Thinking about missiology...Orthopathy and Findhorn

Some of us will be familiar with the terms orthodoxy and orthopraxis - and those who have a life will never have heard of them...However, I've recently come across a new term was coined by Seong Ahn in 2003,  Orthopathy.  And I'm fascinated by it...

Orthopathy is an attempt to construct a new missiology for the contemporary paradigm, the ‘Era of Experienced Innocence’.  The Era of Innocence was the first paradigm; a paradigm that sought an authentic understanding of truth and hence orthodoxy emerged.  In the second paradigm the ‘Era of Experience’ orthopraxis emerged; ‘the head words of this era were, transforming, revolution, identity, society, responsibility, ethos and Missio Dei, to name but a few.  The principle of doing theology was indigenization and contextualization’ (2003, 16).  Orthopathy seeks a missiology that is focused on right feeling, rather than right thought or right actions, it is thought that through orthopathy right action and right thought will naturally emerge.  ‘The head words of this era are relationship, emotional intelligence, symbiosis, community, interdependence, pathos and Missio Hominis’ (2003, 16).    Central within this new missiological understanding is respect for the other human being, because with respect, a human being can keep his or her dignity in any situation.

Ahn: It is a cognitive love, because it inchoates the love of the second Great commandment that “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Through this love, it builds up the community and gives priority to the relations. This type also tries to start from how others feel. Therefore, it cherishes the sensus fidei, the believer’s sense of faith, the feeling for faith’s basic themes and consequently, it enables a democratic theology or a popular theology.  

Whilst at Findhorn I encountered the centrality of orthopathy.  A mantra that was repeated over my time there was ‘Don’t think about it, feel it’.  If I questioned things I was told that I thought too much.  I think that there were a number of reasons for this response, firstly – the importance of the present within the Findhorn foundation.  The present was quite simply all that we were called to be attentive within, future distractions were just that – distractions for the attentiveness of the present. 

Secondly, I was quite stunned at the naivety of faith within this context – on a couple of times I pushed people on theological issues and the response usually lacked any credibility.  The only comparison that I can make is to an early naive form of Christianity, where we ask and God provides.  A person shared with us his experience of having a broken down boat, which needed a new engine – it was going to cost £30,000 – within day’s he’s received a check for £18,000 and had located a second hand engine that cost this amount.  Whilst, I don’t want to dismiss this experience and it may have well been divinely ordained, but there was no critical thinking on how this influenced their wider theology and understanding of the providence of God.  This naivety of faith would not stand up to serious intellectual critique but does that matter?

I do not think it does because feeling is dominant, orthopathy is central.  Mission is about instilling the right feeling in people rather than enforcing a doctrine or a particular way of acting.  This means that when you encounter Findhorn your emotions are highly charged by the experience, a number of games are introduced over the course of the week to create intimacy so that your feelings become you dominant way of operating.   Don’t think but feel it – It’s not about head knowledge but heart knowledge.

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Tags: BenEdson, Missiology, Findhorn

Comments

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Ben - one of the more thoughtful posts I've read for a long while. My 5penneth fwiw: I think we need to realise that there are times when thinking is going to get us nowhere, but we also should beware of any anthropological "orthodoxy" which sets one or more of the human faculties against others. Your description of Findhorn sounded Huxley-like to me, for example. If you can't think, or are actively (or through group dynamics) discouraged from thinking, then that is in effect a denial of free thought, which begs an political evaluation at the very least. Feeling, thinking, doing - there are times and circumstances when one has to be the dominant function and sometimes we need to switch into our inferior functions (in MBTI-type conceptions) to manage and respond best in a given situation. Surely a mature Christian theology/missiology won't tie itself too closely to one or other of these approaches.

[Steve Lancaster]

Just a quick thought:

The whole 'don't think, just feel' is perhaps understandable as a reaction to information overload, be it from religion or any other source? 'Ditch the cognition for a moment in the moment'...

You can call for that out of naivity, but isn't it also true that you can do it through a second naivity, one that has travelled through experience only to find that, at the end of it, one is and always has been secure and loved. Then it becomes an expression of risk and of dedication, however disturbing it might look from the outside.

Not to say that disturbance isn't a valid response of its own: just to say, orthopathy is equally legitimate.

[Paul Fromont]

Thanks Ben. Like you I find it a very helpful term. I first came across it a couple of years in a lecture delivered by Brian McLaren...

I hope all is well with you and the family.

[Ben Edson]

Hi Paul, Was McLaren taking about Orthopathy or Orthopaxy? see: http://www.orlandefc.org/interacting/brian-mclaren-exalts-orthopraxy

b

[Paul Fromont]

Definitely "orthopathy" Ben. It may well have been while he was in NZ a year or so back...

[Pam Smith]

Fascinating.

I had to learn how to reconnect with my feelings when I suffered from a long depression, brought about in part by doing a lot of things that felt wrong (toxic relationships, stressful unrewarding jobs, etc) because I'd been to do what *was* 'right' not what felt right. so I'm a big fan of feelings and what they tell us.

Not so sure about getting people to feel the right feelings as a way of transmitting faith though. On one level this could be extremely manipulative, and on another level could lead people to fake what was expected. Neither of these would lead to right relationships - which are surely another vital component of expressing our faith in a disbelieving world.