The Land of Unlikeness

continuing a theme started by Cynthia’s post and subsequent discussion here….

Giles Fraser has an interesting reflection in the most recent church times on the recent vote for women in the episcopate. For me, it confirms that one of the most significant yet unexplored issues at play here is a fundamental miscommunication over what orthodoxy is and is not. And not merely in terms of the issues - ie. women or no women in the episcopate. Instead, the question should be “how do we conceptually (dare I say, metaphysically?) go about the business of articulating orthodoxy.” On the one hand, you have a group of traditionalists who think of orthodoxy in a transcendental apriori fashion. For them, orthodoxy is something contained in itself that we can “get at” conceptually in more or less exhaustive ways. In other words, its best grasped propositionally. On the other hand, you have a group comprised of social gospellers, progressives, more moderate leaning conservatives, you name it, of whom many, in one fashion or another, tend to think of orthodoxy as something that grows, that either changes as our circumstances change or are access to it changes as our circumstances change. What’s more relevant for them is holding on to a tradition that they think of as a living (i.e. growing) tradition.

It seems to me that, after we recognize these fundamental differences in talking about orthodoxy, a middle way has to be fashioned that allows us to not only be a both/and group, but that finds a different way of thinking of orthodoxy that not only accepts both factions but also draws them closer to real orthodoxy which, if we take God’s transcendence seriously, is closer to what William Desmond would call overdeterminate - orthodoxy is not simply either graspable or beyond our grasp. Rather, it grasps us.