One of the often heard rebuttals to the “orthodoxy answer” (as in, the trinitarian formulation at the Council of Nicea is orthodox) is the response, “what is orthodoxy anyway?” The argument then follows that orthodoxy is merely the opinion of those who came out winners in the theological argument. And we certainly know that winners in debates are not always those who take the day by truth. They could just be the ones who had more clout, more money, more prestige, etc., on their side. So the question is, is that what orthodoxy is? Is it just what remains of the theological debate after those with the most clout had their way? Oden says no. Orthodoxy cannot be traced to the elite, the powerful, the prestigious, the more numerous or any other humanly conditioned definition of power. Read below.
From The Rebirth of Othodoxy by Thomas Oden, p. 37f
Is the orthodox way merely a case of political “winners” eliminating “losers”-a survivor gaem on a grand scale? If so, the faithful have a right to know how they have been deluded by a series of cyncial power plays.
Critical orthodoxy has repeatedly examined this important question. Not a new issue, it has a history of serious inquiry from Justin Martyr, Irenaueus, and Eusebius through John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Vincen of Lerins.
Here is the issue in a nutshell: Suppose that the only thing that various heretics through the ages lacked was clout. Suppose that Montanus and Marcion, for exampl.e, were just as right apostolically and doctrinally as their “orthodox” opponents but laced the muscle-no army, no police-with which to coerce their position. Suppose that the winners were by definition labeled as orthodox and the losers by definition as heretics. If that were the case, the history of orthodoxy would be nothing more than the history of a powerful majority; it would not be the history of truth.
The above suppositions reflect a standard sophomore classroom objections to orthodoxy. The most familiar form of that argument is the Marxist or social-location argument, which challenges religious judgments on the premise that they can always be shown to come form some particular social location or vested interest within the economic order. The Marxist explanation of orthodoxy wa simple: economic interst prevailed. Ideological winners imposed their views on ideological losers coercively-a matter of power. Though Marxism is no in disrepute, dreary echoes of the Marxist explanation of orthodoxy still linger-oddly enough, in university department of religious studies, of all places.
Vincent of Lerins, a fifth-century monk…provided the classic answer to the social-location argument: the argument from martyrdom. As Vincen noted, it is self-evident that the martyrs. had no economic interest. Their very willingness to give their lives for the truth showed their contempt for all economic interests. Most had already given their fortune to the poor, so they had no material wealth to risk.
It is sad that the witness of the defenseless Christian martyrs had been clouded in our time by Islamicist activists who choose brutally to kill others while themselves dying. These are not analogous cases. On the contrary, the former case dies to attest the truth; the latter dies intentionally to hurt and kill. Islamacist suicide killers are not adequate or faithful representatives of the faith of historic Islam. Christian martyrs, on the other hand, profoundly attest the deep faith of Christianity.
What is so conspicuously wrong with the “orthodoxy as winners” premise: Vincent explained the error as follows:
During the heights of Arianism (an early heresy that questioned the divinity of Jesus), many orthodox believers were hunted and persecuted by their more powerful opponents. There was no economic sense in which they could be described as winners. In fact, it offends their memory to consider them under the metaphor of worldly “winners.” Vincent likened them to the faith-heroes of the book of Hebrews. “They were tortured, refusing to accept release in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawed in two, thy were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented-of whom the world was not worty. they wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and hoes in the ground.
The fourth-century Arians lived by collusion with political oppressors. They had plenty of intellectuals and power manipulators on their side, while orthodoxy had to be defended largely by non-scholars and laypeople, by modest men and women of no means, by lowly persons who had no training or special expertise but understood their lives in Christ. The power of numbers and votes in those days was clearly on the side of the Arians, who insisted on reinterpreting scriptural texts on the Son of God in a new and diluted sense. In response God put in his A-team: not scholars, but saints; not elite agents of power, but poor, uneducated, ordinary men-and a great many women-willing to die for their faith. Many Christian wives and widows and daughters suffered during the Arian persecutions. By these ironic means God worked to renew the community of believers.
Similarly, in Soviet times the faithful were not he powerful but the poor, the dispossessed, those who were forced to keep the scripture hidden in a closet. The heterodox, on the other hand, included people of ingenuity backed by streams of money, an eloquent mastery of language, and hordes of bullies.
It is absurd to think of the martyrs of the Decian persecution (CE 249-251) as winners-those men and women who were tortured and died because they refused to sacrifice to the Emperor. Nor is Athanasius justly pigeonholed as a winner-exiled a half-dozen times and chased all over the Mediterranean world during the Arian times. John Chrysostom suffered exile and death in political oblivion. Jerome lost his position in Rome and went to the far country of Palestine to live the monastic life. Augustine died in the midst of an invasion by the barbarians. None of these orthodox believers “won” in the secular power moves of their day. Only the slowly unfolding process of intergenerational lay consent in time would recognize them at the great “doctors of the church” they were. the faithful laity had to discover and confirm the authenticity and wisdom of Athanasius and Jerome before they could become ecumenical teachers.
In what conceivable economic or political sense was Anthony of the Desert a winner? He ate wild grains and berries and insects. Or Mother Theodora? Or blind Didymus? How did Polycarp or Felicitas or Perpetua or Cyprian or Ignatius “win”? They died horribly for their faith. Those who imagine that the consensus-bearers of those earlier centuries were upper-class, comfortable elitists know nothing of the biographies of Justin Martyre, Benedict, or Lawrence fo Rome. Nor to they know of John of Damascus, who sought refuge in the isolated location of San Sabbas in Palestine after the Islamic conquest. Think of Dame Julian of Norwich, who literally lived in a hole in the wall of a church; or Francis of Assisi, who lived in a mud hut or slept outdoors. Winners? Not in worldly terms. That would be gross misreading.
Indeed, some few were born to wealth, Gregory the Great among them; but in his case he voluntarily gave away all his wealth to the poor and entered monastic life, as did Ambrose, who resigned his office of governance when baptized and gave everything to the poor. Augustine and Jerome, who were arguably the most learned of the Western fathers, lived most of their lives under conditions that most today would regard as extreme poverty and ascetic deprivation beyond description. Many early Christian writers spent more time in jail or exile or being hunted and hounded than they did living comfortable lives.
Consensuality does not imply that eveyone got an equal vote, as if the making of dogmas might correspond to the taking of a popular straw-poll. (After all, it was the Holy Spirit who formed the consensus). Rather, the premised is that all who stand at the Lord’s table have freely consented to the apostolic testimony. That is why they are standing there. Their voices of consent have been factored into the general consent, whic has been received in a constrained way so as to resist false and perfidious teachings.
The “winner-loser” oversimplification wrongly applies a competitive sports metaphor to complex historical processes. Fair-minded people will look deeper before allowing such a demeaning generalization to dismiss class Christian wisdom.
Some modern criticism focuses tendentiously on women who never got to speak, on slaves who never had a say, on classes and nations and cultures alienated from the centers of power. But that criticism ignores how important in the ecumenical lay consensus were women and slaves and the dispossessed.
The Spirit found ways of hearing and making known the voices of the underclass, of women, of slaves, and of the oppressed in the deliberative process leading to the ecumenical councils. The Spirit opened ways to awaken general lay consent, even when worldly power or hierarchical organization seemed to override it. Such councils could not have happened (or their conclusios been accepted) without the consent of the poor, of women, of slaves, of bonded servants, and of third-class citizens of the world. These were the very citizens that populated the city of God, a city manifesting itself already through Word and sacrament. They constituted the decisive jury for ecumenical teaching.
