What is "orthodox theology" in Christianity?

Conversation
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I must have missed his return. He was, for a time, completely gone, and it was stated that he and BioLogos had gone their separate ways. At the time he expressed his view that BioLogos had swung in more conservative direction or at least was influenced too much by conservative critics. He was replaced by John Walton as BioLogos’s “Bible guy”, and Walton at least superficially seemed less radical in his Biblical interpretation than Enns, so Enns’s account makes sense. But it is possible that since then, the forces of liberalism have pushed back the forces of conservatism at BioLogos, and liberalism is in the ascendant again.

Can you link me to one of Enns’s more recent BioLogos columns?

This does not strike me as impossible, and I certainly have my suspicions who one or two of them might be, but I have no proof of it. My overall sense back in the Falk-Giberson dispensation was that BioLogos leaders tended to drift into unorthodox theology rather than that they set out to promote unorthodoxy as such. I always got that sense regarding Falk, anyway, and perhaps Applegate as well. With some of the others, I often wondered if there wasn’t a more deliberate attempt to rewrite Christian theology, and not just to harmonize it with evolution, but because they actually didn’t like some of the foundational assumptions of traditional (for them Protestant) theology, and that evolution was merely the lever by which they could begin to make wider changes to the Protestant evangelical mindset.

I agree with you that if there is a covert agenda, it’s less admirable than an overtly liberal or radical agenda. Frank liberals and frank radicals, I can do business with. Liberals and radicals who feel guilty about and/or fearful of the consequences of their stance, and try to conceal it, drive me to rage. Not just regarding evolution, but in every walk of life.

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It’s starting to sound like a conspiracy theory. You clearly have strong feelings on the subject, to the extent that you may not be acting rationally.

Clearly wrong, since God could know some things about the future without knowing everything. Why, various passages in scripture clearly show God being surprised or events happening against his will. Perhaps he doesn’t sweat the small stuff.

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Right. So that means that the tenets of orthodoxy we’re discussing here are not in the Nicene creed; they’re in the writings of those theologians. And they also must be disentangled from the bits of those writings that are not tenets of orthodoxy. It’s not a simple task and not without considerable ambiguity. And that makes it a difficult subject for rational judgment and discussion.

Here you seem to be using “orthodoxy” as just a synonym for “majority tradition”. And we seem to have abandoned Eddie’s criterion of “foundational”.

What would be more to the point would be to include those creeds, works, and writings as separate containers of the tenets of orthodoxy, rather than suppose that the Nicene creed contains them all hidden within.

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Earlier in the article I linked to it made some references to prominent early theologians:

This is a secondary source, so I certainly won’t swear by it, but it is interesting if you think it deserves a follow up. A bit of further digging makes me think there is a combination of hyperbole associated with these claims. So for now, put a pin in it. A surprisingly decent article over at TSZ:

http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/lightning-rods-and-the-church-john-loftus-resurrects-a-hoary-old-myth/

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Well said. To date, I don’t believe anyone has really done this. I’ve followed many attempts, currently interested in WLC’s attempt which I’m rather impressed with. In the end though, close but no cigar.

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Yet you’ve said you have had little or nothing to do with BioLogos, whereas Joshua has had many face-to-face meetings with its personnel, worshipped with some of them at Christian conferences, etc. Would he not know more about what goes on behind the scenes than you would?

So let’s say Daniel would accept your reformulation. What of it? The point is still that there is an orthodoxy, and that we can tell when something is unorthodox by reference to it. It makes no difference what document the orthodoxy is derived from.

Debatable. In any case, we are talking about the orthodox interpretation of Scripture, not naked Scripture.

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I’m sorry, I missed that somewhat oblique reply.

The SBC explicitly rejects OT in its ‘Baptist Faith and Message’:

God is all powerful and all knowing; and His perfect knowledge extends to all things, past, present, and future, including the future decisions of His free creatures.

The Baptist General Conference on the other hand narrowly rejected a motion challenging OT in 1999.

John Polkinghorne, who is fairly prominent in Anglican circles, has apparently openly endorsed OT.

It is possible that, if discussion of it outside American evangelical circles has lacked the ferocity, and particularly the ferocious institutional infighting, within those circles, that it has ‘flown under the radar’.

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Open theism is more than just believing in free will. It says God doesn’t know what we will choose and must react to them instead of foreknowing them and preparing for them. This is what I believe Daniel meant when he said there’s a “non-zero chance” God will not accomplish His purposes. Some of His purposes might, and scripturally do, involve human choices integrated into them.

There are other free will views. For example Molinism claims God knows the results of free choices simply as a basic quality of being God, included in omniscience, but still allows free will. God could be outside of time and know the future by observation rather than by causing it, allowing free will and foreknowledge of free choices.

