When Are We Going to Change This

There is a certain tendency I find disturbing in "Progressive Christianity" (and, I must admit, I have only begun to get my mind around what might be called "Progressive Protestantism"--the notion of a truly "progressive" Catholicism seems hopeless, bound such as it is not only to a seemingly unalterable canon, but also to an entrenched conception of tradition.  What can only be "built upon" can scarcely be "progressive.")

What I find disturbing in much of "Progressive Christianity" is the apparently unalterable determination to wrestle with established Christianity on the usual ground of its own choosing--the Protestant 66-book "canon".  Established or traditional Christianity--when it is not effectively defining itself by belief in that "official" canon and thereby leaving itself open to the charge that it worships not Christ but councils--must ultimately define itself by declaring the nature of the savior it worships.  The proper conception of the savior, I would argue, must be discernable within the gospels--the teaching that he was leaving the first believers with before Paul and the rest.

It is the link between the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament that must be challenged by Progressive Christianity, or else Progressive Christianity has given the game away--having ceded the very notion of a supposedly suitably "ancient" build-up of doctrine that culminated in the traditional canon.  When the "early church" means not "the early church"--the people who stood before the resurrected Jesus--and instead becomes "the early church" post-Pentecost, then the business of determining the core essentials of Christianity--difficult enough when attempting to understand the history of the (indispensable) gospels--becomes the business of determining the essential nature of four or more centuries of the "Church" massaging its (already "ancient") writings as it saw fit.

The church of the councils was already an ancient and fossilized entity.  Hoping to extract anything "progressive" out of the council-defined church, while well-intentioned and understandable, is a fool's errand.