Hilton Head Island, SC – July 27, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 23:13-22; Jeremiah 14:17-22
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “’For both prophet and priest ply their trade through the land, and have no knowledge,’” – Jeremiah 14:18b
Like very many English words, the word “orthodox” comes from two root words in classical Greek: ortho, which means right or straight or correct, and doxa, which means opinion or teaching. We know similar words, such as orthodontics, which refers to dental specialists who make crooked teeth straight, or orthopedics, which refers to surgeons who repair broken or arthritic bones to make them work properly again. Orthopraxis is the proper practice of any human pursuit, as compared to malpractice in anything or a refusal to practice something correctly.
The word “orthodoxy” is probably associated primarily with religious belief, but it also can be applied to many other fields. For example, medical practice until the late 19th century took no account of microbes as the cause of many illnesses. Thus it was considered orthodox for doctors to work in unsanitary conditions, because no one had yet discovered that certain germs thrive in uncleanly conditions. Now it is orthodox for hospitals and clinics to be spotless, because it is becoming increasingly evident that certain microbes are very hard to kill, and the medical workplace must always be very sterile. Conservative economists insist that economic orthodoxy requires little or no regulation of capitalistic enterprise, while liberal economists declare that for the good of the whole, nearly every aspect of capitalism needs to be regulated. Many conservatives believe that none of the Central American unaccompanied children showing up at our southern border should be allowed to come into the country, and many liberals believe they all should be allowed in. Thus one person’s orthodoxy is another person’s heresy, which is another word of Greek origin which means “to take,” as in “to take the wrong opinion” about something which supposedly was settled long ago.
The Roman emperor Constantine called a large conclave of the bishops of the early Church in 325 in the city of Nicea, across the Strait of the Bosporus from Byzantium. Constantine was not a Roman; he was probably born in what now is Bulgaria. By the early 4th century, both the political and the religious center of the Christian world had shifted from Rome to Byzantium. In a burst of imperial humility, Constantine changed the name of Byzantium to Constantinople, the City of Constantine.
When Constantine organized the Council of Nicea, he invited over six hundred Greek-speaking bishops from the eastern part of the empire, and almost no Latin-speaking bishops. Thus when the Council declared the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus to be orthodox teachings, they did so in a language which made those concepts clearer than they ever could have been in Latin. Greek lent itself more readily to the doctrines of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus than did Latin. By a vote among those who attended the council, the notions included in the Nicene Creed became the essential orthodox Christian position from then on. Nonetheless, many Christians since that time have doubted or denied the proclaimed orthodoxy.
Not infrequently, and in fact ordinarily, majority opinions determine what is orthodox, and minority opinions are declared heretical. In 2014 any Democrat who insists that marriage is legitimately a relationship only between a man and a woman is going to find himself with relatively few friends in his party, and any Republican who loudly supports same-sex marriage is going to discover how lonely it is in the GOP with such unorthodox views. Similarly, any mainline Protestant who strongly opposes the ordination of women clergy may feel forced or frozen out of whatever denomination to which he belongs, and any Roman Catholic or fundamentalist Christian who favors the ordination of properly-accredited women clergy may find herself in the same situation.
Defining orthodoxy or heresy is a tricky business, and it depends in large measure on the views of whoever is doing the defining. For much of our lives, some of us have been branded as heretics by people who considered themselves the epitome of orthodoxy, and others of us who are more orthodox have fitted in very nicely with those who agree with us on nearly everything.
A couple of weeks back I received a letter from a high school classmate. Twelve years ago she had started to read a book that I wrote. She put it down when, in the preface, I urged any Christian fundamentalist who happened to buy the book by mistake should read no further and get her money back. She began a lengthy letter to me right then, assuming I disapproved of fundamentalists, but she never mailed it. Then, eight years later, she decided to plow through the rest of the book, and she started to write me yet another letter. Only now, twelve years after this process started in the first place, did she print the text of all three partial letters stored in her computer and send them to me.
Initially, I considered trying to answer each of her objections in writing, but then I decided to call her instead. We had basically a pleasant conversation of about 45 minutes, and I was able to communicate far, far more than if I had written a response. In the end, to neither her surprise nor mine, neither of us changed the thinking of the other.
Is orthodox thinking only for those who don’t think? Well, this truly fine lady is very orthodox, and she is a thinker. However, I suspect she is very uncomfortable “thinking outside the box,” as we say. Some people question nearly everything, and others question almost nothing. That doesn’t automatically mean questioners are better thinkers, but it usually means they are more willing to seek a more compelling rationale for what passes as conventional thinking.
And that prompts a question: Is conventional thinking always orthodox thinking? No. Does orthodox thinking continue to be orthodox forever? Not necessarily. Divorce was very rare and unorthodox for most of the past twenty centuries in Christian culture, but now it is very common nearly everywhere. Is that good, or bad? It is certainly debatable, and the debate shall probably continue on a permanent basis. But orthodoxy regarding divorce has changed.
In the Russian Revolution, most communists were called Bolsheviks, although a relatively small number of them were called Mensheviks. “Bolsheviks” simply means “Majority-ists,” while “Mensheviks” means “Minority-ists.” Were the Bolsheviks orthodox and the Mensheviks heretical? The Bolsheviks thought so. After all, they won the debate which settled that. The Mensheviks disagreed, but they lost. And the most famous Menshevik, Leon Trotsky, ended up with an axe buried in his skull to prove how wrong he was.
Orthodoxy is always determined by the majority in intra-group disputes, and heresy is always espoused by the minority. But in religious disputes, is orthodoxy always orthodox, in God’s eyes, and is heresy always heretical to Him?
