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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/23/2003 2:13 PM (GMT -6) |   | Hey DLW,
I emailed you a marked up version of your paper. Did you not get it?
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/23/2003 2:30 PM (GMT -6) | | I think I know what happened. I sent it as an attached to a reply to an email you sent me from the Discussion Board. It apparently sent it to "boardmail@christusvictorministries.org". No wonder you didn't get it. Send me another e-mail and be sure to tell me the address to send it to. Sorry about the mix up.
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/23/2003 2:34 PM (GMT -6) | | Wait a minute ... rummaging through my Inbox I found your email address, DLW. The paper is on the way.
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/25/2003 4:50 PM (GMT -6) | | I just rewrote the introduction, condensing it a good deal, and making it somewhat more readable, no really.
Comments are welcome...
The title is..
The Problem of Order in Theological Discourse and
The Role of Theological Discourse in the Problem of Order.
An Open View of Theology.
This paper first began in reaction to the Minnesota Baptist Conference’s declaration that Greg Boyd’s open theism was outside its historical understanding of theology. The goal was to explain why the fact that a theology differed from past theologies wasn’t sufficient to warrant its rejection. To do this the author drew upon the understanding of methodology and evolution he had learned from studying american institutional economics as a graduate student in economics, who had done one of his fields in the history of economic thought. He drew upon the thoughts of Charles Sanders Peirce, Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons as he had learned about them in part through his study under Warren J. Samuels. The result is a defense of Open View Theism that differs from many other open-theists, often distinguished by their neo-evangelical background, in that it adopts a neo-orthodox view of theology as a social process of seeking to reconcile our received world-view with the world-view of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded and interpreted in scripture and understood through ongoing attempts to understand the culture of the time and place Jesus lived in.
From evolution/pragmaticism, the paper infers a thorough-going fallibilism with regard to both secular and sacred aspects of life that is post-foundationalist in that it continues the historical quest present in the natural and social sciences to find other bases for knowledge/practice than the method of authority predominant in the Medieval European Christian Church. From fallibilism coupled with an open view of God/Theology, the paper affirms a need to reemphasize the importance of ecclesiology, how decision-making is structured within the Christian Church(es), and the dual role of scripture and tradition, with the latter being non-essential and subject to change over time, for dealing with the problems of ecclesiastical order. The problems of ecclesiastical order can be described as how the Bible does not provide a blue-print for how we should organize the process of determining how Christians should let their lights shine before the world, making disciples of all nations. Right conduct in this regard must be determined politically, worked out among believers.
The conflict among believers over such things can not be resolved through appealing to an inerrant Bible or ecclesiastical continuity with the early disciples, owing to the importance of innovative situations that Christians must cope with. An extreme example of which would be the move of Christianity from being a persecuted cult to the official religion of Rome in a short period of time. An important historical development that the past experiences of Christian leaders had left them ill-equipped to deal with. The alternative recommended is not to discard received ecclesiastical traditions but to inculcate their fallible, received natures and open up to the need to learn through institutional comparison across time and denominations and through some experimentation and innovation. This also stresses, from within the author’s received pietistic heritage, the need to move beyond doctrinal or ecclesiastical unity as the basis for how Christians may strive to be one as Jesus said he and the father were one(John 17:21).
Finally, the paper shows how a pragmaticist form of Christianity would also renew the importance of the historic debate in Christianity over the relations between Church/State. This is done by a consideration of the mutual importance of descriptive facts, often learned from experience and/or scientific investigation, and normative ideals that guide and inspire us in reforming our received ways of doing things in the problems of order that we face in both the sacred and secular worlds, especially when the two are conjoined. Several controversial issues like abortion, homosexuality, the death-penalty are re-analyzed from this perspective. Then, the article finally ends by pointing out how an emphasis on the problem of order entails a need to also revive the concept of the social gospel, since how Christians manage their given political capital has proven to be an important part of their collective public witness to the world, setting up or breaking down barriers to the sharing of the Gospel with others.
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/27/2003 3:22 PM (GMT -6) | | Here's some feedback, DLW. Suggested textual interpolations are in square brackets [], and substantive comments are in curly brackets {} and in italics. Hope it helps some.
