Entering the “House” of Faith

Part 3 of Christian Orthodoxy and Personal Faith

Perhaps expanding Turretin’s metaphor of a foundation into a whole house would help.

The front door to the house of Christian faith is orthodox, catholic, and reformed. Before my reader becomes so quickly distracted, please notice that all three of those labels are in the lowercase. Orthodox simply means “sound” or “straight” or “right” in teaching. Catholic simply means one or universal. Reformed simply means to be submitted to that renovation of the Word. That said, we are ready to approach the front door that is orthodox, catholic, and reformed. How so? It is orthodox in that it has exact dimensions, as every door should. It is catholic because it is a very wide doorway that could accommodate all, if only they would come. It is reformed because, being exposed to the elements, it has needed repair and always will until the Master of the house returns. Having placed stewards over the house, it is expected of them to be faithful tour guides, bringing out of its deepest storerooms treasures old and new (Mat. 13:52).

The speech of these “scribes of the kingdom” is tailored to the position of the guest. Endless pontifications on the blueprints, squabbles about the foundation inspection, or fussing over the recipe for the holiday meal, are all very inappropriate at the front door. Conversely, barging in on the foreman or head chefs to bring them up on charges of domestic violence, when in reality they are merely doing their appointed tasks would be equally impertinent. But let us not move too fast through the hallways and up the stairs.

Someone will say, “But, wait, Christ himself is the door! Didn’t he say, ‘I am the door’ in John’s Gospel?” Yes he did. But this is a figure of speech every bit as much as my house metaphor. What it means is that Jesus is the way of access into God’s family. Those three attributes that have described that door—and which, incidentally, make claims for other parts of the house too—are what they are because Christ is not literally a door. He must be depicted or represented for our weary travelers to see the way. This is true of his person and his work. Now because such a way must be accurately noticed, its early designs are called “orthodox.” Hence the early councils and creeds tended to be more heavily Christological. It is Jesus himself that is most obviously in view when approaching Christianity.

The Sense in Which Personal Faith Depends Upon Orthodox Presentation

This brings us to the first plain fact about relating Christian orthodoxy to personal faith. The subjective entry will depend, to some extent, on the objective doorway’s presentation. When the Apostle Paul was so astonished that his Galatian converts had so quickly walked back out that door in search of another, one of his appeals was this: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Gal. 3:1). Paul’s frustration only makes sense if his converts were expected to match their trajectory to his presentation. So it is quite true that subjective faith must not be confused with the objective faith—however, one’s own faith can only lay hold of what is available to the mind. The guest can only walk through a door that he can locate.

Now let us tackle the other extreme by shifting the metaphor. Supposing now that one guide does begin to disagree with another where the guests should be seated. Let us say that the one guide—let us call one of them “Peter”—begins to insist that the Gentile guests must sit at one table and the Jewish guests at another, and that in fact the Gentile guests need to perform certain duties before they can graduate to the same status in this house. Now just hypothetically, suppose that the other guide—by the name of “Paul”—opposes the first guide to his face, saying that this arrangement is “not in step with the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14).

What then? Rather than keep the reader in suspense, the story ends in Peter and Paul being reconciled, both going on to serve as the most important primary stewards of the Master’s house. Paul was correct, the matter was urgent, and yet they are brothers all the same. Moreover if Paul was right, then for his cause to be lost would have resulted in the gospel being undermined. So while the subjective faith of both was firmly protected by the Master in ultimate unity, the sight that their guests had of the objective faith was in jeopardy. Very well, then, we are ready to put together the moral of our metaphor.

Contemporary Christians who approach questions of what is essential to believe are going about it in a fractured way. They are coming either from one side or the other, oblivious that the other side exists. In doing so they have before their eyes two very commendable motives: discernment and charity.

However, while these are both virtues, plucked from their context they turn into vice.

Over-zealous Objectivism and Over-sensitive Subjectivism

One believer is trying to hold on to discernment as if it were in tension with charity. So if he hears that we have brothers and sisters in all of the Christian churches, he has no other categories but that orthodoxy has been surrendered. He confuses orthodoxy with “What about those people?” If you politely remind him that “orthodoxy” is not a person or that their last name is not “doxy,” he will be sure that you have misunderstood him and are not taking the situation very seriously.

