There are many ways in which the Christian faith can be expressed and remain orthodox—but not every way is. The ultimate authority for what is true and good is found in the words and deeds of God incarnate, Jesus Christ. Every other claim to what is good and true is subordinate to and judged by these. That includes all of Hebrew scripture and everything in the letters of Paul and the other apostles.
Not every voice proclaiming itself to be Christian truly is. In every age there are loud voices attracting followers down paths far from the one Jesus pioneered for us. The Church itself can err—and has. Therefore, it must always be a Church in the process of self-examination, confession, and repentance.
The one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church takes many forms in many places. Amid all its vast variety there are two measures of orthodoxy. Both are necessary and one is more important than the other.
The first is a shared understanding of who God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is. This is necessary because people are inclined to create gods in their own image. The Lord God Almighty is not a thing among other things in the universe but the very source and sustainer of the universe itself. We are God’s creatures—not the other way around. What we can know of God has been revealed to us by God, first through prophets and sages, and finally in Christ Jesus, who is God incarnate. The measure of Christian orthodoxy is the degree to which we submit ourselves and our wills to that one holy, revealed truth about God.
The other necessary—and more important—measure of Christian orthodoxy is the degree to which the Church and everyone in it does their best to follow in the way of Jesus Christ as he commanded and demonstrated by his words, deeds, death, and resurrection. Jesus left us with three commandments upon which hang everything else in Scripture and life.
The first was to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and mind—without reservation.
The second was to love oneself and one’s neighbors, even those neighbors one does not like or trust. Neither was new. God had given those commandments long ago, as the Hebrews leaving Egypt for Canaan were taught how to become children of God. The third commandment was new: to love one another as Jesus has loved us.
What that love looks like was demonstrated in Jesus’ every word and deed as recorded in Holy Scripture. We are to be imitators of him to the best of our abilities.
What follows is a brief examination of these two measures, in the hope that they might help readers discern which public voices are—or are not—proclaiming authentic, orthodox Christianity.
The Church, by its own right, has no inherent authority to declare what is or isn’t authentic Christianity. God does. The authority lies in the three commandments of love and there is no higher authority than that. The Church merely affirms what God has revealed through the prophets and what Christ Jesus taught and commanded and to what his disciples witnessed and bore testimony.
While God’s revealed truth is eternal and inerrant, our ability to understand it is not—and we can easily go astray. By about 250 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Church had spread throughout the Roman Empire and far beyond. In that time, people had begun to invent out of their own imagination various ways of claiming to be Christian that were inconsistent with Holy Scripture and with the testimony of those who had been closest to Jesus.
It was time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Church elders met in sometimes contentious but always prayerful councils resulting in the Nicene Creed. The Creed established a wide circle within which there are many ways to express the orthodox faith in God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Questions remained and it took several other councils before they were fully addressed.
The Creed remains today the essential definition of orthodox Christianity. It accommodates an enormous variety of ways in which denominations can express their shared faith. Nevertheless, a fourth-century understanding of God and salvation has difficulty fitting the conditions of our time. That should not be surprising. Our understanding is always partial and always changing. As the Apostle Paul said, we see in a mirror dimly; we know only in part. We will not fully understand until we enter God’s heavenly kingdom and the greater life beyond the grave. In the meantime, we do the best we can—recognizing that we may be wrong and always learning.
The Nicene Creed is a necessary but not sufficient measure of authentic Christianity. More subtle—and more important—is the requirement that Christians do their best to follow in the way of Jesus Christ and his commandments of love. As the Apostle James wrote, even the demons know who God is. Reciting the Nicene Creed and believing it to be true is only the beginning. James also wrote that one must be a doer of the word and not merely a hearer of it.
To be an authentic Christian is to obey, as best we can, the commandments of love in thought, word, and deed. A religion that claims to be Christian but proclaims teachings antithetical to loving God, loving self, and loving neighbor as Jesus demonstrated is simply not Christian—no matter what it calls itself.
It is difficult for every generation to discern what those commandments mean in the complicated circumstances of life. Yet these same commandments also lead us to new and deeper understandings that often upend the normal ways of thinking and doing. We are always in a state of becoming, always in the process of new birth—a process often painful, confusing, and untimely. It takes patient, prayerful discernment to let God lead us rather than trying to lead God.
To be an orthodox Christian is to be intentionally aware that we may err—and sometimes have. We may hold on to old ways too long or adopt new ways too soon. But we can have confidence that God will lead us, if we listen with our hearts, to greater depths of love—and remain cautious about how easily false prophets can mislead the gullible.
With all that in mind, it should be clear that so-called Christian nationalism—seeking to bind a form of Christianity unknown to the ways of Jesus Christ to a form of government that would repeal the American experiment in republican democracy—has nothing to do with orthodox Christianity. Nor do public figures speaking with voices of orthodoxy, who claim to defend Christianity while oppressing and abusing the very people whom Jesus healed and reconciled.
Beware of those who try to use God to pursue agendas that undermine the three commandments of love and fail to show respect for the dignity of every human being and for God’s sacred creation.