Put simply: the Orthodox man begins with the ‘end,' with the experience, the breakthrough, the very reality of God, the Kingdom, Life—and only afterwards does he clarify it, but in relation to the experience he has had. The Western man rationally arrives at and evokes the ‘end' from a series of premises. The Orthodox often expresses that ‘end' quite poorly in theology. For the Westerner, the end somehow disappears, is diluted in elaborate constructions. (I need to express this problem better.)

Alexander Schmemann, Journals, 1976.

Pluralist-- Thanks for a careful reply. Insofar as it seemed more about academic turf than anything else, I replied under "Common Courtesy," where I usually post things about general argumentation. To readers here I'd note that the case for hermeneutical and introspective reason has been well made, so I do not dismiss that sort of research as not knowledge. However, given the claims being made by Radical Orthodox, I don't think that they can indefinitely postpone doing empirical research on their own hypotheses, even if they have to rethink empiricism somewhat as they do. I look forward to that because, as illustrated below, we construct ourselves as we construct our views of the world, and even hermeneutic and introspective reason needs a horizon for its self-realisation. It is unlikely that any view of the world or construction of the self is wholly without a coordinating mythos that eludes full recognition.

There is now a Radical Orthodox Reader that is expensive but expansive. In October, Graham Ward will be the new Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.

I actually have this book by J K A Smith. The foreword, by Milbank, the founder of Radical Orthodoxy, isn't exactly overwhelmingly supportive. And I do, in the end, attack the idea that there postmodernism allows some equivalence between the so called (by them) secular theology of sociology and actual theology inside their non-objective bubble. And the reason is simple. When you do theology, you make it up. When you do sociology, you do research, and that research can deliver a no answer to your deductive hypothesis whether it comes by mass regularity research or small scale truth validity research. In other words, like science, there is something called evidence. All the Christ, God and rest of it is in the realm of mythology.

I am perfectly aware of the limitations of language in the telling of science, and also how narratives in science also build up. The same is true with social science - there is a relationship with literature. But in the end there is a crucial difference for why sociology is NOT secular theology, and it is because of research.

Whereas, all theological research is a pinch, a theft, from other subjects. If you do theology at university, as I have, it makes frequent references to other subjects like the sciences and social sciences. If you do science or social sciences at university - I've done the latter - they make no reference to theology.

There is no equivalence.

Orthodoxies-- Radical and Eastern. Pluralist's genial pokes remind me that, despite its relevance to the thread, I have not mentioned James Smith's Introducing Radical Orthodoxy (see review ), even though the founders of Radical Orthodoxy are Anglicans in England. They would argue, esteemed villagers, that the wicked Enlightenment project is interfering with our ability to read the creation texts that I have been posting here for the past few months. And how does it do this? By fostering an "ontology of violence" that splits nature from grace, man from nature, and faith from reason. And what does the "ontology of violence" look like in practise? Well, it looks a lot like most of Pluralist's pokes, which you might review for fun after skimming the book. (But be fair-- occasionally, in other comments, Pluralist seems to be trying to oppose the same ontology.)

Now my thought in starting this stream of texts and comments was that the ecclesiological gaps that we see in some discussions in the village have their root in a habit of trying to deduce ecclesial reality only from the individual out, rather than also from the creation in. In Christ, God created and will save both, of course. A favourite Anglican way to break this bad habit has been to read the Eastern fathers who never formed it in the first place and who took especially good care of their doctrinal system, reaffirming all of its essentials as recently as the 12th C. Thus one can sail to Byzantium, learn a new language, and relate nature to grace, man to nature, and faith to reason in a new and scriptural way. Roger Hurding and DavidR have also done some substantial reading on this.

But my own aim here is to find a way to do the same thing without leaving the sceptr'd isle, using only resources more familiar to evangelicals as far as possible. That's why I myself don't say much about Orthodoxy on this thread, whether Radical or Eastern.

An inspired human poetic creation from a former religious age and place.

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun,

which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy.

Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat.

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;

the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes;

the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

But who can detect their errors? Clear me from hidden faults.

Keep back your servant also from the insolent; do not let them have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

--Psalm 19 NRSV

Biological blobs with self-consciousness are capable of these inspiring poetic creations.

Cosmos and ethos. To those who might possibly take offence at Pluralist's dialogue with Angela on his Life and Death thread, I should point out that the inspired biological blobs who wrote the scriptures often also thought of ethos in terms of cosmos and vice versa. When Wisdom sings of the divine word halting the chaotic waters that could overrun the inhabited world (Proverbs 8:29-34 below), she is compactly expressing the relations among God's creativity, the boundaries thus established, the shared meanings that order domestic worlds, and the inner processes of discerning wisdom. However, when the Voice from the whirlwind answers Job and his friends (Job 38-41), it speaks of the Creator's delight in the whole "parade of animals," not least the fearsome Leviathan and Behemoth, to show that, much as the Lord delights in the innocence of the righteous, his powerful imagination finds expression and pleasure in his wildest creatures as well. Though Job's prior innocence is vindicated against his friends, some say that, once restored (Job 42), he nonetheless empathises with servants and women as he had not done before. That these texts do not have the clear legislation of, say, Leviticus does not mean that they are not making profound statements about the divine context within which human life is discovered as it is lived.

