Foundations first
I have always argued that when arguing, arguing (to all my linguistic critics - THAT was deliberate!) about specific details is fairly futile if you cannot first agree about (or at least understand) the foundations upon which those specifics are built. I fear, as I begin to read Spencer Burke'ss book "A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity" that I am going to time and time again grit my intellectual teeth because of the many specific details based on assumptions he makes to which I have little or no allegiance.
It all rests with the issue of authority.
Burke begins in his introduction to describe the new cultural wave of post modernity that is arising amidst the ashes of the failed enlightenment. He and I agree to a large degree, though I would argue that the wave isn't as big or as powerful as he assumes...in my personal experience the secular age is alive and well. None-the-less, I agree that the faith our culture has placed in science and secularism is bound to lead to more and more depravity and human suffering – even if only on an spiritual level. It would seem that Burke is arguing that Christianity must also ride this wave of post modernity.
What will riding this wave look like? Well, I expect the book will lay this all out...but from what I gather in the introduction, it really doesn't matter what it looks like as long as it works. He opts to use the word heretic because he believes that heresy can be a "positive rather than negative force" and he defines it as "those who willfully moved out of perceived orthodox positions" [emphasis mine]. He goes on to write: "contemporary heresy is a means to a new end, a way out of what no longer works." [emphasis again mine].
I was immediately curious to see where he was going with this. Was he going to advocate a sort Spongian revisionist Christianity? Burke writes: "I am not merely seeking to put a new spin on old beliefs ; I am actually declaring that there are new ways of believing when it comes to the Christian story." Hmmm… "Christian story," why does that sound like a loaded term? What does he mean by that? Further he asks us to look "at the gospel story with twenty-first century eyes." Ummm...so do my 21st century eyes see God in the flesh walking out of the tomb ALIVE?
Burke ends his introduction with this: "I am happy to live with uncertainty and in precarious freedom, rather than hunker down in the false security of institutions and recite doctrines that no longer feed my soul."
My questions:
1.How do you know that the hunger of your soul is healthy? In other words what if the hunger you feel, which you believe is not being fed by the traditional Christian faith is the equivalent of a three year old child screaming for candy for dinner? How can you be sure?
2.While trumpeting the failure of enlightenment modernism, have you not also bowed down to the same idol that founded the vast scope of modern Christianity: individualism? In other words: the individual PME is doing EXACTLY what every other founder of the thousands of modern denominations did: decide that the Christianity around them "no longer works" and then simply reinvented it in order to "feed my soul." Have we really left modernity behind? Has the fruit really fallen that far from the tree?
3.Fear of institution is HUGE amongst the PME crowd (and if you've been here at Paradosis for any length of time then you have likely heard me rant against the derogatory use of that term), and yet, curiously they apparently have no qualms in letting the insanity of modern or postmodern culture decide what the Christian story ought to say. Why? Are we seriously under the impression that Jesus' message needs to be overseen, filtered, and dictated by the prevailing and unbound "wisdom" of this age?
I don't know where Burke is going to go from here - especially with regard to doctrine. The introduction seems to indicate that anything is up for grabs. Bishop Spong wrote a lot of the same and he went on to deny the Resurrection, because after all, no rational person today believes in such things today and so the Resurrection "no longer works."
It is one thing to design a worship style to your taste, but it is an altogether different thing to design doctrines to your tatse. One must have a very very high opinion of the quality and discernment of their taste, dangerously high I would suggest.
I'll explain in the next post, but it has to do with humility and community.
- Get link
- Other Apps
Comments
"This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly…. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one’s own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom — that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.(Orthodoxy, 100-101)."
Look at me, I'm a "heretic", aren't I hip?
I know you have an "assignment", but engaging in conversation (oh drat, I used on of "their" terms, seem to be a waste of time, as it appears to be a movement that is more interested in asking questions than finding answers. Furthermore the ignorance about Orthodoxy is stunning, worse in fact than the true ignorance of the average Evangelical, who really knows nothing about Orthodoxy. Listening to some emergent folks you discover that the Orthodox Church is not only Panentheist, but also Universalist. Ummm... right...
In the end the post-modern/emergent conversation seem to be all about questioning assumptions, though the assumption that tradition must be overthrown, orthodox Christianity "no longer works", and God is doing "something new" must NEVER be deeply questioned, anyone that does that is patted on the head, thanked for being "part of the conversation", and promptly ignored.
But then...when it begins to make them uncomfortable...when it begins to demand things of them...when they hear this, they became very sorrowful, for they were very full of self-determined presuppositions. (Luke 18)
I don't know why they expect Orthodoxy to kick their arses any less than it does us Orthodox?
That being said...I'm happy to voice the Orthodox perspective (as best as I can) when asked.