Book Review: “When Doctrine Divides the People of God”

Book Title: When Doctrine Divides the People of God: An Evangelical Approach to Theological Diversity

If you were to look at the “High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus found in John 17, one thing that you would see the LORD praying for His followers is that they would be unified. Unity does not mean uniformity in all situations and nuances, but we who name the name of Jesus should definitely have more things that unite us than separate us.

There are always going to be areas in which we may disagree. I do not know that I have met another person that looks at every single point of the Christian faith in the same exact way and degree that I do. But I know that there are many that are in my “faith family.”

What are we to do about the differences that are seen within the Christian faith? Do we seek to find a common ground, or do we just write off those who do not line up with us in our narrow views? These are some of the questions that are addressed in Rhyne Putman’s new book, When Doctrine Divides the People of God.

I thought that the title was an interesting choice at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the title. The very things that are to set us apart from those outside of the faith have many times also seemed to create pockets on the “inside” of the faith.

Overview

This book is broken up into two main sections. The first section deals with reasons that we come to have these differences of opinions about various doctrines. While Putman does not focus so much on the particulars of the doctrines themselves, this section is helpful to the reader to see where each person may be coming from.

The second section of the book deals with what we should do in light of seeing these differences of opinions. Putman seeks to address topics such as When should we change our minds, or When should doctrines divide us? This section is good to help us see that just because a person may come to a different stance does not always mean that they are wrong and not part of the family of God.

Particulars

One thing that stood out to me in this book was that this book was written more as a textbook or a doctoral thesis. This was not so much of a sit-down and read. Putman includes hundreds of sources in this work. That is not a bad thing (I actually appreciated it myself). It is something that a reader should know diving into this book. This is going to be more of a scholarly read. It is a good read, but it is very scholarly.

I would encourage people who are genuinely concerned making sure that the diversity that we see in the family of God is kept in its proper boundaries to check out When Doctrine Divides the People of God. Putman has put together some great resources to show that just because a person may not see every single point as we do, this does not mean that they are not our brother or sister in Christ.