Essentials of Doctrine 1 (2010 Handbook of Doctrine)

One of the real benefits of the 2010 Handbook of Doctrine is that it includes a section in which the 'Essentials' of the doctrine are summarized. This is of great benefit to our formation of Salvationism because it represents the most critical starting points of understanding why this particular doctrine is important. 


I think that in any Junior or Senior Soldier's training course, it could be critical to teach, translate, apply and evaluate.


In this post, I've removed the Scripture references and am going to add them in an addendum to this post. This will allow me to expand and add the actual passages.
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1. Revelation through the Bible
God is revealed through creation and human history. The Bible is a record of how God works to bring about salvation through the events of history. We read of God making his claims, keeping his promises, pursuing us, saving us through his grace, to bring about the achievement of his purposes for humanity, including a final redemption when God establishes a new Heaven and a new earth.


2. Relationship in the Bible
The Bible demonstrates God's desire for a relationship with humanity. This is expressed in the Old Testament in the establishment, maintenance and fulfillment of covenants and in the New Testament through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God is active in the lives of individuals, inviting them into relationship with him. God is ever-present and inescapable, as well as one who speaks clearly at decisive or critical times in our lives, whether directly or through other people.


3. The inspiration of the Bible
The inspiration of the Bible provides a foundation for our understanding of the reliability of the divine revelation in Scripture. It is uniquely inspired in a way that is different from other writings or works of art. However, this does not mean that the Bible is infallible or inerrant, so that it is incapable of misleading and contains no human error. Whereas we believe that the overall message of the Bible is inspired and reliable, each individual passage must be read and interpreted carefully, in context and with careful reference to the whole of biblical truth.


4. The authority of the Bible
Our first doctrine establishes the Bible as definitive for Christian faith and practice. The inspiration of the Scripture requires that is authority supercedes all other sources of revelatin as the primary source of Christian revelation. Its unique authority reveals the thoughts and actions of God.


The authority of the Bible tests all other authorities. It is therefore described as a "sufficient authority". Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria wrote that "the sacred and inspired Scriptures are sufficient to declare the truth" (Athanasius, Against the Heathen).

Belief in the primary authority of Scripture indicates the affinity of The Salvation Army with Protestant Evangelicalism. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians appeal to Scripture and Church tradition for their authority. Other Christians, for example the Quakers, place primary value of personal experience.

The authority of the Bible is validated by the experience of believers of amny races and cultures and generations who have proved the truth of its salvation and of its teaching in their lives.

5. Confirmation of the biblical witness
The Holy Spirit inspires and teaches readers of every generation, so that the words of the text become the words of God for their life and situation. In order for this to happen, the believer must be open to the Spirit's interpretation of the biblical word, which will bring vitality and relevance to the text.


There are three ways in which the biblical witness is confirmed:

• Internal verification in which one passage confirms and enlightens the another
• Experiential verification as individuals find the truth about themselves in Scripture, encounter God and are transformed
• Social verification which recognizes the positive and decisive guiding role played by Scripture in the course of human events and in the lives of countless communities.

The Old Testament shows the character of God, the action of God in history and human responses to Him. However, it is an incomplete revelation: a preparation. Jesus, the gift of God, completes God's saving work which is prefigured in the Old Testament. This means that we understand Old Testament passages, for example Isaiah 53, as pointing to Christ, who gives them full meaning. Jesus explained his own mission in the light of the Old Testament.

The Salvation Army. 'Word of the Living God: Essentials of the Doctrine." Handbook of Doctrine. London: Salvation Books, 2010.

The Bible - 1890 Doctrines and Disciplines of The Salvation Army

1. What is the meaning of the word Bible?
It means The Book - that is, the Book of books; others are only books, but this is 'The Book.'

2. Explain what you mean when you say that the Bible is the Word of God
We mean that God has caused His mind on the subject of our deliverance, duty and destiny to be written and preserved in this volume, so that this book really contains the statement of His judgment and wil concerning humanity, and is, therefore, the Word of God, or the revelation of His mind on the subject.

