The present volume is the first in a five-volume study of church doctrine. The multivolume set will cover the major parts of church doctrine: Canon, God, Creation, Reconciliation, and Redemption. This first volume begins with an introduction on why doctrine matters, which stresses the ecumenical, global, and above all biblical horizons of church doctrine as a primary expression of Christian witness. The purpose of this volume is to begin a search for an alternative to the many theologies available on the religious left and the religious right. Where doctrine is absent, the church is held captive to ideology; the same is as true among conservatives as it is among liberals. The present work is an attempt to struggle toward the meaning of orthodoxy in church doctrine—an orthodoxy that is never merely a given, but which always has to be sought and found again and again in each new generation of the church. Church doctrine is not a luxury, but a necessity for the living community of faith, by which its witness in word and deed is tested against the one true measure of Christ the risen Lord.