Orthodoxy vs. "It's Biblical!"

I really hate when people use “X is biblical”, during a debate. X is usually some long held belief, first said by some long ago dead dude, and espoused by a bunch of other long ago dead dudes. It seems to be the get out of debate free card.

“This debate has taken a turn for the worse. I don’t know how to respond to this criticism. What should I do? Oh I know…”

“Excuse me sir, but my long held belief that we are debating is Biblical! You can’t argue against Scripture! Check and mate!”

Do you know how annoying that is? Very. And you want to know something embarrassing? I have used that tactic in the past. I think that makes it even more hated in my book.

Anyway, this post is going to be about the difference between a belief being biblical, and a belief being orthodox.

First, however, some definitions:

• Biblical: of, relating to, or being in accord with the Bible
• Orthodox: from the Greek meaning “right belief”. (For the purpose of this post, I will switch between the term Orthodox and the phrase right belief)
  
  For the purpose of this post, Orthodox is not to be considered in relation to Eastern Orthodoxy, unless specified by the phrase "Eastern Orthodox". I realize I capitalize Orthodox quite a bit. I am too lazy to change it now. At the same time, I don't want any confusion.

All Orthodox beliefs are biblical, but not all beliefs classified as biblical are Orthodox. Most heresies (deviation from Orthodox belief) are biblical, but no heresy is Orthodox. In other words, one who has a heretical belief can find passages of scripture to back up their viewpoint. For example, I could string together a few verses to back up varying Gnostic beliefs. Maybe one has a view that the Jesus is different from Yahweh. We can look at some OT Scriptures point to Yahweh as being an evil god, while using the NT Scriptures to point to Jesus being a good god. This is a heresy, but one can twist Scripture (that is, cherry pick) to make their point.

One could also look at the religions of Mormonism, Islam, and Jehovah’s Witness (abbreviated to JW). Mormons and JWs are loosely Christian. In other words, they have some common elements to Orthodox Christianity. But most Christians would not recognize their beliefs as being right. Yet, the Mormon or JW will use various Scriptures from the Bible to back their beliefs. They have biblical beliefs, but not right beliefs. I have also seen a many dā‘ī (Muslim Missionary) use Christian Scripture to make a case for their beliefs (claiming that the Paraclete, or Helper, was Mohammed, for example). Certainly, not many Christians would say that a Muslim has the right belief. That would be completely contrary to the basis of Christianity. Yet, the Muslim can and will use the Bible to back up claims made by the Quran or Hadith.

Even within accepted Christian circles one will see opposing sides use the biblical card. Both the Arminian and the Calvinist, for example, use Scripture to back their beliefs. Are they both right? Can atonement be both universal and limited? Can Grace be prevenient, free, AND irresistible?

The Catholic, the Protestant, and the Eastern Orthodox can point to scripture to back up varying beliefs on a subject. Who is right? All have some sort of biblical viewpoint. Can the Eucharist be symbolic of Christ, and yet be the real blood and body of Christ? Is it both right and wrong to baptize infants? Of course not. Yet, all three dominant branches of Christian have biblical verses to back these views, along with many more.

What about the Pentecostal and Cessationalist? The Charismatic uses the Bible to support their view of the rather free usage of spiritual gifts, and the other uses the Bible to support the view that gifts have essentially ceased. Both have biblical support, but which is right?

Just because one’s view is claimed to be biblical does not make it a right belief.

What, then, does make a belief Orthodox? Well, that certainly is up for a lot of debate, I suppose. If we were to place an Eastern Orthodox, a Roman Catholic, and a Protestant in a room and ask this question, I am sure we would have 3 different answers. I certainly won’t claim to know more than the millions of priests, bishops, and theologians that have tried answering this question. Of course, that won’t prevent me from offering my opinion. This is my blog, after all. J

Before I give my opinion, I want to give a little background to how my opinion shaped. It is no secret to my friends that I have long had dissatisfaction with many Reformed beliefs. On the other hand, there are some that I feel are very reasonable and correct. That led to me consider varying Protestant doctrines. I was most familiar American Protestant traditions, such as Free Will Baptist, Church of Christ, and Assemblies of God.

So, I began to look at other Protestant churches, such as Lutheran and Anglican.

Again, I felt that some things were missing from these churches, so I moved on the Eastern Orthodoxy. There was, again, some things that I felt were right, and others that seemed wrong. Rinse and repeat with Roman Catholicism.

So where did this lead me? Well, it made me begin to read Church history a lot more, as well as the writings of the early Church fathers (ECF). I haven’t read all of the ECF’s writings, as I wanted to keep with the earliest of them (the first 200 years or so), but I’ve read enough to begin to form a strategy for qualifying beliefs as Orthodox.

Below, I will outline the strategy that I have developed. It is a little lengthy, so I suggest taking a break before continuing on.