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I have not researched this, but as far as I know, the late John Polkinghorne, a leading Open Theist and Church of England priest, was never condemned or disciplined by the Church of England for teaching Open Theism. Perhaps Jon Garvey knows more about this.

It would surprise me if official condemnations of Open Theism came from the English Church, which is pretty namby-pamby theologically and has been for quite a few decades. I don’t think the Church of England any longer has the guts or the spine to say that something is heretical theology and that it will not be tolerated. It already has almost empty churches, and anything that smacked of “non-inclusiveness” might shrink its membership even more. The CoE is operating on reserve oxygen at the moment, and I don’t think it will still be in existence by the year 2100. In fact, I think all of mainstream Protestantism will be dead by then, with only fundamentalists, Pentecostals and some evangelicals still in existence.

When I spoke of Anglicanism, I was speaking of traditional Anglicanism, as it was bequeathed to us by people like Cranmer and Hooker. That traditional Anglicanism tried to incorporate all that was good in the Reformation while retaining the theological tradition of the Middle Ages and the ancient Church as far as possible. A traditional Anglican would regard Open Theism with horror. That would be the reaction I would expect from, say, Anglican theologians in Nigeria, which has broken with the Church of England and now is allied with disaffected conservative Anglicans worldwide. But in England, the USA, Canada, etc. I expect the attitude of mainstream Anglican authorities regarding Open Theism would be laissez-faire.

I expect the Catholic response would be much more vigorous, as the Roman Church, unlike the mainstream Anglican churches, still thinks that orthodoxy is worth defending, but I have not researched the response to Open Theism specifically.

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I suspect most Anglicans have never heard of John Polkinghorne :slight_smile: .

I should also add that this sort of analysis doesn’t require picking a side in these debates, or agreeing with any particular side. Just from a “people watching” or sociological point of view, we can talk about what ideas are accepted in particular groupings of Christian.

This original conversations was about Evangelicals, and ETS is the critical body in many ways. That is explicitly a target audience of evolutionary creationists, and they make a showing there every year. If one’s audience is theologians at ETS, It really doesn’t matter if Catholics agree with doctrine X if most ETS theologians reject doctrine X.

With that in mind, it was pretty surprising and avoidable tactical error for evolutionary creationists to latched on to Open Theism in the earlier days, after it had been soundly thumped (even if OT leaders weren’t expelled) at ETS.

Part of what was going on, it seems, is that not many ETS theologians were okay with evolution, but the OT theologians liked evolution. For them, it might have seemed like a validation of their position, demonstrating that science was ultimately on their side, and the rest of their colleagues would eventually have to adapt. That’s all good and fine if science actually does demand OT, but it doesn’t.

If the goal is to advocate OT, then conflating evolutionary science with OT made a lot of sense, even if it was confused (at best) or dishonest (at worst).

If the goal is to advocate evolutionary science, then conflating evolution with OT is disastrous, reinforcing rather than correcting many anti-evolutionist arguments.

Even BioLogos themselves realized (many years later) that this was a mistake, and they don’t conflate the two any more.

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Many of us who identify with the orthodox tradition tend to view it as metaphorically similar to a living organism, consisting of an intimately connected set of theological and philosophical beliefs, practices, and ways of thinking, rather than a motley grab bag of disparate beliefs, or “separate containers”, as you put it. Individual creeds and writings reflect different aspects of this living organism, but don’t express it fully. At the same time, because it’s a unified organism, even a limited picture of it can be said to implicitly contain the whole tradition.

So I do not agree that an orthodox doctrine of God is not contained in the Nicene creed - the actual Nicene creed as it was formulated and confessed in the history of the church certainly assumes a certain understanding of God which would be in deep tension with modern innovations like open theism.

I’m not sure which of Eddie’s criteria you’re referring to. Yes, orthodoxy can be thought of as the majority tradition.

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Yes, in fact it was. And they were wrong.

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Ah, so it’s an elephant, and orthodoxy is very like a rope, or perhaps a wall or a tree.

Yeah, that’s not how organisms work, so best abandon the metaphor.

Eddie disposed of any religious opinions he didn’t want to entertain by saying they weren’t foundational and thus weren’t theology.

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For clarity to onlookers, Pete Enns does not accept open theism. His departure from evangelicalism lies elsewhere (e.g., rejection of inerrancy). I don’t know his view on the early creeds. (He does believe in the resurrection.)

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Really? I thought I was open theism all the way. What did I miss? (And thanks for the correction!)

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I heard him state on his podcast a while back that he didn’t think open theism was the solution or way to go.

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Well I’ll take your word for it. I stand corrected.

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