Asymmetric threats are new, but they can be met by adapting doctrine, training and equipment.
Burgeoning postmillennial Protestant liberalism welcomed academic biblical criticism and adapting doctrine to modern conditions.
It's the Colin Powell doctrine adapted to literature: fight not just to win, but to unleash overwhelming force from the first volley.
It would have to be rationally reformed, of course: the Bible would have to be interpreted in light of recent historical findings, belief in miracles abandoned, the clergy educated along modern lines and doctrine adapted to a softer age.
Whereas Mendelssohn continued the medieval tradition (at least to some extent) or adapted Spinoza's doctrine for his own purposes, the Jewish philosophers of the first half of the 19th century generally followed the teachings of the non-Jewish philosophers of their own time.
In Adversus haereses Irenaeus catalogs and criticizes the doctrines of various Christian teachers and their followers from the 1st and 2nd centuries, devoting particular attention to Valentinus and other teachers who were said to have adapted Valentinus's doctrines.
Descartes, it can be justly said, is the founder of the other main school of the "mechancal philosophy" of the 17th Century, which stood in direct opposition to atomism on the issue of the possibility of a vacuum and which adapted the Aristotelian doctrines on the nature of time, space, and motion to the new world view.
Doctrine is adapted to her own fears and hopes.
"The parts of the Army closest to the battlefield have adapted, including tactics and doctrine," said Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, who wrote a widely circulated article criticizing how the generals fought the Iraq war.
The two doctrines have adapted to each other but their marriage is not happy.
