Orthodoxy… Orthopraxy… Orthoparadoxy…

If orthodoxy (right doctrine) is the gift of the evangelicalism and orthopraxy (right practice) the gift of the liberalism, then orthoparadoxy (right tension) is the gift of the postmodernism. Many evangelicals criticize the emerging movement (conversation) for their lack of orthodoxy. Ortho-ly (rightly) so. But in their haste to label this movement, evangelicals consider them to be bunch of liberals with hair color that God did not originally intend and dressed in graphic t-shirts, jeans, and enough body piercings to cause anyone a knee-jerk wincing reaction.

However, I believe the greatest gift of the postmodern Christianity is the concept of orthoparadoxy, a term that I recently learned from a Jewish postmodern thinker. I believe truth in Scripture presents itself in paradoxes. Not in everything, but in more things than modernistic Christianity would like to admit. While I am not ready to abandon my orthodox beliefs, I do believe paradoxes are to be embraced rather than feared. We must celebrate the “both/and”-ness of Christian faith. Evangelicalism tends to present it as contradictions (“either-or”), thus forcing us to choose between the two. Inevitably, when paradoxes are understood in the framework of contradictions, it causes undivine divisions. This is what we saw in the evangelical world. We have Calvinists and Arminians; baptists and presbyterians; continuationists and cessationists; post-, a-, pre- tribulationists/millennialists; so on and so forth…

These dividing walls are now being deconstructed and reconstructed within the framework of orthoparadoxy, resulting in inclusivity among various Christian traditions. So, now a liberal mainliner can work comfortably beside a conservative evangelical and vice versa, all in the name of orthoparadoxy, devoid of any wincing (to shrink back involuntarily (as from pain), from Merriam-Webster).

Now, this may make some evangelicals little uneasy. It did to me (I winced). Perhaps, balance is called for. But this is a typical response from an evangelical.

I am still wrestling through how I, as a Bible believing, Jesus loving Christian, reckon with these three orthos of faith…

Any thoughts??

~ by wonsukdo on July 5, 2008.