Right belief, right practice?

I've been hearing a lot of talk about the importance of orthopraxy, or right practice, alongside orthodoxy. I hear that orthodoxy without orthopraxy is dead (James 2.17), and at the same time that orthopraxy without orthodoxy is blind.

I wonder, however, how valid this distinction and setting side-by-side of belief and practice is. Not to mention the suffix. The emphasis is clearly modernist, dividing the spheres of human existence neatly into the abstract/intellectual/spiritual and the concrete/practical/bodily.

Is it enough to bring these spheres into equal standing with one another? Is that doing justice to the human experience, and the human experience of the divine (or, for that matter, the divine experience of humanity)?

Take two biblical examples brought to my attention by Professor Bogaski today.

In conventional Hebrew speech, the phrases 'remember' and 'forget' are inextricably related to actions. In Psalm 106, the actions of the Israelites are summarized as, 'They forgot God their savior,' a verse that stands in paralellism to 'They exchanged their glory for the image of an ox that eats grass.' Further, the same language is applied to God in the Exodus account, as he hears the cries of the Israelites and 'remembers' them. He had never forgotten them in the modernist sense of having lost a cognitive knowledge of their existence or his covenant with them. But he had 'forgotten' them for a time in the unified sense of knowledge-inextricable-from-action.

A second example is the parable of the good Samaritan, in which the Samaritan's aberrant theology counts for nothing over-against his right practice in this case. In contrast, the relative orthodoxy of those who passed the man by, rather than being praised but carefully set aside as "not enough by itself," is utterly ignored.

What this leads me to think is that it isn't enough to say that orthopraxy needs to stand alongside orthodoxy. Rather, there is some problem even in the casting of doxa and praxis as seperate entities. The modern solution, as I perceive it, has been to drill doxa in the hope that correct praxis will, with sufficient encouragement, follow of its own accord.

Assuming (as I do) that this is not a fair solution to the (apparent) dilemma, I am left looking at two options. Some within the emerging church have argued that orthopraxy fairly defines the scope of human living, by framing through action and practice (not to mention dialogue) what its true beliefs are.

(To phrase this in deconstructionist language, statements and thoughts of beliefs are signs with no final referent, while practices, symbols (such as Eucharist), etc., are signs with actual final referents, those being the beliefs of the one performing the actions.)

The second option, as I see it, is to abandon talk of orthodoxy and -praxy, and find a new medium of expression altogether.

As I am just starting this blog, I haven't generated much traffic yet, even among those who know me. Of those who do read this, please encourage me by weighing in on these thoughts. So, as usual:

Ideas? Comments? Critiques? Thank you.

A few thoughts on 'redemption'

I have fallen into the habit lately of insisting that Christian talk is best expressed in terms of redemption rather than of salvation. As such, it occurs to me that it might be helpful to explore some meanings of redemption, bearing in mind, of course, that I speak as one deeply entrenched in North American western dogma, and feeling no need to speak in particularly theological terms, as theology is nobody's native language. Here goes.

1) To redeem might mean to make up for a poor performance, in the sense that I might say that a particular actor redeemed his mediocre acting by delivering a vital line precisely right, or a baseball batter redeemed himself of several strike-outs by delivering a home run in the ninth, just when it was needed.

The idea of cruciality seems to be central to this meaning of redemption. In order to be acting redemptively, the batter's home run must come at the brink of losing. In this sense, both the danger of losing and the last-minute victory must be conceivably real.

To apply this Christianly, my idea is that in acting redemptively, God "makes up for" the poor performance of the world. Whether this implies an initial failing on God's part which he must then redeem or not is debateable.

2) A second sense of redemption that I think of us particularly "redemption from" some thing. If this meaning appears in modern usage, it is probably most often in the banking world, where collateral can be claimed as the property of one issuing a loan if the borrower is
unable to meet their interest payments. In many cases, once the borrower is able to pay back the due interest, the collateral is redeemed from the loan party back to the borrower.

To apply this Christianly the meaning comes closest, I think, to what most mean by 'salvation.' Payment (or back payment) is made to return one's property that had been lost. In other words, God frees people (and, often overlooked, situations) from oppressive powers
that either bind or control them. Now, by "oppressive powers" I do not primarily mean the satan of medieval teleology, but concrete situations in the perceivable world. Christianly speaking, redemption need not refer to being saved from hell for a spiritual afterlife, but rather of being redeemed in any context.

3) A third possibility is that to redeem can mean to make good on a promise. This might be the most familiar sense to many of us who have worked in sales, and have to turn in sales reports of "gift card sales" and "gift card redemptions." Even travelers cheques function in these terms, with the result that losing one is like losing so much cash.

To Christianize this meaning of redemption is to generalize it, pulling it away from strictly monetary meanings into simply "making good on a promise." Does this mean that a promise itself can be seen as redemptive so long as the one making the promise is trustworthy? If so, many of the tensions of Biblical theology and Christian theology become somewhat more bearable (if no less tense).

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These thoughts are meandering, and guided at no ideology in particular. More than anything, I am just trying to get a feel for the contemplative terrain and topology.

Ideas? Comments? Critiques? Thank you.

-ND