Have you ever heard the following argument:

In a case wherein many thoughtful Christians disagree on an issue, the church ought to tolerate diversity of belief, expression, and practice.

This is an old argument, and it has been applied to many disputes: predestination, the nature of the sacraments, the Trinity, the resurrection of Jesus, divorce, war, and more. I’ve encountered it most recently in discussions of LGBTQ+ affirmation. The church, it is argued, ought to listen to both sides of the issue and make room for a diversity of opinion. And sometimes you hear the additional argument that, because the truth of the matter is uncertain, we ought to risk error on the side that seems most loving, which of course is LGBTQ+ affirming.

Analysis

Let’s think about this argument. First, let us admit that it possesses a certain plausibility both philosophically and theologically. Philosophically, it assumes that disagreement among competent thinkers about a particular truth claim indicates its obscurity of expression or intrinsic unknowability. As an obvious corollary, the argument also assumes that the greater the consensus among competent thinkers the more likely the truth of the conclusion and the greater the division of opinion the less likely its truth. And if human beings were thinking machines, having access to all relevant information and immune to all self-interest and irrational emotions, we might find this argument unobjectionable. But human beings are not thinking machines.

Theologically, too, the argument finds some support in Scripture:

Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters. One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables.The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand (Romans 14:1-4).

Most Christians will agree that there are some obscure and “disputable matters” among issues of theological interest. For there have always been disputed matters, and it would strain credulity to argue that there are no truly disputable (i.e., obscure or intrinsically unknowable) matters among the ones actually disputed. But it would be equally implausible to think that there is a one-to-one correspondence between disputed and disputable matters. That is to say, just because someone somewhere holds a different opinion about an issue does not mean that this view must be tolerated. For there is no Christian doctrine, not even the gospel itself, that someone has not disputed.

The Necessity of Orthodoxy

Clearly, the argument that diversity of opinion demands toleration is too general and can easily be reduced to absurdity. It would lead to theological anarchy, remove the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, destroy the church’s unity, render it unable to confess its faith to the world and teach its young, and discipline its wayward members. Contrary to the diversity-demands-tolerance argument there is no simple rule to distinguish between orthodoxy that must be enforced and disputable matters in which diversity may be tolerated. These distinctions must be hammered out in the heat of controversy. The history of theological development demonstrates the necessity of deciding an issue even in the absence of complete consensus. Some people will be silenced and some who insist on teaching heterodoxy may be excluded as heretics. Even in the absence of absolute certainty, the church must humbly but decisively take this risk. The alternative is gradual or precipitous surrender of its identity and abandonment of its mission.