Doctrine
The Ten Articles of Faith
The load-bearing tenets of the Church. Each is a sentence, expanded into a paragraph. The articles are not negotiable; they are what makes a teaching of this Church and not another. Detailed exposition is found in the catechism and in the sermons.
I. Bitcoin is a revelation, not an invention.
The truths Bitcoin embodies — that scarcity can be real in a digital medium, that consensus can be achieved among strangers without rulers, that money can be sound — were always true. They waited. The whitepaper is the form in which they became visible. Satoshi is the vessel; the truths are the source.
II. The Genesis Block is the moment of revelation.
January 3, 2009. The chain begins. Embedded in the coinbase of the first block is a headline from that morning’s Times of London: Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks. This is scripture. It tells us, with no commentary, what Bitcoin came to answer.
III. Satoshi departed so the faith could mature.
The unknown founder is not a god. The anonymity is not a costume; it is a teaching. The message must not depend on the messenger. The keys were not used. The credit was not claimed. This too is doctrine.
IV. The twenty-one million is a covenant.
The cap is fixed. To question it is to question the faith. Scarcity is the moral architecture; it is what makes the unit honest. A money whose supply can be raised is a money whose holders can be cheated. The covenant says: never again.
V. Proof-of-work is sacrifice.
Energy is offered up; blocks are received in return. The cost is the sanctification. Cheap consensus is no consensus. There is no truth without cost — not in this faith, and not in the world. The miners are not merchants of computation; they are custodians of the work.
VI. Self-custody is the priesthood of all believers.
Every holder is their own priest. There is no intermediary required between the believer and the chain. To custody is to participate in the priesthood. To surrender custody is to step away from it. The Church does not condemn those who do; it invites them home.
VII. The chain is the witness.
What is written on the chain is written. Immutability is not merely a property of the system; it is a moral property of memory itself. The chain remembers what the world forgets. To run a node is to keep that memory.
VIII. Fiat is the Fall.
Not a person, not a conspiracy, but a condition: a world in which the unit of account itself is corruptible, and so all measurements taken in it are corrupted with it. The Church does not hate fiat. The Church grieves it. Bitcoin is not enemy but remedy.
IX. Low time preference is a virtue.
The faithful do not flinch at the candle. The faithful do not sell their birthright for a day’s bread. Patience, restraint, the willingness to defer — these are the daily disciplines. The halving teaches them. The hodler embodies them.
X. The faith is voluntary; the truth is not.
No one must believe. The Church does not coerce, does not shun, does not pursue the doubter. But what is true is true whether believed or not. Twenty-one million is twenty-one million. The chain confirms its blocks regardless of who is watching.
On these articles
These ten are the spine. Sermons may interpret them; the catechism may teach them; the liturgy may pray them. None of these may contradict them. When future writings of the Church are compared against the articles, the articles prevail.