Arkodoxy

I once worked for a seminary whose principal was constantly re-evaluating the curriculum. He was convinced that if we could ever get the right curricular framework then we could get on with teaching and never consider it again.

Maybe its because my principal was a theologian. After all, my old theological professor, Schubert Ogden, (who passed away the day before I began writing this) once remarked to our class that systematic theology often never gets past the “prolegomena;” the introduction that spells out the basic framework within which theological theory could be built. Still, he was a great believer in prolegomena. If you didn’t clearly lay out the system of systematic theology one that was “modern without remainder” could never be formed. 

What is true of systematic theology is often true elsewhere in the theological world. Much more recently a member of the UM Traditionalist movement (who naturally disagreed with Mr. Ogden about a theology that was “modern without remainder”) said to me, “Once we re-establish orthodoxy we can get on with ministry.” 

Of course traditionalists continue to engage in ministry. What he meant was that the UMC couldn’t effectivelyengage in its mission unless the self-professed theology nerds built out a clear, coherent, orthodoxy as defined by the traditionalists.

We see something emerging here, a tendency to believe that if you can just get the structure, the framework, the plan right everything else will fall into place. 

We find this among self-identified progressives who believe that when the UMC gets it right on LGBTQ inclusion and acceptance somehow we’ll be freed to have an effective, relevant ministry. 

And we find it in churches whose leaders believe that if they can just get it right with worship styles, or finally get a youth group going, or build up a Hispanic ministry, or build a family life center, then and only then will it all fall into place and the church will grow and be healthy. 

There are four problems here. 

The first is that this wasn’t how it started. The apostles didn’t begin their ministry by working out the thorny theological problem of Jesus relationship to his father, or defining exactly how his death and resurrection were salvific. Nor did they work out the relationship between natural and revealed theology, or scripture, reason, and experience. Nor did they work out a comprehensive doctrine of ministries and structure for the church. They both lived and preached a story of salvation, not an epistemology, ethic, doctrine, or ecclesiology.

This doesn’t mean that epistemological, ethical, and doctrinal structures were unimportant to the apostles; just that Christ didn’t call them to get things right, he called them to get things done. Moreover they were moving rapidly into complex new cultural settings. What worked in one place with one group of people wasn’t like to work in another. 

Secondly this “get the structure right first” approach quickly moves from an effort to build an effective structure to being an effort to cram everyone into that structure. Once the Christian Church allied itself with the Roman Empire and created a fixed doctrinal and ecclesiological structure that mimicked that of the empire it immediately began to use the majority of its energy not in mission, but in enforcing conformity. Eventually it would quash vernacular liturgy, vernacular scriptures, and all indigenous expressions of faith in Christ so that everyone would fit in the same box. 

Structures, especially those that can be reproduced, are a great way to keep from reinventing the wheel. But keeping them pure as the world changes around them takes a vast amount of energy away from mission. 

And here we come to the third problem: unchanging structures, whether ecclesial or doctrinal, lose their effectiveness in a rapidly changing world. Consider the foundational doctrinal structures of the United Methodist Church. They specifically address issues no longer relevant to modern Christians, perpetuate doctrinal controversies of no relevance, and if taken seriously reinforce the patriarchy endemic in Wesley’s time and indeed his ministry. United Methodism has survived only because it subverted, overthrew, or marginalized these structures in its subsequent evolution. And its failure as a church, and general decline coincides with 50 years of increasingly strident efforts to enforce conformity instead of re-forming those structures.  

The future is the forth problem, because in that future the enduring context of mission will be ceaseless and largely chaotic social and cultural change. Forces are in motion, particularly what is being called the 2nd Machine Age, that will exert a greater impact than the rise of science and secularism on human self-understanding, and thus on the preaching of the gospel. Right now we’re busy trying to work out just the right structure(s) that will somehow allow United Methodists to get on with ministry in a context that is already passing; not realizing that we’re building on sand as the sea rises and the storm-clouds form.

Scripture offers us some telling stories. Two are stories of an ark; Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant. In the first case, the when the ark has completed its task it becomes unnecessary, indeed eternally unnecessary since the covenant with Noah precludes it ever being called into action. Noah’s ark was left high and dry because it would always be high and dry. 

The same is true, certainly for Christians, of the second ark, the Ark of the Covenant. With the coming of Christ God’s presence with humanity will never again depend on tablets in a box, much less in a temple made by human hands. 

Just as the days of the two arks are gone, so should be the days of Arkodoxy. Its time to get outside the box.