Two Kinds of Orthodoxy?

Misusing the Term ‘Orthodox’?

Back in 2017, there was a dust-up conversation on the internet about how we use the term “orthodox.” On his personal blog, James K. A. Smith bemoaned that Christians were misusing the term ‘orthodox’ (you can still find that article here). More specifically, Smith disapproved of the increasing numbers of Christians who use the “o” word to declare another Christian out of bounds when it comes to sexual morality. He said that ‘orthodox’ historically refers to the councils, the creeds, and the fundamental doctrines of the faith therein. We shouldn’t therefore use this term to declare a sexual practice unChristian. Instead, Smith suggested we use the word ‘traditional’ when discerning such matters lest we rule people who are still sorting out these issues out of the conversation (because they aren’t ‘orthodox’ Christians) before it even starts. This way we allow orthodox Christians to disagree and discern together on disputable matters of faith and practice.

There were a host of replies to Smith (I couldn’t find the old links). Alastair Roberts complained that Smith separated theology and ethics. Good point. Derek Rishmawry argued in Christianity Today similarly saying sexual matters are tied inextricably to creedal doctrines like Creation and Christology. Interesting. Alan Jacobs came to Smith’s defense clarifying the positives of keeping first and second order issues separate. OK. Rod Dreher and a host of others on both conservative and progressive sides of Christianity argued Smith has just made his first step into affirming same-sex sexual relations. This appears to have come true?

At a time when denominations are wrestling with these same questions, I think this is a discussion worth revisiting. Several important questions emerge out of it such as: How does theology work in cases of discerning disputable matters (matters not explicitly stated in the creeds)? Do we merely have credentialed experts rule on such matters based on the past traditions/creeds? Or do we discern these matters together as local bodies of people making space for God to extend gospel into new territories. How do the dynamics of mission and discipleship change the way we engage disputable matters in the guidance of Christian living, when we find ourselves in a decidedly new/post Christian context?. How does moving matters of discipleship and discernment to the status of orthodoxy/confessional status change the ability of a church to engage in mission?

‘Biblical’ as the Evangelical ‘Orthodox’

Regarding these questions, I think we can learn from how evangelicals of my youth would often use the word ‘Biblical.’ In my church growing up, it was common to assert orthodoxy on a given matter by claiming a belief to be ‘biblical.’ It was the way to gain the higher ground on any issue that was in dispute. Sometimes, without even working through the hermeneutics of the particular text, they’d recite a Biblical text, and simply declare their position ‘Biblical.’ Then a bunch of people in the pews would nod their head, say ‘of course!’ and that side would gain leverage in the debate. ‘Biblical’ was the power word. And it was used to cut short a conversation and exert one position over another by the so-called expert in the Bible who alone had the authority to interpret the Bible.

My point here is that ‘orthodox’ can function in theological circles in the same way that “Biblical” functioned in my old evangelical circles. The one who gets to claim ‘orthodoxy,’ in a very real sense, is an act of asserting power over a conversation that shuts down the conversation. I think therefore that Smith accurately questioned the way some use the term ‘orthodox.’ Is there another way to orthodoxy that seeks to extend the gospel faithfully into new and disputable matters that opens space for conversation instead of closing it?

Faithfulness versus Orthodoxy

Towards this end, I (like Smith) suggest we dump the term ‘orthodox’ when discerning disputable matters. Instead, I suggest ‘faithfulness’ as an alternative way of ‘orthodoxy.’ I define ‘faithfulness’ as taking “what we have heard” from the apostles “in the presence of many witnesses” and entrusting it “to men and women who are faithful” who can extend faithfully the teaching to others as well (2 Tim 2:2).

Paul was the apostle to the gentiles. He confronted new cultural dilemmas the original apostles had not yet encountered. So he did not just enter these new situations and repeat the teachings of the original apostles in the original Aramaic. He translated them, extended them to where they had not yet been applied. He did so among (“in the presence of”) a community who affirmed these teachings as “witnesses” (who discerned what they were hearing/seeing). I suggest this idea of faithfully ‘extending’ the truth of the apostles is essential to understanding how orthodoxy works in the context of mission.

In terms of power dynamics, ‘faithfulness’ takes the emphasis off of truth as a hardened formula found in a creed to be enforced over someone or a group. Instead it moves truth towards a working out what these teachings mean in each new context. Faithfulness moves the emphasis off of universal statements of truths made across cultures to local discernments of truths made within cultures.

