Well, greetings everyone. Dr. Svoboda back for our next conversation around the topic of essential theology or what we would call orthodoxy. You've likely at some point in your Christian story had an experience where You you've gotten into a debate with a friend or a colleague or someone you work with in the church or maybe even your pastor. You've gotten into a debate about some important theological topic, be it women in ministry or sexuality or your view on angels or if the resurrection had to have been bodily or not. A really important part of the Christian story and being.
a Christian is being in the church and learning how to engage in theological dialogue with people that you are seeking to follow Jesus with. And this is a really important part of growing in our faith. And I think one of the most important things God will ever do for you is he will put you in an environment where you're going to have engagement with people that think differently about Jesus than you do. I can recall story after story after story over the years of being in seminary. And having this experience of being in the classroom with people who loved Jesus too, but came at their approach towards Jesus from such a different posture with so many different ideas.
And it's a little, at times, difficult to mitigate, understand, and learn to traverse major differences. in theological belief. And all the more the case when you're talking about differences of belief when it comes to maybe your own church.
Well, this whole conversation about what we believe as Christians and living in community with others brings us to the issue of the topic of, again, what we would call orthodoxy or what we're going to call here essential theology. And that is, what are the ins and outs of historic Christian doctrine. What are the most important beliefs, and what are the least important beliefs?
And are all beliefs as Christians equally as important and weighty? And a way to think about this is, in the early Christian community, as the earliest Christian communities were starting all over the world, there emerged this problem. And the problem that arose Almost immediately as the church begins to grow is that as the church enters into different cultures, nations, ethnicities, people groups, and ways of life, the Christian story begins to take on the flavor and the flair of those local particular cultures.
Almost immediately, you begin to see differences in different Christian communities. For example, the Christian witness and the Christian churches in what is called... Antiochian Christianity or around Antioch tended to take on a very different flair than those, for example, in and around the ancient city of Alexandria or the Alexandrian churches. And so these different communities, it's not that they believed in different Jesuses, it's that they worship Jesus in their own unique way. Well, this created theological diversity because very early on, these differences led to arguments about the nature of God.
How do we remain faithful to the true historic Jesus, while at the same time honoring theological differences in different parts of the world? And so very early on, this raised an issue for the earliest Christians on how to navigate these differences. In fact, when you go and read documents like the Apostles'Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Nicene Constantinoplean Creed, the Alexandrian Creed. You have all of these various creeds that the early church produced by virtue of what we call councils, gatherings of bishops and Christian leaders. These were, in essence, attempts at answering these questions.
What is in and what is out? If you go read the Nicene Creed, for example, you'll begin to see. one of the earliest formulations of what the skeleton of Christian belief is all about. They didn't iron out, by the way, all of the differences.
They leave some room for cultural differences, a variety of theological differences. But they incorporate the core issues, things like belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. And when you read the Nicene Creed, which is one of the first articulations of core Christian belief, mere Christianity, as C.S.
Lewis would call it. Bodily resurrection is one of them. The Trinity is a core belief.
And so this early on is what was called the difference between orthodoxy and heresy. And orthodoxy is our word for core Christian doctrine. The word orthodox simply means right teaching or good teaching.
And that is that which is acceptable, true, and always in every church. And the difference between orthodoxy and heresy. And by the way, the word heresy in our moment in time, in our moment in history, heresy basically has become the word that we use for Christians that we don't like.
You know, it's not uncommon for me on Twitter to see somebody call somebody a heretic. We really misuse the understanding of heresy in our time, because heresy is not a catch-all term for just Christians that annoy you. It is a historic concept drawn from the early church to determine those who have transcended or gone beyond core Christian doctrine. And by the way, when a heretic comes about, it's important that we call someone a heretic when that comes about.
But we have such a narrow understanding of heresy. We basically just use that word for anybody who says stuff that we don't like. Okay. So just because somebody has a different theological opinion about something doesn't necessarily mean they're heretic.
There are heretics, but not everything qualifies as heresy. A way to think about it is this. Think about the difference between a set of, for example, take the image of a fence.
The purpose of a fence is to keep the right things in and keep the right things out. It's the boundaries. But there's a difference between a fence and a well. A well, there's no boundaries to the well. A well is what everybody's trying to come to.
