernist teaching in religious colleges and seminaries. This loss of control over his own philanthropic giving is what led Stewart to focus his generosity on Biola, where he could have more direct control over how his money was used. Having been burned repeatedly in other giving projects, Stewart was especially prone to establishing clear guidelines and even penalties. In this case, the Building fund was tethered to the doctrinal statement and held “inviolate for the teaching of these truths.” Further, “Failure to insist upon the promulgation of these truths or the permission of teaching contrary to this statement of belief would constitute ground for suit for the reversal of the money contributed to the original donors or heirs.” In short, if Biola deviated from the doctrine set forth in the statement, it could lose its buildings, and this phraseology sounds very much like Stewart's influence at work. In fact, at the May 31, 1913 ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone at the Biola property itself, Stewart declared to the gathered crowd: “Should the Institute ever depart from these truths, or allow any teaching within these buildings contrary to them, then this property is to revert to the donors or to their heirs.”

The statement appeared in the July 1912 issue of the King’s Business, and R. A. Torrey’s strong editorial hand left some other interesting marks on the issue. For instance, one of the guest editorials re-published in that issue is entitled “Cold in Politics, Hot in Theology,” a spirited defense of creeds and controversy by a Frances L. Patton, a former president of Princeton University. Patton says, “I do not see how we can help having polemic theology. I do not understand it to involve a bitter spirit at all.” He goes on, “Don’t you see that creeds will multiply when the basis of the argument is not the creed which will include the largest number of Christians, but on the contrary the creed that will embrace the greatest number of doctrines and express them in the best and most scriptural manner. The more ideas you put in a creed the fewer people will accept it; reduce the number of ideas –the fewer things to talk about—the more people will agree with you, the bigger the church.” Torrey prints this editorial and adds the footnote: “Dr. Patton was lately President of Princeton University, and is now of Princeton Theological Seminary; one of the greatest thinkers and humblest believers of our time. We are glad to quote him with this number in which we print our Statement of Doctrine.” <ref> The King's Business Vol 3.7, Jul 1912, P. 164 [</ref>(emphasis original) His editorial point is apparently that it is not a sign of small-mindedness or sectarianism to elaborate a more extensive doctrinal position; urbane and sophisticated Princetonians agree that it is a reasonable thing to do. The opposite extreme would be to have a creed with no ideas in it, so that everybody could agree to it. But maximizing the size of a coalition is not always the relevant or appropriate goal for doctrinal statements.

Theological Issues

The 1912 doctrinal statement does not specify a premillenial eschatology, saying only that Christ will return to earth “personally, bodily, and visibly.” The omission of any premillenial specification is surprising for several reasons. All the key players at this time were known premillenialists; in Torrey’s case, he had published at length in defense of the position. The King’s Business had been decidedly premillenial for two years, and the 1908 articles of incorporation-so minimal by comparison to the 1912 statement-were already premillenial. There were certainly important reasons why the circle of doctrines was not drawn to include that commitment in 1912, but these reasons are difficult to ascertain without a much deeper understanding of the complex theological commitments of the period. One hypothesis goes as follows: In 1914, Torrey took over the final editing of The Fundamentals, financed by Milton and Lyman Stewart. The goal of The Fundamentals was to draw in as wide a coalition of conservative Christians as possible for a broad anti-modernist co-belligerency, so the ninety chapters omitted discussion of denominationally divisive issues like baptism and detailed eschatology. Perhaps the hope of preserving the widest possible coalition influenced the decision to avoid specifying the premillenial position held by the founders.

Stewart, T.C.Horton], and the other directors brought Torrey to Biola and gave him ultimate doctrinal authority for many reasons, but one of them was to establish peace and stability in the face of two simmering controversies. One was minor, and may have been a misunderstanding; the other was significant and required Torrey to draw and enforce a sharp doctrinal boundary over a real theological difference.

The first is reported in Kermit Staggers’s dissertation, R. A. Torrey, American Fundamentalist, chapter vii, pp. 199-200.

During his meeting with Horton, Torrey agreed to accept the deanship if a number of conditions were fulfilled. Of prime importance for Torrey was control over the course offerings and the choosing of orthodox faculty members. Control over faculty selection took on added significance at the time because of an ongoing controversy at the school concerning an unorthodox statement by a faculty member, the Reverend J. H. Samis. (sic, one m) Before the congregation of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church where Lyman Stewart had his membership, Samis had declared that Jonah had not been in the whale for three days and that Christ had not been in the tomb for three days. <ref>Lyman Stewart to Thomas Horton, July 1, 1911, Stewart Letters, Bible Institute of Los Angeles, La Mirada, California.</ref> This statement, however trivial it might seem to modern ears, came as a thunderclap to the congregation, and the situation was still unresolved when Horton met with Torrey.

Staggers goes on: “By the time Torrey had begun his duties at the Institute, the Samis controversy of a few months earlier had been resolved. Samis was allowed to stay on at the school after he and all the other faculty members had signed a statement of belief affirming the traditional Christian doctrines. With doctrinal peace reigning at the school, the new dean could focus his energies on bringing BIOLA’s curriculum into harmony with the course of instruction at the Moody Bible Institute.”<ref>Staggers, Kermit L. 1986. R.A. Torrey, American Fundamentalist, 204. Claremont Graduate School.</ref>

The second, more substantive controversy was over hyper-dispensationalism. This is a form of dispensationalism that views Acts 28:28 as the watershed between Old and New covenants, with only Paul’s letters from the second captivity being letters written for the true church age. Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and the Pastorals are the only parts of scripture that apply to the heavenly people of God, the church. There are many consequences to this view: it requires most of the New Testament to be interpreted as referring not to the church, but to an ethnically-identified people of God, as in the Old Testament. Israel, described in the Old Testament as Yahweh’s spouse, is described in the NT as the bride of Christ, and is not mentioned until the book of revelation. In the meantime, the body of Christ is being established.

Horton to Robert A. Hadden: "The Board has adopted the enclosed statement of Doctrines, which I trust will bring to us unity of teaching throughout the Institute. The President and Officers and Workers are all to sign it and I trust we will move on harmoniously. I found great division among the students, some holding one line concerning the Body and Bride and some another. I feel that the Jewish aspect of the NT has been projected way beyond its true interpretation and that in justice to ourselves and the place we take with the churches we could not honestly permit such teaching without doing violence to our evangelical position.”<ref> reference? </ref> In essence, Horton is saying that Torrey had authority over the official doctrines of the Institute, and Hadden is being asked to affirm the statement or leave.

Torrey had come to BIOLA to establish “doctrinal peace.” In the end, the churches were reassured that Samis was okay, and Hadden was forced out.

References