Back to Tony Jones' paper and it's rejection for publication in a book detailing the conference at Wheaton in which it was presented.
My quibble with Tony Jones' use of the strike zone as an analogy to the task of theology is pretty much just that, a mere quibble. When Jones takes on Vincent of Lerins and the very definition of orthodoxy, I believe he goes way over the edge and “disaster”, a word used by his critics at the Wheaton Conference, seems an accurate description of his position.
The title of his paper is “Whence Hermeneutic Authority?“ so he has declared a purpose. He also clearly identifies himself as “Tony Jones, National Coordinator of Emergent Village”, so we should all agree that Tony Jones claims to be a leader in the emerging church movement. His positions cannot be dismissed as just a singular tentative opinion in a large “conversation”, but are instead positions that carry a certain amount of weight and influence. That is why they are troubling.
Jones begins with a quote: “Tipp O.Neill famously quipped that .All politics are local.. Maybe so, but the postmodernists have argued that all hermeneutics are local. It is our local communities that shape how we see the world”. This quote is critical to understanding emerging church viewpoints. The postmodern epistemology that flows through the veins of key EC thinkers colors everything. The disdain for “metanarratives” can only lead, in their view, to one conclusion, that “micronarratives” are the logical replacement.
Jones continues in his first paragraph “…in what way does the grand tradition of church history interact with our local iterations of the faith? Does Chalcedon trump Minneapolis?” There is a certain chutzpah that is undeniable in such a question given the context of Jones insistence on the "local" hermeneutic. Jones makes his intention fairly clear, "…in an age of micronarratives, Vincent of Lerins’s exhortation that orthodoxy must 'hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all' rings somewhat hollow.”
One wonders, what will Jones put in the place of “always, everywhere and by all”? The answer, based on the “all hermeneutics are local” vision he espouses would seem to be the dictum, “sometimes, somewhere, by some”. Hardly a recipe for stability! Hardly a path to ecumenical consensus! Hardly builds confidence that the “strike zone” won’t evolve into including theological pitches thrown in the dirt, particularly when we consider his description of the hallmarks of the emerging church:
• Inviting
• Accepting
• Non-Judgmental
• Inclusive
• “Wherever you are on the journey“
Each of these “values”, if you will, seem to suggest the same thing – a curious lack of boundaries. Even if we accept the task of theology as “apophatic” - that Eastern Orthodox concept which states that we do not define what God is, we define only what he is not - by defining what God is not, we have traditionally set certain boundaries in theology. When we say God is good, we are saying He is not evil. When we say Christ is fully divine, we deny that he is only “partially” divine. When we say he is “eternally begotten of the Father” we deny that he had a beginning at a point in time. And none of these definitions can be equated with an evolving “strike zone”. You can’t say, “that eternally begotten concept is low and outside and I kinda-sorta like it” and still be considered orthodox.
But one has to look specifically at Jones’ “deconstruction” of Vincent to get the full effect. Jones relates a conversation he had with the Dean of a certain Nazarene grad school who was, like many; concerned that EC was becoming a new evangelical version of liberalism. The dean brought up Vincent. As Jones tells it, the dean “…claimed that orthodoxy must 'hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always, and by all'. I assume this could be said without irony in the fifth century, but it surely cannot today. If this is orthodoxy, then there’s no there there. There’s no such beast, and you’ll search in vain to find it.”
Now let’s leave aside for the moment what subtle meanings Jones may have had in mind by this statement. Imagine the effect of a PhD candidate, leader of a movement that has already engendered a great deal of criticism for being simultaneously “provocative” and “nebulous”, marching into an institution like Wheaton, at a conference that included many theologians with earned PhDs, and loudly proclaiming something to the effect of “there is no such thing as orthodoxy!” There’s “no there there”, “no such beast”. I think one can easily see why his paper was termed a disaster. One fails to see why Jones would be surprised at the reaction.
I have to assume that intelligent men like Tony Jones and other EC gurus are perfectly capable of communicating exactly what they mean to communicate. After all the criticisms and claims of being misunderstood, you would think they would be capable of tempering their statements if they really desired not to be misunderstood, if they really wanted to avoid controversy. Jones shows no sign of studied restraint in his provocations. He just charges ahead, fearlessly.
"The Vincentian Canon of universality, antiquity, and consensus is met head on by the postmodern canon of radical locality, the biases of history, and dissensus. "
Now I have a problem here. Why must Vincent’s canon be met “head on” with the “canon” (his word, not mine) of “radical locality” or any other postmodern assumption? First of all, "canon" implies a “standard” a “measuring rod”. Why should I accept postmodern epistemology as a “canon”? More to the point, why should orthodoxy be subjected to a “measurement” by postmodern standards? What gives postmodernism authority over orthodoxy?
Jones takes issue with each of the three planks of Vincent’s canon. He begins by “deconstructing” universality as a criterion for orthodoxy. It becomes clear, fairly quickly, that he misunderstands (or chooses to reinterpret) Vincent’s intention:
"Vincent wrote, 'We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses'. Postmodernism is, of course, famously characterized by an incredulity toward just such metanarratives. And our world of blogs and 24-hour news channels show us just how unreasonable Vincent’s universal vision is..."
