The New testament use of Teaching
teaching itself because false didaché produces false worship and false living. The battle for the church is always, at its root, a battle for doctrine.
The New testament use of Teaching The New Testament's use of didaché yields several Biblical importances that are non-negotiable for a biblical ecclesiology.
1. Revelation Requires Propositional Content God has chosen to reveal Himself through words. The didaché of Christ and the apostles is the recorded form of that self-disclosure. While God certainly reveals Himself in creation and in personal encounter, the normative, saving, authoritative revelation is verbal and propositional. It can be written, taught, learned, and defended. To minimize doctrine is to minimize the means God has ordained to make Himself known. Christianity is irreducibly a taught religion because God is a speaking God.
2. Authority Resides in the Doctrine, Not the Teacher John 7:16 establishes that Jesus' authority derived from the source of His doctrine — the Father. Likewise, the apostles' authority derived not from their personal charisma but from their commission to deliver Christ's didaché . This is why Paul could command Timothy to entrust the teaching to faithful men who would be able to teach others also. The authority is in the message. The modern cult of personality that places a teacher's influence above his fidelity to the didaché is a reversal of the biblical order.
The question is never, "Is he dynamic?" but always, "Is his didaché the apostles' didaché ?"
3. Doctrine and Life Are Inseparable Romans 6:17 links obedience "from the heart" to a "form of doctrine." In the New Testament, orthodoxy and orthopraxy are twins. Right living flows from right learning. The heresies condemned in Revelation 2 were