Roger's concerto for Trio and orchestra has three movements which follow the shape that the Eternal has given to time. Its themes are familiar to most villagers, but their harmony is their resonance with each other under the headings that Roger has given them. They might work well as an outline for meditation or retreat.

Hearing it myself, I recall one local church facing the dilemmas of dismantling the practise of slavery. After all, notwithstanding St Paul's epistle to Philemon, slavery is the village's favourite exemplar of evil, and the abolition of the global slave trade is one of the many achievements of which English evangelicals are justly proud. That in itself may be proleptic of the New Creation that we have been discussing. However, I am thinking here of the way my mother's people in Virginia rid themselves of slavery in the 18th-19th C, despite the strong support for the South's "peculiar institution" among the churches around them, including the one by law established under the transoceanic oversight of the Bishop of London.

Since they were anabaptist pietists of German origin who had settled in Virginia just beyond the frontier recognised by the Crown, they were already distinguished from their Christian neighbours by an anabaptist distance from the powers of this world and by a pietist devotion to the Person of Christ. Most salient for this discussion is that they believed that the union with Christ on the Cross effected in baptism necessarily entailed nonconformity to the world (Roger's New Identity), that the Lord's plan for the end of things was the basis for their communal life in the present (New Hope), and that the local community of believers was a household of faith that made decisions about  its "economics" (oikos + nomikos; New Creation) together. 

Roger's concerto recapitulates their ecclesial logic. Had they thought of their Christianity as an expression of their society rather than as a New Identity given by God, then as newcomers they would probably have assimilated to the view of their Christian neighbours who considered slavery to have been ordained by God. Had they lacked the New Hope to see the Church as the presence of the Kingdom, they would not have seen the need for their church to be free of slavery, even if they did privately deplore the institution. And had they not seen their livelihoods and possessions as part of the material life of the Body of Christ-- a New Creation-- they would have lacked the authority and capability to act collectively on the many complex ethical and financial issues that arise with emancipation. As it was, they were not afraid to say, "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us..."

In short, because they held traditional Christian beliefs in a way not unlike the way Roger has framed them, they had the spiritual freedom to discern an ugly reality in their new land, and to free themselves from that reality, whilst other Christians instead sought a scriptural basis on which to defend it. We could conclude from this that the New Creation celebrated by an inaugurated eschatology is the ontology of the Church, in part because, apart from that ground of hope, a congregation lacks the spiritual freedom to be the people of God imagined in the messianic prophecies and partially realised in the post-Resurrection Church. Of course I wonder-- what sort of church would have the spiritual freedom to free herself from what is similarly ugly in our own time and to serve the Lord in a more beautiful way?

Following Art's and Bowman's posts (for which, many thanks), I thought I'd look more closely at Ehesians 1 and Colossians 1 in terms of our threefold headings for the ontology of the Church with its foundation within the old creation and its promise of the new creation.

Actualization (a New Identiy):

• Blessed in Christ (Eph 1:3)
• Adopted as God's children (Eph 1:3)
• Redeemed and forgiven (Eph 1:7; Col 1:14)
• Rescued from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God's beloved son (Col 1:13)
• Sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph 1;13)

Aspiration (a New Hope):

• Given hope through the gospel and in Christ (Eph 1:23; Col 1:12,18)
• Bearing the Spirit's fruit (Eph 1:6,8,10,11; Col 1:15)
• Granted God's wisdom and understanding (Eph 1:17; Col 1:9)

Realization (a New Creation):

• A promised inheritance (Eph 1:11,14,18; Col 1:12)
• All things gathered up in the fullness of time (Eph 1:10,21; Col 1:18-20)
• The Church as Christ's body (Eph 1:22,23; Col 1:18)
• Supremacy of Christ now and in the age to come (Eph 1:21)
• Reconciliation to himself of all things (Col 1:20).

All these new beginnings are effected through the Cross (Eph 1:7; Col 1:20) and the Resurrection (Eph 1:20; Col 1:18).  As Tom Wright puts it:

'...the great poem in Colossian 1...has often been squashed into a shallow-level picture of a supposed "cosmic Christ", legitimating a dehistoricized Jesus and an easygoing transition away from a Jewish creation-theology and towards various soft versions of Teilhardian and similar thought.  But it stands there as a rebuke to all such attempts, not least because, if it is Jesus who is the key to the cosmos, it is of course the crucified and risen Jesus we are talking about...' (Surprised by Hope, pp.117-18).

Isaiah 43:19-21. Behold I am making a new thing, now it will sprout, now you shall know it; yea I will make a road in the desert, rivers in the wasteland.

The beasts of the field shall honor Me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I gave water in the desert, rivers in the wasteland, to give My chosen people drink.

This people I formed for Myself; they shall recite My praise.

Beauty and Faith. This surely deserves a thread of its own, but perhaps Ratzinger's thoughts can serve here as a placeholder for all that we might say about the aesthetic apprehension of the creation narratives of ancient Israel as expressions of faith.