Doctrinal Position
- Former user (Deleted)
A Doctrinal Position was published regularly on the masthead of The King's Business beginning in the first issue.
The Institute is interdenominational. Its chief text book is the Bible. The management holds to the Divine Origin, Inspiration, Integrity, and Supreme Authority of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. It is in accord with the historic teachings of the church and holds neither new theologies, fads nor vagaries.
By June of 1910, the Doctrinal Position was further elaborated in the form of fourteen bullet pointed items and a brief introduction:
We hold to the Historic Faith of the Church as expressed in the Common Creed of Evangelical Christendom and including:
The Trinity of the Godhead.
The Deity of the Christ.
The Personality of the Holy Spirit.
The Supernatural and Plenary authority of the Holy Scriptures.
The Fellowship of the Church.
The Substitutionary Atonement.
The Necessity of the New Birth.
The Maintainance of Good Works.
The Second Coming of Christ.
The Immortality of the Soul.
The Resurrection of the Body.
The Life everlasting of Believers.
The Endless Punishment of the Impenitent.
The Reality and Personality of Satan.
These fourteen points are set forth under the word “including,” suggesting that there are further points that could be specified. The high doctrine of scripture is prominent in the longest of the fourteen affirmations: “The Supernatural and Plenary authority of the Holy Scriptures.” Premillenial eschatology is not drawn out here. There is no urgency about saying everything; for instance, in reference to Christ it is his deity which is specified, rather than his humanity or his personality. But with regard to the Holy Spirit, it is his personality that is specified rather than his deity. God the Father is not specified at all. But the framers of this set of doctrines obviously believe all those things that are part of the “Historic Faith of the Church” and the “Common Creed of Evangelical Christendom.”
The commitment to “the Maintainance of Good Works” is interesting because it is not usually something specified in brief accounts of the core of the faith. Hell and Satan are also specified, as is the fellowship of the church. I do not know if each of these bullet points can be traced to controversies in the air at the time. It is worth remembering that the founders of Biola included the movers behind the publication of The Fundamentals, so they were people who knew how to draw a clear line and specify what things needed to be reaffirmed in the face of controversy. The Fundamentals themselves, a series of 12 short books published in these early years of the 20th century, did not limit themselves to a handful of doctrines, but ran for ninety chapters stating and defending numerous Christian claims. These fourteen points in the King’s Business masthead are clearly meant to be impressionistic, showing the kind of things the school was committed to without being definitive.