What is Orthodoxy? The word "orthodoxy" comes from two Greek words, "orthos" which means "correct," and "doxa" which means "belief" or "opinion." Orthodoxy would them mean "right belief." In regard to Christianity it refers to right Christian beliefs and actions in contrast to wrong beliefs and actions. Always, from the beginning, there have been those who rightly upheld Christian Truth and those who perverted it.
We see this clearly in Scripture. Paul, for example, knew he preached the true Christian gospel and that others did not. Therefore he warned the Galatians, "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!" (Gal. 1:8) Or again, Paul knew that certain forms of immorality were wrong, and therefore he would say, "Drive out the wicked person from among you." (I Cor. 5:13). These are only two of many passages in Scripture that distinguish between true and false belief and moral practice.
As the Christian faith spread across the Roman Empire it encountered a host of non-Christian cultures. These cultures contained ideas and practices alien to Christianity. In fact, in the first few centuries of the Christian era, virtually every imaginable way of corrupting right Christian doctrine and morals was examined and repudiated by the Church. At every step, the Church did not add anything essentially new to the Christian faith. Rather, the Church worked out the implications of the original apostolic faith as challenged by new ideas and practices. As that happened, the Church built up a body of authoritative teaching and moral norms. The decisive authority was Scripture, but Scripture together with the Creeds, valid biblical interpretation, fitting worship, and right moral practice. That is orthodoxy.
What is Revisionism? Revisionists are generally well meaning people who want the Church to be more relevant, modern, and inclusive. Normally they do not reject the Scriptures, Creeds, worship, and the tradition of the Church. In fact, they teach Scripture, worship with the Prayer Book, and say the Creeds side by side with the orthodox. For that reason they appear orthodox. They are not, however, orthodox, even though many consider themselves orthodox. They are revisionists. They revise the Scripture, Creeds, and Christian practice in light of what they take to be a more enlightened perspective. This allows them to change orthodox teaching and practice -- such things as our language for God, sexual norms, evangelism to those of non-Christian faiths, and Eucharistic hospitality. Let me give some examples.
Revisionists will use passages of Scripture, for example, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles (Acts 10:44-48), and how that experience led the early Church to revise its teaching on including Gentiles (Acts 15:6-29), to say that Scripture teaches that God acts in our experience with new revelations which revise old beliefs and practices. Or, revisionists will take the sacrament of the Eucharist, an evident symbol of unity, to say that Eucharist expresses our unity in Christ regardless of our differences on critical moral or theological matters. Or, revisionists will use the fact of the Incarnation, professed in the Nicene Creed, to say that God is constantly incarnating and revealing himself in our lives so that our lives, including our sexual orientation, become revelations of God's will for us. In this way revisionists "honor" Scripture, sacraments, and Creed by appealing to them, but they revise them in contradiction to their original orthodox meaning.
To be an Anglican is to be orthodox. The sixteenth century Anglican Reformers separated from Rome because they believed that Rome had departed from orthodoxy on critical matters of doctrine and practice. To make their case, they appealed to orthodoxy, especially the body of doctrine and practice of the first five centuries. What does orthodoxy teach in regard to Scripture, Creed, and Eucharist? That teaching is clear. Scripture was written to preserve the apostolic faith, not the "truth" of our experience. Eucharist does not symbolize a unity that crosses critical theological and moral differences. Rather, orthodoxy teaches that there must be agreement on essential matters prior to taking Eucharist. The Creed does not intimate that the Incarnation is a symbol for God's incarnate presence in all of us. Rather, Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God."
Ultimately, orthodoxy emerged in the life of the Church to proclaim and protect the good news that Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior. Revisionists, in their several ways, always, in the end, undermine that gospel. They substitute experience, false unity, and the "truth" of their own lives for the saving revelation of Jesus Christ as known in Scripture. Revisionism must be resisted. It is the ruin of the gospel and the death of the Church.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
This article was published in the October, 2004 issue of Encompass, a publication of the American Anglican Council.
An Egregious Theological Failure
Anglicanism and Justification - Introduction to Anglicanism
Barth - Reconciliation and Economic Life Chapter Three
Barth's Creation and Economic Life Chapter Two
Barth's Doctrine of the Trinity - Chapter One
Capitalism and Paganism--An Intimate Connection
Creation, Science, and the New World Order
Introduction to Anglican Theology - Anglicanism and the Prayer Book
Introduction to Anglicanism - Anglicanism and Justification
Introduction to the Theological Essays
John Jewel and the Roman Church
Karl Barth, the German Christians, and ECUSA - Introduction
Mathematics, Science, and the Love of God
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Some Reflections On Evil and the Existence of God
The Historical Jesus and the Spirit
