In the climactic scene of Henry V (1989), Kenneth Branagh gives Shakespeare’s famous St. Crispin’s Day speech with as much conviction as any actor ever delivered his lines. I love the effect Henry’s speech has on his embattled men at Agincourt. One moment they’re like a huddle of mice, cowed by a superior French force. The next, they’re a pride of lions, rejoicing that “not one man more” fights beside them, lest he share their glory. Their king knew it wasn’t enough to have swords at his command. He needed men’s hearts.
I thought of this scene while reading Trevin Wax’s The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith, not only because I finished the book on St. Crispin’s Day but also because Wax’s call to delight in Christian truth, not merely to recite it, left me ready for battle.
Orthodoxy vs. Apathy
Rich Mullins sang of orthodoxy, “I did not make it, no, it is making me / It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man.” There’s a remarkable, even miraculous, unity of Christian belief across time and space that confounds critics who see it as a manmade religion. Christianity’s three ancient statements of faith (the Nicene, Athanasian, and Apostles’ Creeds) are still confessed in most churches and bind together believers worldwide in affirming one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and one Lord, Jesus Christ.
But “familiarity is the enemy of wonder” (2). Merely reciting core doctrines, especially when they seem esoteric and out of touch with the concerns of secular culture, can breed something more dangerous than unbelief: apathy. Wax argues that the church today is in danger of drifting from orthodoxy not because of new errors (though there are many) but because Christians are bored with old truths.
The church today is in danger of drifting from orthodoxy not because of new errors (though there are many) but because Christians are bored with old truths.
His solution is to see the faith once more for what it is: “A mission that requires obedience to a King, a rollicking adventure that brings us face to face with opposition, as we proclaim something bigger and more satisfying than personal preference” (6). Part of what makes Christianity thrilling is how strange it is. But those accustomed to hearing its claims can grow deaf to them. Those accustomed to reading them can grow blind.
Paradox of Orthodoxy
To remedy this blindness, Wax follows G. K. Chesterton’s advice that people must learn to see orthodoxy again “as if for the first time.” In The Everlasting Man, Chesterton famously illustrates this principle by describing what a horse must have looked like to the first human ever to behold one:
Out of some dark forest under some ancient dawn there must come towards us, with lumbering yet dancing motions, one of the very queerest of the prehistoric creatures. We must see for the first time the strangely small head set on a neck not only longer but thicker than itself, as the face of a gargoyle is thrust out upon a gutter-spout, the one disproportionate crest of hair running along the ridge of that heavy neck like a beard in the wrong place; the feet, each like a solid club of horn, alone amid the feet of so many cattle; so that the true fear is to be found in showing, not the cloven, but the uncloven hoof. Nor is it mere verbal fancy to see him thus as a unique monster; for in a sense a monster means what is unique, and he is really unique.
Like a horse, Christian orthodoxy seems strange, magnificent, and maybe a little monstrous when seen for the first time: one God who is also three persons; one Christ who is both God and man; the Maker of the stars taking the form of a servant; a righteous Lord dying for sinners, rising to inaugurate an upside-down kingdom of sheep who will conquer a world of wolves, until he sets a feast at which the first will be last and the least greatest.
C. S. Lewis put it well when he wrote that Christianity “has just that queer twist about it that real things have.” It’s not the sort of religion you’d make up. It’s packed with paradox, affirming “in their fiery fullness” (89) doctrines that appear at first blush to contradict one another. How, after all, is the church both saved and awaiting her redemption? How can we overcome the world with otherworldly weapons? How can the Scriptures be written by men yet authored by God? How can the gospel be narrower than a needle’s eye yet wide enough for the whole world? How can a Son be eternally begotten? How can the Creator of the universe have a mother?
“The paradox of orthodoxy,” writes Wax, “lies in its simplicity and complexity. The gospel is simple enough for a child to grasp, yet so complex that the greatest of scholars can only scratch the surface of its glory” (77).
