The Lie of Orthodoxy
Oftentimes, when reading my musing on religion and spirituality, you will come across the term “orthodoxy”. If capitalized, I’m most likely referring to the Eastern traditions of Christianity which are known in the west as the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches - terms made more confusing by the fact that the words eastern and oriental are synonyms. However, if uncapitalized, the “orthodoxy” I’m referring to is the right (ortho) belief (doxy) of a given faith. For example, Hindu orthodoxy holds that the Vedas are divinely revealed scripture, Buddhist orthodoxy holds that there is no “self”, and Muslim orthodoxy holds that Muhammed is the final prophet of God.
I understand the inclination towards the defining of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy (or wrong/different belief). Terms like Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. wouldn’t really mean much if there was no somewhat coherent agreement about what defines a Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jew, etc. However, I also feel that the mere concept of orthodoxy is a lie, and perhaps the greatest lie ever sold to the faithful.
Take, for example, Christianity. The generally recognized Christian orthodoxy is summarized in the words of the Nicene Creed. But where did that creed come from? In order to argue that I need to hold to a particular belief, I feel that you should be required to offer a good argument for it. For something like, “What you do unto the least of these you do unto me”, we have that as a teaching attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. That seems good enough for me. But where do we find the notion that Jesus is “true God from true God” as stated in the Nicene Creed? Well…from the Nicene Creed.
More specifically, I suppose, we get it from the argumentations of the Christian bishops who met together in Nicaea some 1700 years ago at the behest of the Roman Emperor, Constantine. There, they argued the minutia of the faith so they could take this quickly growing tradition and subordinate it to a singular creed and a singular hierarchy of priests and bishops. Who was the emperor to support financially as the truth church? Who was the emperor to quell as false teachers? Who was a heretic and who taught the true faith? These were the questions argued out at Nicaea, and the Nicene Creed was the result.
But, and here’s the real kicker, why do I care what the bishops at Nicaea had to say about anything? Additionally, should I follow the original formulation still held by the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches, or should I recite the version innovated in the Western Church which includes that phrase “and the son” in the formulation of how the Holy Spirit comes forth? And if I do hold to one or the other, what am I to make of sacramental rites and apostolic authority? Should I adhere to the Pope or just find a church that works for me? Should I use the Catholic canon, which includes more books than the Protestant canon, or the Orthodox canon which includes still more? What if one or more of those “additional” books would shape my theology in a way the Protestant canon doesn’t?
And here we find the crux of the issue when it comes to “orthodoxy” - it isn’t that the tradition flows forth from the proper belief, it’s that the tradition decides what counts as proper belief. If you believe in the authority of the Pope, then you are going to have to interpret things differently than if you were a Baptist. And if you don’t care for the authority of the Christian scriptures at all, then you will find no reason to listen to them. Our traditions shape our beliefs and decide what is “orthodox” in order to create insiders and outsiders - those beholden to the authority of the tradition and those who are not, as well as those who should be converted and those who can be left alone.
The blunt, frustrating reality is that there is no inerrant authority, and there are no infallible leaders (and yes that includes ecumenical church councils). We can blindly accept their authority and thus subjugate ourselves, believing that the Holy Spirit spoke through these men of old, but then we must reckon with that fact that the authority to choose what binds us still resides within us. We have simply handed it over to someone else.
My advice? Ignore orthodoxy. Eschew the norms of traditional religious practice. Mix and match the beliefs that call most vividly to you and which ring the most true. Do not let “learned” men with clerical collars and seminary degrees dictate how you are allowed to interact with the divine. They do not hold the key to heaven (if such a thing can even be said to exist). God does. And I’m fairly certain God is perfectly capable of interacting with each of us on our own.
