The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Life in Christianity

0 Comments

Book Reviewed
by David Gushee
Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy, Union University.

The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Life in Christianity
by Thomas C. Oden
Book Reviewed by David Gushee New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

Every so often a book comes along that rattles your cage, changing not just your ideas about one thing or another but the very categories you think with. This transformational experience probably has as much to do with where the reader is "located" at the time as with the content of the book. I would like to reflect in this review on why I found Tom Oden`s new book, The Rebirth of Orthodoxy, to be transformational. To do so I must inevitably be a bit autobiographical. Yet I hope my comments are relevant to other people with other autobiographies.

Oden`s argument is crisp and clear. He claims that the modern world is fading-and with it modernist presuppositions about truth and how it may be known, and about the human condition and how it may be healed. Amidst the collapse of modernity, religious orthodoxy is making a comeback. Both Jews and Christians (and he refers respectfully to both throughout) are returning to the roots of their faith and reclaiming ancient texts, traditions, and convictions with growing confidence.

Oden defines orthodoxy as "integrated biblical teaching as interpreted in its most consensual classic period," or, more simply, "ancient consensual scriptural teaching." For Christians this "orthodoxy" includes the canonical scriptures and the ancient ecumenical teaching of the church in its first five centuries. Oden describes this as "consensual" teaching in that it gained wide consent by the faithful at the time and has retained this consent over the two millennia of Christian history. Oden is interested in affirming the version of Christian faith (doctrine, morals, and spirituality) that has been believed "everywhere, always, and by all," making much of this ancient ecumenical formulation of how Christian conviction is to be tested and affirmed.

To the extent that Rebirth offers a polemic, it is aimed at modern ecumenical Protestantism, with its symbolic headquarters in Geneva (World Council of Churches) and New York (National Council of Churches). Oden was once a loyal part of this world, but he tells us in this book how he broke with it and why its regular heterodoxy in doctrine and ethics must be opposed today in the name of ancient consensual scriptural teaching. He offers considerable attention to how orthodox boundaries are best marked, why they need to be marked, and the good fruit that can and might emerge if mainline Protestantism is re-centered around classic Christian orthodoxy. He points to numerous signs of a resurgence of such orthodoxy in mainline Christian circles today.

Those familiar with Oden`s career, and his recent body of work, will not be surprised at these themes. The turn to "paleo-orthodoxy," as he calls it in this book and elsewhere, the return to authoritative Scripture and its patristic interpreters, the emphasis on the classic creeds, the rejection of a modernist accommodation of Scripture to the epistemological presuppositions of logical positivism and scientific rationalism, and a polemic against drifting mainline Christianity, are all familiar notes.

This book is more autobiographical than any other Oden work that I have seen. He devotes a chapter to his personal story, and as he tells it the reader sees quite clearly how important has been Oden`s own search for roots, for a foundation worth standing on, for an anchorage point for theological and ethical reflection-and for life. Unlike some postmodern anti-foundationalists, he does believe that a foundation can still be found for certain Christian convictions. He finds it in ancient consensual scriptural teaching, the trustworthiness of which he believes is vouchsafed by the Holy Spirit as promised by Jesus. He is confident that after two thousand years (more, due to its common rooting with the even more ancient Jewish tradition), this paleo-orthodox Christianity has proven its truthfulness and its staying power. Oden will evaluate all formulations of Christian doctrine and ethics in light of both Scripture and the Fathers, and he strongly urges the rest of us to do the same.

I do not agree with everything that Oden says in this book. I am too much of a child of the Reformation to believe that the authority of Scripture and tradition can be woven together in the way that he seems to do here. (Though I very much appreciate the problems associated with the alternative "Scripture alone" position.) I seem to be more gravely disturbed than Oden by the times when even the finest Christian leaders erred badly, such as with the theological anti-Semitism of men like John Chrysostom, one of the eight patristic leaders Oden names as most authoritative. I think I must be more unhappy than Oden with the distortions introduced into Christian teaching by the accommodations to political power that were made by the church after Constantine. I want to hear more about Jesus and his centrality, the way his teachings stand in judgment over the words of church councils or any church Father, and how sadly even the best ancient creeds neglected the actual content of his proclamation.

