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A good friend of mine asked me to unpack these tweets:

The real foil for #emergent isn’t Western evangelicalism per se but the naive realism and foundationalism that ground most fundamentalisms (including an Enlightement scientism). What is #emergent on its own terms? Its soteriology is broadly conceived & integral; iow, applying both now & later to both us & “them”

I thought I’d blog my response here:

Soteriology refers to the theology of being saved. The different stances that theologians will take on soteriology will depend on many other factors:

1) theology – or the questions surrounding one’s conceptions of God, but in addition to mere conceptions are people’s imaginative participation in different symbol systems and the practices of a given faith. For example, in our Catholicism, think of the sacraments, our liturgical practices, our different ministries

2) pneumatology – or the questions that speak to the activity of the Holy Spirit throughout history

3) Christology – assuming Christian theology of course, takes into account one’s beliefs about Jesus and the incarnation and why did it happen and what did it accomplish and for whom

4) theological anthropology – asks what is a human being and what are the most insistent longings and ultimate concerns of humanity. In what sort of predicament does humankind find itself, in general, and in our postmodern world?

5) ecclesiology – looking at different ways of being church. What is the church and who belongs? Who’s in and who’s out? What is its mission?

6) eschatology – considering where we as individuals and as a people of God are ultimately headed. What’s the final vision and realization of all that we hope for?

7) epistemology – a branch of philosophy that investigates what it is that humans believe we can know and how it is that we actually know what it is we think we know

8 ) emergent refers to a conversation going on within and between the different traditions of Christianity about how the church is emerging as a whole. In our Catholicism this conversation began w/Vatican 2 and expressed the creative tension between the 2 notions of aggiornamento, which means “to bring up to date” and ressourcement, which means a “return to earlier sources, traditions and symbols.” The general idea is that our institutions preserve what is essential and must continually return to our earlier sources to revive and renew them. New “movements” refer to works of the Spirit in our midst.

9) foundationalism, then, comes under the category of #7, epistemology, as a theory of knowledge or how we know what we know and has resulted in what I called a naive realism, which pretty much means that one imagines that one has a rather unproblematical access to the truth. For example, I used an example, scientism, which is a stance that imagines that science is both necessary and sufficient for interpreting reality. As people of faith, you and I reject that notion; we’d say that science is necessary but, alone, it is woefully insufficient. But, one can ask even from within a faith tradition, what about the Bible? the Pope? the Koran? How truth-laden are they? Why? Why not?

10) The stance one takes in any and all of the above outlooks will influence one’s view on soteriology: What does it mean to be saved? Are we talking about an event in the past, present or future? or more outside of time? Are we talking about Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Christians, NonChristians, Nonbelievers or even Atheists?

For a more comprehensive introduction to the emerging church conversation, one can visit Cathlimergent online, which is largely informed by the teachings of Fr. Richard Rohr and also Brian McLaren. There are a lot of links at Cathlimergent to videos and discussions that break these topics open in an engaging and accessible way.

I would like to extend this excursus below to set forth my own vision of how the emerging church conversation might define its self on its own terms without, as some protest, using a Western evangelicalism as a foil.

The most pertinent categories, in my view, are numbers 7 and 9. I do not think it would be too facile a characterization to suggest that emergents employ approaches to the truth that are either nonfoundational or weakly foundational, employing some form of critical realism. They have not traded in an epistemic hubris for an excessive epistemic humility (e.g. Rorty’s vulgar pragmatism) but embrace, rather, an integral epistemic holism.

This results in a more tolerant attitude both toward reality and other people. It does not otherwise result in a monolithic systematic theology. Believers may not jettison their metanarratives but they will consider them fallible, provisional closures. As such, we still transist as anglimergent, baptimergent, cathlimergent, presbymergent and so on.

