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Guest Post: Why Orthodoxy Must Come Before Orthopraxis

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Gareth Palmer is a seminoid who resides in South Africa, teaches high school, studies theology part-time, and serves tirelessly in his local church. He has a penchant for pogontrophe (beard art), and has never been accused of succumbing to herd mentality. It’s a privilege to know him and an honor to have him post at Café Seminoid. You can check out his blog at evangelismtheology.com

 

A very good reason to go to seminary, is to make sure you’re ideas and life are orthodox.

Orthodoxy – Right or correct thinking and theology.

Orthopraxis – Right or correct conduct and action.

Many of you may be familiar with the word orthodox. “Ortho” means straight, as in orthodontics: straight(er) teeth. Orthodoxy refers to straight doctrine. Eastern Orthodox Church is one way the word can be used, to refer to the subgroup of Christendom that believes they are right. But I use it in this post to refer to right thinking or correct theology about God.

You may be less familiar with the word orthopraxis, which simply means correct action or correct applied theology.

Orthodoxy must come before orthopraxis, for one simple reason: to prevent the Christian’s life going wonky due to a misunderstanding what God requires of us. Or to put it another way: Because Christians and Churches who get theology wrong are often unable to correctly obey God.

Let me cite an example. One of the clearest commands a Christian has is that he or she must go and preach the gospel (Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:15, Luke 24:46-47, etc.). This is a mandate from scripture that is very clear. And yet applying that command can derail into mere social service if we are not careful. Christians often spend more time and effort on meeting the needs of, say, the poor, than they do evangelizing the lost. Yet one is commanded as having primary importance and the other is not as clearly commanded. The former has a direct command, the latter an implicit command.

Yet many people and churches will build huge ‘poor’ related ministries without ever proclaiming the gospel to them, as Jesus did (Luke 7:22). I am thinking mainly of the mainline denominations which have lost their gospel message. All that is left are soup kitchens and such like.

Now don’t get me wrong; soup kitchens aren’t bad, neither are ministries that build houses, support AIDS orphans and so on. These ministries must certainly happen, but they should exist as an extension of our gospel witness, not the replacement of it. They become primary when one’s theology is land-logged instead of being focussed on eternal priorities, like souls.

The problem here is a low view of scripture. When people stop believing that the Bible is both inspired and clear, they stop trying to obey it.

But they still want to obey God so they think to themselves ‘What do I think God wants me to do?’ Then they camp on whatever they think of. It is very rare however that they camp on the idea of publicly proclaiming Jesus Christ and Him crucified as a matter of first importance (1 Corinthians 15:3-6).

In conclusion, let me encourage you to read the Bible, interpret it correctly, and apply what it teaches. In that order. Line up your life to the plumb of God’s word.

Understand exactly what God commands and expects of us. And as you understand, obey those commands.

Don’t jumpt to application without pausing at interpretation. Get your doctrine straight, i.e. your orthodoxy settled, and your actions will naturally be othropraxis or straight living.

 


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