Another believer is doing the opposite: she is trying to extend charity as if it were in tension with discernment. So if she hears that some remote “ism” is an erroneous doctrine, the indignant shakedown will follow: “Are you saying that church isn’t Christian?” or “So my mother is not saved?” But of course neither her mother, nor whatever church she is so worried about, are Subordinationism or Pelagianism or Open Theism. And they are free to disassociate their minds from those wretched falsehoods at any point.

One way to characterize this brother and sister’s respective mistakes is to show that neither of them have appreciated the “position-based” appropriateness of each conversation. The cook, the foreman, and the guide have varying degrees and kinds of orthodox speech that need to be shared in concert with specific tasks. The guide must be sensitive not to use too much “blueprint” or “recipe” talk to those first taking the tour.

Fair enough. But what would we say to a newcomer who breaks into the foreman’s office and begins questioning the precision of his measurements in front of the others? We have an awkward showdown. The steward is under orders to be gentle with those who must be nourished for a season before understanding. On the other hand, if the mob continues to collect and demands his sharp instruments and fancy paper to be handed over, the next part of the construction will be compromised.

The failure to distinguish between person and proposition, between subjective and objective, between Christian orthodoxy and a Christian’s faith, is, under the surface, a failure to have applied the truth of 1 Corinthians 12 to the complexity of overlapping tasks in theology, pastoral ministry, and brotherly love. Overcoming this failure is a natural part of maturity in the average Christian. It will happen over time. However this failure is inexcusable in the stewards of the house, since the show must go on both with respect to the construction project and the welcome tour. The house servants should know better.

The Postmodern Problem of Personifying Propositions

Postmodernism has blurred the lines between the object and subject for even the most “tough minded” of people. Beginning at the agnostic fountainhead of Kant and ending out in the muddy and shallow puddles of our culture’s thought life—such as there is one—the person and the proposition have become a total amalgamation. And the more offence one can take at the slightest departure from the interrogative tone, the better and humbler we have all been. What matters to what is left of speech is that all take comfort that not much was meant by it.

Theology is not immune. Indeed, because of its lofty subject matter, it is the orthodox theologian who was first to the interrogation room. However one tells the academic side of this story, one could scarcely deny that “the only heresy left is saying that there’s a heresy,” if I could borrow the line of a rapper who is far more sound in his lyrics than the vast majority of theologians. All this does is to create yet one more divide between those masculine souls who sense that this is all effeminate lunacy, and then the vast majority who either detest conflict or who have elevated the unassuming virtues to chief status.

It also does not help that we tend to oppose the words “orthodoxy” and “heresy” in our language, when we should be primarily thinking of “orthodoxy” and “heterodoxy” as the more accurate pairing. Modern scholarship has been unhelpful on this point.

After the History of Religions school had effectively placed all religious claims on perpetual equilibrium mode in terms of our “objective” study of them,1 Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934) was the theological version of the maxim that “History is written by its winners.” And even more conservative attempts at ecumenical treatments have tended to cast orthodoxy and its only acceptable evil twin, heresy, as a sociological construct.2 In other words, even where recent authors have lauded the orthodox cause, they have defined orthodoxy as what the Christian community had to do for the sake of its identity. The notion that such doctrines are attempting to conform to the mind of God is simply not, well, scholarly.

On the flip side, to say that some idea is heretical is, ipso facto, to prepare the flaming stake.

In the classical understanding of the word “heresy” we are dealing not simply with “false doctrine,” but with an error that strikes immediately to the heart of the faith and which has a divisive following. The Greek word from which it originates is used in the New Testament to speak of the “factious man” (Titus 3:10) and “divisions” (1 Cor. 11:19).

To illustrate all of this at an obvious level, think of that simple brother or sister who is filled with the Holy Spirit and loves Jesus, but who if asked about the Trinity would probably express something like Modalism. Indeed if asked about the distinctions between justification and sanctification, they may even feel too unnerved to continue the conversation. Would any of us say that such a person is unsaved? Of course not. Much less would we call them a “heretic.” And yet Modalism is called a heretical doctrine and all forms of works-righteousness are called a false gospel. Rightly so in both cases. What now? The answer is what I have already been suggesting. You may likely have to change the way you think about the relationship between Christian orthodoxy and personal faith.

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1. cf. Hugh R. Mackintos, “Does the Historical Study of Religions Yield a Dogmatic Theology?” The American Journal of Theology, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Oct., 1909).

2. cf. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984); Alister McGrath, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (New York: HarperOne, 2009).