3. How does the Bible reveal the mind of God?

• It contains a large number of messages sent directly by God to people, in bygone times, through the medium of the prophets and apostles, and indirectly, from them to us and all whom they may concern.
  
• The histories, biographies and facts of the Bible revealed exactly how God feels to people in similar circumstances, and are, therefore, a revelation of the mind of God.
  
• This is especially true of the life, death and teaching of Jesus Christ.
  
• The Bible is full of God's thoughts about all the possible conditions of people in time and eternity.
  
• It was written directly under the direction or inte inspiration of God's Spirit.
  "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but by holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." - 2 Peter 1:21

4. In what way did this direction or inspiration enable these men to write the Bible?
The Holy Spirit not only preserved these holy men from mistakes, and enabled them to write the exact truth concerning the facts they record, but also enabled them to communicate the mind and will of God to us.


5. What evidences have you to show that the Bible is Divine, beyond the claim to inspiration of the writers themselves?
The character of the book proves this:

• The prophecies it contains of events which came to pass hundreds of years after they were written.
• The miracles it records, performed by the writers and by others in conjunction with them.
• The high morality taught all through it.
• The claim made in it of its own inspiration.
• The revelation it makes of the future.
• The style of the book, so different to that of any other.
• The influence of the teaching of the book on all individuals and nations who have in any form accepted it.
• The book must have been written either by bad or by good men:
  - Bad men could not have written such a good book which so condemned them, here and hereafter, if they could.
  - Good men would not have written a book which they knew to be false, claiming all the time to be inspired by God.
  - Therefore it must have been written by good men, who were themselves the personal witnesses, in nearly all cases, of the wonderful miracles they record, any one of which is a sufficient and unanswerable argument for the divine origin of the whole.

6. Is the knowledge and belief of the words of the Bible taken alone sufficient for a man's salvation?
No! the Bible is but a means to an end. It is simply God's message to men, telling them that if they seek, trust and obey Him they shall be saved, sanctified and glorified.

7. How am I - a Salvation Army soldier - to make the best use of my Bible?

• Read it on your knees
• Read it a little at a time.
• Read it in faith, believing every word you read.
• Depend on the Holy Spirit to reveal the real meaning to your soul.
• Commit the most practical portions to memory.
• Explain what you read to the people in words, and with illustrations they can understand. 

8. Do not some people set a false value on the Bible?
Yes, some undervalue it, and, in consequence, neglect to read and be governed by its teaching; while others overestimate it by regarding it as the only way in which God speaks to people.

9. Does God communicate His will to people in any other way than through the written Word?
 Yes, He speaks directly to the heart by His Spirit, and by His Spirit also through one person to another.

10. How could you show this? 
In two ways:

• It has been His custom from the beginning to raise up prophets, who shall directly convey His wishes to people.
• The Savior promised that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, should be given to His people to lead them into all truth.
  'And I will pray to the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever.' - John 14:16

11. Does this promise apply to us, and may we expect its fulfillment?
Certainly we may. The notion that the fulfillment of this promise was confined to apostolic times is one of the greatest mistakes ever made. It is therefore wrong and misleading to argue that we have no other way of ascertaining the mind of the Spirit concerning our own salvation, or our duty to our fellows, except through the written word. It is one great cause of so much tame experience in the knowledge of God, and so much lame effort to extend the kingdom of God. The living, active, positive agency of God is comparatively shut out of the world, and a dead book placed in its stead.

12. What authority has the Bible with the Army?
While we hold that God does, by His Spirit, speak as directly to His people in this age as in any other, still the Army does solemnly and most emphatically regard the Bible as the divinely authorized standard by which all other professed revelations are to be tried, and, if any professed revelations do not square to that standard,  such revelations are to be rejected as having no truth in them. Whatever is contrary to the teaching of this book must be considered false and thrown overboard.

'To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no ligt in them.' - Isaiah 8:20

"The Doctrines and Disciplines of The Salvation Army" The Salvation Army, 1890. Ref: John Waldron. The Salvationist and the Scriptures. NY: The Salvation Army, 1988.

