St. Gregory of Sinai's two-layered definition of "orthodoxy"
A "rather significant" post
One of the purest definitions of Christian “orthodoxy” (ὀρθοδοξία = “right opinion”) is that of St. Gregory of Sinai (1255 – 1346). His commemoration on the Orthodox calendar is August 8th, which serendipitously happens to be the date I’m writing this post (and, by the way, I regard this particular post as a rather significant one). His definition of “orthodoxy” may strike us today as a little too spare, too pared down, living as we do in an age (now five centuries old) of Christian fissiparousness. Nevertheless, his is the fundamental denotation of the term in the Tradition. Gregory expresses it succinctly, with no wordy embellishments, but implicit to the definition is a substratum that too cursory a reading can easily fail to recognize as being there. I have copied out his definition below, along with his clarifying supplements to it, rendering a handful of significant words in italics to draw attention to them. These latter are terms that telegraph to us the fact that, for Gregory of Sinai, as for all the Fathers, theology is inseparable from mysticism. Gregory writes:
