RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Orme
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy
Commentary (London, 1881-89); The Christian View of God and the World (Kerr lectures for 1891; Edinburgh, 1893, 3d ed., 1897); The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith (London, 1897) ; Neglected Factors in the Study of the Early Progress of Christianity (1899); The Early Church: Its History and Literature (1901); The Progress of Dogma (Elliot lectures; 1901); David Hume and his Influence on Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh, 1903); Ritschlianism; Expository and Critical Essays (London, 1903); God's Image in Man and its Defacement in Light of Modern Denials (1905) ; Problem of the Old Testament Considered with Reference to Recent Criticism (Bross prize; 1906, 5th impression, 1908); The Bible under Trial. Apologetic Papers in View of Present Day Assaults on Holy Scripture (1907); The Virgin Birth of Christ (1907); and The Resurrection of Jesus (1908).
ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY.
Definition and Derivation (§ 1).
Historical Unfolding (§2).
The Modern Antithesis (§3).
Conflicts in America and Great Britain (§ 4).
Orthodoxy refers to a conscientious adherence to the Christian faith as taught in the Bible [or rather in the ecumenical creeds], and heterodoxy to a divergence from such teachings. The concepts do not occur in the Bible, for such phrases as those in Titus i. 9, 13; I Tim. i. 3; II Tim. i. 13, do not correspond to the antithi. Defini- esis expressed by these terms. Yet the tion and passages just cited furnish the basis Derivation, for the concept of orthodoxy, since Paul required that Christian teaching be in conformity with the words uttered by Christ and his disciples, equal authority being claimed for both because of such passages as Matt. x. 20, 40; Luke x. 16; John xiv. 12, which place the testimony of the apostles under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost. While the Church, in her establishment of the canon of Scripture, definitely recognized this norm of doctrine, she did not proceed immediately from the Bible, since there always intervened the general interpretation of the Word and the general belief of Christendom. Both these factors progressed, though by no means simultaneously and directly; but in such a way that the present time, with all its historical and philological skill in exegesis, falls far short of the living faith of the patristic or of the Reformation period, while the teaching of the Church then made a progress which can no longer be equaled. If orthodoxy be taken to mean, in its most general sense, conformity with the prevailing doctrines of the Church, it follows that such orthodoxy is no constant quantity, so that, in the course of evolution, a belief may be orthodox at one time and heterodox at another. This purely historical evolution is further complicated by sectarian divisions of the Church, thus giving rise to Lutheran orthodoxy and Reformed orthodoxy, Roman Catholic orthodoxy and Greek Catholic orthodoxy, and the orthodoxy of the most varied sects. This leads to the widest application of the terms, but a narrower sense is approached in considering in what measure the conformity of Church
members with Church doctrine may be expected. While the terms are seldom used with reference to laymen and non-theologians, all should be so instructed as to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in them (cf. I Pet. iii. 15). Those who give religious instruction, on the other hand, must be known to be in strict conformity with the teaching of the Church; and orthodoxy becomes of decisive importance for the clergy and scientific theologians, for they expressly take upon themselves the obligation to defend and to present the teachings of the Church whose service they have entered. The clergy not only should give orthodox sermons and instructions, but should be orthodox themselves. Even granting that the academic teacher and the theological writer should have wider scope than the general clergy, nevertheless no church can disassociate its theology from connection with the creed which it professes so as to allow the theologian to exchange the banner of the Church for liberal science. At the same time, the question arises as to where orthodoxy ceases and heterodoxy begins, and as to how far heterodoxy is to be tolerated before it evolves into actual error.
In answering this problem, Marheineke, in Daub and Creutzer/s Studien (1807), shows for the first three centuries the gradual unfolding of a fixed
and authoritative norm of doctrine
2. His- by the development of the rule of
torical faith, the labors of the Church Fathers,
Unfolding, and the Catholic episcopate. The
crystallization of doctrine involved two elements: the divine, which assured the abiding foundation of the Christian faith (i.e., the right understanding of the Scriptures); and the human, which made the development the transition to a stereotyped orthodoxy which sapped the spiritual life of the Greek Church more and more since the time of John of Damascus. In the western Church, on the other hand, the popes, rather by neglect than intention, gave ample scope throughout the Middle Ages to individual concepts and presentations of the doctrines of the Church. A great change was ushered in by the Reformation; for the Protestants not only made for themselves formal creeds, but forced others to do the same. The sixteenth century, therefore, was the period of creeds, and the seventeenth that of orthodoxy. Not only was this true of Protestantism, especially in Germany; but in France, during the same period, Roman Catholic orthodoxy, more especially Jesuitism, fought its great battle with Jansenism ; and the Greek Church, roused from her apathy by Cyril Lucar, again formulated her doctrines in the " Confession " of Petrus Mogilas. When orthodoxy became idolized and attempted to assert its exclusive despotism over the Church, it led to its own downfall. Yet the very flood of heterodoxy in the eighteenth century soon revealed what a dam had been removed; nor could either Pietism or supernaturalism withstand the onslaughts of rationalism, the Enlightenment, skepticism, and speculation. Despite all this, faith gradually found a firmer basis, even though there was, in the very nature of things, no return to the seventeenth century. The orthodoxy of the
Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy Osborne