By George “Chip” Hammond

The word “orthodox” has fallen on hard times. Its antonym “unorthodox” gets all the glory. This is understandable in the realms of science, technology and business. Were it not for Copernicus’s unorthodox ideas and Galileo’s unorthodox experiments and verifications of Copernicus, mankind would never have traveled to space. Apple would not have led a business and technology revolution that enables me to type these words on a computer that is smaller than the leather-bound Bible sitting next to it. And Sweetwater Sound, a musical instruments supply company in the Midwest that decided early on to put customers and employees before profits, would not have grown to an industry that does over a billion dollars in sales every year.

 There are many areas and instances in which unorthodoxy has brought tremendous benefit. Unorthodox business models, unorthodox production methods, unorthodox surgical techniques and approaches to medicine have all made the world a safter, cleaner, better place in ways that could never have occurred if there had been a hide-bound attitude of “but this is the way we’ve always done it.” Is unorthodoxy ever bad?

 Defining our terms

 There is no question that the world is a better place for the things described above, but we need to be clear about how the word “orthodoxy” is being used in such cases. The word “orthodox” itself comes from two Greek words, ortho meaning right or straight, and dokeo meaning to think. In this sense “orthodox” means to be right thinking or straight thinking.

 However, the word has come to mean “traditional thinking.” At some point in the past some ways of looking at certain things or doing certain things were codified and were repeated to the point that all thinking about them ceased. These “orthodox” views were unquestionably accepted as true or right . . . until someone had the audacity to check into them and found that that they weren’t true. Such discoveries were met with enthusiasm or fury depending on how much a person had invested in the error.

 In such cases the “orthodox view” was not orthodox in the sense of it being “right thinking” (since it was obviously wrong thinking), but “orthodox” only in the sense that it was traditional. This is what happened in Galileo’s day. The scientists of the day had adopted the Ptolemaic model of the universe and had built their careers on it. The church had “baptized” a particular view of planetary mechanics as a matter of faith, resting their spiritual authority and the claim that this was “God’s view of the universe.”  Wide-spread knowledge of Copernicus and Galileo, they believed, would undermine their authority so they fought them tooth and nail.

 Orthodoxy’s necessity

 In every realm, though, real orthodoxy – right thinking, thinking that correspond to reality – is necessary. Orthodoxy is foundational. Some orthodoxies, in the realm of science for example, would be that observations correspond with reality and are not merely an illusionary world we create in our heads; mathematics is constant and work as a way of describing the real world; and there is a constancy to the law of physics so that what is true one day is not false the next.  Without acceptance of these axiomatic orthodoxies, we could say nothing at all about the world. At some foundational level orthodoxy (right thinking) is necessary to be able to learn anything. It’s orthodoxy in this sense that allows the veracity of tradition and long held custom to be challenged.

 Christian orthodoxy

Most people outside the church, and many inside, when they hear the word “orthodoxy” think “hide-bound, uncritical traditionalism.” Given how the church has behaved in the past and in some cases behaves today, this conclusion is understandable. But rightly understood, Christian orthodox is simply a set of foundational axioms on which thinking and investigation can be carried out. Orthodoxy is necessary for the toppling of wrong tradition – sometimes long-held, vociferously argued for, “you don’t know how this will ruin my life and career if this tradition topples” tradition.

 Christian orthodoxy rests on the Bible, but (strange as this may sound) the Bible cannot determine orthodoxy for us. Or maybe it would be better to say (as R.C. Sproul once did), our reading of the Bible does not determine orthodoxy.

 The boundaries of Christian orthodoxy were set in the year 1053. It was in that year that the church grievously divided between East (polemically calling themselves “orthodox” to imply that the church in the west was not) and West (polemically calling themselves “catholic” to imply that the church in the east lay outside the universal church). Since that time all decisions of all churches have been parochial. This does not mean that some decisions or doctrinal formulations since that time are not better or truer than others. But it does mean that these cannot be the Spirit-guided decisions of the whole (catholic; the word means “according to the whole”) church. Any church making such an audacious claim for itself would by doing so place itself outside the boundary lines of Christ’s church. Drawing on Mark 9:38-42, J.C. Ryle condemned those who in the name of a proprietary “orthodoxy” of their own making would exclude others from the church.

