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How to you relate being orthodox with being "emergent"?
I have a friend who has recently become orthodox. He's been talking to me a lot about some of the ideas of the Orthodox church and eastern philosophy...
I couldn't help but notice that many of the ideas he's been talking about are very similar to the ideas being tossed around in the emergent conversation and amongst people talking about post-modern theology. How do you relate the two? How similar are they from your perspective? I wonder sometimes if it can be argued that post-modernism (more specifically as it is related to theology) is really westerners adopting philosophies from the east that have been around for a long time?
Answer: Yes. One way to say it is that those of us in the emergent conversation are questioning some assumptions of the modern western mindset that has so influence modern western Christianity, so it’s natural we’re finding help in nonmodern nonwestern forms of Christian faith. You might find help in this regard in my book
A Generous Orthodoxy.