The Revised Bible - General William Booth

During the first week of May 1885, a new translation of the Bible was issued. Upon this work a goodly number of the foremost scholars and divines of the age were engaged for more than 15 years.

The value of the result of their labors has been pronounced to be considerable. It may be so. I have hardly had time to look into the Book, but from what little I have seen of it I have gathered the notion that its chief service to the cause of religion will be that of a book of reference. I do not think it at all likely that the revised volume will supplant our old friend the King James Version, and that for two reasons:

1. First, there is no substantial difference of doctrine or fact between the two. This was what was to be expected. If there had been, it would have been a sad proof that for all these hundreds of years the people of God who have lived and died in the faith of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments had been seriously in error. This would have made Christianity a laughing-stock before the infidel and heathen nations of the earth.

2. And secondly, while no difference in the substance of the volume could be expected, it is well known that those who have produced this new revision boast that one of its principal advantages consists in its being expressed in the same particular style and form of language as the present Bible.

In substance and form, therefore, the Book is much the same, and perhaps it is best that it should be so; although it is probably that had the arrangement of the revision been left with me, I might, nay, I think I should have said, 'While the substance is the same, we will express it as nearly as we can, not in the stiff and ancient language used three hundred years ago, but in that form of speech employed by the people of the present day.'

The value of the Bible as a book lies not in the words employed, but in the ideas conveyed by such words. and those words must therefore be the most desirable which most nearly convey the meaning of the inspired writers to those to whom they may be now addressed. For this reason, my comrades, I should very much like to see a Bible rendered into the English language as now spoken by English-speaking people throughout the world.

However, if the revision throws any new light upon the precious volume - the Book of books - I shall accept it gratefully. Meanwhile, I am most interested just now in a further translation, for which either volume will serve. I want to see a new translation of the Bible into the hearts and conduct of living men and women. I want an improved translation - or transference it might be called - of the commandments and promises and teachings and influences of this Book to the minds and feelings and words and activities of the men and women who hold onto it and swear by it and declare it to be an inspired Book and the only authorized rule of life.

That seems to me to be the only translation, after all, that will in the long run prove to be of any value. It is the reproduction of the Scriptures in men and women that makes their worth. The Bible is a book intended to make Bible-people - that is, good people. If the end is not gained, where is the value of the means? What will be the value of the Bible in the day of judgment apart from the transformations of character it has produced? It is of no use making correct translations of words if we cannot get the words translated into life.

Now I have a great deal of fault to find with the present living translation in the men and women who represent the Bible in their daily walk to the world. There are, beyond controversy, several most erroneous readings, some most serious imperfections - a large number of glaring errors. In many cases the living translation is not only unlike the original book, but in direct contradiction to it.

This leads to most serious consequences. One of the great arguments for all the trouble and labor of the new translation has been that an odd passage here and there has been incorrectly given, and that this has led to some heretical opinions. But oh, my God! what heresies, what infidelities, what dreadful ruination of souls - wholesale and retail - have arisen from the false representations of Bible truth made in the lives of so-called Christians!

In the living translation every man who bears the name of Christ says thereby, 'My life is a representation of Christianity.' If a Muslim or a Buddhist came to live in your house, or to be your next-door neighbors, and you had not read their sacred books or listened to the descriptions of their religion as given by their advocates, you would reckon from what you saw of those men that you knew what their religion was. You would say, 'I know what Islam is, and I know what Buddhism is. I have not read it in their books, but I have been privileged to see it lived out before my eyes.'

As you might very reasonably do with this heathen religion, so men do every day with regard to Christianity. And because these translations have been falsehoods and hypocrisies and shams, and altogether different from originals, all manner of false and pernicious and damnable errors have crept abroad among men as to what real religion is. The translation and revision have made it appear a thing altogether unlike the original, and all manner of explanations and apologetics are necessary to explain the glaring contradictions.