 Christian orthodoxy is objectively set by the determinations of the first seven ecumenical counsels and the historic ecumenical creeds. To define “orthodox Christianity” in any other way is to sink into a subjectivism in which everyone (or “me and my three friends”) does what is right in his own eyes. It is the spiritual equivalent of questioning Einstein’s theory of general relatively on the basis that you are not sure if math is real or not.

Parochial Orthodoxy

 The ecumenical counsels and creeds set a foundation for the Christian faith, but they also leave many questions unanswered. Some questions are necessary to answer for the functioning of a church. For example, who is to be baptized and how? What should the governmental structure of the church look like? On what basis do we carry out our mission? These are all questions that the ecumenical creeds and councils do not speak to but must naturally be answered for a group to form a cohesive church. It is natural, then, that churches would have statements which describe (never prescribe – only the Bible can do that) their faith and derivative practices. This parochial orthodoxy does not define the boundaries of the Christian faith (again, anyone claiming so would place himself outside of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” church), but it does show how a particular church applies the principles of the Bible.

 Our own such statement, the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms, completed in late 1640s and revised slightly in 1787, was crafted as a consensus document. There were varying views at the Assembly and the language that resulted was an attempt to get at the core of agreement while leaving room for discussion and for the differences.

 A textually transcendento orthodoxy

 Rightly understood, orthodoxy in any sphere is necessary and good. It’s only when orthodoxy takes on the meaning of “hide-bound traditionalism” and that traditionalism is used as a shibboleth to ensure tribal boundaries that it becomes a bad thing.

 This was the orthodoxy of the Pharisees (a status they were known for and gloried in). They had come to confuse their conclusions about what the Bible said with the words of the Bible itself. (See Matthew 5:17-48.) Though they were experts in the law, Jesus said to them “you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” (Matthew 22:29) Clearly, they knew the words of the Bible, but their traditionalism got in the way of knowing what it meant. Proud and self-sure, neither were they teachable. Anyone who differed with them “differed with the word of God.” Though they claimed to know and defend the word of the God, by their tradition and “orthodoxy” they were nullifying it. (Matthew 15:6, Mark 7:13)

 I sadly saw an example of this in a presbytery meeting several years ago. A candidate being examine for ordination was asked about the creation of human beings and he replied that human beings were created by God ex nihilo.

 The Latin phrase ex nihilo means “from nothing.” Since the time of the early church theologians have used the phrase to described God’s creation of the primordial universe when it was “formless and void.” (Genesis 1:2) The phrase is meant to clarify that God did not create the universe from some pre-existing (eternal?) substance that existed alongside of God, nor did God create the universe out of himself. The building blocks of the universe were brought forth by God by fiat. In the Bible’s own language, God spoke and it was.

 But this fiat creation ex nihilo applies only to the original “stuff” of the universe. The text of the Bible indicates for example that “the land produced living creatures.” (Genesis 1:24) That “God created human beings ex nihilo” was a bit of “orthodoxy” (in the sense of recent hide-bound traditionalism that arrests all thought and investigation) that this young man had picked up somewhere, which he seemed to believe was a kind of litmus test for “being allowed into the tribe,” and which he seemed to fear transgressing greatly.

I asked the young man if he knew what ex nihilo meant. He answered, “from nothing.” I asked him if he would turn in his Bible to Genesis 2:7 and read it, which he did: “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” I asked him what the text said God formed the man from, and he said, “from the dust of the ground.”  I said “Before you were asked how human beings were created, and you said that God created the first man ex nihilo. Considering what you’ve just read, would you like to clarify your answer?” The young man looked around nervously and then hesitantly responded “God created man ex nihilo, from nothing.”

 I pray that the day will come when the word orthodoxy can be reclaimed as a good word in society in general, and in the church. If orthodoxy is associated with hide-bound traditionalism, or with an extra-biblical, extra-confessional, litmus tests created by the self-assured and self-righteous in order to be allowed into the tribe it will not be. Orthodoxy that transcends the bounds of the biblical text is concerning. When the word “orthodoxy” creates fear because it is believed to mean a position that one must hold and express despite the clear words of the biblical text it has become twisted thinking rather than straight thinking.