It's the thing that draws everybody in. But the fence exists to keep people out or exists to create a healthy set of boundaries. A fence is a very important thing to have. Without a fence, without boundaries, We become an amalgamous sort of collection of everything. And without boundaries, imagine your life without boundaries, without the capacity to say, no, that's not who I am.
Boundaries are really important for us. We need boundaries for healthy relationship. And likewise, we need boundaries in the history of the church.
That is to say, we need things that can help us differentiate what is within healthy, historic Christianity. And what is not? If somebody came to your church and began to declare that they were the son of God and were the next Messiah, nobody in the room would question the importance of boundaries at that point. To be able to say and articulate, no, you're not, and here's why.
I remember years ago an experience of a young man in the church that I pastored who felt as though He felt as though God was giving him freedom to leave his wife because he was not sexually satisfied. In moments like that, how important is it that we understand in and out beliefs, right beliefs and wrong beliefs? You see, we want everybody to be drawn to Jesus. Jesus is the well, okay? Jesus is the well.
We want everybody to be drawn to Jesus. But it is very important that we have boundaries. to guard and protect the well from people who poison it.
And of course, when I'm sitting with somebody who says that they feel like Jesus is telling them they can leave their wife and their marriage because they're not sexually fulfilled. Thank God I have a biblical text from which I can draw from to make it clear that that voice, whatever that voice you think you're hearing is not the voice of Jesus. Without theological boundaries.
we can do tremendous harm to a lot of people. Okay. Probably the most helpful way that I've heard this described comes from a Wesleyan scholar by the name of Roger Olson.
Olson is a high-level theologian, church historian, a brilliant thinker. His works, I can't commend to you enough. He writes in his book, The Story of Christian Theology, he offers a paradigm that I think is not only historically accurate as to how Christians have thought about this for 2000 years, but it's a really helpful way for us to do the work of discernment in thinking about essential theology.
So he argues in his book that not all theological beliefs are of the same importance. Okay. Meaning whether one believes that angels have wings or not is not as important as whether Jesus was physically and bodily raised from the grave.
So he would say this. He would say there are three levels of theological belief. There are, first of all, what he would call dogma beliefs.
Dogma beliefs. My God, you hear that word dogma. You probably don't like that word.
In fact, there have been movies made mocking the idea of dogma. When in reality, dogma is actually a Bible word. It comes from the Greek word dogmata. which is a word used in the New Testament regarding teachings. It just means teachings.
And dogma, Olson argues, are what we would call essential beliefs or essential theology. And that is to say, these are non-negotiable beliefs that Christians have believed for 2,000 years. And there has been little to no disagreement in a global Christian church, multi-ethnic, trans-cultural...
environment. That is to say that Christians in Africa, Tanzania, have believed in these doctrines as have those in Rome and those in Nantucket, America. So dogma are essential beliefs.
Or my friend Gary Brashears at Western Seminary calls them to die for beliefs. I don't like the violent language, but the point is beliefs that we would say. are worth fighting for.
They are non-negotiable beliefs. The second level for Olson is what he would call doctrine beliefs, or second order beliefs would be another way of saying this. And these are what he calls doctrine.
Doctrine, they're important beliefs. They're important beliefs, but they are not essential. They're not core.
These are not beliefs that if they change, you lose Christianity. You lose the essence of the Christian gospel. And again, going back to my friend Brashears, he calls these to divide over beliefs.
So to die for beliefs are like, you're either a Christian or you're not based on these beliefs. But doctrine beliefs are, they're important. They're really, really important, but they're not essential. In a moment, I'll give you some examples of these things.
The third level. are what we would call, what Luther called, Martin Luther called, adiaphora, which simply are theological opinions. These are opinion beliefs, okay? These are like completely inconsequential beliefs that don't have weight and bearing. They're still beliefs, and they're important, and Bible speaks to them, but they are not in any way, shape, or form the beliefs that we should be even dividing over.
Gary Brashears called these to debate over beliefs. Um, uh, you, you could say this is, uh, a pipe and beer questions, right? These are questions that, uh, we have a great time in the backyard, smoking a cigar and, and bickering over, but boy, oh boy, oh boy, are they inconsequential?
They are not that important. So, you know, what are these beliefs? You and I know, um, what many of these are.
In fact, how do we know? One of the things you got to do is we've got to get more acquainted and more comfortable with the earliest formulations of dogma. found in the Nicene Creed.
