I'm reading a book for a class on the Patristic Church Fathers called, The Rebirth of Orthodoxy by Thomas C. Oden. He's exploring the trend in the modern church toward a return to orthodoxy as defined by the early church councils and the renewed interest among various evangelical groups in the writings of the early fathers. ("New Ecumenism") He's contrasting this attitude with that of the ecumenism of the majority of the last century focusing on accommodation to modernism and negotiated lowest-common-denominator theology. ("Old Ecumenism")
I've found a quote I love (keep in mind that Oden was old enough to be a youth observer at the the second assembly of the World Council of Churches at Evanston in 1954):
"Think of the new ecumenism as analogous to the worldwide information web: it is dispersed, decisions are made mainly through local initiatives, and there is little need for central integrative control. The old ecumenism is more like defensive proprietary hardware, while the new ecumenism is like public domain software: the old guard wants to keep control. In the new ecumenism there is no desire to control the work of the Holy Spirit." [emphasis mine]
While I like his ideas, I'm more impressed that a guy who's got to be at least seventy can not only write decent history and theology, but seems to have at least a working knowledge of what a Copyleft license (the "copyright" on Open GNU/Linux software) is!
Posted by currie at January 31, 2006 11:25 PM | TrackBackCurrie, that's a great post. I have (and hope to have time to finish reading) Oden's ``Justification Reader'' which details the biblical understanding of justification as held in the first four or five centuries of the church. What's fascinating about it is that the patristic's statements sound incredibly like Calvin and Luther, so the Reformation really was a rediscovery of old truths.
I also was surprised by the analogy to trends in computer software. The Oden book you're reading sound like I should put it on my reading list. Thanks!
Posted by: Joel at February 24, 2006 07:16 PM