Heretical Orthodoxy

Heretical Orthodoxy, as coined in Rollins's How (Not) to Speak of God, designates a reconception of what "orthodoxy" means: rather than denoting adherence to a fixed set of propositionally correct doctrinal beliefs (the Greek-philosophical inheritance of "right belief"), it designates a manner of holding belief — an orientation toward truth grounded in love, praxis, and transformative engagement (the Hebraic-mystical inheritance of "believing in the right way"). The "heretical" dimension is not a rejection of orthodoxy but its internal subversion: the claim is that any orthodoxy which reduces faith to propositional correctness is itself the deeper heresy, because it mistakes the map for the territory, the signifier for the Thing. The "orthodox" dimension is preserved precisely by being cancelled in this way — a movement structurally analogous to Hegelian Aufhebung, in which the inherited term is negated, kept, and elevated to a new register.

The concept intervenes in what Rollins frames as the false binary between theological absolutism (one set of propositions is simply correct) and relativism (all propositions are equally valid or invalid). Heretical Orthodoxy refuses both poles by shifting the evaluative criterion from the content of belief to its mode of enactment. Knowing, on this account, is not a cognitive relation between a subject and a doctrinal proposition but a participatory, love-structured praxis — a form of knowing that does not know itself in the sense that it cannot be fully captured in explicit, self-certifying knowledge claims. This aligns, within the Lacanian frame, with the distinction between savoir and connaissance: what Rollins calls "believing in the right way" is closer to an embodied, unconscious-structural knowing that exceeds the imaginary self-recognition implied by holding "right beliefs."

Heretical Orthodoxy appears in peter-rollins-how-not-to-speak-of-god-paraclete-press-2006 as one of its central organizing concepts, doing the work of reframing Christian orthodoxy through what is effectively a post-foundationalist, mystical-praxis lens. Within the cross-referenced canonical network, the concept is most directly in dialogue with Knowledge, Truth, Ideology, and Sublation. With respect to Knowledge, Rollins's move parallels the Lacanian distinction between savoir and connaissance: propositional "right belief" functions as connaissance — imaginary, self-certifying recognition — while "believing in the right way" points toward a knowing that, like savoir, operates through participation and practice rather than explicit self-transparent affirmation. With respect to Ideology, the concept can be read as a critique of religious ideology in the Žižekian sense: doctrinal orthodoxy as a system of explicit beliefs is precisely the ideological layer that mistakes its own symbolic fictions for the real; Heretical Orthodoxy, by displacing the locus of truth from proposition to praxis, gestures toward the kind of traversal of fantasy that Lacanian ideology-critique demands.

With respect to Sublation, the very structure of the concept enacts an Aufhebung: "orthodoxy" as right-belief is cancelled (negated as the defining criterion), preserved (the term and its aspiration toward truth are retained), and elevated (reground in love-oriented praxis). This makes Heretical Orthodoxy not merely a rhetorical paradox but a dialectical operation in the strict Hegelian sense. The cross-reference to Desire and Universality suggests further traction: if desire is always a relation to a lack that cannot be filled by any positive object, then a theology of right-belief (which promises completion through correct propositional content) is structurally fetishistic — it disavows the constitutive gap that Rollins's heretical move insists on holding open. Heretical Orthodoxy is thus, within this corpus, a theological specification and extension of the broader Lacanian-Hegelian critique of any discourse that claims self-grounding, completed knowledge.

How (Not) to Speak of GodPeter Rollins · 2006 (page unknown)

HERETICAL ORTHODOXY: FROM RIGHT BELIEF TO BELIEVING IN THE RIGHT WAY

The phrase enacts its own argument structurally: "HERETICAL ORTHODOXY" holds the two terms in unresolved tension, refusing to let either cancel the other, while the subtitle's shift from "RIGHT BELIEF" to "BELIEVING IN THE RIGHT WAY" moves the evaluative criterion from propositional content (what is believed) to mode of enactment (how one believes) — a displacement that is itself the theoretical move, redefining the entire register in which theological truth-claims are assessed.