When you read the Nicene Creed, why the Nicene Creed and the Apostles'Creed are so fundamentally critical for us is that they identify for us what the earliest Christians, after the New Testament had been written, what the earliest Christians believed were non-negotiable. So you read the Nicene Creed, Trinity, bodily resurrection, the belief in hell, the belief in forgiveness of sins. the place of scripture.
Okay, inspiration of scripture. These are core beliefs. So let's take, for example, the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Does it matter that Jesus was bodily resurrected? Absolutely.
Read the Nicene Creed, the Apostles'Creed. Nowhere are we given any sense that Jesus resurrected in our hearts in some weird spiritual sense. He did not resurrect in our hearts.
He resurrected bodily. Paul affirms this by saying, If the resurrection of Jesus did not happen, then we are wasting our time. We are absolute fools.
Non-negotiable. The belief in the resurrection of Jesus is an absolute non-negotiable dogma issue. Doctrine.
Now, again, doctrinal issues are important, but they are not essential. And I'll give you an example of this, okay? And one example of this would be women in the church, women in ministry, women in the church, and the place of women in the church.
So clearly, obviously, I come from what would be called the egalitarian perspective, which would be that women can and should be affirmed and empowered for every element of church office possible for a human being. Some of my best friends are complementarians who believe and affirm women as made in the image of God and all the sort. but that there are particular roles that women cannot serve in the church.
Now, I wish I could say that the idea of women in all areas of ministry in the church was a dogma issue. I wish I had permission to determine that, but I don't. It is a doctrine issue where there has been disagreement in the history of the church, and yet...
Christians can disagree over this and still identify each other as Christians. Yes, we will probably divide over it. We will probably have different denominations as a result of it. But just because somebody disagrees on women in ministry does not mean they are not a Christian.
And that's a very sensitive one for many of us. Because again, I wish I could say it was a dogma issue. But historically, it is not.
And this is one of the marks of dogma is that I don't get to pick it. This is not something that I get to wake up in the morning and decide for myself. So that's a doctrine issue. An adiaphora issue would be the conversation around, for example, this is, I'm just bringing up this, is the issue of the sexuality of angels.
There's been a longstanding tradition in the history of the church around whether angels can have sex or not. You go, does that really? Well, go read, for example, Genesis chapter five, when the sons of God come and have sex with women. Or. There's a variety of stories in the Bible that we could bring up that seem to suggest on some level that there may be some sexuality involved.
We don't know. There's no way to know. It is a fascinating conversation of complete inconsequence for whether we are going to get along as Christians.
That is the kind of argument that you get a cigar out and you have a great conversation in a backyard somewhere. And so these are to debate for issues. I think what I'm trying to get at here is I want you to see. that not every belief has equal weight.
Now, one of the marks of what I would call toxic fundamentalism on both the conservative and progressive side, because fundamentalism is not in any way, shape, or form a monopoly on the right. One of the marks of toxic fundamentalism on the left and the right is that it actually ends up having too large of a list of doctrinal of dogma points. So for example, there are some kind of fundamentalist evangelical teachers who basically make everything a dogma issue. And I would contend in many respects, it's actually an issue of control, because it's a way of controlling people through doctrine and dogma.
And so everything is a dogma issue, from whether you believe angels had genitalia, to the issue of women in ministry, to the issue of the topic of... whatever it would be, that everything is a dogma issue. That is on the right, something that often happens.
But it is also something that happens on the left. And that is, for example, Christian movements that will say something like this. If you are not affirming on sexuality, meaning if you do not have a progressive perspective on sexuality, then you are an oppressive bigot.
who doesn't care about people and you you you have a dis you have you are dishonoring true spirituality well that is just fundamentalism on the left. And that particular person who's saying that is failing to neglect that up until the 1970s, all Christians everywhere had a historically Christian orthodox view on sexuality. So again, it's on both sides.
Fundamentalism, one of the marks of unhealthy toxic fundamentalism is that it oversteps its boundaries in terms of dogma and actually ends up having a... larger set of dogma than historic Christianity. So I'm with C.S. Lewis, who thinks we actually should have a very, very humble set of mere essential Christianity or mere Christianity understandings that represent all of Christians everywhere.
