Religious orthodoxy

“ The author seems to think that nothing but Catholic, conciliar orthodoxy can be held to account for the perverse exegesis of Protestant theologians, and their unthinking trust in the revealed dogma of the Divine-humanity and Deity of our Lord. Surely the very fact may be in itself a vindication that, apart altogether from Church authority, and apart from the Bible also, in the history of religious thought and philosophical speculation there are predisposing causes and tendencies which lead up to this great induction. ”

“ We abhor religious conventions; in particular we hasten to proclaim that we are free from the stigma of orthodoxy. We do not go to church to learn, to meditate, to repent and to pray; we go to be happy, to learn how to keep young and prosperous ”

“ In another way also may the comparatively speaking undisturbed orthodoxy of Western Europe be accounted for. For the orthodox there have been cakes and ale, and even the ass knoweth his owner and the ox his master’s crib. Nothing so keeps men from religious speculation as a good endowment. ”

“ Who cares nowadays for what is dully orthodox? Who ever heard of a hero in orthodoxy nowadays? The thing is impossible. There may be, of course, thousands of orthodox heroes, but one never hears anything of them. ”

“ I do not think that orthodox religion is popular to-day. The ministers dare not preach the creed in all its naked deformity and horror. They are endeavoring with the vines of sentiment to cover up the caves and dens in which crawl the serpents of their creed. Very few ministers care now to speak of eternal pain. They leave out the lake of fire and brimstone. They are not fond of putting in the lips of Christ the loving words, "Depart from me, ye cursed." The miracles are avoided. In short, what is known as orthodoxy is already unpopular. ”

“ You have levelled an arrow at the very seat of life of what is considered orthodoxy in divinity, it is impossible but that the wound should be severly felt. For you are not insensible sir, that it is not only the general, but almost the universal sentiment of orthodoxy, from his holiness the Pope down to the smallest child who has been taught to lisp the christian name, that the revelation of the gospel of Jesus Christ was designed to prepare mankind in this world for heaven and happiness in another. ”

“ I believe that thousands of men would be orthodox enough in certain points, if divines had not been too curious, or too narrow, in reducing orthodoxy within the compass of subtleties, niceties, and distinctions, with little warrant from Scripture, and less from reason or good policy.
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution. ”

“ Let us lay to heart the rudimentary and incomplete character of a faith which simply accepts the teaching of Jesus Christ, and does no more. The notion that orthodoxy is Christianity, that a man who does not contradict the teaching of the New Testament is thereby a Christian, is a very old and very perilous and very widespread one. ”

“ Orthodox believers 'never read the other side.' The mastery of standard Unitarian books is no part of clerical preparation in the Church of England, and orthodox Nonconformist ministers are 'not genuinely and honestly acquainted with the adversary at all.' The moral results of Protestant orthodoxy are, in this writer's opinion, deplorable. ”

“ You are great Hindus and very orthodox. Ay, what I want to do is to make you more orthodox. The more orthodox you are, the more sensible; and the more you think of modern orthodoxy, the more foolish you are. ”

“ Men and women who are orthodox are generally so for the same reason that they are English or French—they were born in England or France, and cannot help the good or ill fortune of their birth-place. Their orthodoxy is no higher virtue than their nationality. ”

“ Every day the whole thing becomes more and more absurd. Of course there are hundreds and thousands of most excellent people who believe in orthodox religion; people for whose good qualities I have the greatest respect; people who have good ideas on most other subjects; good citizens, good fathers, husbands, wives and children—good in spite of their religion. I do not attack people. I attack the mistakes of people. Orthodoxy is getting weaker every day. ”

“ There, reader, you have the candid confession of an honest-minded, orthodox, and one of the ablest and most talented writers that ever wielded the pen in defense of the Christian faith. And if such a talented and logical mind could find no reason, consistency, or moral principle in the dogmas of orthodoxy, we may readily ask, Who can? Thousands of other orthodox clergymen have doubtless been perplexed with the same difficulties, but have not had the honesty to confess it. Those who do not now perceive them can find the reason by putting their hands on their own heads. ”

“ For neither does religion consist Orthodoxy, or right opinions; which, although they are not properly outward things, are not in the heart, but the understanding. A man may be orthodox in every point; he may not only espouse right opinions, but zealously defend them against all opposers ”

“ One might say that any heresy inspires them with less horror than the Catholic doctrine about the Pope, and that they consider the rejection of this doctrine a sufficient proof of a healthy orthodoxy. But the day will come when every Russian who loves orthodoxy above all else will no longer regard with so much horror as now a church which is far better calculated than the Greek Church to furnish him with arms wherewith to defend the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Real Presence, the sacraments, the veneration of Mary and the saints. ”

“ In large sections of the Church the greatest stress is still laid upon Christian doctrine, especially as expressed in dogmatic forms. If a man thinks that orthodox doctrine is the test of a healthful and vigorous church, he will make that the determining element in his judgment whether Christianity is advancing or declining. In this sphere we have to distinguish three things: (1) The popular orthodoxy, which is determined by the consensus of teaching from the pulpit ”

“ But, friends, we are making inroads upon orthodoxy that orthodox Christians are painfully aware of, and what think you will be left of their fearful doctrines fifty or a hundred years from tonight? What will become of their endless hell—their doctrine of the future anguish of the soul; their doctrine of the eternal burning and never-ending gnashing of teeth. Man will discard the idea of such a future—because there is now a growing belief in the justice of a Supreme Being.
Do you not know that every religion in the world has declared every other religion a fraud? ”