The Nicene Creed as a Local Theology

The Nicene Creed was written in the Greek language in a Greco-Roman context (the Greco-Roman empire) as the outworking of the issues of Christology that had been raised amidst the gospel entering this broad new context. Even though it was hundreds of bishops gathering, it was still a “local theology” of sorts, in the words of Robert Schreiter. Schreiter tells us ‘orthodoxy’ is the history of many local theologies strung together one after another. And so for each people (community of witnesses) we learn to believe the gospel, trust Jesus as Lord and Savior, make space for the Kingdom, in our given languages via the issues and questions presented by our culture today. To do this in continuity with the apostles is to be faithful. It is orthodoxy.

But of course, that creed became the orthodoxy for the whole Roman church. It became much more than a local theology. It became the theological instrument to enforce orthodoxy over already existing Christian churches. This ‘church’ is a completely different dynamic than the church in mission.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Creeds (Roman Catholic)—and confessions (Euro Reformation orthodoxy) still have authority in and over our lives for churches in mission. It is an inextricable part of our history even as we extend these truths into new contexts. But it must be a dynamic authority as opposed to a static one.

The gospel can never enter a context ex nihilo: starting all over again from nothing. We need the creeds. The high Christology of the Nicene Creed cannot be lost as this truth is carried forth into new places even though the homoousian may not make sense in the new language/culture we find ourselves in.

And yet equally so, we must learn and deepen our theology every time we work out how our inherited beliefs translate and make sense within new cultures (Lamin Sanneh and Bo Lim are good places to start in reading on this).

If one cultural articulation of the gospel, however, portends to speak for all future times and place, we have a recipe for the coercive imposition of power into a culture. This is how the term ‘orthodox’ can function at its worst. I contend in Christendom, the creedal formulas, as worked out amidst the Constantinian power alignments of the 4^th century, often did function just like that. It is a mistake, therefore, to suppose that we have articulated (or are going to articulate) our key beliefs and answers to questions once and for all for everybody. To do so is to shut down the translation/extending of the gospel into new places, new languages and new questions we hitherto have not yet known. To do so is to be tempted to impose our ready-made solutions on these new cultures. And this is a ready-made recipe for colonialization all over again.

Extending Faithfully What Has Been Handed On

So I suggest we not enter the sexuality debates and the other disputable matters among us, as if we are going to declare the orthodox position and then impose it. Let us first begin a vigorous discussion on what it means once again to be faithful to the gospel and the full history of what has gone on before.

In regard to sexuality, let us not exert power in the name of orthodoxy. This goes for the defensive conservatives as well as for the accommodative progressives. Instead let us enter our contexts, listen to the questions, understand the language, open space for unwinding the ideological antagonisms that drives our debates and let God work. Then, let us together articulate what we have learned, what is good, what is sin, propose discipleship, and seek a new faithfulness to who God is, what he is doing in restoring all creation to Himself. This is the way the gospel will be proclaimed. This is contextual theology.

Indeed, let us start with the discipleship question. What does it mean to follow Jesus in the attractions, sexual identities, gender conflicts we find ourselves in. Heterosexuals go first! Let us call one another into the sexual/gender reconciliation, healing and renewal God is doing among us all over again in and through Jesus Christ. Let us ask what difference Jesus makes in our sexuality. Let us ask what a discipleship into Jesus’ powers of salvation, healing, reconciliation and transformation would look like. Again, heterosexuals go first. Let us be faithful. As Christians, we do not get to make sex up, just like we don’t get to make Christianity up. Instead let us extend the richness of the sexual theology of historic Christianity into the new questions and situations we find ourselves in.

Let us resist separating behavior from belief. It is through Christians engaging the questions of our context faithfully, and working out a discipleship for all people, that we give witness to the saving power of Jesus, and extend the gospel visually via our actual way of life that bears witness to the life, death, and resurrection, and rule of Jesus as Lord Christ. The proclamation of the gospel as worked out in our daily lives becomes manifest in power. This, too, is contextual theology.

Two Kinds of ‘Orthodoxy’

What emerges from these thoughts, and indeed from the lessons of two thousand years of Christian history, is that there are two ways to think about orthodoxy. One is the way of rational “scientific” reasoning that has been so dominant in the modern world since the enlightenment. Exegete the correct forensic meaning/truths of the Creeds/Confessions and/or the Bible and dictate that meaning over a church. The second way is of historicized discourse where truth is worked out within a tradition and a community of memory. Discern the meaning of these texts and truths within a context faithfully, through the language yes, but also through listening and discerning what is actually going on in the context so as to extend the meaning into a church and its mission.

The first is a discourse of control. It is exercised in the name of objectivity. People already in power are comfortable here. The second is a discourse of extending the story. Here the question is not only what is right or wrong, who is in and who is out, but what is faithful and what is unfaithful to the Story. I consider the first approach to orthodoxy to be Christendom, the second to be the approach of mission.

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