Athanasius the Extremist
The history of Christian belief is complex and fascinating. One important question raised by a recent piece by Michael Beck is whether there has ever been a single orthodoxy in the church. He raises this question by conflating three distinct typologies from Justo González (Christian Thought Revisited), Dorothee Sölle (Thinking About God), Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder (Constants in Context). Typologies can be helpful, but in dealing with historical matters one should be cautious in applying loaded contemporary categories like “liberal” and “conservative” to voices and documents from centuries past. It is also not at all clear that these three distinct typologies overlap as neatly as is suggested. Beck, however, is not wrong that there were a number of theological trajectories in the early church that were considered orthodox. Defining some terms will be helpful in what follows.
“Orthodox” means “right doctrine” or “right praise.” Thus a critical distinction, missing from the piece in question, is needed between doctrine and theology. Doctrine essentially means teaching; dogma is a parallel word, but both name the basic commitments of the church across time and geography. In this sense, there has been an orthodoxy from the earliest days of the Christian movement. Thomas Oden helpfully referred to this as the “consensual tradition.”
As St. Vincent of Lerins put it in the 5th century, the church proclaims "what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all." These are what could be described as settled questions in the life of the church. As we will see, however, these answers the Spirit has revealed to the church are less ways of closing the conversation and more like language to preserve the glorious mysteries of salvation in Jesus Christ. That is the function of doctrine.
Theology, on the other hand, names the spiritual and academic discipline of reflecting creatively on dogma in new and fresh ways, and speculating about more open questions. For instance, debating various atonement theories falls under the realm of theology. That we are saved by divine grace is a classic Christian doctrine; how we are saved by divine grace can be answered in numerous ways (Anselm, Abelard, etc.), and the church has never canonized a particular model. Likewise, the Arminian-Calvinist debate exists in the realm of theology; one can be a Calvinist or Arminian and still be an orthodox Christian.
This is an important distinction to keep in mind when evaluating a claim like this, at the heart of Beck's argument:
There has never been a single “orthodox theology” in history. Tracing back even to the four Gospels we see distinct theologies that reflect the writers/communities’ contextual circumstances.
This is highly imprecise language to describe complex phenomena. The question of the four Gospels has been treated at length by biblical scholars like Francis Watson (The Fourfold Gospel) and Bruce Metzger (The Canon of the New Testament). Richard Burridge puts it best, however, when he argues that the New Testament gives us four gospels, but one Jesus. (See his aptly titled Four Gospels, One Jesus). Of course there are different theologies represented by the diverse authors and communities of the New Testament canon, but they all fall within what was determined to be orthodox teaching. This is in distinction to many texts, including a large number of documents purporting to be gospels, which were not canonized. Despite what many popular authors claim, these were not lost, suppressed, or forgotten. They fell out of use because they did not teach the faith widely proclaimed among the churches.
On the larger question: it would be much closer to the truth to say that there was never a single theology in the early church, but the basic outlines of orthodox dogma are there from the earliest days, not least in Scripture itself and in the writings of the Fathers and Mothers. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul cites what many scholars believe is a proto-creed about the resurrection of Jesus ("For what I received I handed on to you..."). In the next century, Irenaeus and others wrote about the "Rule of Faith," the basic summary of the gospel that united all Christian churches. It was on the basis of this early rule of faith that converts were catechized and the New Testament was canonized. The church was baptizing new Christians before there was a New Testament. This could be so only because there was broad agreement – an orthodoxy – regarding the basic outlines of the faith. But there is more, and here is why this debate matters.
What Beck fails to take into account is that there were groups who considered themselves Christians in the early centuries of the church who fell outside of the Rule of Faith. Scholars like Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels have spilled a great deal of ink defending the self-description of these groups, such as Gnostics, as Christians. Arguing against the existence of an orthodoxy in the early church sounds a great deal like disagreeing with the apostles, doctors, and martyrs of the church. There is a world of difference between noting theological tensions within the church (such as between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools) and claiming implicitly that every group who referenced Jesus was in fact Christian. Just ask Athanasius.
Athanasius Contra Mundum
What became the Nicene-Constanopolitan Creed, the bedrock statement of Christian doctrine, was at the time of the First Ecumenical Council an extremist position on the identity of Jesus. Arius was the doctrinal centrist; his homoiousios position was a middle ground between the extremist heterousians (also called "dissimilarians") who believed Jesus and God were not of like substance, and the homoousians led by Athanasius, who held that the Father and Son were "of the same" substance.
