{"id":674,"date":"2008-10-30T06:30:35","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T13:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=674"},"modified":"2008-10-30T06:30:35","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T13:30:35","slug":"relational-orthodoxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2008\/10\/30\/relational-orthodoxy\/","title":{"rendered":"Relational Orthodoxy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting discussion on Jesus Creed<\/a> about how a younger pastor interested in the emerging church movement can relate to an older pastor who is wary of it. \u00a0Here’s a comment I posted for discussion, offered here for discussion as well.<\/p>\n

Scot and others, I\u2019m curious for your take on this rumination. So this idea of \u201corthodoxy\u201d has been nagging at me for quite some time. I wonder if in the context of the young pastor\u2019s conversations with his senior pastor, we could use a word like \u201cauthenticity\u201d instead. \u201cOrthodoxy\u201d and \u201ccentral to the gospel\u201d to me sound like hard demarcations based on mere assent to propositions. You agree with this list, or you\u2019re out. Perhaps even, \u201cif you get this one wrong, you\u2019re not really among the elect \/ saved \/ Christians.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as I read scripture, the central concern seems to be \u201cauthenticity.\u201d The epistle of 1 John, for example, is heavily invested in \u201corthodoxy,\u201d because one of the writer\u2019s central concerns is to distinguish authentic Christians from false teachers (possibly Gnostics) who are denying the deity of Christ. But the overall emphasis is on right\u00a0relationship<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the false teachers were ultimately unable to exhibit a right relationship to Jesus issuing in the prime virtue of love, because they were not coming to Jesus as he is, as the God-man. The sense, I think, is not to ossify a certain statement, expression, or contextualization of faith, but to encourage and enable people to remain in authentic, transforming relationship with Jesus. I\u2019d suggest that other places in scripture in which proto-creedal statements are passed along perform the same function.<\/p>\n

So maybe the starting point for this cross-generational, emerging-to-conservative-evangelical conversation is to shift focus from the demarcations of \u201corthodoxy\u201d to the purposes of \u201cauthenticity.\u201d Then the younger pastor can say something like \u201chere\u2019s how I think what NT Wright \/ Willard \/ McKnight \/ McClaren \/ etc. helps people deepen an authentic relationship with Jesus\u201d; and the older pastor can say \u201chere\u2019s where I see some concerns with authenticity.\u201d Not hard analytical lines, but relational boundaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting discussion on Jesus Creed about how a younger pastor interested in the emerging church movement can relate to an older pastor who is wary of it. \u00a0Here’s a comment I posted for discussion, offered here for discussion as well. Scot and others, I\u2019m curious for your take on this rumination. So this idea of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-aS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}