After Modernity . . . What?: Agenda for Theology

Written with a more moderate to liberal audience in mind, Oden seeks to make a case for returning to a kind of "Postcritical Orthodoxy" in this postmodern world. He advocates the "consensual Christian tradition" of the first millennium, before Medieval, Reformation and Enlightenment developments which have managed to twist and turn a proper examination of Apostolic Christianity. Oden calls for a return to a Christ-centered and robust ecclesiology rooted in the Church Fathers. He believes that this vision will encompass and inspire to renewal the broad spectrum of believing Christians in the world today. A highly recommended work for anyone needing to re-think the first things of their faith.

Years ago Tom Oden, professor of theology and ethics at Drew University, published Agenda for Theology: Recovering Christian Roots. Recently he has revised and republished the book titling it After Modernity . . . What? Agenda for Theology (Grand Rapids: Academie Books, c. 1990). Having discovered that both he and his "postcritical" students hunger for "the available power of the Christian heritage rather than trendy ideas of minor modern heretics" (p. 16), he calls readers to recover their authentic Christian roots in the Ancient Church, for "it is from the martyrs, saints, and prophets of Christian history, more than from recent riskless interpreters, that we learn of the value of classical Christianity" (p. 13). In part one of the book, "The Courtship of Modernity," Oden urges us to reject many of our era's most seductive proposals. To do so means discounting "modernity," which he describes as "a narcissistic hedonism that assumes that moral value is reducible to now feelings and sensory experience" (p. 31). Indeed: "Narcissism is a key mark of modernity. Myself becomes the central project of moral interest; self-enjoyment and self-development become the central goals" (p. 79). Oden knows whereof he speaks: in some deeply personal, confessional, passages he reflects on all the "movements" he earlier joined and championed, only to find them short-lived and inconsequential. Older, and wiser, he has found profoundly satisfying rootage in classical orthodoxy, especially that of the first five centuries of Church history. A major step on this journey involved making a transforming discovery: proper hermeneutics! By learning to listen to the text itself, becoming obedient to it (not the latest scholar's interpretation of it), he found what "was the most improbable and difficult and revolutionary thing that has ever happened to me" (p. 80). He discovered his rightful role as a theologian. He discovered that for the first thousand years of Church history theologians listened to and obeyed the text. Today, however, rather than seeking to clarify and declare the ancient text churchmen cultivate novelty. During the last two centuries, "critical" scholars, which Oden tackles in Part Two, "The Critique of Criticism," have pretended to objectively deal with biblical materials. In fact they usually asserted, in religious terms, their peculiar generation's prejudices, thus imposing a "naturalistic reductionism upon the New Testament texts" (p. 101). Rejecting fashionable moderns and their cavalier treatment of ancient texts, Oden prefers Origen's abiding confidence that the Holy Scriptures are not mere human productions, but rather written by humans under the "inspiration of the Holy Spirit," scriptures subsequently "transmitted and entrusted to us by the Will of God." Having cut a wide swathe through modernity's most treasured artifacts, Oden turns in Part Three, "The Liberation of Orthodoxy" to his more constru

In the Introduction of After Modernity...What?, Thomas Odem appropriately begins his apologia for the restoration of historic Christian orthodoxy with a parable. A man of great wealth inherits a diadem of great beauty and value from his Eastern European family without having any understanding of its symbolism or history. He knows it is old but thinks it useless - a sign of a backwards past. He casually displays it, makes fun of it, bends it out of shape to elicit laughs from his party guests, and now and then removes a jewel and hocks it. It is only when it is passed to his son, who has always been drawn to it, that its history is studied and revealed as a symbol of great honor and power among their ancestors - a treasure that legions once would fight and die just to possess. This diaden, Odem states, is the heritage of Christendom - only now being studied and treasured by a new generation bored with the vapid fruits of modernity. Dividing his book into three parts, Oden begins his task with an overview of the corrosive role modernity has played in the devlopment of Christian theology. With an insatiable appetite for what is new and an uncritical belief in the inevitability of progress, those influenced by the modenist ideal see little value in the maintenance of the traditional beliefs and practices of a revealed religion. As change becomes the only constant, the idea of eternal truith becoems an "antiquated ideal" and is cast aside for a series of reconstructions of the faith - each more outlandish than the next. But, Oden contends, the pendulum has now swung against modernity. He has noticed young students increasingly do not want the endless projections of their professors' pet theories on the Christian faith but the Christian faith of the Church unmediated by modern biases. The Church Fathers, the Medieval Doctors, the Reformers, and most of all the Apostles and Christ Himself are their teachers. They want nothing less than the faith once delivered to the saints and defended, expounded, and taught for centuries prior to the onslaught of the modern. They wish to reclaim their neglected family heirloom and to restore its lustre. Oden points out this movement is not to be confused with other movements that rebelled against the modernist dilemma. This new orthodoxy differs from neo-orthodoxy, fundamentalism, and even the old orthodoxy (or paleo-orthodoxy) from which it seeks guidance. Neo-orthodoxy, while seeking to displace the modernist paradigm, were essentially agents for change themselves who thought the modernist program had gone awry and did not seek any return to the ideals of classical Christian orthodoxy. Fundamentalism, with all of it's emphasis on the fundamentals of the faith, defined its five fundamentals in a purely 19th century manner - in terms of historicity. It is difficult to see why the five they chose were any more fundamental than belief in the Trinity or the hypostatic union except that the movement developed under th

