What Is Protestant Orthodoxy?
The other day, I read Carl Trueman's piece in First Things titled "David French And The Future Of Orthodox Protestantism". Nowhere in the short essay is "orthodox Protestantism" defined. In the context, it seemed clear to me that he means "Protestants who are orthodox on Christian sexual morality." And that's a perfectly good way to use the term, as sex and sexuality have become the point on which so many churches and denominations have broken apart in our time. Liberal Christians love to say, why do you conservatives care so much about sex? -- while at the same time, pushing their denominations and congregations so far from Christian norms on sex that the center of those communions cannot hold. As I wrote here recently, the German Catholic bishops are determined to liberalize their churches on homosexuality, and are doing the all-to-familiar move of claiming "plural truths" -- a nonsense position that is a tactic to stabilize the situation until such time as they can declare pro-homosex as the new Catholic orthodoxy.
Anyway, it makes sense to speak of "Protestant orthodoxy" and "Christian orthodoxy" regarding basic matters of sexual morality. There is a clear Biblical view, one that has been held by the churches consistently, until modern times. Usually when I use the clunky term "small-o orthodox Christians," I mean it to entail Christians who are orthodox on sex, and more broadly, who believe that the Truth is something outside of us, to which we must conform. This, in contrast to modern Christians, who are heterodox in the sense that they believe it is up to the individual to determine what is true, and that truth is radically subjective (unless, of course, we are talking about LGBT people, in which case there is no orthodoxy more rigid than the progressives' normalization of sexual expression deviating from the Biblical norm).
I'm kind of like Justice Potter Stewart on the question of broad Christian orthodoxy: I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it. Again, I think the most general useful definition I can come up with is in a shared stance towards theological and moral truth. The orthodox Southern Baptist and the orthodox Roman Catholic have deep and irreconcilable disagreements on theology and ecclesiology, but the thing they agree on is that we don't have the right to make it up as we go along. Though the Baptist believes that Scripture alone is the source of authority, while the Catholic believes that it is Scripture as interpreted by established authoritative Tradition, both see Truth as being something objective, that must be grasped and appropriated by the subject.
Modernist Christians don't understand what we orthodox Christians mean when we say that marriage cannot be other than one man plus one woman, exclusively. We believe that this is God's ideal, revealed in Scripture. We are bound to obey it, even if we want to change it. For modernists, though, the tradition is not binding at all; the religion can be shaped to fit the perceived needs of the existing community.
The kind of people I know who use variations of "small-o orthodox Christians" know that it's only a limited term of description, but it's still a useful one. An orthodox Catholic knows that he has more to discuss with an orthodox Calvinist than he does with liberal, modernist Catholics, who don't recognize any source of authority other than their consciences.
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But what does it mean to speak of "orthodox Protestantism"? I'm not asking to be combative. I really am curious how Protestants would define this. As we know, the churches of the Reformation began to split from the beginning. Calvinism is not Lutheranism. Can an LCMS Lutheran recognize a Bible-church nondenominational Evangelical as an "orthodox Protestant" -- and if so, on what basis?
I'm guessing that it would be on the same general basis that we orthodox Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox define orthodoxy: in a limited, particular context. But I'm curious to know from your Protestant readers where you would draw the line between Protestant orthodoxy and Protestant heterodoxy -- and when it would be necessary to make that distinction. On the question of sexual morality, no question. But are there other issues today?
"Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior"- the ancient "fish"(ΙΧΘΥΣ) acronym by which Christians once identified.
Obviously we can all add more stuff to that-- Nicene Council and various others, but if we want it apply broadly to all Christians, Quakers as well as Copts, that's about as far as it can go.
This is the rock, divinely revealed authority, but besides this, there must also exist a solidly secular, liberal argument for the marriage concept you outline, for in the long run, those skeptical minds will have to be changed, as well. Divine revelation cannot be denigrated, for it appears to animate most of humanity, but observe the standard liberal response, yet-to-be countered: divine revelations are multiple, and in conflict with each other. Objective truth may well exist, but none have a convincing path to it through logic. The Truth is obscured, and we probe the veil via our imaginations, mostly. It seems we have no other tools left.