The emergent cohort of most denominations does seem to be correcting certain overemphases. For example, in eschatology it is better balancing now and later, where later had been way overemphasized. In soteriology, it is better balancing us and them, where us had been way overemphasized. In Christology, it is better balancing the historical & mytho-poetic Jesus with the Cosmic Christ. In epistemology, it is better balancing the dual and nondual, where the dualistic had been way overemphasized. In ecclesiology, it is better balancing the institutional and noninstitutional, where the institutional had been way overemphasized. In theological anthropology, it is better balancing the incarnational goodness of humanity with its wounded condition, where our woundedness had been way overemphasized. In our pneumatology, it is better balancing the notion that the Holy Spirit is active both now and in the past, both in the clerical and in the lay, both here in this religion and there in that religion, where it had way overemphasized the past, the clerical and one’s own religion.

Perhaps 38 Special put it best:

So Hold On Loosely, but don’t let go
If you cling too tight babe,
you’re gonna lose it
You’re gonna — lose control
yeah, yeah, yeah
Just Hold On Loosely but don’t let go
If you cling too tight babe,
you’re gonna loose control

This excursus will be facile and brief. It’s not even mostly about Hume, who makes for naught but a good foil in this story.

There’s an old aphorism that suggests, if you really believe that Hume, himself, believed all the stuff he said, then, should you decide to invite Hume to tea, be sure to hide your silver. One of my own biggest philosophical laments has not so much been the Humean (empiricist realist) school but, rather, the Kantian (rationalist idealist) response that it spawned, a transcendentalist perspective that then infiltrated Thomism and other, once fairly respectable, scholastic settings.

There can be no denying that Hume did both Platonism (rationalist realist) and Aristotelianism (empiricist realist) a favor by inoculating them against the rather insidious viral meme we call naivete and ushering in all manner of so-called philosophical turns that, in retrospect, look more like elephants in ballet tutus doing pirouettes.

Many exits were installed on the epistemological expressway after Descartes’ initial turn to the self. The metaphysical highway split, taking rationalist (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz) and empiricist foundationalists (Locke, Hume, Berkeley) off in two different directions. Hume had scared the bejesus out of folks (you can take that literally if you want) and Kant had sung them a lullaby and provided a tonic for their skepticism. There were turns to the subject, turns to experience, analytical and linguistic turns, a critical turn to praxis, a hermeneutical or interpretive turn, even a turn to history. Not having any formal education in philosophy, but terribly interested in its subject matter nonetheless, as an autodidact, I drove this highway without a map and, at one time or another, pretty much made each of the turns and discovered all of their epistemic cul-de-sacs. It reminded me of all of the lawsuit pleadings and counter-pleadings I’d read over the years, each spot-on and devastating in its sophistry, only to be soon demolished by some small technical point, for example, like a fact.

Deconstruction followed. It was not a bad thing. Really. Well, that is, except for its radical versions, which tried to establish on foundations too firm that foundations were just not acceptable. They lost a good working theory of truth by conflating it with our various tests for truth. The last turn I made, and I haven’t looked back, was the turn to community with the pragmatic realists. And I don’t mean Rorty’s vulgar pragmatism but that of Peirce and his triadic semeiotic.

Once one encounters a more holistic epistemology, a more naturalized evolutionary epistemology that pays heed to our ecological rationality, the Humean critique loses its punch.  Those who imagine that the Humean critique is still wreaking theological havoc must be engaging either radical fundamentalists (whether from religious fundamentalism or an Enlightenment scientism) or mere caricatures of postmodern critical realisms. Although I don’t personally construct either metaphysics or metanarratives, myself, I don’t really begrudge anyone such attempts as long as they proceed both hypothetically and with a contrite fallibilism, looking over their shoulder at their various leaps.

Don’t get me wrong. For my part, I am very much standing at the ready to do a metaphysic and to write a metanarrative but am waiting for a really good root metaphor – you know – like one that’ll reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics. I reckon: “Til then, why bother?”