And I think, so it's a little bit like another way to think about this is, you know, dogma beliefs and doctrine beliefs. you know, when you're driving through the United States and you come to a new state, that's a very different thing than if you're entering a new country. You know, there are hard boundaries and there are soft boundaries.
And I would say the hard boundaries are, you know, dogma represents the hard boundaries. Those are in or out issues. But doctrine and adiaphora represent soft boundaries between states.
And, you know, when you go between states, you don't have to stop and give your ID and make sure that, you know, you can come in. There's a sense of freedom in doctrine and adiaphora, but there is a sense of rigidity and hard boundaries when it comes to Orthodox issues. Now, we're not going to get into it now, but a whole lot. But, you know, the question for a lot of things is. Is something an orthodox issue?
Is something a dogma issue? Or is something a doctrine issue? And one of the debates that's being had right now is, is the historic Christian view on sexuality a dogma issue or a doctrine issue?
Meaning, can Christians disagree on sexuality and still be Christians? I will be honest that I am increasingly convicted, convinced, based on a number of things, that the issue of sexuality is a dogma issue, both based on the earliest council in the Bible, which is in the book of Acts, the council in Jerusalem, in which sexual immorality is named as one of the core key issues of essential Christianity. I would contend that very early on, and among all the apostles and early church fathers, that that sexuality issue was considered a dogma issue.
But we could get into a long debate about that. I'm not going to get into that here. But just to say, this is a very important conversation for a moment in time. It's a very important issue at our moment in time.
Okay. So the repurchase Mendelius, the famous line, Amy Semple McPherson loved to quote this as though it was hers. It was not hers. The famous line Mendelius is, it goes something like this, in essentials, In essential matters, unity, and that is things that are core, unity. We agree on those things.
In non-essential matters, liberty. But in whatever we do, we do it with charity. I am very, very, very, very passionate on the topic of sexuality.
One could say I'm staunchly committed to the historic Christian witness on this topic of God's vision for sexuality. And even though I'm highly committed to that and believe with all my heart that it is not only the witness of Jesus, but the entirety of the biblical narrative, even though I'm passionate about that, I have to approach those that disagree with me with profound charity and generosity. And I have dear friends who land on the other side on the topic, for example, of sexuality.
And while I differ tremendously, I must approach it with generosity, kindness. and an open heartedness. And that's a hard thing to do.
How do you guard deep Christian beliefs, and yet still be compassionate? Now that raises, you know, in a second, I'm gonna talk about, I'm gonna talk about, I want, not in a second, I want to talk here about, about the importance of right belief, with not only right belief, but right living and right feeling. So there are, in Christian faithfulness, we have three different orthos, okay? Three different right approaches towards theology, or right approaches towards the Christian life.
Orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy. So what do we mean by that? So orthodoxy are right beliefs, okay?
Again, these are core Christian beliefs that have been handed down from the apostles. things like belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, so on and so forth. Orthopraxy is not right beliefs.
It is right living. So this is living out the way of Jesus. This is living out the ways of Jesus.
It's living out the ways of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Orthopraxy, praxis, practice.
Orthopraxy is right living. But there's a third level, and that is orthopathy, or right feeling and right affection. What you've got here is three different levels, belief, living, and affection, or feeling.
And orthopathy is living the right emotional response to life. Should it be that we feel angry when we see injustice? Absolutely.
Should we feel compassionate? for our friends that wrestle with same-sex sexual desire. Absolutely. That is orthopathy.
And yet, oftentimes what happens is in our orthopathy, our right feelings of compassion and empathy, we can often be drawn away from orthodoxy. And so our empathy can end up having an effect on our orthodoxy. Here's the idea.
is that we need to learn to tether all three of these together at the same time. That we do not abandon orthodoxy because of orthopathy. That we do not sacrifice orthodoxy to be orthopraxy for orthopraxy. Here's a good example.
I know a ton of Christians who have incredibly orthodox belief. They have all their doctrine down, but they are the meanest people you'll ever meet. I mean, they are just mean.
And so, you know, it's shocking. In the Bible, who is often most orthodox? The devil, the demons, who, when they talk about and to Jesus, always give right beliefs. He is the Holy One of God.
He does have power. He can cast you out. He is the Messiah.
The irony that the demonic powers have orthodox beliefs. They have right beliefs. They clearly have right beliefs.
