This is why a movmement that is so contemporary is nevertheless deeply committed to tradition, convinced that the insights of the Spirit given to the early church have much to say to the contemporary church — and to the world.

Is this implying something about a lack of legitimacy of “ongoing revelation” or just that the early church is most able to help us now, being in that they were pre-modernist, and therefore free of the modernist assumptions? I can go along with the idea of an advantage to pre-modernity (not falling under the weight of the dualisms and fallacies of modernity). Sounds also a lot like some of the stuff I read from Matthew Fox in the late 80’s early 90’s, where he kind of introduced me to several pre-moderns who were not so “Western” in their thinking. I still like to use the concept of The Cosmic Christ to talk about how it is that Christ reaches across cultures and traditions and “reveals” himself in non_western, non-“Biblical” cultures (maybe even some non-Biblical cultures are not as overlayed with the many modernistic overlays to the Bible such as in the “American Bible” that JIm Wallis so often mentions.

But as for early church, I could do with some more learnings on those dudes (and even some of the non-dudes, like Teresa of Avial ,Julian of Norwich, and Hildegard of Bingen). Al of these were expounded to me by Matthew Fox, and earlier , Elizabeth O’Connor (that Church of the Saviour Narrative writer) had quoted from them in her book “Our Many Selves”.

So I have some history in being made aware of the blessings of the non-Western, non-modernist mind. I can dig it.