In "Why J. Gresham Machen Didn’t Like the Term ‘Evangelical’," Thomas Kidd quotes from Machen's “What Is Orthodoxy?” (1935). Machen is not satisfied with "Fundamentalism," or "Conservative," or "Evangelical" as descriptive of his theology. Instead:
...[I]n view of the objections that face the use of other terminology, I think we might do far worse than revive the good old word orthodoxy as a designation of our position.
Orthodoxy means, as we have seen, “straight doxy” [or “straight teaching, straight doctrine”]. Well, how do we tell whether a thing is straight or not? The answer is plain. By comparing it with a rule or plumb line. Our rule or plumb line is the Bible. A thing is “orthodox” if it is in accordance with the Bible. I think we might well revive the word. But whether we revive the word or not, we certainly ought to hold to the thing that is designated by the word.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. I will gladly approve any comment that responds directly and politely to what has been posted.