Supposing we have not a Bible correct in the letter, printed in a book, the reproductions of the mind of God so far as He has declared it to some of His people in days gone by; let us now have some equally correct reproductions of the minds of Christ - some actual flesh-and-blood translations - some living epistles inspired and empowered by the Holy Ghost, that can be read and known of all humanity.

I mean, let us Salvationists live out before people lives on which God has written out in big heavenly words His own notions of truth and righteousness and purity and patience and love and sacrifice. Christians for generations now have been spending an enormous amount of strength upon the Bible. They have done well in that duty; but it seems to me that with regard to the sacred Book something very important still remains to be done. Christian scholars have translated it and re-translated it, and then translated it again. They have commented and printed and published it in every form, and it is hurrying on to encompass the world with its revelations in every tongue. They have explained and preached about almost every word within its covers. There seems to be only one thing left to be done with it, and that is to give us a literal and faithful and understandable translation of it in practice. Let us live it; live the real things - live the Christ-life.


Such a translation, my comrades, will tell. It will be victorious. It will be triumphant.


This is possible. It does not require learned divines and scholarly men to accomplish it. Wayfaring men, though fools, can make this translation, and 15 years' perseverance in it will, I have not the shadow of doubt, go a long way toward bringing in the millennium.

William Booth. 'The Revised Bible' The War Cry, May 10, 1885.

The Bible - General William Booth

My dear Comrades,

I desire to offer you some council about the Bible. You will all know that the Bible is a very imortant Book, and I have no doubt you set great store by it; indeed, I am pleased to learn that, of late, more thought is being given to its pages than ever throughout the Army. But still, I am afraid that the precious Book does not receive the attention that it demands.

Why the Bible is of Great Value

Let me try to say a word or two that will be likely to better impress upon you its great value.

The Bible is a very wonderful Book. Its very name signifies this, for the word Bible simply means The Book, so that when we say the Bible, we mean that it is The Book, the Book which, above every other, people should know, treasure, and obey. If to a wise person, the choice were offered of the Bible on one hand, or all the books in the world, on the other, they would choose the Bible.

It is so valuable because:

1. In the first place, God is the author. He caused it to be written under His special direction. The Holy Ghost put the thoughts which it records into the hearts of holy men. They wrote them down; that is the reason we speak of it as the Word of God.

2. The Bible is an important Book, because it tells us of God. We might have expected that our Heavenly Father would not leave us in ignorance about Himself. If there is a God whom we ought to serve, we might be quite sure that He would want to tell us of His power and love, and to declare what His feelings are towards us. And that is just what He has done in the Bible. It is a precious Book because it is the revelation of God.

3. The Bible is a valuable Book, because from it we learn all that we need to know about the birth and life, the suffering and death, the resurrection and ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Except for one of two passing remarks in one other very ancient book, we should all be ignorance of the career of our Lord but for the Bible. Then we have the wonderful story of His earthly journeyings, His marvelous miracles, His wonderful addresses, His glorious death and resurrection, and oh, what a fascinating story it is!

4. The Bible tell us all we know with certainty about the future state. We should be in utter ignorance of what happens after death if it were not for the Bible. It is the Bible that tell us of the resurrection of the dead, the great White Throne, the Heaven of delight, and the Hell of misery. But for the Bible we should be in complete darkness concerning these important things.

5. It is the Bible that tells us of the merits of the precious Blood of our dear Savior, the possibilities of the forgiveness of sins, the purification of our hearts, the protection of God, and the triumph of the dying hour. Of these blessed possibilities humanity world know nothing without the Bible.

6. The Bible has a mighty influence for good on the world in the years that are past. It has won the hearts and enlightened the lives of millions. It has rescued multitudes from the horrible pit, led their feet to the Rock of Ages, filled their mouths with singing, kept them from falling into Hell, and guided them safely to the golden gates of the Celestial City.

7. The Bible has been more bitterly attacked and mroe cruelly slandered than any other book in existence. Again and again people have exerted every powet to effect its destruction. But it has survived all opposition, and today is more widely circulated, and is probably more generally read, than ever before. Not all the powers of earth and hell combined have been able to destroy the blessed Bible.

