functions of doctrine is “to help protect correct reference by disciplining our manifold propensity toward idolatry. Idolatry is a matter of getting the reference wrong: of taking that to be God which is not God.”73 Yet doctrine involves more than referring to God. Indeed, doctrinal truth has less to do with theorems or axioms than with theological judgments—with decisions about what we should say and do here and now in order to correspond to God’s word.74 Doctrine helps the people of God to participate
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