427 - The Test of Orthodoxy

The Test of Orthodoxy
By Albert C. Outler

Time was when daring young men labelled themselves "heretical" as a way of declaring their independence from the slaveries of "orthodoxy." This Jack Horner-ish posture is not as fashionable as it once was-so that there are now those who, like Mr. Carr, feel free to speak a good word for orthodoxy, so long as all bondage is disavowed. What has happened, of course, is that the traditional notions of heresy and orthodoxy have both been altered. Our present problem is not so much whether orthodoxy is "right thinking," but who can tell the difference between orthodoxy and heresy, and on what grounds? It is no accident that a heresy trial nowadays is something of an anomaly in many parts of the Christian community.

This essay ("Orthodoxy as Open-Ended," by Clay B. Carr, Jr.) has a double intent: to commend orthodoxy as "the realm of discourse in which the ongoing tradition of the church finds expres-

428 - The Test of Orthodoxy

sion" and also to guard this discourse from its own typical abuses. Carr rightly denies that orthodoxy must be a rigid structure; he sees it as a process by which the Christian mind may be clarified in the course of sustained debate over live theoretical options. His major contention, as I take it, is that this process of clarification is open-ended and ought never be adjourned by the Christian magisterium. Orthodoxy "is thus a more or less articulated description of the given way in which [the Christian community] thinks and speaks".

It would be surprising if there were many readers of THEOLOGY TODAY who would be for what Mr. Carr is against: i.e., inflexible, perfected, unchanged, and unchangeable doctrinal formulations palmed off as the theological equivalent of "the faith once for all delivered to the saints." The simple fact of clashing orthodoxies blocks the prospect of a single system of pure doctrine-and makes implausible any positive claim to a conceptualization of Christian truth to end all Christian conceptualizing.

It is not so clear, however, as to what Mr. Carr is really for. Orthodoxy "is . . . a language map of the Christian faith," he says. But the language map of religion is multi-colored; there are many realms of religious discourse, Christian and non-Christian. If one is to commend Christian orthodoxy in any of its modes, one must identify and differentiate its topography.

"Let me state categorically," he writes, "that it is impossible to tell beforehand whether a really significant new concept will be heretical or not" (my italics added). Waiving the fact that this is overconfident in mood and petitionary in form, it prompts a question as to whether it is ever possible to tell whether any concept is heretical. In short, what is heresy? Map makers know that one of their crucial problems is the matter of borders and boundaries. If there is such a thing as orthodoxy, and if it can be "located" on "a language map," who is to patrol the marches between orthodox discourse and whatever else is not?

Historically speaking, the habits of Christian reflection have seemed to follow some rough equivalent of Newton's "First Law." Yet the Church has never been allowed to remain long in unaltered rest or motion. Nobody had to contrive a crisis in order to shove the Christian mind into a hubbub, where clashing convictions forced the Church to rehearse its tradition and to make up its mind in

429 - The Test of Orthodoxy

the face of incompatible options. "Heresy" has regularly preceded " orthodoxy," which is usually the end product of the passage from hubbub to orderly and consented conversation. But the question which such an outcome always raises is whether it is a metamorphosis (continuity) or a pseudomorphosis (discontinuity) of the primordial Christian message and ethos. Christianity has to be traditioned from one generation to the next. What matters is whether the traditioners, are agreed as to the identity of the tradition they are responsible for traditioning (I Cor. 11: 2, 23; 15: 3).

I wonder if Carr would agree that all the "heresies" are, at bottom, Christological-that is, inappropriate ways of talking about Jesus Christ? He speaks of "the clear danger" in "going back" "whether to the Reformation, the historic creeds, the Apostolic Church or wherever." And yet what danger is there in "going back" to the "event" of Jesus of Nazareth as the distinctive "topic" of any realm of Christian discourse? Orthodoxy, then, would be the mode of discourse in which the integrity and the fullness of the apostolic faith in Jesus Christ is the subject of discussion. The test of orthodoxy is not whether it can follow the twists and turnings of new ideas but whether it can renew in drastically changed contexts the dialogue between the Christian present and the apostolic past. Is this "going back" or forward? Orthodox conceptualization is very far from being invariable, as a glance at the history of doctrine will show-but it has an identical "subject" as its referent and the same "evidence" (the apostolic remembrances and testimony) as its datum-plane. Heresy is not necessarily inferior to orthodoxy in conceptual form; but it is different because it has a different "topic" and intent.

It is, therefore, a weakness in Carr's essay that he tries to manage without even a description of the topic and intent of the orthodox realm of discourse. If there are many people still left about who insist on conceiving orthodoxy in "strictly doctrinal terms," as Carr assumes, they have here a clear and generally persuasive challenge. But I should have thought the real intransigeants in this area are the "cultured despisers" of orthodoxy to whom Carr addresses himself in his closing sentences. Who is really to be helped by this notion of orthodoxy as realm of discourse unless it is also made plain that what the discourse is about is the skandal and morian of Christ crucified . . . "the dynamis of God and the sophia of God to those who are called" (I Cor. 1: 23-24)?