8. Bad men hate the Bible, denounce it, call it hard names, question its truths, and wish it were out of existence. Good people love it, read it, make it the guide of their lives, spread it abroad, and thank God for its precious pages.

9. The truths written down and explained in the Bible have done wonders for Salvationists. What would you have been without them? But for the free salvation set forth in the Bible, many of you would have been in the grave, and your souls cast into outer darkness, while others would have been on their way there. Oh, the precious Book! What a priceless blessing it has been to The Salvation Army!
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What Ought You Do for the Bible?

 
Now, my comrades, I want to ask the question, What ought you do for the Bible? Ought you to neglect it - pass it over for the newspaper, the story book, or other rubbish? By no means. That is how the godless world around you deals with the precious treasure. What, then, ought you to do? I will tell you:

1. The very least you can do with the Bible is to read it. If I, your General, sent you a letter, you could not do less than read it over, try to understand it, and strive to do what I requested in it. The Bible is a letter from your Heavenly Father; you cannot do less with His letter than you would do with one from the General.

2. Read it alone.

• Read a few verses at a time
• Read them on your knees
• Read them as you walk the streets
• Read them while you take your midday meal
• Read them when you rise in the morning
• Read them when you retire at night
• Read them in your spare moments

3. Read it to your families. Impress its precious truths on your children, if you are parents. Explain them to the ignorant - make them understand.

4. See to it that you experience in your own hearts the blessings the Bible offers you. Remember, it will be little better than a curse to you if you only know the Word, and do not possess and live in the spirit of it. If you only believe it with your head, and do not enjoy the things that it describes, and accept the mercy, wash in the fountain, receive the Holy Ghost, and live and die in the light and joy of its good tidings, it will only add to your condemnation and guilt.

5. Fulfill the duties it commands. It is the doers of the Word who are blessed. Make it the guide of your life: at home, abroad, in your corps, in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, everywhere and all the time.

6. Publish the salvation of the Bible wherever you go - in the street - in the barracks - in your home - at your work - everywhere tell the glad tidings.

Oh, my comrades, do not let the Bible rise up in judgment against you, as it surely will if you either neglect it, or if, reading and knowing about the salvation and victory of which it tells, you do not enjoy the salvation and experience that victory.

William Booth. 'The Bible.' Religion for Every Day. London: Salvationist Publishing and Supplies, 1922.

How to Use the Bible - General William Booth

The Bible is one of God's greatest gifts to man. It contains not only the announcement of the sacrifice of His dear Son, but a revelation of His will concerning the manner of life He wants men to live. The Bible has already worked saving wonders of great magnitude, and is closely associated with almost every important advance for the betterment of mankind which the human race has experienced. The extent of the world's indebtedness to that sacred Book for the privilege it enjoys will never be known, neither in this life nor the next. What marvelous works of healing alike to body, mind and soul we Salvationists have witnessed through its wonderful words! Still, we expect to see the Holy Spirit accomplish far greater miracles by means of the blessed book.

To effect these wonders can we not do something more than we are doing to secure for the Bible a wider circulation?

There ought not to be a house in the wide, wide world without a Bible; not a man, woman or child ignorant of its promises, or uninstructed in the values of its counsels and commands. 

If I entertained the notions of some millionaires with respect to the Bible, and had the money at my disposal, I would place a copy of the Scriptures in every home in the world, with explanations that would bring its important truths within the comprehension of every occupant.

We want the Bible to be more carefully read.

I know that, with many, the Sacred Book is regularly read in a formal manner; but I want to see it more carefully and thoughtfully studied, and I want to make sure that all who read it understand its true meaning.

I am afraid that many of those Christians who profess to rest their every hope for earth and Heaven upon the Bible, and who make the loudest boast of its importantce, only very imperfectly act out the practical principles it contains, and that only when such obedience is agreeable to their feelings.

We want the Bible not only to be read and committed to memory, and repeated at all manner of times, and in all kinds of places, but to be really understood.

