Bumper-Sticker Theology

I dislike using slogans, catchphrases, and denominational terminology as doctrinal statements.

Why? Because they lend themselves to partisan debate through loaded definitions and smuggled meanings. Catchy phrases have their place—I use them often to drive home a point or draw a distinction. I just try not to let them function as the definitions or ultimatums of doctrine, because they do more harm than good when used that way.

To be clear about scope: this isn't an essay about any one slogan. It's about what happens when a slogan becomes the doctrine's definition—when a signpost gets treated like the map.

Take a common catchphrase as an example:
"We are saved by faith alone."

As shorthand, it can be useful—especially when someone is insisting they can earn salvation by piling up good works. But as a standalone doctrinal definition, it's vulnerable: people hear the same words and import different meanings, and then they argue past each other instead of returning to the text. That’s also how slogans can harden into pet doctrines: they get protected from context and correction.

That vulnerability is the point. In Scripture, key truths come with a particular grammar and structure that slogans tend to flatten. Paul doesn't just stack nouns; he makes careful claims with careful boundaries—saved by grace through faith—not of yourselves, not of works. When we collapse that structure into a bumper-sticker sentence and then treat the slogan as the doctrine, we invite confusion and overcorrection: some hear "Christ alone, not my merit," while others hear "mere assent is enough," and now we're shadowboxing over a phrase instead of submitting to Scripture's own words.

This isn't pedantry for pedantry's sake. It's a refusal to let a slogan reduce the full counsel of Scripture. Slogans can point in the right direction, but they can't bear doctrinal weight—and they shouldn't be asked to do the work of exegesis.

Once a phrase becomes the definition of the doctrine, two things tend to happen:

1. We start arguing over our private meanings instead of the text.
   One person uses the slogan as faithful shorthand. Another uses the same words as a loophole. Same sentence, different doctrine.

2. We accidentally erase the Bible's own grammar.
   Scripture often gives us both the claim and its guardrails. When we reduce that structure to a slogan, we keep the punchline and lose the boundaries that keep it true.

So I'm not trying to win a semantic knife-fight. I'm trying to protect clarity, protect assurance, and protect the actual shape of the apostolic message—so our confessions don't get smaller than Scripture, and so our debates don't get louder than truth.

In other words: slogans are fine as signposts. They're terrible as substitutes for the map.