Runtu wrote:
It's not a matter of accepting it or not. I understand the reasons why the church insists on its own definition of "official doctrine." But you are incorrect in saying it is a long-established process. Correlation began in 1971, and since that time it is the correlation committee that determines the doctrinal validity of what goes into church publications. The big 15 don't have much to do with it at all.
I am fine letting the church define its own doctrine, and I think I have a pretty good handle on what that doctrine is. That said, if absolutely nothing pre-1971 is considered doctrine unless it's been through the post-1971 correlation process (which is exactly the church's policy), then there's something else going on besides the brethren establishing and declaring doctrine.
Is something published in December 1970 in the Improvement Era--at the time the official church magazine--doctrine? Not according to the church, which is why the church's web site includes only publications after 1971.
But this really ends up with an odd result. Nothing before 1971, or 141 years of teaching and none of it is doctrine unless it goes through the correlation machine? What it it was published in an official source such as your example of the December 1970 Improvement Era? I struggle with that concept. I guess the Church can argue that nothing pre 1971 that has not been approved is official doctrine NOW and TODAY. But it cannot argue that things the Church taught and published pre 1971 were not doctrinal for the Church at that time. Thus for example, Adam God, which was published in the Millennial Star cannot be simply dismissed as opinion even if the Church does not accept it today.