The word postmodern is thrown around quite a bit. Given the nature of this post-modern age, even the term postmodern is likely to have a variety of nuances. Oden provides one interpretation. This interpretation is that postmodernity allows for a return to classical orthodoxy, i.e. the Christianity of the first millennium. So for Oden, writers such as Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, and Clement are more important to Christian theology than recent theologians who attempt to construct "new" theology. Indeed Oden is correct in that modernity kept telling us what was "relevant" and what was not. We were constantly told what we could and could not believe, despite the fact that most modern peoples probably conceived of God `incorrectly.' Thus, modernity, with its promise of human progress, ended up seeming elitist and quite irrelevant. Oden is not a fundamentalist. His tradition might be described as something of a conservative evangelical catholic. He critiques fundamentalism, pointing out (correctly) that fundamentalism is simply just another modern movement, that only could have come out of the Cartesian/Enlightenment era. Oden also critiques the more pietistic and ultra-liberal forms of Christianity, preferring an ecumenical consensual orthodoxy as explained by Vincent of Lerins, `that which has been everywhere and always and by everyone believed.' Thus Oden proposes a return to Orthodoxy grounded in the center, one that virtually every mainline denomination and classical Christian writers can affirm. Oden is not pre-modern though. He critiques those who claim to be pre-modern, asserting that such a claim is impossible. This is why postmodern `paleo-orthodox' Christians, such as Oden, embrace modern science, critical enquiry, etc.Overall, I think Oden has written an excellent book. He critiques modernity's methods and assumptions, and (I believe) generally avoids falling into conservative error, by being grounded in the ancient orthodox Christian writers. I think the `Vincentian canon,' while certainly appealing, is doubtful as an actual historical reality. However, as a model, it is still useful, so long as we recognize its weaknesses (as Oden does). I took issue with Oden's distaste for Vatican II. Despite its weaknesses, it brought the Roman Catholic Church into the current age, and caused them to leave behind various late-medieval practices. Generally, this is a thought provoking book, and a good angle on the postmodern age for those of us grounded in the catholic tradition.

After five years of soul searching Oden rejected liberalism and embraced the precepts of evangelical conservatism. In 1979 He first published this book under the title "Agenda for Theology." In this book he laid out his reasons for rejecting liberalism and the promises of modernity it held and began describing a new emerging postmodernity which he clearly differentiated from what he calls "ultramodernity" which so many other authors believe is postmodernism. Oden lays down his reasons for becoming disenchanted with mainstream liberalism through the examination of where he has been in his own walk with the Lord. He presents a convincing agenda for theology which is the rediscovery of the teachings and precepts of the ancient church and the theologian's task to boil theology down to the pastoral office. Oden argues that it is the teaching office of the church which is the thumbtack, or linchpin, which holds the entire discipline of theology to those it hopes to serve. The importance of this office and the duties it is to perform needs to be rediscovered, he maintains, and the biblical role of the pastorate needs to recover its soul and spirit within the biblical precepts of its origin. This book is a good read for anybody who wants to understand the collapse of modernism, the emergence of postmodernism, and the role that theology and theologians are supposed to fill within the church.Since writing this book, Oden has been following through with the agenda for theologian's office which he first laid down in this book producing a fine series of books about the duties and responsibilities of the pastoral office; writing what may emerge as the best 20th century systematic theology; continuing to develop and articulate the emerging postmodern climate as an opportunity for the church rather than something to be feared (Two Worlds); all the while attempting to drag what has been called "an incurably liberal denomination," the UMC, back to the orthodox center.If you want to learn about postmodernism, this book is your starting point.