Emerging Truth & Orthodoxy

Off and on over the course of the last two-days I wrote “a letter to the editor.” It was a good way for me to encourage a friend who had written a very useful essay in a magazine. The experience of thinking and writing the letter was fuelled by the memory of work by three people: Cardinal John Henry Newman, Dave Tomlinson, and Rowan Williams - An Anglo/Catholic re:mix

Catholicism, insisted Newman, is not a matter of opinion but truth. “Liberal” Catholicism, like every other form of ‘liberal” Christianity, was it’s own worst enemy. ‘“Liberal” religion has no internal brake, no way of saying, ‘here is where opinion stops and truth begins.’ It has no mechanism to keep itself from unravelling. The author of the essay writes, “That’s as true today as it was in Newman’s day…we live in a culture saturated by what Newman called “liberalism” – a culture in which about all that can be conceded is that there may be your truth and my truth, what’s good for you and what’s good for me. To assert that there might be something properly described, as the truth is not only considered odd, it’s usually considered intolerant…Newman’s life and work suggests that the risk of being labelled intolerant is worth taking - if you understand that genuine tolerance means engaging differences with respect and civility, not in avoiding differences as though they made no difference…

So, within the context of emerging theology, ecclesiology, missiology, and spirituality...

what is truth and orthodoxy? Where is truth located? For me, I’m increasingly relocating “truth” and “orthodoxy” from the solely rational sphere to the embodied and incarnational, e.g. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life – so what does that look like, feel like, taste like, smell like, and sound like in embodied realities such as church, community, and world? Truth is not abstract and solely propositional, truth in embodied in flesh and blood. The truth of what is said is seen and experienced. Don’t talk to me about “love” – show the truth of love by the reality of its being experienced by me in a very multi-sensual way. Truth then is not a matter of opinion, truth is incarnation and embodiment, truth is a particular story lived into and especially lived out of. Tell me your truth and I’ll look, taste, touch, smell, and listen. Does it make a difference? Am I less “orthodox” because I’m less inclined than ever to ‘test’ orthodoxy by propositional ‘truth’ alone? Is my Jesus-faithfulness less orthodox because the test of orthodoxy for me is embodiment and multi-sensual? Is approximation to Jesus the test of truth and orthodoxy? Is Newman’s “internal brake” within emerging theology, ecclesiology, missiology, and spirituality in fact Jesus-likeness rather than proposition, cool, and trendy? Jesus-likeness rather than PowerPoint, candles, and ancient liturgy re-mixed?

Colossians 2:7

"...You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving..."

From THE MESSAGE

Comments

[Geoff Holsclaw]

for me, this shift of truth also moved from the individual to the communal, such that truth and orthodoxy can't be separated from the daily life of the Church.

[anj]

yes. I don't know about orthodox or not, I just know the church has become where i am. Where jesus is with me, everywhere, in all things.
thanks Paul for putting words to this shift.

[bill]

Well put my friend. I need to hear this kind of things said many times, many ways.

[maggi]

I like the idea of locating truth in jesus, rather than propositions. That's primary in orthodxy. But surely Newman's whole argument was based on propoositional truth?

If you take the liberty to relocate truth in 'incarnationalism' you're already stepping into a liberal revisionist place, I would have thought. However, I would disagree that there are 'no brakes' in Liberal thinking. I think there are brakes - plenty of them - but they aren't propositional ones.

[david]

... traditionally facts have been described as those things that possess a level of empirical or external evidence/data . . . and as a result the western mindset all to often performs a logical fault known commonly as a slippery slope . . . all to often we treat fact and truth as a being synonymous and that is not by necessity a reality . . . if we look closely at this trajectory of that thought we can quickly discover that if that is accepted (without exception) it is a fact that water (H2O) does not change its chemical essence into wine, it is a fact that once death occurs in organic matter life does not return, and yet while these things might remain facts they do not possess the truth in the world as we know it, when we consider the suspension of both these facts and the laws that govern them we commonly refer to them as miraculous events . . . i believe this to be a true statement truth is a person not a proposition to which we merely mentally assent . . . i like it! . . . :::peace