They just don't have, they're not living the way of Jesus. And they certainly don't care the way Jesus does. Right. So orthopraxy, orthodoxy, and orthopathy must go hand in hand. We need all three of them to exist together, tethered together.
And the minute we pull one of those away from the others, bad things start happening. Okay. So orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy must go hand in hand. And in our moment in time where we are emotional beings, I would just guard your heart of allowing right emotions to pull you away from right beliefs. We need to keep the two tied together.
Another way to think about all this is that we do theology, but we've got to recognize sometimes we do theology, but we're not doing what we say. Or we aren't doing what we say we believe, or we are doing something that we don't believe. There are four levels of theological engagement, and I'm borrowing a number of theologians who have articulated this in very clear terms. But there are four kinds of theology in addition to all this.
The first is what we call espoused theology. And espoused theology is theology that we claim to believe, right? We espouse it. We say we believe it.
We declare it. I believe in women in all levels of ministry. I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I believe Jesus is the only way to God.
I believe in heaven and hell. I believe in the inspiration of the Bible. Those are espoused beliefs, okay?
And it is one thing to have an espoused belief. There's another kind of belief or theology that we would call operant. theology.
And operant theology is not necessarily theology that we believe, but it's the theology that we do. We are living it out. We are operating in it.
So unfortunately, unfortunately, a lot of Christians in my tribe and tradition claim they believe in women in ministry. But when you look at their ministry, it is not even close to reflecting that belief. Their operant theology, what they are doing.
is very, very different than what they say they are doing. And so operant theology is what we are actually doing by how we live. Embedded theology is the theology that we, by virtue of what we are doing, is what others receive. It's what they see us doing. Okay, so a great example of an embedded theology.
A number of years ago, I was invited to go to speak at a conference on creation care. And the conference was all about how to care for the earth from a Christian perspective. And when I got up to speak, they handed me a bottled water.
Now, when you're talking about creation care, if you are waxing eloquent about caring for the earth and you're doing it while drinking out of a water bottle, you are sending a very complex message. And so in that instance, unembedded theology was the theology that they were seeing from me. I may be saying one thing, but they are receiving that. drinking out of a water bottle seems to not matter. So an embedded theology is what others are receiving.
So espoused theology is what we claim. Operant theology is what we're doing. Embedded theology is what people are receiving. And the fourth, I think, is the most important one and the one that we should aim for. We shouldn't aim at just having an espoused theology.
We shouldn't aim at just having an operant theology or an embedded theology. We should aim for what we want to call an embedded, an embodied theology. And an embodied theology is this. Unembodied theology is that when our theology that we claim is the theology that we're practicing, and it's the theology that's being received.
And that is so that there is an alignment between what we say we believe, what we are doing, and what others are hearing and seeing us say and do. Jesus, obviously, in the Gospels writes a lot, speaks a lot about the issue of hypocrisy. And I think when you look at it through this lens, hypocrisy are those moments when our espoused theology and our operant theology are not aligned, that there is a discontinuity between what we are saying and what we are doing.
To be a follower of Jesus is to aim at being a holistic person who is integrated what they think, what they do. and what others are picking up. And the goal here is an embodied theology in all of our ministry, all of our work, all of our life, that there is alignment between what we say we believe, what we actually do, and what other people are picking up from us.
And that last point is for those of us who are teachers, very important, because Paul goes out of his way. It's hard to even say this. I'm a teacher. Paul goes out of his way to say teachers will be judged more harshly.
And I think part of that is that we have to recognize as teacher, God has given us a lot of authority. And if that authority is not used in a way that aligns with truth, we do a lot of harm and a lot of damage. So may we seek, and God help us, seek to have an embodied theology where what we claim and what we practice and what we what we give to others and has picked up is one in the same okay all right well this has been kind of an intro to essential theology or orthodoxy and i hope in some small way in part it has helped to spark some good thinking in you as you think about your own work ministry life there's certainly I'm ending this conversation realizing there are about four hours more worth of things I think we need to talk about.
But for the sake of keeping this manageable and digestible, we'll end it here. But this has been a brief introduction to essential and operant, or essential and orthodox theology. And I do hope it's been helpful.
All right. Thanks for your attention, time today, and God's grace in your ministry and work. We'll keep it going.
All right. Bye.