Orthodoxy and the Pursuit of Truth

"Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers." (1 Timothy 4:16)

"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!" (Galatians 1:8-9)

Three times this week I have heard people comment in regard to heresy and orthodoxy that "Of course everyone is going to thing their way is the orthodox way." Now, there is certainly some truth in recognizing that we are all naturally biased by our own pride toward our position, but this was more than that. In each case, it was meant to say that the notion of orthodoxy in the church was silly and impossible. A few points occur to me that people who feel this way ought to keep in mind.

1. Heresy is not simply a term meaning "we disagree with them." Instead, it makes a statement about the truth or falsity of the position itself. I might call you a heretic, but our dispute would not ultimately be on political or cultural grounds, but on theological ones. The other factors certainly influenced the modern church, but gnosticism isn't heresy because it lost a power struggle but because it says things which are in tension with the truth of scripture. They might even disagree about what scriptures we use, but that argument can also be settled on objective grounds in pursuit of the truth, rather than arbitrary ones.

2. The process of determining orthodoxy was a careful and thorough one. The councils and creeds which resulted weren't light or arbitrary affairs, but instead consisted of the godliest and most knowledgeable individuals of their day coming together to carefully weigh positions against the weight of scripture and come to a conclusion which they felt was as faithful to God's revealed truth as was possible.

3. If early Christians were incapable of considering and either accepting or rejecting new ideas, there would be no early Christians. The truth is that the missionary enterprise of the church was very much based on a pursuit of theological truth. One cannot read Justin, Clement, Tertullian, Origen and other early apologists and fail to recognize that they were very much interested in arguing about propositional truth about God with those who disagreed with them. To dismiss them as stupidly closedminded would force us to ignore virtually every other historical thinker who actually took a position on issues.

In summary, I think we need to examine early orthodoxy, like every other discussion of truth, in a way which recognized bias but doesn't simply dismiss creedal Christianity as the "lucky sect that beat the others out."