So once a week we have a church history class where lately we have been surveying creeds.
I read this tonight from The Shaping of Things to Come:
"What is more interesting is that none of the creeds get to talk at all on right living, the very topic the Bible itself cannot seem to talk enough about. In its Hellenistic bent, doctrine shifted from right acting to right thinking. This has been referred to as the distinction between orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Orthopraxy is a system that believes that right living provides the context for us to embrace right thinking...The reverse is called orthodoxy. It assumes that if we change a person's thinking, we will change the way he or she lives. But there is too much evidence to the contrary. Many great theologians have "thought" rightly about Christian teaching, but their lives have not necessarily mirrored their beliefs."
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3 comments:
Greetings, Ben!
You win the award for biggest picture in the header of a blog that I've ever seen. But it is a nice picture.
My two cents on doxy vs. praxy is that there is also a lot of evidence that right belief does not neccesarily follow right behavior. In the sermon on the mount, doesn't Jesus expose the sin that is hidden in the hearts of the men who are outwardly following the law?
Matt 5:27-28 "27"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Obviously, we must come to God humbly and confess both our sinful thinking and our sinful behavior, and let him restore us in both. Fortunately, it not by the doxy or the praxy that we attain righteousness, but by faith from beginning to end, so we are free to approach the throne of God with flaws in both arenas.
good point!
You are right Matt! I do have the award for the biggest pic in the header. In fact Blogspot sent me a cool plaque thingy last week. Wierd.
Anyway, I just think it says something that the creeds of the past seem to totally fly over right living for right believing. It is both and sometimes I need to believe to live and sometimes I need to live to believe.
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