I have been working on what I call my Peircean-Nevillean Integral Axiological Epistemology. To be honest, it still reflects my rather ineradicable positivist bent, a celebration of what I hope is weakly truth-indicative even if I’ve otherwise been wholly dispossessed of the robustly truth-conducive. That is to say that I’m an incurable realist, not just in science but also in religion. I’ve accepted that things are rather suboptimal by the old scholastic realist standards but am content to muddle along with a healthy dose of skepticism (it’s only a vaccine; the live virus can kill you!). It’s actually more exciting this way. Who needs theme parks when all of creation is an incredible risk adventure?

I had a saying in banking that profits do not come from taking risks but, instead, from superior skills at managing risks. (I was one of the few in banking, though, who saw it that way. So, I exited way before the crash. I’m big on exit ramp metaphors.) Science has its epistemic risks, as do cultures and philosophies. And we amplify these risks in order to augment the values that are gifted us as their fruit. Faith is a clear amplification of the risks we’ve taken in pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness. Thus it is that through faith, hope and love (the best managed risk-amplifications around) we reap the value-augmentations of creed, cult and code in an existential turn to community that has rewarded me beyond my most realistic expectations.

This turn to community is, more simply put, a turn to love. It is best amplified through a self-emptying kenosis. Any parent knows the value-augmentations that then ensue. Despite my positivist bent and hygienic skepticism, or perhaps I should better say because of them, once all things are otherwise equal empirically, logically, practically and morally, then, relationally, I then leap and thus cash out the pragmatic value of an existential option that James well-described as forced, vital and live. Very many get the forced and vital bit in their very bones but so few seem to pay attention to all that goes into making a particular option live.

None of this is to deny that most of our value-realizations come more so from our participatory imaginations (hometown knowledge) than our propositional cognitions (conceptual map-making), anyway. And our participatory, imaginative and interpretive engagements, collectively, get systematized and with great practical effect. These systems (like our Great Traditions) are truth-laden — not in the manner in which they conceptually describe the ultimate, but rather — in the manner they foster human value-realizations vis a vis our concerns re: ultimacy. One must inhabit the symbol systems of such systems, existentially, to real-ize their value & truth, as they do not readily lend themselves to mere propositional analysis. This approach should prove increasingly fruitful for our inter-religious dialogue and understanding of religious pluralism.

Since Hume came along, there are all sorts of things that get in our way of apodictic certainty regarding, as they say, final things. This largely has to do with some rather intractable problems with which we are faced regarding primal things, problems like Gödel‘s incompleteness theorems, entropic erasure and a host of other epistemic indeterminacies and putative ontological unspecifiabilities. As for the problem of induction, well, we have some pretty good work-arounds.

All this said, we’re not suggesting that, while God is wholly incomprehensible, He is not partly intelligible. But we do need to take heed of just what we are saying about Her, being clear as to what came from special divine revelation and what we have imagined from so-called general revelation in the book of nature. As far as natural theology goes, the book of nature provides us the questions (rather some questions) and a few vague concepts and categories that provide but a heuristic that may help us to successfully refer to Whom we cannot otherwise aspire to describe.  We do gain some descriptive accuracy through apophatic negations (for example, Johnboy is not God) but our kataphatic affirmations are pretty much limited to weak analogical predicates, metaphors, that are gifted through special revelation and faith. I mean, what does the concept cause refer to at T=0, anyway? What we have gathered otherwise through faith is an essential nature that creates, loves and Self-empties. Our theologies of nature are extended allegories of those aspects of an essential nature that have been revealed. No one, nowadays, pretends to call such poetry natural theology. Reality otherwise presents in such a way that is way too ambiguous for us and way too ambivalent toward us for us to draw any coercively compelling inferences regarding its initial, boundary and limit conditions.

