A doctrine is a rule that is established by an authority, or a principle or idea that is asserted as true by the authority. In the case of Christianity, that authority is the Bible, which Christians historically have considered to be the inspired word of God. When a doctrine is accepted and credence is given to it by a person or an entity (e.g. an organization) it becomes a belief that is held by the person or entity*.
A doctrine is considered to be subscribed to by a person or entity when in addition to accepting and giving credence to the doctrine, they earnestly strive (i.e. not due to coercion) to conduct themselves in a manner that is in accordance with it. A doctrine can be accepted by a person or entity but not given credence, in which case if they strive to conduct themselves in a manner that is in accordance to it, they are considered as observing or practicing the doctrine, but not as subscribing to it. (Note: for the sake of brevity, on this site from this point on, the term "person" will is used, though the actual meaning will be "person or entity").
* Note: This is not saying that beliefs can only come from doctrines; for example a young person’s belief in Santa Claus, or someone’s belief that a particular person can be trusted to properly do a particular job.
A group of doctrines (and implicitly the corresponding beliefs) that form a unified, integrated system are known as a belief system. There are a number of belief systems in each of the various spheres, and Christianity itself is a spiritual belief system, that is, a belief system belonging to the spirituality sphere.
A belief system is made up of a group of doctrines, yet not all of its doctrines are of the same weight (i.e. importance in maintaining the unification and consistency of the belief system as a whole). While some doctrines of a belief system are not relatively important to its unification and constancy, other doctrines are in relative or absolute terms, of large importance. In particular, a belief system may have one or more doctrines which are critically important to it, in that they constitute the most basic building blocks of the belief system to the extent that without any number of those doctrines, the belief system's existence as a unified, integrated, and consistent system is not possible. Such critically important doctrines of a belief system are called its Foundational Doctrines. Doctrines which are of relatively large import for a belief system yet are not among its Foundational Doctrines are referred to as Secondary Doctrines. In addition to Foundational Doctrines and Secondary Doctrines, a belief system may also have Miscellaneous Doctrines.
A person may make a decision to conduct themselves based upon a belief system. When the person then subscribes to at least all of the belief system's Foundational Doctrines the person becomes and is referred to as an adopter of the belief system.
This site would like to stress the point that if a belief system's doctrine is subscribed to, it means that the subscriber is living, or at least earnestly striving to live, in a manner that is in accordance with it.
For the Christian belief system, this point that is made at various places in the Bible, where it states that a Christian needs to act in the private and public areas of their life in a manner that is accordance to their beliefs. It also plainly states that action based on beliefs is an inseparable part of being Christian (e.g. James 1:22).
Copyright (c) 2017 by Christianmetrics.org
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