Arius and his party, who were quite powerful in this period, offered a compromise: The Father and the Son were of similar (homoiousios) substance. Athanasius and those in his corner balked at this. Anything short of affirming the full and eternal divinity of Jesus meant that Christians were idolaters, for they worshiped a creature rather than the Creator. The "extremist" homoousios party won the day, and this has been Christian dogma for over a thousand years. For his bold stance, for which he endured exile multiple times, Athanasius earned the moniker contra mundum, "against the world." For Athanasius, the divinity of Christ was a matter of orthodoxy. For Arius and others, it was an arena of contested theological claims that could live in tension. The church ultimately sided with Athanasius.
Not every group that claims the name of Jesus is part of the church. Irenaeus, far from being a writer who winked at doctrinal pluralism, makes a strong case for this.
Irenaeus and the Deceptive Mosaic
One of Irenaeus' best-known insights involves a thought experiment. In Against Heresies 1.8, he describes artists who take the pieces of a beautiful mosaic depicting a king and rearrange them. Instead of a king, they force the pieces to depict a fox or a dog, and they still celebrate the image as if it is a king. The pieces are the same, but the arrangement is different.
So too, Irenaeus implies, are the heretics. They take the Scriptures out of context and rearrange them into something different, while claiming that the image is identical. "In like manner do these persons patch together old wives' fables, and then endeavor, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions."
This leads us to the important distinction between heresy and outright paganism. Pagans know they are not Christian and do not pretend to be. Heretics, on the other hand, know Christian truth but reject it. They rearrange the pieces of the mosaic, claiming the truth, but in fact presenting false teaching.
Technically, to be a heretic is not to have bad theology. It is to be outside the bounds of Christian doctrine.
Theological or Doctrinal Pluralism?
As we have already seen, the distinction between theology and doctrine is often blurred in discussions about the presence, absence, or importance of Christian teaching within a community. When talking about the diversity of Christian speech, much depends on whether we are celebrating theological diversity or inviting doctrinal pluralism. If the claim being made is that there are many ways to express the orthodox faith, we are in the realm of helpful theological diversity. But if what is being defended is doctrinal pluralism, which is really the sort of indifferentism that Wesley himself derided as "the spawn of hell," we have entered a morass.
Wesley was not indifferent to matters of doctrine. As Randy Maddox has argued in reference to the much-discussed sermon "The Catholic Spirit" just cited, "for Wesley, authoritative formulations of Christian teachings like the Thirty-Nine articles of the Anglican Church were articulations of Christian 'doctrine.' His understandings of these teachings were his 'opinions.'" There is, in Wesley, the crucial distinction between authoritative doctrine and various explications of those doctrines that we have already named. Thus Beck, in the last paragraph of his piece, explicitly misconstrues Wesley when he conflates orthodoxy with “right opinion.”
"Ah," one may say, "but can we not have unity in essentials, diversity in non-essentials, and charity in all things?" This sounds good, but amounts to little more than pious question-begging. Who determines what is essential and what is non-essential? You may (rightly) say the Trinity is an essential doctrine, but what happens when someone baptizes in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer? This person likely believes he or she is a Trinitarian honoring the Nicene faith, but one could quite easily identify this alternative formulation as an instance of modalism. The mosaic has been rearranged; Christian words are being used, but the church's grammar has been broken.
Seinfeld and the Purpose of Doctrinal Standards
In recent debates about the status of orthodox teaching in the UMC, the inviolability of the doctrinal standards is often proffered as counter-evidence to any concerns about the future prospects for United Methodist preaching and teaching. To be sure, it is worth celebrating that the Restrictive Rule protects our Doctrinal Standards, such as the Articles of Religion and the EUB Confession of Faith, along with Wesley's New Testament notes and his sermons. These are rich sources of Methodist doctrine that deserve attention. But does the Restrictive Rule thus guarantee the doctrinal orthodoxy of the church? Let me answer this by way of a sitcom.
In a classic Seinfeld scene, Jerry gets frustrated at the airport when the rental car company loses his reservation.
Jerry : I don't understand, I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation?
Rental Agent : We have your reservation. Unfortunately we ran out of cars.
Jerry : But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
Rental Agent : I know why we have reservations.
Jerry : I don't think you do. You see, you know how to *take* the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation: the holding.
On paper, Jerry had a reservation. But when it was time to drive the car, the reservation did not actually safeguard a vehicle for him to rent. This, I would argue, is something like the status of our doctrinal standards. We have a reservation; on paper, we have excellent doctrinal standards. They are protected quite seriously within the Discipline and are practically impossible to change at a General Conference. But do these documents actually function as "standards?”