What we are left with, epistemically, to put it most succinctly, is love. It is not that I have forsworn my godforsaken positivist bent; rather, I have surrendered to the undeniable and inevitable. Because of my radical finitude and indelibly fallible nature, to put it bluntly: epistemologically, I’m screwed. Thanks, David Hume.  But, you know what? As a result, I see what Scotus meant regarding the primacy of the will over the intellect. And it resonates wonderfully with Neville‘s solution to the One and the many through a recognition of the primacy of God’s will in determining God’s nature.  (Thus we are truly eikons in that regard.)

More and more, then, I believe that the Franciscans have gotten things the most correct, philosophically and theologically.

Thus it is that I wonder if, in fact, there is not something of an inchoate systematic theology, both a ressourcement and aggiornamento, in our emerging church conversation. (See this related conversation.) And it might be grounded in a semiotic realism, which prescinds from any robustly descriptive metaphysic to a more vague phenomenology, that has been, as they say, constant throughout our tradition, even if most often reduced to minority report status. This is to suggest that no given metaphysic, much less autonomous philosophy, has ever been inextricably intertwined with Christianity’s essential message or core praxes. On occasion Christianity has been subverted and co-opted by a culture but the general idea is that it can be successfully inculturated and assimilated to any culture.

This is why I could write to Brian McLaren a few days ago, suggesting:

I’ve been scratching my head questioning how I could interpret your thrust as grounded in and consistent with what I see as a long (and continuous) semiotic tradition in Christianity, dating back to the early church fathers, running through the medieval church and influencing our postmodern outlook (e.g. Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scottus Eriugena, John Duns Scotus, John of St. Thomas /Poinsot, Charles Sanders Peirce, Walker Percy, Robert Cummings Neville, Amos Yong), while others imagine you’re simply reiterating old liberal and neoliberal arguments. You’re much closer to being a medieval Franciscan! I can only reckon that it was my foreknowledge of our kinship with Walker Percy that innoculated me against that rather insidious viral meme that paints you as the reincarnate Adolf von Harnack.

And this is why I’m going to be paying close attention to a Boston U./Claremont scholar, Benjamin Chicka, who will soon be blogging weekly on science and religion HERE at Patheos. He’s got a lot more to say and can say it much better than I could ever aspire.

What could one possibly mean by convergence in the emerging church conversation, especially once recognizing and acknowledging that we remain, in the same instance, Anglimergent, Baptimergent, Cathlimergent, Luthermergent, Presbymergent and so on?

To the extent the conversation primarily involves a consideration of methods, practices and experiences and not, rather, belief systems, conclusions and propositions, and given the conversation’s postfoundational orientation, what emerges will not be in the form of  arguments in the strict sense. Instead, we are discovering a convergence that is more so of nonpropositional nature.

This is to say that this convergence does not articulate, for example, a new narrative arch of a distinctly descriptive, normative or speculative nature, which would be a cosmological enterprise. Rather, this convergence has an axiological trajectory, which is to say that it fosters a harmonic resonance of an evaluative, interpretive or existential nature. Interpretively, we are coming away with a deepened sense of solidarity. Evaluatively, we share a profound sense of compassion. We share, then, a great unity of mission even as we recognize our diversity of ministry and acknowledge our plurality of belief systems.

What emerges, then, is not so much a convergence of metanarratives but, instead, of meta-perspectives. It is a convergence of perspectives that conditions HOW we will first see and experience reality, so to speak, desiring the Kingdom, and not of narratives setting forth WHAT we will eventually think about reality in order to somehow argue and prove the Kingdom.

A lot of people, who remain immersed in dualistic mindsets with their problem-solving orientation to all of reality, have a difficult time evaluating the emerging church conversation. These are likely the same tweeple who are repeatedly tweeting their frustration with trying to nail jello to the wall in their coming to grips with what the emerging conversation is all about. For so many, apologetics is primarily evidential, rational and presuppositional, proceeding with empirical, logical, practical and moral reasoning. And, by all means, this approach to reality is indispensable and necessary. When it comes to life’s deepest mysteries, more ultimate concerns and most significant value-realizations, however, we must go beyond this dualistic approach and engage reality with a more nondual, contemplative stance.

