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.