Heresy Is Simple
Here lies another paradox: our inability to fully describe the God we worship is precisely why the details of orthodoxy matter—why a single Greek vowel once threatened to break the church (76) and why the Athanasian Creed roots out misunderstandings about Christ’s humanity and divinity with almost obsessive precision. We’re not free to be indifferent toward these truths, precisely because they’re not our truths. They’re God’s description of himself.
Wax thinks that in contrast to orthodoxy, heresy has a telltale “narrowness.” Heresy is always small and sensible, seizing on a single truth and weaponizing it against all other truths (85). False doctrine thrives on false dilemmas, insisting God can’t be both one and three, his Son can’t be both begotten and eternal, the Messiah can’t be both divine and human, and the material world can’t be both fallen and worth saving.
Heresy is always small and sensible, seizing on a single truth and weaponizing it against all other truths.
Ancient heresies from Arianism to Gnosticism fall prey to this reductive tendency. But modern heresies do too. One of the most pernicious errors shows up in churches and Christian social circles influenced by our dominant culture. Wanting to affirm the identities and choices of their neighbors and avoid contention, some Christians propose a doctrinal minimalism that demotes sexual morality and anything else not explicitly mentioned in the creeds to debatable matters. As long as we all affirm the basics of the Trinity and the incarnation, their reasoning goes, good Christians can “agree to disagree” about things like sex, gender, and marriage.
Wax forcefully rejects this proposal, insisting that a kind of “moral orthodoxy” undergirds the wording of the creeds and was in some sense assumed by their authors:
It’s beside the point to argue that marriage and sexuality are not explicitly spelled out in the creeds. Neither is infanticide. Neither is theft. Neither is the command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Neither is a whole host of issues connected to Christianity’s moral vision. (101)
Failing to affirm any of the pieces of Christ’s moral vision strikes at the creeds’ opening affirmation that God the Father is Maker of heaven and earth, including our bodies. If basic truths about right and wrong evolve from generation to generation, and if the Scriptures are mere expressions of cultural prejudice, then what are we saved from and what will we be judged for? Reducing orthodoxy to a list of context-free statements about the triune God leaves those statements content free. It reduces them, tames them, and robs them of their thrill. And it sends the message that Christianity is something we make and remake rather than something that’s making and remaking us.
Stepping into Reality
Not everyone will like this. Encountering a truth you can’t change is uncomfortable, yet it’s still the truth. Wax compares a person who wants a customized faith to someone who prefers to always stay indoors, setting the thermostat to his or her preferred temperature and never venturing outdoors. Orthodoxy calls us into sunlight and blue sky, “away from the domesticated doctrines and palatable heresies of our time, and into a wild and glorious world of wonders” (39).
Reducing orthodoxy to a list of context-free statements about the triune God leaves those statements content free.
Yes, the truth about God whom heaven cannot contain (1 Kings 8:27) can be unsettling. There’s a reason people carved and sculpted their personal, fun-sized gods out of wood and stone for thousands of years. But deep down, we all know better. Lewis wrote that in our hearts we understand that “nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality.” Real things, by nature, have “sharp corners and rough edges.”
When we recite the creeds and preach the Bible, Christians aren’t merely parroting propositions but confessing truths about a person. “Every statement we utter about him in faith,” writes Wax, “intends to describe the awe-inspiring being at the blazing center of the universe” (67). We grasp each biblical paradox in its fullness and hold on tightly because we refuse to settle for less. We wrestle with God and believe until he blesses our faith that seeks understanding. And we refuse to retreat before overwhelming opposition because our King promises undying glory.
The Thrill of Orthodoxy reads like a St. Crispin’s Day speech on behalf of the church’s ancient and miraculous doctrinal unity. But more than that, it’s a reminder that Christian truth is a mystery that should perpetually excite us. By helping readers to see that unity and mystery as if for the first time, Wax opens Christians’ eyes to our common allegiance and hope—one that has endured for 2,000 years despite its many enemies. Just as importantly, he makes it exciting again, not only as a creed but as a battle cry for faith.
The Gospel Coalition