Theological Word of the Day: Adiaphora

Learning to not major in minors

Photo by Luca Lago on Unsplash

(A seven-minute read.)

Back in the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformers introduced and debated an interesting concept known as adiaphora. The term literally means “things indifferent,” which were matters that were not expressly addressed in the Bible—or, as the Formula of Concord, which is a Lutheran statement of faith, explains, adiaphora are “church rites which are neither commanded nor forbidden in the Word of God.”

Essentially, with the reforming impulse at the center of their religious concerns, Protestants debated just how much of Catholicism needed to be reformed, and what to do about matters that the Bible didn’t explicitly discuss.

For example, could or couldn’t priests wear fancy garb? Should church buildings have stained glass windows? Could they use organs to accompany their corporate singing? (Some have somewhat-humorously referred to adiaphora as the “smells and bells” of worship.)

None of these matters are explicitly addressed in the Bible. So some, like Martin Luther, argued that Christians should have liberty in prayerfully considering whether or not to incorporate these elements in their corporate worship. What separated Protestantism from Catholicism, he argued, was not necessarily their liturgical practices which were nowhere explicitly addressed in the Bible. What separated Protestants was their understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith—that one was made right and forgiven by God solely on the basis of faith rather than good deeds.

This became a point of contention between Luther and others like John Calvin, who favored a stricter view of how to apply the evidence of Scripture, maintaining that only those things which were explicitly condoned and promoted in the Bible could be utilized by Christians.

The debate also found its way to England, where the Puritans, following Calvin’s lead, sought to purify the Church of England from what they felt were non-biblical practices, like the wearing of vestments by the clergy. When the Puritans failed to achieve their theological agenda and fully purify the Church of England, many of them set sail for the “new world,” where they pursued their goals of setting up a church that was free from all the non-biblical trappings.

Such debate about adiaphora continues today, whether or not people know the term.

In some ways, much of the contention among Christians revolves around matters that are not explicitly addressed in the Bible—both when it comes to matters of corporate worship as well as personal conduct. Everyone agrees that people shouldn’t murder; everyone believes it’s wrong to steal. But there are other issues we dig in our heels over, some of which do or don’t have anything to do with Catholicism, which, it seems to me, are not as clearly addressed in the Bible.

For example, should Protestants observe Lent? Should they celebrate Christmas? Can they burn incense during a worship service?

None of these things are explicitly addressed in Scripture (or the New Testament at least)—but for some people, they originated in and are associated with Catholicism to such a degree that no good Bible-believing Protestant should or would participate in them.

Other matters have nothing at all to do with Catholicism, or worship, but they’re still much debated.

Should Christians serve in the military? Is it acceptable to use drums in Christian worship? Can women serve as pastors? Should a Christian school have sports teams?

Of course, where most of the rub lies is that people debate whether the Bible does address these matters. Usually those who push back against some of these practices appeal zealously to the Bible, attempting to make explicit that which, it seems to me, is at best implicit.

In my faith community, there’s also significant appeal to extra-biblical sources, which cover a whole catalogue of commands and prohibitions, leaving little room for adiaphora.

You may not be surprised, but for my part, I’m inclined to side with Luther on this one. It seems to me that when one reads Paul, for example, he gives wide latitude. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is,” he thus writes to the Corinthians, “there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

Similarly, no sooner did the leaders of the New Testament church decide that they would mandate only a minimal list of Old Testament requirements for Gentiles when they became followers of Jesus, than Paul toppled one of them. While the so-called Jerusalem council insisted that Gentiles must not eat “things offered to idols” (Acts 15:29), Paul later declared that “an idol is nothing” and that followers of Jesus could therefore eat food offered to them (see 1 Corinthians 8).

Of course, in the interest of balance, Paul acknowledged that one shouldn’t use their liberty to disrupt the growth of their fellow Jesus-followers. Some people had weak consciences, he said, and their spiritual development wasn’t mature enough to wisely navigate the moving parts.

Thus, for those hampered by “all or nothing” thinking, one shouldn’t deliberately flaunt their liberty in front of them and weaken their confidence in God’s leading (to use a poor analogy: to insist upon flaunting my liberty in this context would be like overwhelming my first-grade child with trigonometry when they’re just learning addition and subtraction).

The point here is that Paul evidently thought that such an issue—eating food offered to idols—was its own sort of adiaphora. It was a “thing indifferent” and not worth dividing over.

A modern example

Let me give you a very simple example from my own life (which may seem so trite or trivial to some): for the first 16 years of our marriage, my wife and I did not wear wedding rings. She will quickly tell you it was entirely because of me. For me, it was a moral issue—to wear a wedding ring, I guess, was wearing jewelry, and that was (apparently) prohibited in Scripture. Or something like that.

More accurately, I was probably more influenced by my own denomination’s version of what the Bible allegedly says. And though my denomination’s statement of fundamental beliefs doesn’t explicitly prohibit the wearing of jewelry (which will probably come as a surprise to some people), it is very much an “oral law.”

Needless to say, over the last number of years, my perspective on this shifted. I became more and more acutely aware that if one simply used Scripture, it was a really hard case to make that jewelry of any kind is categorically prohibited. At best, the testimony is ambiguous—and sometimes it seems to me that it even takes a positive attitude towards jewelry (most Christians, after all, believe that we’ll be given crowns to wear in heaven—according to the Book of Revelation! Talk about bling!).

Thus, though I didn’t have this language at the time, I came to the conviction that the question of wearing jewelry in general and a wedding ring in particular was adiaphora and not a matter worth being dogmatic over.

And now, to make a long story short, my wife and I wear wedding rings—16 years after saying “I do.”

The reason this is partly important to me is because, going back to last week, I believe that, in the interest of creating and pursuing community together, we should try to minimize the number of issues over which we’re willing to divide. And there is probably a lot more adiaphora than we admit.

This is critical because, as my former seminary professor, Robert M. Johnston, put it: “Every time a doctrinal point is added to the required list, it is like adding a new station to a railroad—it is one more place for people to get off the train.”

That’s such a good analogy.

Of course, I suppose for those who are trying to pare down God’s chosen people to as small a group as possible, establishing only a remnant within a remnant, that’s a good thing. The more people who get off the train, the better.

But I’m not one of those people.

Sure, as I mentioned last week, it’s ultimately fine to exclude people—so long as we’re clear what we’re excluding them from and we don’t exclude over matters that don’t directly affect other people.

Which is to say, so long as we’re not excluding people over adiaphora.

So drop me a comment or message: what are matters that you have come to believe are adiaphora?

---

Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.