New Church Life September/October 2017 | Page 42

new church life: september/october 2017 defining his use of several terms (e.g. “Doctrine is anything that the church holds to be official teaching [or that a priest teaches] based on or informed by its sacred canon.”) Chris laid out a system of grading doctrinal construction, not for its quality, but for its distance from the source. Two classifications that were above the grading system represented the source: the Ineffable Truth which is immovable and eternal, and the canon of Divine revelation which yet varies in our minds with different translations and our understanding of the historical context of the literal sense. The five grades measure the distance from this source: • Grade A, Orthodoxy (= right teaching) consists of clear and direct quotes. • Grade B, Synchronodoxy (= simultaneous teaching) consists of orthodoxical points held in mind together. (On finding few examples in this category, he suggested this may not be a useful grade to keep in the taxonomy.) • Grade C, Logodoxy (= logical teaching) consists of logical conclusions drawn from orthodoxical and academic points. • Grade D, Eurekadoxy (= discovery teaching) is Logodoxy taken to more speculative and projective but still plausible conclusions. • Grade E, Sophodoxy (= wisdom teaching) consists of best guesses based on the general understanding of someone well-informed on doctrine of Grades A-C. We were then given a 15-minute small group exercise in which we graded doctrinal topics and briefly shared our experience of working with the taxonomy. Chris then shared his experience of grading 10 papers dating from the present back to 1925. Grading them for style of argumentation or construction, he found the orthodoxical style used heavily, followed by the sophodoxical and logodoxical. When it came to the conclusions, they were split between logodoxical and eurekadoxical 56% to 44%. He observed that ministers love to quote the Word, but that does not necessarily lead to an orthodoxical conclusion. He suggested the taxonomy would be most useful in measuring how close our own work is to the source, and urged us to humbly and honestly convey to parishioners how close to the source our teaching is. Defending what is not clearly taught undermines our ability to defend what is. The Rev. Brett D. Buick, in giving the formal response, reiterated the paper’s use: to help us be more honest in presenting our conclusions. Drawing on his work as a lawyer he asked what difference in weight is given to circumstantial evidence versus direct evidence in a court of law. In fact, they can be given equal weight, which he illustrated by our ability to know with certainty that 396