Book Review: A Generous Orthodoxy Part 26 of ??
Unfinished
"To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way," McLaren writes, "is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on a wall. It is rather to be in a loving community of people who are seeking the truth on the road of mission and who have been launched on the quest by Jesus, who, with us, guides us still. Do we have it? Have we taken hold of it? Not fully, not yet, of course not."
McLaren asks what it would mean if we could get the glory of God fully right in our thinking. He states that it would be like claiming to, "love your spouse 'right' with technical perfection or by following appropriate directions and rules, which sounds like grounds for marriage counseling." Or, it would be like saying, "Mozart (or Bob Dylan) finally got it right; there's no need for more musical composition after him."
McLaren hopes that orthodoxy will come to mean, "not just correct ends but right means and attitudes to keep on discovering them, not just straight answers but a straight path to the next question that will keep on leading to better answers. This kind of orthodoxy will welcome others into the passionate pursuit if truth, not exclude them for failing to possess it already."
"To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way," McLaren writes, "is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on a wall. It is rather to be in a loving community of people who are seeking the truth on the road of mission and who have been launched on the quest by Jesus, who, with us, guides us still. Do we have it? Have we taken hold of it? Not fully, not yet, of course not."
McLaren asks what it would mean if we could get the glory of God fully right in our thinking. He states that it would be like claiming to, "love your spouse 'right' with technical perfection or by following appropriate directions and rules, which sounds like grounds for marriage counseling." Or, it would be like saying, "Mozart (or Bob Dylan) finally got it right; there's no need for more musical composition after him."
McLaren hopes that orthodoxy will come to mean, "not just correct ends but right means and attitudes to keep on discovering them, not just straight answers but a straight path to the next question that will keep on leading to better answers. This kind of orthodoxy will welcome others into the passionate pursuit if truth, not exclude them for failing to possess it already."
posted by Freethinker at 7:15:00 PM
4 Comments:
Greetings, Jasen:
I just jumped into this review at part 26, so I'm not sure what's going on. I enjoyed the great sport/not-sport debates below.
Isn't a review supposed to have some kind of evaluative element, or is that just a convention I'm used to?
I probably am the one who talked about you to TANK.
Talked about in a good way?
Pretty soon I'll post a sort of recap to my too many parts review, which did turn more into a summary than a review.
So this dude just wants to change the definition of orthodoxy? Not that I know the definition of it. Sigh, now I have to look it up. Shoot.
ORTHODOX: 1 a : conforming to established doctrine especially in religion b : CONVENTIONAL
2 capitalized : of, relating to, or constituting any of various conservative religious or political groups: as a : EASTERN ORTHODOX b : of or relating to Orthodox Judaism
Doctrine. There's the kicker. Hmm.
Well, as the title would suggest, he thinks that orthodoxy needs to be more generous than some make it out to be.
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