Doctrine

So I finished the Bible study on Genesis that I wrote. As I went through parts of Genesis, I realized the God we find in Genesis is very basic. We have no Trinitarian understanding. Oh, we get hints to the Trinity, hints to a coming redemption. We even get glimpses of God the Son being torn apart for us when we break covenant. But this is not spelled out completely. I wonder if I was Adam or Abraham or Joseph if I would have interpreted what Elohim was doing at that time as pointing to the Jesus of the New Testament. Yet as I read Genesis, God revealed himself more as the book went on. It was like an unfolding of who God is as the heroes of our faith experienced God. Our doctrines are statements of our faith's ancestors and how they experienced God. They experienced God as creator, as redeemer, as love. And Scripture as a whole gives us a bigger picture of who God is than who we meet in Genesis at first. Oh, I believe we encounter the same God throughout Scripture--the God of Genesis is the God in Revelation. Yet we see God approaching humanity in the language and customs of a specific culture. This God reveals enough of himself for human beings to have a relationship, a covenant with him.
I state all this because I think as Christians we have gotten lost in the doctrinal debates. Oh I am one who loves the doctrinal debates. Give me a good theological discussion any day. But I have found it a whole lot easier to debate our theologies and doctrines than it is to live out our theologies and doctrines. Perhaps the reason our theologies and doctrines have become divisive instead of unifying is because we debate them rather than live them. Perhaps like those who defined our doctrine did so because they experienced God in that way, we are suppose to experience theology more than debate it. Although, I am up for a good debate any day.