This issue was addressed many times in the Bible. The prophet Jeremiah apparently was a minority of one in his own time. He characterized what he called “the false prophets” in this way: “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of God is with us’? …The wise men shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken” (Jer. 8:8-9). Later Jeremiah puts these words into God’s mouth: “For both the prophet and the priest ply their trade through the land, and have no knowledge” (Jer. 14:18b). What a withering put-down! They “ply their trade”: could there be any more biting indictment than that of supposedly “religious” leaders? What they thought was orthodox was heretical, said Jeremiah, and what he taught was orthodox, although almost everyone considered it heretical. Only centuries later, when a Jewish conclave agreed on what particular writings were to be accepted into the Hebrew Bible, did Jeremiah pass from being an heretical gadfly in his own time to being one of the truly immortal prophets of Israel.
Robert Burns was a common Scotsman who lived much of his life in or near the village of his birthplace, Alloway, in Ayrshire. He regularly attended the village church, a Calvinist stronghold, but he was far from being a Calvinist. He wrote a poem called The Kirk’s Alarm, in which he began with one stanza which illustrated what he considered the problem, and twenty subsequent stanzas in which he described many people whom he disliked, and one about himself, whom he knew many people disliked. “Orthodox! Orthodox!/ Who believe in John Knox--/ Let me sound an alarm to your conscience;/ A heretic blast/ Has been blawn in the Wast,/ That what is not sense must be nonsense--/ Orthodox!/ That what is not sense must be nonsense.”
Then he gives a brazenly self-serving verse about himself, as seen through the eyes of the wee-minded folk o’ Alloway: “Poet Burns! Poet Burns!/ Wi’ your priest-spanking turns,/ Why desert ye your auld native shire?/ Your Muse is a gipsy,/ Yet were she ev’n tipsy,/ She could ca’ us nae worse than we are--/ Port Burns!/ She could ca’ us nae worse than we are.”
When Jesus was alive in Judea in the first third of the first century of the Common Era, the Pharisees and the scribal interpreters of the laws of Moses were the orthodox leaders of the Jewish community. Jesus was as strongly opposed to them as Robert Burns was to the orthodox leaders of the Alloway Kirk. Incidentally, Walter McGinty, a friend of mine from Trinity College of Glasgow University was the pastor of the church in Alloway for many years. Fortunately, he was not nearly as traditionally orthodox as the Alloway people whom Robert Burns excoriated. But for Mr. Burns Walter arrived two centuries too late. Anyway, Jesus gave the scribes and Pharisees holy what-for. “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! ...For you traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matthew 23:13,15). Strong language, that.
Orthodox thinking is often what it is claimed to be: correct, straight, and right. But not always. And when it isn’t right, it needs to be re-visited, so that the truths it claims to proclaim are far more widely agreed to be true.
On the editorial page of USA Today a few days ago, there were six brief clips of writings regarding the decision of the great majority of voters in the Anglican synod which declared that from henceforth the Church of England shall have female bishops. For eighteen centuries the orthodox position in the worldwide Christian Church regarding the ordination of women was that it was utterly unthinkable. Then, in the late 19th century, a few Protestant denominations began to ordain women as ministers, priests, and bishops. By the late 20th century, and now in the early 21st century, there are hundreds of Protestant denominations worldwide that ordain women. Many evangelical Protestant denominations do not yet do so, nor do the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Here are two brief paragraphs which illustrate the divide which still exists in Christendom over this question. Monsignor Mark Langham, a Catholic priest, wrote, “This is a critical moment for the ecumenical dialogue. Anglicans do not seem always to realize how difficult (allowing women bishops) is for Catholics. …(Consider) how two traditions, one of which ordains women bishops and one which does not, co-exist. The rug has been pulled out from under those who longed for unity.” I would note in passing that Monsignor Langham does not seem to realize how difficult this change was for multitudes of conservative Anglicans.
Then there was a brief quote from an English woman named Linda Woodhead, who, in my opinion, is certainly not wooden-headed, despite her surname. She wrote, “In recent decades (the Church of England has) been dominated by people who wanted it to become an exclusive ‘sect.’ …The maintenance of male privilege was a major element in their strategy. The fact that they have finally lost … is a significant victory for those who want to see the church regain lost respect and serve the whole nation again.”
Conflicts over orthodoxy inevitably cause some people to leave denominations and to join other denominations or to form new, small, and very ultra-orthodox denominations. Currently in this country Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, and American Baptists, among others, are being torn apart over debates about same-sex marriage, homosexual clergy, and how denominations should handle these disputes. Huge amounts of thought are poured into the discussions. But it seems to me that not enough thought is given to the damage done by drawing clear lines in the ecclesiastical sand over what can and cannot be allowed. Purity is chosen over unity, and Christ’s Church inevitably suffers when the dust finally clears, if it ever does.
The following observation may or may not be true. But when did I ever refrain from offering an opinion which might be incorrect? It seems to me that close-minded people are more likely to value orthodoxy in everything, whereas more open-minded people are willing to question the validity of long-held positions on anything. Another way to express that is to say that extremists on any side of any issue usually consider themselves and very few others to be orthodox and nearly everyone else to be heretical.
Orthodoxy in politics, economics, the law, foreign policy, or other such questions will always be debated. For better or worse, orthodoxy in matters of faith often evokes even greater heat, although not necessarily light. When it comes to genuine Christian faith, it is not so much the particular content of faith which counts, but rather its character. Does our faith allow for breadth of expression among others, or do we insist on narrow definitions to describe who we are and what we must believe? When content trumps character, contention is almost certain to follow. When character trumps content, peace should ensue, even if not everyone agrees with one another. But, considering the long and tortured history of religion, which is preferable: peace or contention, peace or purity?