Oden Rocks

Thomas C. Oden is my new hero. That's strange, since he's not a Calvinist, but he seems to be the only one I've read so far who's making the most clear-headed sense of what the church should do in our current cultural situation. Not only is he not a Calvinist, he's a United Methodist. J.I. Packer likes him, too, so I'm not in bad company. In fact, the two just co-edited a book called One Faith: The Evangelical Consensus in which they document the growing theological agreement between the various Christian denominations and organizations. He's a former liberal and modernist who is skeptical about modernism but does not think postmodernism is the answer.

I intend to post more (which means I might, if I remember) about his own quest to promote classical ecumenical confessional theology as a point of unity for Christians, but for now, I just want to provide a few great quotes. The one thing I love about reading Oden is that almost every page is jam-packed. He has this uncanny ability to say a whole lot in just one or two sentences. Here are just a few examples from The Rebirth of Orthodoxy:

"The Freudian idealization of sexual liberation and the dream of freedom from limits have resulted in the realization that it is easier to make babies than parent them morally." p.8.

"Those who willingly enslave themselves to passing idolatries should not be surprised when the gods of modern times are shown to have feet of clay." p. 11.

"Both Jews and Christians view all of history as the arena of revelation, but both see revelation through the lense of a particular history. They tell the story of salvation as a particular narrative, not as a general logical, scientific, or philosophical set of arguments." p. 17.

"The most salient feature of orthodoxy is not its rigidity but its flexibility. Since orthodoxy is centered in life in the eternal Word, it is free to enter willingly into infinitely varied cultural settings on behalf of its all-embracing vision of the truth." p. 41.