So, when we speak of a convergence in the emerging conversation, we are not suggesting a novel set of concepts and categories. Neither should one look for a specific political agenda. It is not a convergence of moral reasoning, such that emergent folk will all necessarily share the same positions on one moral reality or another. Even regarding cosmological matters, we are not suggesting a convergence of views regarding such things as philosophy of mind, theological anthropology, divine interactions and so on.

A distinctly nonpropositional convergence of shared practice and shared experience, of a deepened sense of solidarity and heightened sense of compassion, will very much condition our approach to environmental & social justice, ecclesiology, worship and Jesus. Notice how these are not primarily propositional realities but are, first and foremost, relational realities. We are not first preoccupied with getting answers right as if we were mostly dealing with ideas. This convergence is not about getting the correct relationships between ideas, whether through a harmony of reasons or even intuitions. This is about realizing the right relationships between humankind and God, ourselves and one another, ourselves and nature and even our relationship to our own self.

This harmonic convergence, then, is like a symphony of many instruments, each with its own sound and timbre, all playing together in the same key, in harmony and to the rhythm of the same Drum.

This is not to deny, however, that to the extent that we are conditioned, shaped and formed by a convergence of nonpropositional influences, that it will not eventually transvalue our more propositional approaches, effecting their convergence also. It will. But that requires a great deal of patience.

I have to run. The exigencies of life press in. But I will elaborate on all of this later and hopefully in a more accessible way.

Update: Really, the best articulation of the emerging conversation trajectory from a Catholic perspective is in this video clip of Fr. Richard Rohr: Fr. Richard Rohr describes the Emerging Church Conversation

Also, here’s the latest HomeBrewed Christianity Podcast of Fr. Rohr: Get your Non-dualism on with Richard Rohr

Day 3 – continuing

Beyond socialization, we are opening ourselves up to ongoing transformation and a deep desiring of the Kingdom. We experience a deep desiring for environmental and social justice in solidarity with and compassion for humankind and our cosmos. Ever more identified with Jesus and His deep desiring of communion with the Father, we long for the coming of the Cosmic Christ. Our ecclesiology is more ecumenical and egalitarian as we go beyond institutional structures (and not necessarily without them) seeking authentic community in manifold and multiform ways, wherever two or more can gather in His Name. Our worship becomes the practice of the Presence of God as we seek an abiding relationship with Him – not Whom we possess, but – Who possesses us.

In solidarity and sharing this same deep desiring, we may otherwise differ in HOW we see justice playing out morally, practically and politically, in HOW we see the Kingdom unfolding eschatologically and metaphysically. And we can abide with these differences because of our deep humility and deep love for one another, encouraging and forgiving one another, sharing a vision THAT in the Kingdom all may be well, all will be well, all shall be well and we will know that all manner of things shall be well.

The emerging church conversation is less about positions and more about dispositions, about being disposed to a Deep Awareness, Deep Solidarity, Deep Compassion, Deep Humility, Deep Worship, Deep Justice, Deep Ecology and Deep Community. That these realities will play out in our lives we are confidently assured. How they will play out is something we explore in humility and civility with all people of goodwill. Ours is foremost a shared axiology, interpretively and evaluatively, of what we deeply desire and deeply value. We share practices that shape, form, cultivate and celebrate these desires and values. We believe that, one day, this will lead also to a shared cosmology, descriptively and normatively, consistent with the best science and best philosophy.

“Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.” Thomas Merton

Below is a contribution evoked by Kevin Beck‘s question re: empathy & compassion: (more…)

Below, I will employ a Strategic Plan paradigm to characterize and organize the emerging church conversation employing what might, at first, appear to be characteristically Catholic categories. In doing so, I hope to emphasize how this conversation proceeds more from a consideration of questions rather than answers, practices rather than conclusions, methods rather than systems.