For example, what strange mistakes are made with respect to its teaching. Only think of the error so commonly made in imagining that the favor of God can be enjoyed without obedience to His commands.

There are plenty of arguments designed to lessen the importance of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, or to explain away its merit altogether, although the spirit of that sacrifice and the blessing it brings are the glory of the Bible. There is plenty of interpretation of the Bible which vainly attempts to explain away the punishment of the wicked, so clearly announced in its pages. Take away those things, and the Bible becomes not only ordinary, but an uninteresting book, to be neither feared nor cared for.

We want the Bible to be studied with a view to practical godliness.

You must read the Book, my comrades, in order to learn how better to obey its commands and realize the blessings it offers. It is only in this way that you can discover the height and length, and depth, and breadth of the religion of purity and peace, and divine communion, which are described and revealed in its pages.

I want my people to read the Bible with an eye on their obligation to follow Jesus Christ in that life of self-denying service He led to seek and save the souls of men. I want such a Bible-reading as will make Salvationists who shall be truly Christ men and Christ women; that is to say, imitators of their Lord.

I want all who read the Bible to realize that the deliverance of men from the guilt, the power, and the indwelling of sin, and their being brought back to God, are the great objects for which the book was written. That deliverance is the great purpose of the Word today.

Our Charter of Salvation

It is for us, then, as Salvationists, to give more heed to our "Charter of Salvation." We must see to it:

1. That not a single home with which we have to do is without a copy of God's Word.
2. That we read the Book of books more regularly, and urge others to do the same.
3. That we study the spirit as well as the words of the Holy Book, and that with a view to our realization of the blessings it offers, and the discharge of the duties it enjoys.

William Booth. "How to Use the Bible" in John Waldron (Ed.) The Salvationist and the Scriptures. NY: The Salvation Army, 1988.

What the Bible Shows - General William Booth

General William Booth
Founder of The Salvation Army

The Bible has been carefully preserved by Jews and Christians; some men have thought its preservation as great a miracle as its inspiration.

What is claimed for the Bible? Not that every word is inspired. Some words have crept into the text which manifetly do not belong to it. Not that it is without mystery. None of the books on which God has evidently written is without mystery. Not that every passage is easily understood. It requires careful study, like all other great books. Not that exactly in its present form it is entirely free from errors. The lives of many people are made a constant agony because someone or other keeps announcing the discovery of some supposed error. These discoveries of mistakes are in turn constantly being proven mistaken.

That there should be some mistakes in the Bible was to be expected. Remember that the Bible consists of a collection of books written in different languages by many pens, and at different stages of the world's history. This has necessitated constant copying. Try to copy a book and see whether, on close examination, you have done so without some mistake.

There have been many mishaps in preservation 'unto this day.' The Bible, having been originally written in several languages and being constantly translated into difference languages, there have undoubtedly been mistakes made in translation. In modern times there have been different editions by different printers, hence printers' errors. In some cases, the observations of commentators have crept into th text. People endeavor to explain the Bible today, as they always have done so! And often the comment, I am afraid, has come to be regarded as the text.

But too much can be made of such mistakes, or omissions, or of the insertion of a matter foreign to the original. Mistakes in names and words do not destroy the sense of the main teaching. Misquotations do not interfere with the meaning. Treating parables as facts, and facts as parables, and the like, does not alter the general trend of the meaning of what is written. Is the story of the prodigal son a mind picture or an actual incident? The value of its teaching is not affected either way. Seeming contradictions in the Bible may be explained away by better knowledge, by customs of the age in which the book was written, or by some incidents that occured at the time of which, at present, we have no knowledge.

The Salvation Army claims for the Bible that it contains a revelation of the feelings of God toward us and of His wishes as to our conduct and our fellow men. It gives us everything in the way of a written revelation that is necessary to salvation, holy living and our welfare.

William Booth. "What the Bible Shows" in John Waldron (Ed.) The Salvationist and the Scriptures. NY: The Salvation Army, 1988.