Done with your break? Good. Let's continue.

First, the belief must be in Scripture.  I think that most Christians would agree that the Bible is indeed where we can find doctrine. But, as shown in the examples above, it is not enough to simply say that finding support in Scripture makes a belief right. If we stop at this step, we can make up any set of doctrine and claim it to be right because it is in the Bible. On the other hand, if the belief is found nowhere in Scripture, it can be automatically dismissed. If we are able to determine there is indeed Scriptural basis, we’ll need move on to the next step, which ties in right along with Scripture.

Second, context matters. The saying goes something like “context is king”. Believe it or not, context can make or break a belief. For example, let’s say a conservative Baptist church believes that women should be silent during service. They are not allowed to pray out loud, sing, preach, or even give announcements. This belief seems valid because there is scripture that says “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says” (1 Cor 14:34). Boom goes the dynamite. That verse proves that women should shut up in Church! How can you argue with me? It is biblical.

Well hold on cowboy, let’s look at the context of this verse. Now, this is not a cop out. Seriously. You really need to examine context. I don’t know if there is a right method to looking at context, but here are some tips:

• Are there any verses or passages that would seem to indicate the opposite of what I think a verse says?
• What do the verses around this verse say? Do they hold up my belief 100%?
• What is the theme of the chapter? Does it jive with my belief?
• Who was the author of this passage? Do they have other writings that line up with this belief?
• What was the situation for which the scripture was written?
• Who is the audience?
• What is the time period?
• What does the original language indicate?
• What is the style of writing?

For aforementioned belief, if I use context, I can put quite a bit of doubt into my belief by doing a little research. For starters, I know that this passage is attributed to Paul. He wrote a letter to a specific church  located in the city of Corinth. This specific church came with specific issues. One of these issues was that there were some scandalous women in this church that caused a lot of problems. From this, I might start imagining that he was specifically talking about these women.

Let's dig a little deeper.

 I also know that there are other writings from Paul that indicate there were women active in the early Church as deaconesses, among other things.  Further, I can find only one other passage from Paul that says that women need to be silent. In that verse, he is speaking to his protege about best practices in church leadership. And even then, he only states that he did not allow women to teach men.

If this were to be a right belief for all Churches and believers, I would imagine it would be included in all of his letters to the various churches. In fact, this doesn’t even come up again in his next letter to the Corinthians. That tells me that this verse was a solution to an issue with the particular church, for a particular period of time. Then the situation was handled, and didn’t need to be addressed again. The latter verse in 1st Timothy (women not permitted to teach) was not an absolute command, but seems to be a preference of one man. That hardly constitutes rigid Orthodox doctrine.

I would personally discredit the belief of the Baptist preacher after this step.  But for the purpose of this blog post, we will continue to go through my method.

So, if we are able to find support in scripture, and the belief stands up to contextual criticism, the next step would be to take a look at Tradition. This is a tricky one to deal with.  Before we continue, let me first clarify what I mean by tradition. I define tradition as the collective writings, beliefs, and actions of the early church. To avoid possible tainting, I try to limit tradition to the first 200 or 300 years of Christianity. Once we get to Nicene Council, the church becomes a little too cozy with the State for my liking. To avoid any possible corruption, I simply shy away from that post-Nicene period. That is not to say that Nicaea and beyond is corrupt. I do hold to the creeds, the canon, and most of the writings, after all. I just feel that the closer the tradition is to Jesus and the 12 Apostles, the less likely it is to have outside influences creeping in.

All of the being said, let’s get back to tradition and doctrine.

Do you remember how I said “All Orthodox beliefs are biblical, but not all beliefs classified as biblical are Orthodox”? Well, the same can be said of the relationship of orthodoxy and tradition. All orthodox beliefs can be found in Church tradition, but not all claimed tradition can be classified as orthodoxy/orthopraxy (right action).  In other word, if the belief is correct, one should be able to find it in the actions, writings, and beliefs of the earliest Christians.

Example time: Say there was an unknown, isolated tribe that converted to Christ after meeting St. Andrew. He teaches them the basics of the faith and then moves on to another tribe, only later to be martyred. This isolated tribe no longer has a connection to the early church and its leadership to teach it more practical matters.  So, let’s say they develop a tradition that mixes their former pagan beliefs and their new Christian beliefs. To celebrate the birth of Christ, they hold a ceremony where they kill a newborn child, to symbolize the pure atoning blood of Jesus. Imagine 1500 years later, this tribe is found by the outside world. They have this long standing tradition. Some of their holiest leaders have even written about the sacredness of this event. Would we consider this as right belief or action? Of course not! In fact, it wouldn’t even line up with Scripture!

Though that was a very extreme example, there are some seemingly harmless traditions that have no root in Scripture. This includes doctrines such as the ever Virginity of Mary. There is no scripture that says Mary was forever a Virgin (in fact, one even implies that she had sex with Joseph after Jesus was born).

It falls apart further when you examine historical context. The area that this belief took place was pagan, where there were many known virgin goddesses. We know that some of these beliefs mixed with Christianity sometime after the first few centuries of Christianity. It is not unreasonable to think that this was one of them.

Also, in terms of historicity, as a Jewish woman, Mary had a minor obligation to have sex with her husband. She could not withhold sex, else it would be grounds for divorce in some cases. Of course, a Catholic would retort that Mary was an extraordinary case. If that is true, then there should be some sort of proof for that claim.

Anyway, I said all of that to make a point. One needs to be careful with tradition. You cannot just take a tradition with no basis and try to use it to justify a belief.

Let’s look back to the example of our very conservative Baptist preacher that believes women should be silent in church. We already debunked it pretty thoroughly, but he wants to keep debating. He brings up Roman Catholic tradition of allowing only men to be Priests and Bishops. He wrongly interprets this as meaning that the Church has a history of women being silent. “Heck, even the Catholics got that one right”, he boasts. But, he didn’t do much studying. Well, it is time to school him on tradition. Remember, tradition is the collective writings, beliefs, and actions of the early church. If we look at writings of the ECFs (Polycarp, Clemente, Tertullian, etc), we’ll see automatically that there are women who are mentioned as having leading roles in the early church. Granted, none of them are considered priests or bishops. However, they do have roles which would indicate they spoke during the gathering of believers. This preacher doesn’t seem to have much to work on with his belief that women are to remain silent in service.

1. For most, it would seem that these three steps would be all you need to figure out if a belief is orthodox. However, there is one last step that I think is important. 

For the last step, I believe that one must go to the Holy Spirit for truth. As with tradition, this step has a great possibility for misuse and abuse. I have seen many people have really whacked beliefs because they were ‘led by the Spirit’.  The reason I list this as last is because of the potential for abuse. Anyone can claim the Holy Spirit gave them a special revelation. Remember, I said that almost all heresies are partially rooted in scripture. They are also partially rooted in this idea of “being led by the Spirit”.  Take Joseph Smith, for example. He claimed that he had a special revelation (although his was supposedly given by an angel). To back up this special revelation, he could cherry pick certain parts of the Bible to back him up. To further his claim, he created his own history, or tradition.

Many men and women who desire to fulfill their own beliefs will claim the Spirit led them to that point. How can we judge what the Spirit tells them? Are we God?  Well of course not. But God has told us to have a little judgment when it comes to these matters. If there it doesn’t pass the other three tests, why should I believe that your special revelation is anything other than a self -fulfilling fantasy aimed at fueling your pride?

Please don’t think I am diminishing the role of the Spirit in seeking out truth. May I die before do such an act! I simply wish to urge caution. Falsely attributing words or deeds to the Holy Spirit borders on being Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which is the unforgivable sin.

I should also mention that the Holy Spirit is the bookends of Orthodoxy. He inspired the hands of men to write the Scriptures, and He guides us to truth in our time of prayer and contemplation. He is at the beginning of this process and at the end.

One last note on this subject: I cannot stress enough the importance of meeting with a person, or group of people who are in the same spirit of seeking truth. You can do this in a formal church, with family,   or with friends. I think one is less likely to fall for a false belief, if they are with other people who can go through these steps with them. After all, iron sharpens iron. If two or more people gather to discuss beliefs, and are united in the Holy Spirit, He will lead them to truth. It might be a long and dirty trip, but I believe He is faithful to this purpose.

I know I went into too much detail, like I normally do.  Whoops, I’m doing it again… Anyway, here is a brief recap of the steps.


1. Can the belief be backed up Scripture?

2. Does the belief stand up to contextual criticism?

•  Criticisms include: Verses that seem to oppose, context within the chapter and book, tone of the author, audience, history, situation, literary techniques, etc. 

3. Does it align with the tradition of the Early Church?

• Remember, not all traditions are equal. If there is no basis for a tradition, don’t consider it. 
• Also remember that it might be better to consider the earliest traditions, as to avoid possible outside influences or corruption

4. Does the Holy Spirit affirm this belief?

• Remember that revelations not in line with Scripture and tradition are subject to intense scrutiny. Our sinful nature will try to deceive us into accepting falsehoods as truth.
• It is strongly recommended that you seek community with others who are fellowship with you in the Holy Spirit. There will be times you will need to them to smack you around, and there are times that you need to smack them around. Do this in love, of course. J

I am open to criticisms of this technique. I always look for ways to make my methods and beliefs stronger. I want to be rooted in truth. I do not want to be one of those who simply use Scripture as a weapon to fight against others and defend my own biases. I want to use it as a detective’s kit to find out more about God’s will for my life, for my family, and for my culture.

Blessings,

Thomas