This is a much harder question to answer. To be fair, no one seeking to answer that question is disinterested. Institutionalists have every incentive to argue for broad, orthodox teaching across the whole of the denomination. (Could we describe this as "weaponized institutionalism"?) Evangelicals, particularly those who may discern a desire to leave the UMC, are incentivized to highlight people and situations that poke holes in this narrative.
I am not going to pretend to settle this question. It is enough here to raise the issues and simply point out that having strong doctrine on paper does not automatically mean that clergy, theologians, General Agencies, and others who speak, write, teach, and preach in the UMC are held to the dogmatic content of the documents we protect as standards of orthodoxy. I suspect, at minimum, that it varies widely across the connection. I spoke to a colleague in my conference recently, for instance, who told me she quite intentionally used the Doctrinal Standards when serving on our Board of Ordained Ministry and examining candidates for ordination. I hope this is a common practice across our connection, but I am doubtful.
We have a reservation, but whether that piece of paper amounts to a car for us to drive is – pardon the pun – where the rubber meets the road.
The Beauty of Orthodoxy: Preserving the Mystery
In debates over these questions, dogma and mystery are often pitted against one another. I have been in more than one heavy doctrinal discussion with a clergy colleague who simply pled "mystery" when the going got tough. But rightly understood, Christian doctrine preserves what the UMC eucharistic liturgy calls "the mystery of faith." For instance, the two chief dogmas we've already discussed, the Trinity and the Incarnation, are both names for mysteries. The Holy Spirit has led the church to confess that somehow God is One and Three and somehow Jesus is fully human and fully divine, and yet we do not comprehend with human reason how this is so. These are mysteries that Scripture presses us to confess, which the Spirit has convicted the Church to proclaim, but we do not fully grasp their meaning. The mystery is thick here.
Heresy, by contrast, simplifies. It is easier to say that there is One God with three expressions (modalism), or that Jesus became divine at his baptism (adoptionism). These may be less offensive to naked reason, but they also flatten the mystery. The dogmas preserve the deep mysteries with which the Church has been entrusted.
Conclusion: De Jure vs. De Facto Doctrine
Athanasius stood against the world to proclaim that the moderate position was a betrayal of God's revelation in Christ. Arius desired to flatten the mystery of God incarnate, rendering the God-man as something less than fully divine. To bring it home for those of us in the United Methodist Church: Arius desired a broad tent, but ultimately he was an eminently reasonable man who was steeped in error. The Church declared Athanasius was correct. The mystery would stand, even if some who considered themselves Christians were mistaken. They had rearranged the mosaic and created a dog instead of a king.
To be a doctrinal extremist in the vein of Athanasius is thus to embrace the mystery of Christian truth precisely by reveling in the dogmas given by the Holy Spirit through Scripture and church tradition. These dogmas, moreover, are at the very center of our work as Wesleyan Christians. We believe in the possibility of full salvation for every single person because Jesus is fully human and fully divine; as many early teachers noted, Jesus became human so we could become by grace what he is by nature. Likewise, we believe that we are empowered for faithful ministry because God the Father sends the Son to conquer sin and death, and the Spirit is poured out to make us fruitful and equip the saints for effective service in the world. If we are to live, as Wesley said, as "transcripts of the Trinity," we would do well to understand and teach what Wesley and his ancestors in faith meant by that term.
Likewise, if we are going to sing "Christ the Lord is Risen Today!" we should be crystal clear about the joyous, reality-shattering news that Jesus was dead in the grave and rose physically from the dead. The martyrs did not go to their deaths for a metaphor. The early church did not proclaim the world was made new by a poltergeist. Christ is risen! And while there are many ways theologians can and should parse out the meaning of that confession, this core doctrine is as immovable for truthful Christian proclamation as gravity is for basic physics.
On paper, de jure, we have excellent doctrinal standards that warrant continued attention and study. It is, however, an open question as to whether they function de facto as standards for United Methodists charged with teaching and proclaiming the faith. Historically, it is quite common for individual pastors, bishops, or theologians to claim they are Christian while espousing beliefs far afield from the most basic claims of orthodoxy. Does contemporary United Methodism have the resources to discern when and if this happens? Do our leaders and institutions have the desire and will to correct unorthodox teaching if it appears? These are serious questions, and they deserve more than anxious wagon-circling in response.
To paraphrase Seinfeld at the rental counter: Anyone can put doctrine on paper. But can we hold ourselves to it?
Drew McIntyre is an Elder in the Western North Carolina Conference and the pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Greensboro, NC. To read more from Drew, visit his blog: https://drewbmcintyre.com/.