Alan
The Problem of Order in Theological Discourse and
The Role of Theological Discourse in the Problem of Order.
An Open View of Theology.
This paper first began in reaction to the Minnesota Baptist Conference’s declaration that Greg Boyd’s open theism was outside its historical understanding of theology. The goal was to explain why the fact that a theology differed from past theologies wasn’t sufficient to warrant its rejection. To do this the author drew upon the understanding of methodology and evolution he had learned from studying american institutional economics as a graduate student in economics, who had done one of his fields in the history of economic thought. He drew upon the thoughts of Charles Sanders Peirce, Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons as he had learned about them in part through his study under Warren J. Samuels. {Instead of describing the genesis of the paper, I think your opening will be stronger if you get right to the point and describe what the final result is intended to accomplish.} The result is a defense of Open View Theism that differs from [the kind of defense typically given by] open-theists--[who are] often distinguished by their neo-evangelical background--in that it adopts a neo-orthodox view of theology as a social process of seeking to reconcile our received world-view with the world-view of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded and interpreted in scripture and understood through ongoing attempts to understand the culture of the time and place Jesus lived in.
From evolution/pragmaticism, the paper infers {"infers" seems like the wrong word to me, perhaps you could say something like, "This paper is pragmatic in orientation, in that it adopts a thorough-going fallibilism ...} thorough-going fallibilism with regard to both secular and sacred aspects of life that is post-foundationalist in that it continues the historical quest present in the natural and social sciences to find other bases for knowledge/practice than the method of authority predominant in the Medieval European Christian Church. From fallibilism[,] coupled with an open view of God/Theology, the paper affirms a need to reemphasize the importance of ecclesiology, how decision-making is structured within the Christian Church(es), and the dual role of scripture and tradition, with the latter being non-essential and subject to change over time, for dealing with the problems of ecclesiastical order. The problems of ecclesiastical order can be described as how the Bible does not provide a blue-print for how we should organize the process of determining how Christians should let their lights shine before the world, making disciples of all nations. Right conduct in this regard must be determined politically, worked out among believers. {Try to state the "problem of ecclesiastical order" in a positive, rather than a negative way, e.g., "it is the problem of applying the general principles of Scripture to the particular details and issues of life ..."}
The conflict among believers over such things cannot be resolved through appealing to an inerrant Bible or ecclesiastical continuity with the early disciples, owing to the importance of innovative situations that Christians must cope with. An extreme example [is] the move of Christianity from being a persecuted cult to the official religion of Rome in a short period of time[, an] important historical development that the past experiences of Christian leaders [left the Church] ill-equipped to deal with. The alternative recommended is not to discard received ecclesiastical traditions but to inculcate {wrong word} their fallible, received natures and open up to the need to learn through institutional comparison across time and denominations and through some experimentation and innovation. This also stresses, from within the author’s received pietistic heritage, the need to move beyond doctrinal or ecclesiastical unity as the basis for how Christians may strive to be one as Jesus said he and the father were one (John 17:21).
Finally, the paper shows how a pragmaticist {You should probably footnote Peirce if you're going to use this term} form of Christianity would also renew the importance of the historic debate in Christianity over the relations between Church/State. This is done by a consideration of the mutual importance of descriptive facts, often learned from experience and/or scientific investigation, and normative ideals that guide and inspire us in reforming our received ways of doing things in the problems of order that we face in both the sacred and secular worlds, especially when the two are conjoined. Several controversial issues like abortion, homosexuality, the death-penalty are re-analyzed from this perspective. Then, the article finally ends by pointing out how an emphasis on the problem of order entails a need to also revive the concept of the social gospel, since how Christians manage their given political capital has proven to be an important part of their collective public witness to the world, setting up or breaking down barriers to the sharing of the Gospel with others.
{A couple final comments. From this intro it seems to me that you're trying to accomplish quite a lot in this paper. Perhaps too much. Consider narrowing the scope. Relatedly, you describe several issues that you intend to discuss and the general perspective from which you intend to discuss them, but what exactly is your thesis statement? Your introduction should tell the reader the main conclusion(s) that you intend to argue for. Your say a couple times in the last paragraph that the paper is intended to "show how ...". What is it intended to "show that"?}
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