Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Tony Jones on Orthodoxy

Tony Jones recently gave a paper on "orthodoxy" at the 2007 Wheaton Theology Conference. A book will come from the conference, but the editors decided not to include Tony's paper, which Tony is not so happy about.

So he's posted the notes to the paper online. Denny Burk provides a few outtakes:

“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” (p. 15).

“Orthodoxy is a happening, an occurrence, not a state of being or a state of mind or a state-ment” (p. 20).

“There is no orthodoxy out there somewhere, only here, in me and in you and in us when we gather in Christ’s name” (p. 23).

“There is no orthodoxy without orthopraxy. It doesn’t exist. People may talk about it, but they also talk about unicorns” (p. 24).

“There is no song until it’s sung—it’s just words and notes on paper. There is no strike until it’s called by the ump—’It ain’t nothing till I call it.’ And there is no orthodoxy until it’s lived. It is an event that happens when we gather to worship, when we change a diaper, when we read a book, when we present a paper” (p. 24).

Read the whole thing.