First of all, I doubt that Vincent would see “universality” as a “metanarrative”. Vincent was well aware that not everyone in the history of the church saw particular theological questions the same way. In fact, that is precisely what led Vincent to pen his “Commonitorium” in the first place. His whole point was that not everyone agreed on interpretations of specific texts. His reason in writing was to find a way to mediate those disputes. Universality did not mean some authoritative decree by a majority of elites foisted on the unsuspecting church through a power play. Universality meant an honest sifting through the views of many voices over many centuries and across many cultures to find common threads and to allow those commonalities to set limits. If the vast majority of bishops and laypeople in Europe, Africa and Asia all are pretty much consistent in a particular view, then by golly, there must be something to it. It does not mean unanimity. It does not mean authoritarian decree. It simply means that the voices of the few dissidents should not trump the voices of a significant majority, particularly when that majority spans many centuries and crosses cultural boundaries.
But under Jones penchant for “local” authority, the views of a particular local, experimental, cutting edge ministry somewhere on the outskirts of a particular American city are “authoritative” enough for him. In short, because not everybody agreed on a particular topic in the fourth century, we have no need to expect agreement in the 21st – so we should feel free to create, invent, speculate. Don’t be concerned with limits, oppressive propositional statements, metanarratives. Local authority, (under the guidance of the “holy spirit” of course) is all that is needed and all that can be expected.
Jones finds little to restrain him in Antiquity:
"Vincent continues, 'Antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers'. In this quest to know the interpretations of the church fathers, friends like Chris Hall and Thomas Oden have been of great help. But even in the pages of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, one finds those hallowed fathers sometimes at odds. Not to mention all of the brilliant voices of the ancient church who were silenced by those with bigger theological muscles. We Protestants thank God that others were not silenced, voices like Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Servetus. Oops, strike that last one. To the claim of antiquity, we who are educated white males-the history writers-are today chastened by feminist historians (what did the ancient mothers believe?), and theologians of color (what did the ancient slaves believe?). These silenced voices were not a part of the Vincent’s venerated antiquity, and their silence haunts our appropriation of ancient sources."
Again, he totally misses the point. Everyone knows the fathers were “sometimes at odds”. Vincent clearly understood this. Antiquity simply means that those closest to the time of the Apostles ought to receive more consideration than those who came later and were more distanced from the actual events that formed the church. The point is to be “devoted to the apostles’ teaching”. The oldest and most authoritative voice is that of the apostles themselves in scripture. Beyond that, those who personally knew the apostles and were commissioned by them ought to be given far more weight than a PhD candidate speculating on theology some 20 centuries later.
But his not-so-subtle insertion of the accusation of power-politics to the discussion at this point is rather exasperating. It is very easy to throw around unspecific allegations and leave them hanging – perhaps to create enough cognitive dissonance in the minds to sway them this way or that – but it is a little harder to be specific and deal with the questions. So those with “bigger theological muscles” are guilty of silencing other “brilliant voices’ in the ancient church. Which “brilliant voices” might they be? The Gnostics? Arius? Montanus? Perhaps Jones is leaning in the direction of Dan Brown? Does he really mean that feminist historians are the best choice to correct “orthodoxy” for us? To straighten out those patriarchal egotists of those less enlightened centuries? I note with irony that “Theologians of Color” are assumed to be in opposition to 2000 years of orthodoxy. I can think of a few clerics of color in the southern hemisphere who might dispute that. More on that later…
"Finally, Vincent concludes, 'Consensus, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors'. But Lamin Sanneh argues that we should not quest after an unrealizable consensus, a Global Christianity, but instead should embrace a World Christianity in all its mosaic beauty. For, as he writes, as each new indigenous culture discovers the gospel, they will help us understand it better and see its great beauty."
Lamin Sanneh is a Yale Professor, apparently and may be a fine fellow. But Sanneh’s particular point is what Jones is after. Once again, the “local” imperative becomes the test which Jones insists we must use to trump all others. Each new culture “discovers” the gospel. And, of course, we should listen to these “new” discoveries and not be all bothered about whether they line up with anything that has stood the test of 1500-2000 years of thought and debate. The postmodern notion that we are so imprisoned in our own cultural context that we can’t possibly understand anything beyond our own noses is simply assumed as absolute truth by Jones and many of his fellow leaders of EC. We are all expected to bow to this self-evident truth and acknowledge that recent, local discoveries are much more exciting and enlightening that the fruitless and futile exercise of trying to figure out what the ancients really meant. Jones simply dismisses Vincent's canon with a final flourish of disrespect.
"So, while Vincent exhorts us to hold fast that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all, you’ll have about as much luck finding that elusive thing as you will be hunting Jackalope in South Dakota. No such universal, a-contextual orthodoxy exists. Instead, orthodoxy is a mess, a beautiful mess."
The irony of all this is that Jones seems genuinely upset that after point blank denying that orthodoxy can even exist conceptually, he would be excluded from the official publication of his paper in a book ostensibly about historic, consensual orthodoxy! Call me crazy, but I think the Trinitarian theology is a bit easier to find than a non-existent Jackalope. Tony Jones seems to not want to see what is right under his nose. He seems more interested in being provocative. It appears he has gotten a mild slap on the wrist in having his paper rejected. By publishing his paper on his blog, it is clear he has little intention of being chastened. He just continues to provoke. He prefers provocation to clarity.
And there is, unfortunately, more.
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