While there is certainly an implicit assumption that one will take from these conversations some best practices, which will then be integrated into some otherwise disparate ecclesial systems, we hope to show how such approaches as descriptive science, normative philosophy, evaluative culture and interpretive religion can be methodologically autonomous even while, at the same time, being axiologically integral, which is to say that each method is necessary, none alone sufficient, in every human value-realization.

For example, put more plainly, how can we answer the normative question How does one best acquire or avoid that? without first answering the descriptive question What is that? much less the evaluative question What’s that to us? (I say to “us” rather than “me” in recognition of our radically social nature). And we dare not ignore our interpretive grand narratives, which, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, contextualize all of these questions with their (often implicit, very often unconscious even) answers to the question How does all of this re-ligate or tie-back together?

Before laying out a Cathlimergent approach, I want to build a conceptual bridge to the approaches taken by many of our Protestant sisters and brothers. Dialogue about prescriptive realities is very much dependent on fair and accurate descriptive representations (avoiding unnecessary strawmen and ad hominems). When it comes to good scholarship and civil discourse, few have gone about it better than the author of Deep Church, Jim Belcher,  so I will employ his categories in our bridge-building effort.

To wit, when Jim —

prescribes Deep Truth in response to a captivity to Enlightenment rationalism he’s breaking open our category of normative philosophy;
prescribes Deep Preaching in response to ineffective preaching he’s breaking open our category of orthodoxy vis a  vis boundary establishment and defense;
prescribes Deep Evangelism in response to an overemphasis on belief before belonging he’s breaking open our category of orthodoxy vis a vis inclusivism and boundary negotiation;
prescribes Deep Worship in response to uncontextualized worship he’s breaking open our category of orthopathy;
prescribes Deep Gospel in response to a narrow view of salvation he’s breaking open our category of orthopraxy in relationship to orthodoxy;
prescribes Deep Ecclesiology in response to weak ecclesiology he’s breaking open our category of orthocommunio vis a vis church as institution and tradition;
prescribes Deep Culture in response to tribalism he’s breaking open our category of orthocommunio vis a vis church as organism, in the world, transcending boundaries to permeate and improve the temporal order by being tribal not tribalistic (cf. Rohr).

The emerging church conversation is lyrical in a sense as a pattern presents that reveals a fugue-like interplay of boundary establishment, boundary defense, boundary negotiation and boundary transcendence.

Does everyone come out singing the same lyrics even if we all seem to be humming the same melody? Of course not! But there’s a not too distant drumbeat that has us all marching, sometimes swiftly with little hindrance, often bumbling and stumbling, to the same beat and beckoning us into a banquet hall where the banner over us all is love.

To some extent, boundary establishment is largely a discursive, descriptive enterprise where orthodoxy enjoys its moment and has its say; it describes such as our essential creeds,  theological anthropology and social ontology (marriage, children, family, institutions, etc). Boundary defense is a normative enterprise where orthopraxy exerts its influence in loving and compassionate action ordered to the end of orthocommunio or authentic unity in community, where we realize our telic aim of boundary transcendence.

None of these boundary dynamics enjoy any efficacy in and of themselves, however, apart from the boundary negotiation that occurs in orthopathy, where our desires, themselves, are first shaped and formed by liturgy, whether of the mall, the marketplace or Eucharist. (I cannot more highly recommend Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, in this regard.)

Liturgy, then, nurturing our nondual, contemplative stance, enjoys an epistemic primacy in the fugal movement of orthopathic, orthodoxic, orthopraxic and orthocommunal moments. This is to recognize that sacrament and song and psalmody and story-telling and gathering for bread-breaking came first in our tradition, our ecclesial phylogeny, so to speak, and that it remains first, even now, in each of our lives, our spiritual ontogeny, in other words, as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny in religion as well as biology and every other emergent reality.

A question that begs regarding this exercise is if we are primarily about finding questions, exploring methods and exchanging practices, where might the theoretical rubber hit the road in next proposing concrete ecclesial changes?

