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
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