orthodoxy

Catholic dogma that must be memorized rather than questioned or interpreted independently.

Right or correct thinking enforced by the church as the basis of institutional legitimacy.

Correct thinking; Jiang treats it as an imperial control mechanism that creates heresy.

Doctrine that a central authority tries to impose across otherwise autonomous churches.

Science, once dominant, becomes orthodoxy and suppression rather than innovation, helping explain Jiang's claim that the last 20 to 30 years produced scaling and popularization more than major scientific breakthroughs.

He argues that the Romanovs failed to flee because they believed peasant love, Orthodox legitimacy, and European royal relatives protected them.

Constantine makes Christianity official and needs one orthodoxy because a franchise-like Christianity with competing churches cannot stabilize imperial religion.

The Council of Nicaea solves doctrinal conflict with the Holy Trinity, but Jiang says the solution is more problematic than the alternatives because it must be accepted as reality rather than reasoned through.

Forced irrational orthodoxy hollows out the logical system of the brain: if an unseen unknowable layer is inserted into thought, people can no longer build connections creatively.

Byzantine enforcement of Holy Trinity orthodoxy generates wars, drives dissenting Christians toward Sassanid Persia and Arabia, and contributes to both Byzantine and Sassanid exhaustion.

Jiang distinguishes orthodox canonical Christianity from apocryphal, hidden, or esoteric knowledge kept within secret societies.

Jiang says orthodox Christianity and Judaism leave three major puzzles: why Eden required banishment, why Noah's flood happened if humans stayed wicked, and why Jesus had to die.