However, Oden`s proposal still makes a great deal of sense to me. It makes sense not just of the history of Christianity (and Judaism), but also of my own personal history. It helps me understand what I have meant when I have claimed to be an evangelical Christian, and what I should mean when I say that today. It also makes sense, in a tragic way, of the internecine warfare that I have experienced as a Southern Baptist and of some of the strengths and weaknesses of my own tradition. And it helps me interpret the significance of the theological, liturgical, and ethical arguments still swirling in my Christian subculture today. I would like to make just a few brief comments about each.

Oden pictures a vast family of orthodox Christian faith. It includes historic Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism. To the extent that groups within each of these traditions retain ancient consensual Christian teaching, they are kinfolk. We are kinfolk. In this sense, the Christian family is far wider, broader, and deeper than most of us commonly think of it as being. Those who can recite the Apostles` Creed with full integrity of conviction (and live out Christian moral norms, and worship in spirit and in truth) are all part of Christian orthodoxy. We are a family of faith.

Oden`s classic (rather than "politically correct") inclusivism makes of the Christian family a big, sprawling, diverse-in-many-particulars-yet-united-in-essentials community of faith. He helps confirm my own sense of religious kinship with many different kinds of Christians and many different kinds of faith communities that I have encountered over the years. I feel at home in highly liturgical Catholic worship services (the tradition in which I was raised, by the way), in the embodied joy of the black church tradition, in the spontaneous celebration of a Pentecostal worship experience, in the rich expository preaching of a serious-minded Reformed congregation, and beyond. My spirit resonates with the spirit of deeply committed Christians in all of these traditions as we study, talk, pray, and work alongside one another. Oden`s big-tent paleo-orthodoxy helps me understand how I can feel at home in all of these settings, and why I should have little hesitation in doing so.

But it also helps me understand why there are Christian subcultures (churches and denominations) in which I cannot feel at home. In some cases it is because they have left classic consensual Christianity behind. In others it is because they have narrowed the boundaries of Christian identity beyond what is warranted.

I remember being unable to attend worship services after the first few weeks of my time in residence at Union Seminary (New York) as a doctoral student in 1987. The reason was simply that the liturgy and proclamation were too often idiosyncratic and bizarre, well beyond the boundary lines of a recognizable Christian orthodoxy. I was not a real strict boundary-marker at the time but my spirit knew that basic boundary lines were being transgressed. I found community there among a small group of orthodox Christians (I now know what to call them) who had a similar sense of where the boundary lines needed to be drawn.

I remember a first (and only) visit to an American Baptist Sunday School class outside Philadelphia in 1990. It was near Christmastime, and my wife and I were shocked to see that the focus of the class that day was to pour derision on those rubes (like us, it turned out) still ignorant enough to believe that Jesus was born of a literal virgin (of all things!).

Where the inspiration of the Scriptures is rejected; where the authority of the Bible for doctrine and life is rejected; where modernist presuppositions overwhelm historic faith in an avalanche of revision and derision-in places like this classic consensual Christianity has been lost, and there is no place for me.

For a long time I thought that this made me an evangelical. Evangelicals often define themselves as Bible-believing Christians, traditional Christians, conservative Christians, or some more sophisticated formulation. Oftentimes they want to evaluate thinkers and movements as to whether they are evangelical, or evangelical enough. Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are not counted as evangelical because they are not Protestants. Mainliners are usually not counted as evangelical because they are not conservative enough. And the historic black churches are often not counted as evangelical because they are not interested in the label.

