Orthodoxy

The English equivalent of Greek orthodoxia (from orthos, "right," and doxa, "opinion"), meaning right belief, as opposed to heresy or heterodoxy. The term is not biblical; no secular or Christian writer uses it before the second century, though the verb orthodoxein is in Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics 1151a19). The word expresses the idea that certain statements accurately embody the revealed truth content of Christianity and are therefore in their own nature normative for the universal church. This idea is rooted in the NT insistence that the gospel has a specific factual and theological content (1 Cor. 15:1 - 11; Gal. 1:6 - 9; 1 Tim. 6:3; 2 Tim. 4:3 - 4; etc.), and that no fellowship exists between those who accept the apostolic standard of Christological teaching and those who deny it (1 John 4:1 - 3; 2 John 7 - 11).

The idea of orthodoxy became important in the church in and after the second century, through conflict first with Gnosticism and then with other Trinitarian and Christological errors. The preservation of Christianity was seen to require the maintenance of orthodoxy in these matters. Strict acceptance of the "rule of faith" (regula fidei) was demanded as a condition of communion, and creeds explicating this "rule" were multiplied.

The Eastern church styles itself "orthodox," and condemns the Western church as heterodox for (among other things) including the filioque clause in its creed.

Seventeenth century Protestant theologians, especially conservative Lutherans, stressed the importance of orthodoxy in relation to the soteriology of the Reformation creeds. Liberal Protestantism naturally regards any quest for orthodoxy as misguided and deadening.

J I Packer

Bibliography
H E W Turner, The Pattern of Christian Faith.