“ The great secret is, to let orthodoxy slide, as something which is neither to be maintained nor refuted,—insisting only on the spirit of Christianity, and applying it to the life of the present day in this land. ”

“ Every orthodox creed is savage, ignorant and idiotic.
In the orthodox heaven there is no mercy, no pity. In the orthodox hell there is no hope, no reform. God is an eternal jailer, an everlasting turnkey. ”

“ They did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. They did not believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures. And, if orthodox religion be true, they are castaways. But he says: "No one has the right to say that orthodoxy condemns to perdition any man who has struggled toward the right, and who has tried to bless the earth he is raised on." That is what I say, but that is not what orthodoxy says. Orthodoxy says that the best man in the world, if he fails to believe in the existence of God, or in the divinity of Christ, will be eternally lost. ”

“ Contrast it with the notion that an orthodox belief is the purpose of revelation. I remember hearing once of a man that 'he was a very shady character, but sound on the Atonement.' What is the use of being 'sound on the Atonement' if the Atonement does not make you live the Christ life? And what is the good of all your orthodoxy unless the orthodoxy of creed issues in orthopraxy of conduct? There are [Pg 116] far too many of us who half-consciously do still hold by the notion that if a man believes rightly then that makes him a Christian. My text shatters to pieces any such conception. ”

“ Just to the extent to which orthodoxism succeeds in forcing its demand is progress rendered impossible. There have always been brave men to whom truth was dearer than orthodoxy, and to them we owe all the gains the church has made. ”

“ Orthodox churches have fallen away, more or less, from the doctrine of justification by faith. They have fallen back from the central point of Christianity, faith in Jesus, in different directions, and seek to be justified by a law,—some upon a law of belief, and others on a law of emotion. ”

“ More than any other branch of the Christian church the Greek church has put the emphasis upon orthodoxy. The natural and inevitable result has been that that church has destroyed itself and the nation whose life it has dominated and blighted. It is the Greek church that has led Russia to its doom. And it is orthodoxism that has made the Greek church a blind leader of the blind, and has plunged nation and church into the ditch together.
Truth, not orthodoxy, is the sovereign mistress of the human intellect. What I must know, for my salvation, is not what everybody says, but what is true. ”

“ Therefore I take a peculiar interest in those members of our circle who are not “orthodox” Christians. The majority of our Circle are believers in what is called “orthodoxy.” We have some souls who hesitate when they come to definitions about doctrines ”

“ An unpractical orthodoxy is as real a peril. You may swallow all the creeds bodily, you may even find in God’s truth the food of very sweet and real feeling: but neither knowing nor feeling is enough. The one all-important question for us is—does our Christianity work? ”

“ I realised, and, once again, not abstractly, but with body and soul, that in Russia, orthodoxy and the existing order of things are inseparably united, and that before both—autocracy and orthodoxy—are rejected together, a new conception of Christianity must first be arrived at. ”

“ But while on the outside the Midianites of denial were prowling for these clinging souls, within the camp they were assailed by a meticulous orthodoxy that was only too eager to cast them forth. The bishop dwelt for a time upon the curious fierceness orthodoxy would sometimes display. Nowadays atheism can be civil, can be generous; it is orthodoxy that trails a scurrilous fringe. ”

“ Thus while Christ is held to, while orthodoxy is presented as a shield, all imitation of Christ, all anxiety for true and spiritual holiness, “without which no one shall see the Lord,” nay, all the decorum befitting a Christian, is banished, is exterminated, that it may not disturb the societies of perverse men.” ”

“ It is sometimes said, that what is called orthodoxy or Catholicism is only the opinion of one or two Fathers—- fallible men, however able they might be, or persuasive—who created a theology, and imposed it on their generation, and thereby superseded Scriptural truth and the real gospel. ”

“ There were two tendencies at work to provoke collisions between{551} the schoolmen and the inquisitors. The ardor of persecution, which rendered the purity of the faith the highest aim of the Christian and the most imperative care of the ruler, secular and spiritual, created an exaggerated standard of orthodoxy, which regarded the minutest point of theology as equally important with the fundamental doctrines of religion. ”

“ The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance. ”

“ God's orthodoxy is the truth; and the truth remaineth, though man's orthodoxy exercises all its fury and all its baseness to overwhelm it. What hope has any man, even a St. Paul—what hope had even the Lord Himself—before the harsh, [Pg 247] self-interested tribunals of human judgment, or of that purely external religionism which has always shown itself more brutal and more blundering than secular cruelty? What chance has there been, humanly speaking, for God's best saints, prophets, and reformers, when priests, popes, or inquisitors have been their judges? ”

“ He said in an address given at a meeting of Congregational ministers in London in September, 1886:
“I think I am as orthodox a man as there is in this world. Well, what are the tests of orthodoxy? Man universally is a sinner; man universally needs to be born again; there is in the nature of God that power and influence that can convert a man and redeem him from his animal life; and it is possible for man 607so to bring to bear this divine influence in the ministration of the Gospel as that men shall be awakened, and convicted, and converted, and built up in the faith of Jesus Christ. ”

“ During those ages in which the Christian Church was so spreading as to become at length the fit cultus of the decaying State, its history is almost wholly one of internal and external strifes, conflicts between the Church and its pagan persecutors, between its literary champions and pagan criticism, between the champions of orthodoxy and the innovating heretics, between the partisans of dogmas whose life-and-death struggle was to determine what orthodoxy was to be. ”