Why Orthodox?
Possibly he has wondered one day: why are we orthodox? The Christmas gives us a good opportunity to explain it.
It was passing the second decade of last century. The theological liberalism of Europe had been spread inside the Presbyterian Church in the United States of North America. Doctrines keys of the historical Christianity had been denied, and did not have to be signed for the arrangement of his ministers. One of them, the virginal birth of our Mister Jesus Christ. Harry Emerson Fosdick, a shameless liberal had preached a challenging sermon, titled: Will the fundamentalists win? In him, Fosdick was affirming that the belief was not excellent for the faith in the virginal birth of Christ like a historical fact.
Before this incredulity stage it emerged the figure of John Gresham Machen, a teacher of the Seminar Princeton, ready to give the battle “for the faith that once and for all was given to the saints”. Machen turned into the principal voice of the Presbyterian conservatives, defending the reliability in the historicity of the Bible, into his books The Origin of Pablo's Religion and The Virginal Birth of Christ. Also, it did devastating criticism of the Protestant modernism in others of his most well-known books: Christianity and Liberalism and: What is the Faith? Finally, the Seminar Princeton and the presbiterianismo they lost a leader in the struggle against the theological and spiritual decline of his epoch, but with him the new Seminar was born Westminster in 1929 and a new denomination, The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, in 1936.
The "orthodox" word comes from the Greek “sunrise“ that means “rectum“, and of "doxa" that it means “education or indoctrinates”. As well as the "ortodoncista" deals that his teeth are well aligned or right, in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church we deal in preaching, teaching and defending the straight education of the Bible, in accordance with the doctrine of the apostles of the New Testament, and to his exhibition for the historical Christianity.
And, of course, we believe faithfully, in the historicity and crucial importance of the virginal birth of Christ for our faith and salvation. And we do not hide, intimidate, do not even shame of preaching the gospel as it is, please or do not please, because it is a God power for salvation. And God has proposed to save to the world for his preaching, which will be able to be a madness for the incredulous ones, but God's knowledge for those who believe.