“Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed …” Neuhaus’ Law

I just read this Presbyterian Outlook article by Barbara G. Wheeler and John Wilkinson, pleading with orthodox Presbyterians to stick with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the face of the likely removal of biblical fidelity and chastity standards from the denomination’s ordination standards.

The article immediately brought to mind something Richard John Neuhaus wrote several years ago. At that time, Neuhaus addressed what happens to orthodoxy when it’s made optional. Lo and behold, Neuhaus’ words were reprinted in the latest issue of First Things magazine. What a happy coincidence.

I’ve found “Neuhaus’ Law” to be very helpful in interpreting the times of my own denomination (PCUSA) and other mainline denominations:

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed … Orthodoxy suggests that there is a right and a wrong, a true and a false, about things. When orthodoxy is optional, it is admitted under a rule of liberal tolerance that cannot help but be intolerant of talk about right and wrong, true and false. It is therefore a conditional admission, depending upon orthodoxy’s good behavior. The orthodox may be permitted to believe this or that and to do this or that as a matter of sufferance, allowing them to indulge their inclination, preference, or personal taste. But it is an intolerable violation of the etiquette by which one is tolerated if one has the effrontery to propose that this or that is normative for others. [Emphasis added.]

Despite all the protestations to the contrary, proscription of orthodoxy is precisely what will happen if the revisionists succeed, as they almost certainly will, in altering the denomination’s ordination standards. All will be well, until that first person ordained under the diminished standards gets called to a predominantly orthodox presbytery.

Christopher Drew is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Jackson, Minnesota. He blogs at The Central Point where this article first appeared; it is used with his permission.

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]