church doctrine
Official faith teachings
Church doctrine is the official body of beliefs and teachings held by a religious denomination or institution.
It encompasses positions on theology, morality, and practice that adherents are expected to accept: The church doctrine on marriage has remained unchanged for centuries.
Doctrine may be codified in creeds, catechisms, or official statements, distinguishing one denomination's positions from another's.
- HeavenSacred afterlife realm
- eternal lifeUnending conscious existence
- EucharistSacramental bread and wine
- TrinityGodhead as three persons
- holy ordersSacrament conferring clergy status
Resurrection · dogma · Mass · creed · articles of faith · orthodoxy · catechism · Hermeneutics · infallibility · teaching · Virtue · canon · papal · confession · covenant · revelation · sacrament · salvation
- church historyapostles, Protestant Reformation, Christian history, baptism, Reformation
- Italian sacred literatureDante, Divine Comedy, Inferno, Paradiso, Beatrice
- religious educationreligious education, Bible college, Bible stories, religious instruction, Sunday school
- theologyecclesiology, eschatology, Christology, God, dogmatics
- church lawcanon law, papal bull, papal bulls, papal decree, papal authority
- creedsNicene Creed, Apostles' Creed, Athanasian Creed, creed, credo
church doctrinepersonal faith
Individual religious belief
folk religion · mystical experience · individual conscience · inner light
church doctrineheresy
Belief opposing official doctrine
heterodoxy · apostasy · unorthodoxy · free thought · blasphemy
church doctrinescientific theory
Substantiated explanation of nature
secular humanism · naturalism · materialism · freethought · worldly wisdom