Where I hope to take my questions and concerns is here:

American Catholic Council

The outline below is meant to be comprehensive but not exhaustive. In each category are sample strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities and sample resources. It is intended as a catalyst for constructive conversation and a guideline for dialogue, a conceptual bridge-builder or heuristic device. It is expected that you will engage this outline, perhaps even suggesting an entirely different paradigm, certainly adding different strengths, weaknesses, threats, opportunities and resources, raising new questions and concerns, breaking open new categories.

I’m a retired Bank CEO so thought, immediately, that this resembles strategic planning. A spiritual director might look and see a prayer ladder of lectio, meditatio,  operatio, contemplatio. A social media consultant might see a P2P platform or a viral meme. A conflict resolution mediator might see (Greg, what DO you see?) … What, then, do YOU see?

So, Catholics and nonCatholics, alike, please join us at Cathlimergent!

What’s Up? wussup? or WOTS up?: the Emerging Church Conversation as Strategic Planning Exercise (Risk Management)

EXTERNAL OPPORTUNITIES & THREATS

Axiological Visions as amplification of risks (through beliefs) ordered toward augmentation of value thru:

DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE (a cosmological methodology) asking What’s that?

Threats:
Scientism

Opportunities:
Technological Advance
Dualistic, problem-solving approach

Resources:
The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose by John F. Haught

Institute on Religion in an Age of Science

Metanexus

Zygon Center for Religion and Science

EVALUATIVE CULTURE (an axiological methodology) asking What’s that to us?

Threats:
Practical Nihilism
Consumerism
Narcissism

Opportunities:
Story-telling
Music & Dramatic Arts

Resources:

Inter Mirifica, Decree On the Means of Social Communication, 1963.

Gaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution On the Church In the Modern World,1965.

Ad Gentes, Decree On the Mission Activity of the Church, 1965.

NORMATIVE PHILOSOPHY (a cosmological methodology) asking How do we acquire or avoid that?

Threats:
Enlightenment Rationalism – naïve realism
Radically Deconstructive Postmodernism

Opportunities:
Critical Realisms thru weak foundationalism and nonfoundational (fallibilism) & postfoundational epistemologies
Semiotic Realism

Resources:
Donald L. Gelpi, S.J.

Centre of Theology and Philosophy

INTERPRETIVE RELIGION & IDEOLOGY (an axiological methodology) asking How does all of this re-ligate or tie-back together?

Threats:
Religious Fundamentalism
Enlightenment Fundamentalism
Colonialism
Paternalism

Opportunities:
Ecumenism
Inter-religious & Inter-ideological Dialogue

Resources:
Dialogue Institute

Ecumene

David Group International

Francis X. Clooney, S.J.

Innerexplorations

Dignitatis Humanae, Declaration On Religious Freedom, 1965.

Monastic Interreligious Dialogue

INTERNAL STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES

Religion as a further amplification of risk ordered toward the further augmentation of value thru:

ORTHODOXY & TRUTH ARTICULATED IN CREED (DOGMA) or boundary establishment

Weaknesses:
Dogmatism
Ecclesiocentric Exclusivism

Strengths:
Pneumatocentric Vision
Christocentric Inclusivism
Theocentric Inclusivism
Honest Jesus Scholarship (cf. Rohr)

Resources:
Dei Verbum, Dogmatic Constitution On Divine Revelation, 1965.

Fides et Ratio

Gravissimum Educationis, Declaration On Christian Education, 1965.

Unitatis Redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, 1964.

Orientalium Ecclesiarum, Decree On the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite,1964.

Nostra Aetate, Declaration On the Relation Of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, 1965.

