Trevin Wax is Vice President of Research and Resource Development at the North American Mission Board, is visiting professor of theology at Cedarville University, and has taught theology courses at Wheaton College. He served as general editor for The Gospel Project and is a regular columnist at The Gospel Coalition. Trevin is the author of several books. His latest is, “The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith.”
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Key Questions for Trevin Wax
-How would you define “orthodoxy”?
-You begin your book, “The church faces her biggest challenge, not when new errors start to win, but when old truths no longer wow.” Why do you say that?
-The creeds don’t address issues of sexuality at all. Does that issue rise to the level of orthodoxy?
-How can people discern what fits into the category of primary issues versus secondary ones?
Key Quotes From Trevin Wax
“The church rises and falls with what the church confesses about Jesus.”
“Orthodoxy really matters if we’re all about God or if we’re all about his mission, if we want to see his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”
“If you’re not careful, you’ll take this approach to theology where you’re basically just looking for errors all over the place. And what I want to say with this book is, yeah, we’ve got to take error very seriously. But before errors really gain in popularity, generally it’s because the old truths are no longer at the forefront of the church’s minds.”
“I am talking about orthodoxy as those beliefs of Christians that have been…held always by everyone, everywhere, like the essential, like the classic Christian tradition.”
“I would say that the creeds actually explain and describe what the Bible teaches about who God is—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and what he’s done to save us. So I don’t think the authority resides in the creeds.”
“There are really two different ways to look at the creeds. You can take a minimalist approach or a maximalist approach.”
“There are a number of people who say, ‘I believe the creeds, I just differ from the church for the past 2,000 years on our understanding of the human body and the theology of the body and sexuality.’ To me, it’s like trying to take shelter under the creeds to get out from under the authority of Scripture, which is a really strange approach.”
