Monday, September 23, 2002

Orthodox - is it any longer a useful adjective?

We seem to know what is orthodoxy and who is orthodox; yet "we" are not one unit but many units and thus there are multiple definitions of orthodoxy and differing interpretations of who is orthodox.

This is perhaps inevitable when the Church scene at its more conservative end is that both of competitive denominations/jurisdictions and competitive groups within a denomination.

Because of individualism begin taken as a given in Western society, we speak of this or that person and this or that group being "orthodox." Yet there is no commonly agreed definition of orthodoxy.

Of course, if we accept that older patristic definition of orthodoxy, as that is still embraced in the Orthodox Churches and by the Roman Catholic Church, then we say that orthodoxy is first and foremost an attribute or quality of the true Church and that a member thereof is orthodox because as a baptized believer he has embraced the true Faith, believed, taught and confessed by the true Church. Here there is no individualism as such for the attribute belongs only to the Church as Church and is applied only to faithful members thereof. [One may find a similar approach in the Caroline Divines of the C of E in the 17th Century.]

From my observations it is also true that we Anglicans or Episcopalians change our definitions of orthodoxy in order to serve the cause that we have embraced. For example, you will hear Forward in Faith members defining orthodoxy to include the Threefold Ministry as being by Christ's design a male-only Ministry. Then when they want to praise certain Bishops in the AAC, who ordain women, but who have been kind to F in F members they will call them orthodox.

This implies that orthodoxy has a minimal and maximum definition and perhaps also that the minimal is what is necessary to eternal salvation in Christ Jesus while the maximum is the listing of everything that should be believed in a perfect situation. It may also imply a hierarchy of truths wherein the all-male Ministry may not be in the top ten.

I have never read a definition of orthodoxy from either F in F or from the AAC. But neither have I from the AMiA. The Prayer Book Society has always assumed that those who use the classic Book of Common Prayer according to its internal spirit and rubrics will be orthodox at least in intention.

Maybe in a pragmatic world and for practical purposes, it is best that there is not any clear and final definition of orthodoxy for without such there can be a fluid situation when political necessity requires cooperation with & affirmation of the other (or the opposite!). So one can move from a minimal to a maximum and from a maximum to a minimal as occasion requires.

When it comes to bringing together (in convergence & congress and then into comprehensiveness in a National Anglican Church) the various schools and expressions of Anglicanism/Episcopalianism that claim to be or aspire to be orthodox, obviously the very minimal definition will have to be used first of all in order for there to any possibility of the meeting of minds and the beginnings of conversation and cooperation. That is, a general acceptance of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, the truth of the Creeds, the necessity of the two dominical Sacraments, the Three fold Ministry and the historic Formularies of the Anglican Way (classic BCP, Ordinal and Articles). This acceptance would not be an agreement as to the interpretation of these Standards but the granting that they are basic to what has been and is Anglicanism. Thus it would leave room at the start of dialogue for those who believed that women were to be within the Threefold Ministry and for those who wanted to use modern prayer books (but with the classic BCP as the standard of worship & doctrine) and so on and so forth.

In the end, orthodoxy (minimal or maximum) as right belief, without the holiness of the members of the beauty, reverence of worship and warm-hearted evangelization, is cold and hard. In fact genuine orthodoxy embraces worship, doctrine and discipline.

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor, England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large of The Prayer Book Society of America

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