To make the answer slightly more complex, we can say that ‘doctrine’ is what you ‘believe, teach, and publicly state.’
Your doctrine is correct to the extent that it corresponds to reality. The reader will recognize the correspondence theory of truth at work here. There are other ways to explore the truth, or lack thereof, behind a doctrine.
According to ‘coherence’ view of truth, a proposition is true to the extent that is does not contradict another proposition which is part of the same body of propositions. This understanding of truth is founded upon the idea of a consistent system of propositions.
The coherence theory of truth might perhaps work well for academic disciplines like mathematics, which, especially when reduced to a pure formalism, essentially is a systematic set of propositions which do not contradict each other and which sometimes imply or entail each other.
But for the academic discipline of theology, or any discourse about spiritual topics, the ‘coherence’ theory of truth might not be well-suited. If it is axiomatic to spiritual thought that some of its subject-matter may well be beyond the ability of the human mind to grasp or understand, then ‘consistency’ may be difficult to define or detect.
What it means to ‘cohere’ and what it might mean to be ‘consistent’ could become unclear when dealing with persons and things which exist outside of time and space. Seeming contradictions - paradoxes - might arise when a finite mind attempts to understand an infinite one.
In addition the correspondence theory of the truth and the coherence theory of truth, a third understanding of truth is commonly found in introductory lectures on philosophy. The ‘pragmatic’ approach to truth explains that a proposition is true to the extent that it is useful, to the extent that an individual mind can apply it to concrete situations and thereby gain predictable significant results.
This ‘pragmatic’ view of truth, however, is less helpful when dealing with metaphysical entities, and ‘practicality’ might obtain variant definitions in spiritual contexts.
The correspondence theory of truth, then, is most useful for dealing with doctrine. Doctrine changes over time, and these changes might imply that it becomes hopefully more, but sometimes less, accurate, i.e., that it corresponds more or less to the reality which it claims to express.
As the propositions of natural science change over time, when attempts are made to refine its statements and bring them into closer correspondence with the physical phenomena which the science hopes to both explain and describe, so also doctrine can be refined. In neither case does a change in the proposition assert a change in the state of affairs.
A certain momentum or inertia of ideas accumulates over time. In the context of an official ecclesiastical institutional doctrine, as contrasted with private individual beliefs, such inertia can be seen as ‘tradition.’ As Jaroslav Pelikan writes,
To interpret the development of doctrine in the ancient church, it is necessary to pay primary attention to the condition and growth of the church’s faith and worship, to its exegesis of the Bible, and to its defense of the tradition against heresy.
While the understanding of truth is understood as an abstract principle, its change, development, and growth are subject to historical conditions: personalities, events, discoveries, and even emotional reactions.
Like truths of geometry, which are timeless and pristine in their abstraction but subject also the vagaries of physical concreteness and to the finite minds of their discoverers, so also theological truth, in the words of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, is “known in part” and “seen dimly.”
We must learn to be content with an imperfect and incomplete knowledge, which, however, is as good as it can be in this world, is promised to be sufficient, and is well worth preserving and defending.
