Biblical Doctrine for the Nations, Part 1
Why do we study doctrine?
Biblical Doctrine (edited by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue) is a weighty text—over a thousand pages in English. A brief flip through its pages reveals instruction on every major doctrinal topic from the atonement to the attributes of God.
And yet, the study of doctrine is not an end in itself. Worship is our goal.
TMAI has been committed to developing biblical resources around the world so that pastors, churches, and believers will grow in their understanding of the truth, bringing praise to the One who deserves it all.
Since its publication in 2017, Biblical Doctrine has become a cornerstone TMAI resource for its systematic summary of Scripture’s teachings. The book has been translated into 14 languages and is developing in nine more.
This is how it came about.
The Vision
Biblical Doctrine was born from the legacy of the flagship MacArthur Study Bible (1997) and the MacArthur New Testament Commentary. In 1999, Pastor John MacArthur and Dr. Richard Mayhue agreed that a complementary book was needed to present key theological distinctives built on the same consistent reading of Scripture.
“John always had, and I’ve always had, a sense of the mandate of Christ to go into all the world and reach every creature with the gospel”
It took almost two decades to produce, but what resulted was a systematic theology text that was both comprehensive and clear, pastoral and practical.
From the beginning, the editors understood that these biblical resources were crucially needed by the global church.
Mayhue said, “John always had, and I’ve always had, a sense of the mandate of Christ to go into all the world and reach every creature with the gospel. And that was really foundational.”
As they talked to ministry leaders around the world, they discovered that in many countries, Biblical Doctrine had no equivalent. Many believers did not have a book in their own language that systematically explained the teaching of Scripture from a consistent, literal hermeneutic.
At the same time, TMAI was receiving requests from training centers for a theology textbook that could train pastors—not in English, but in the languages known and understood by these men.
So TMAI began to license Biblical Doctrine in other languages—first in Spanish, then in many more.
The Audience
Through its Global Publishing Department, TMAI has committed time, finances, and skilled translators to the production of Biblical Doctrine worldwide. It is now available in Albanian, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, French, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, and Tajik.
We asked several training center leaders to share about the impact of the newest translations. Kris Brackett, vice dean at Theological Biblical Academy (TBA), wrote the following about the Croatian translation:
“It has taken us five years to do this project. Even though the market is small in Croatia due to the small evangelical population, our hope is that like other books we publish this volume will serve Slovenian, Bosnian, Serbian, and Montenegrin churches as well…
We have to do all work in house and oversee each step. From initial translation, editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design, indexes, printing, and many more steps, work is done by a team of paid professionals, volunteer professionals (who are very generous with their time and skills), and small companies.
We publish books because we know they have a wider audience than we do and will be around a lot longer.”
In honor of Pastor MacArthur, this translation has been made free upon request for many Croatian pastors.
This year, Biblical Doctrine was also published in Albanian. The director of Southeastern European Theological Seminary (SETS) offered his thoughts.
“I believe that after the translation of the Bible this is the most important book to date to be published and printed in the Albanian language…
It is most consequential in the Albanian context because we endured the occupation of the Ottoman for more than 400 years and then nearly 50 years under an evil and atheistic communist regime. Those were years of complete spiritual darkness. It was the translation of the Bible into Albanian which helped spark a movement which led to our independence from the Ottomans. Now, with the publishing of Biblical Doctrine, we have in Albanian a comprehensive volume of biblical Christian theology, the theology upon which western civilization was founded. It provides answers to the main questions of all of life. We are grateful to have it.”