ORTHOPATHY & BEAUTY CELEBRATED & CULTIVATED (CULT / RITUAL) IN LITURGY or boundary negotiation

Weaknesses:
Ritualism
Dualistic Approach
Traditionalism

Strengths:
Retrieval, Renewal, Revival of Tradition
Contemplative Stance
Nonduality

Resources:
Center for Action and Contemplation

Fors Clavigera (Jamie Smith)

Brother David Steindl-Rast

Christian Nonduality

Cynthia Bourgeault

Contemplative Outreach

Worship Blog

The Website of Unknowing

Shalomplace

Sacrosanctum concilium, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 1963.

ORTHOPRAXY & GOODNESS PRESERVED IN CODE (LAW) or boundary defense

Weaknesses:
Legalism

Strengths:
Social Justice

Resources:
Religion Online – Social Issues

Sojourners

Center for Action and Contemplation

ORTHOCOMMUNIO & UNITY ENJOYED IN FELLOWSHIP or boundary transcendence

Weaknesses:

Institutionalism, Heirarchicalism,Patriarchalism, Sexism

Strengths:

Magisterial Reform
Democratization
Organic Growth
Noninstitutional Vehicles

Resources:
Lumen Gentium, Dogmatic Constitution On the Church, 1964.

Christus Dominus, Decree Concerning the Pastoral Office of Bishops In the Church, 1965.

Perfectae Caritatis, Decree On Renewal of Religious Life, 1965.

Optatam Totius, Decree On Priestly Training, 1965.

Presbyterorum Ordinis, Decree On the Ministry and Life of Priests, 1965.

Apostolicam Actuositatem, Decree On the Apostolate of the Laity, 1965.

GENERAL RESOURCES

Brian D. McLaren

Commonweal

Emergent Village

Emerging Women

Per Caritatem

Phyllis Tickle

Post Christian

Radical Emergence

Transmillenial

Zoecarnate

Anglimergent

Boulder Integral

Catholica

Emerging Church Portal (international)

Phyllis Tickle

Taming the Wolf

Thomas Merton Center

Virtual Chapel

http://cathlimergent.ning.com/

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The New Age seems to be a dysfunctional response to postmodernity.

I use the word response to indicate an over against or counter-movement. For example, it seems to me that the emerging church conversation is a response to Protestant fundamentalism (and, I’m hoping, Catholic fundamentalism). For its part, the New Atheism, is a form of Enlightenment fundamentalism. Another example, in the Catholic church our new priests are tending toward a reactionary traditionalism, what sociologist, Fr. Andy Greeley, has called “young fogeys.” Radical Orthodoxy seems to be another response to both modernism and postmodernism; I’m sympathetic to and interested in RO’s response.

If I had to choose one word to describe what many, many people seem to be searching for it would be reenchantment and I would reckon it is motivated by a nostalgia for an experience of the world prior to it being demythologized. (If only they understood our true myth.)

If the transformative journey is marked by movement from a naive understanding through reflection to a novel hermeneutic of the second naivete’, then some movements, as responses, seem to entail an en masse regression back to an original, first naivete’. I’m no sociologist of religion but this dynamic does seem to capture at least part of what is going on.

I would like to add that, in my view, the New Age movement has done violence to the wisdom of the Eastern traditions. It has engaged them at a very superficial level, especially where ontological monism is concerned. The East, for the most part, is not engaging in classical Western metaphysics. It’s practices are geared toward leading people into phenomenal experiences and not, rather, to metaphysical conclusions. The New Age movement, in my view, is a superficial engagement of the East that results in a perversion of those traditions, which I treat here, for any interested: No-Self & Nirvana elucidated by Dumoulin.

The New Age, then, is a facile syncretism and seems a kindred spirit to the Prosperity Gospel movement in that it tries to do an end around the Cross. What has often been called transrational, in the New Age movement, is actually an arational gnosticism, which tells us spiritual pedestrians of the metaphysical bourgeoisie: “You don’t see this truth because you are not at this stage, on our level.” And they are blind to and caught up in this silly tautology, which is like saying you don’t see any elephants around here because I carry an elephant gun and they wouldn’t dare come ’round here.