Oden has helped me see that what matters is not whether someone is "an evangelical," or "evangelical enough," but whether they are orthodox biblical Christians. Evangelicalism is best understood as the name given to a variety of reform movements within historic Protestantism, beginning with the Reformation itself. These include Pietism, Puritanism, Wesleyanism, and others. What these diverse movements have in common is a desperate desire to renew Protestant Christianity along scriptural lines. In other words, they all intend a return to orthodoxy, whether in doctrine or in practice, or both. The "evangelical movement," then, is best understood as the handmaiden of the Spirit in returning the churches to orthodox Christian faith. I now see that I want to be known primarily as an orthodox biblical Christian, not an evangelical.

But do I still want to be known as a Baptist, or even, dare we say it, a "Southern Baptist"? What does Baptist identity have to do with orthodox Christianity? As I understand the origins of the Baptists, both sides of the family tree (Anabaptist and Reformed) originally can be identified as belonging to reform-minded (evangelical) Protestantism. That makes them a part of historic Christian orthodoxy. And to this day, most Baptists retain such an identity and often a way of life to go with it. This is why I feel so at home in most Baptist churches both here and around the world.

If Oden is right, it is more important to be orthodox than Baptist, or Southern Baptist. If a Baptist body ceases to be orthodox it is important to dissociate from it and find one that is orthodox. As a corollary, those seeking to move Baptist churches (or colleges, or seminaries) back securely to orthodox Christian identity when they have drifted outside the boundaries are doing valuable work.

The great denominational tragedy we have experienced as Southern Baptists, as I see it, is that our conservative-moderate political war obscured rather than clarified the legitimate struggle to retain or strengthen historic Christian orthodoxy among us. How?

Some institutions and individuals that remained within the bounds of historic Christian orthodoxy were treated as if they were heterodox because the vision of normative Christianity that was imposed was far narrower than historic Christian orthodoxy itself.

The tactics that were used to bring about the denominational transition sometimes transgressed the ecclesiological/moral standards of "ancient consensual Christian teaching," thus creating an inevitable resentment and a political reaction that obscured the legitimate theological/ethical issues.

This resentment made it all but impossible for orthodox reformists in some settings to make needed changes in institutions that had either drifted outside of historic Christian orthodoxy or were at risk of doing so-any effort to arrest such developments was (and is) labeled "fundamentalist," when in fact all it is, is "orthodox"-or for that matter, biblical.

There is another level at which Oden`s account of orthodoxy speaks to what it means to be Baptist-and to a real hunger in my own heart. This has to do with our profound disconnection from the historic liturgy, prayers, calendar, hymnody, artwork, and other traditions of the broader orthodox Christian family. When Oden speaks of praying the historic prayers, singing the historic songs, participating in the historic liturgy, all I can think of is the impoverished worship experience so common in our "three songs and a sermon" Sunday morning experience. That quite obvious impoverishment has stimulated its own reaction in the contemporary worship movement. I worship and serve at such a "contemporary" church, and certainly consider it an improvement. But as one who knows how rich the rhythms of ancient worship, ancient hymnody, and the ancient Christian calendar can be, sometimes I am all too aware that in light of the riches of the tradition we are serving our people thin gruel indeed.

Then when I go to work on Monday morning, and learn that the big argument among some on our campus is whether to take a Calvinist or Arminian stance on human freedom and divine sovereignty, or whether to reform church order entirely along Calvinist lines or instead stay with traditional Baptist polity, I am struck once again by the narrowness of vision that would make these the make or break issues for contemporary theology and church life. As if the ecclesiological conflicts of scholastic Protestantism are the heart of what matters in the entire historic Christian tradition.

Oden is right about many things, one of them being that when we choose to dwell in the precincts of historic Christian orthodoxy we learn what matters and what doesn`t, what is non-negotiable and what isn`t, where the historic boundary stones are placed and where they are not. We are able to understand small side arguments in the grand Christian tradition for what they are-and great confessional showdowns for what they are. We learn to avoid the kind of "broadmindedness" that sells the faith for a mess of (post) modern pottage, as well as the kind of "traditionalism" that unnecessarily slams the door on great numbers of orthodox faithful.

I am grateful to God for the journey he has given to Tom Oden, and I commend its literary fruit to any willing to pay attention.