For someone like me, and for others like me, for those of us inelegantly dancing on the liberal's generously slime-covered slippery slope, skating grimly, secularly styling patterned figure-eights, semicircles of a pantheistic bent, but untouched by the divine aroma of Heavenly roses, traditional marriage between one man and one woman MUST come to fully stand on its own sturdy legs, somehow. There is a superior form of human collaboration, and it's called marriage. A variety of arrangements are possible, I suppose. We can have polygamy, polyamory, bestiality, homosexuality, sure, the Mormons and the Spartans did some weird stuff, and the Kyrgyz still practice bride-napping. You can have young boys, you can have young girls, you can have a harem of young transgender concubines guarded by old eunuchs who are all married to each other and their pets. There's room for plenty of diversity under the sun, we can have all types of partnerships and business arrangements. It's all available in a giant mess.
For me, I would like it to be simple. Admittedly, I don't really know why I put "alternative" marriages into the same basic category as cannibalism: totally legit and yet totally backward human behavior. It was no big deal to eat people a long time ago, after all, dear Science: we're animals, and we still eat animals. Therefore, we're cannibals all day long. We simply stopped eating the human animal, that's all. We also used to marry our cousins a hundred-fifty years ago. We no longer do that, either. Thus, evolution to me is fact, easily provable by the most superficial historical survey. The moral (and physical) evolution of mankind is incontestable. And we seem to be evolving in a certain direction, too. Maybe even with a Purpose? I don't know, but there does seem to be a directional arrow. Evolution is supposed to be a soup of random mutations from which a pattern emerges.
Well, the ancient and fine art of human coupling is also a soup of random mutations from which a pattern emerges. That most basic one being reproduction. And yet, that's nowhere near enough. You can reproduce with your fourteen year old niece, can't you? Why isn't that marriage? Inevitably, you regress to anthropological investigation or Divine Revelation in order to solve the deeply unpleasant dilemma: inclusion and exclusion are codependents.
Sorry, liberals, but the game of evolution picks winners and losers. There is such a thing as a hierarchical system, independent of whether we approve of it, or acknowledge it. The thing we call heterosexual monogamous marriage between non-related adults who don't cannibalize each other but have children instead has taken a long time to come out on top, and I don't think we should surrender it so easily.
More recently, I have begun to recognize the problem Evangelicals in particular and Protestants in general have with orthodoxy. Yes, we have "Scripture alone", but whose understanding of it? There is no authority in Protestantism that can settle disputes for us; we have Scripture and Scripture alone. The question is: is it even possible to have an orthodoxy that does not require a corresponding present-day human authority to declare it? Of course Protestants would answer with a resounding "Yes!", but how? If various Bible authorities disagree on something associated with the meaning of salvation e.g., Ryrie vs. MacArthur on repentance, Chafer vs. Hodge on the covenants, Calvin vs. Luther on eternal security, etc.), how do we settle the issue? It seems the only answer we have is to insist that our interpretation is right because of X, Y, & Z and to marshall more followers than our opponents so we can have our view hold sway. There is no "Catechism of the Protestant Church" - only catechisms specifically for Lutherans, Calvinists, and other denominations.
In the end, there is a real need for a visible authority to settle questions of doctrine and morals in much the same way there was a need for Church Councils to degree what the canon of Scripture was and is, and the sooner Protestants can honestly face this reality, the sooner we can begin to stand together not only against liquid modernity but for true Christian orthodoxy - and orthopraxy.
Why would you even go there?
A love for Scripture as the ultimate authority, a commitment to absolute truth and the courage to follow Christ come what may are hallmarks of Christian orthodoxy where ever its found, regardless of institutional structures.
I do like the saying: “In essentials unity, non-essentials, liberty, in all things charity”. Of course there will always be someone willing to bicker over what is essential.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augsburg_Confession#The_28_articles
Law: The 10 Commandments/C.S. Lewis' Tao. (The law as for our good even if we can't keep it.)
Gospel: The Second Article of the Apostle's Creed (The life, atoning work and imminent return of Jesus Christ in glory)
Telos: The Third Article of the Apostle's Creed. (The Holy Spirit works in and through the church in a binding way.)
Heterodox protestants will quibble or outright reject elements of that. It usually shows up most clearly in rejection of the law, but by the time they are rejecting the law they have reject either God's creation, Christ's work or the Holy Spirit's specific work sanctifying sinners through the church.
I once was part of a small group that was quite close to each other. But we only shared one basic teaching in common. As long as we stayed on that topic, everything went well. But bring up any other topic, and nobody could agree. But that can't last very long, and such groups eventually splinter. Which is what happens with non-denominational churches. It's largely become that each pastor decides what's really important for his church and what they consider orthodox -- if they even care so much about orthodoxy as compared to other things.