Title: Brian McLaren’s, A New Kind Of Christianity, Ten Questions That Are Transforming The Faith.

Disclaimer: I think it is important to begin with a disclaimer for this book because I cannot deny that Brian has been somewhat of a mentor for me, if only through his writings.  I have had the opportunity to meet and interview him and I walked away deeply impressed by his humility and dare I say radiance.  I freely admit I began this book with a bias.  I know that when Brian speaks, my ears prick up and I listen with more intent.  But I also read this book with a critical mind.  This is the first book I found myself not sharing Brian’s entire perspective, and in fact disagree with him on some fundamental points.  But I also know Brian well enough to know he would invite that dialog.

Overview: As Emergence Christianity progresses, it becomes critical for voices to begin offering not just critique but alternative perspectives that make sense. Brian offers ten questions that begin to frame an alternative perspective to traditional evangelical orthodoxy.

In this review, I’m choosing to directly address each question, summarize what I hear Brian saying, and then offer my response to his perspective. This is an important book because of who Brian is.  People will look at this book for answers to long standing questions about emergence, so I think it deserves the time and effort of a detailed response.  My hope in this review is to create dialog.  As I said before, the most important thing Brian is doing is asking good questions.

1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?

What I Hear Brian Saying: Brian suggests that we read the narrative of Scripture from a Platonic six line narrative.  1) Edenic Perfection – 2) Fall – 3) Condemnation – 4) Salvation – 5) Heaven for Believers – and 6) Hell and Damnation (i.e. “eternal conscious torment”) for Unbelievers.  Brian calls this fall a shift of “state”.  Brian suggests this is not an ontological fall, and that it can be described better as a coming of age story, suggesting, “there is not one isolated moment of ontological shift from state to story.” (p48)

My Response: This question had to come first because it frames the entire book.  But this is the response that I had the most trouble with, not because Brian isn’t suggesting something unorthodox, but because in many ways it feels like he missed the very story he’s trying to argue for.

Beginning with Brian’s quote above, it appears Brian suggests that nothing significant happened in the Garden, when something clearly does happen. If this were a movie, the Garden would be the opening scene because it creates the tension. If the cross is the solution or resolution of the story, the Garden is the tragedy or the setup.  From a storytellers perspective, this is the moment when our main character is captivated by something.  To suggest that nothing happened just doesn’t resonate for me.

Brian does seem to contradict himself in back to back pages (p50-51) when he offers two charts; one ascending and one descending.  He says, “But the ascent is ironic, because with each gain, humans also descend into loss.  They descend (or fall-there’s nothing wrong with the word itself, just the unrecognized baggage that may come with it) from the primal innocence of being naked without shame in one another’s presence.” (p50)

This is where I think Brian shoots himself in the foot. He suggests nothing is happening and then provides direct evidence that something is happening, and its downward.  Instead of listening deeply to the story to ask what is the meaning of “death” in the text, he seems to excuse it away.  His critique on p49 ends before it really begin.  I say this because understanding the meaning of what God means by “death” is central to the story.

What this does is create a paradox for those who hold the more traditional view that something does happen.  It makes one question what is the purpose of the cross and the atonement in taking on and solving death, which can only be answered if there is a problem.  And I say this because these are deeply important parts of the story, not just state.  If we read the narrative as story from front to back, without a Greco-Roman mindset, we still can’t help but suggest that God is solving a problem of death.

This also leads to the critique many will have of the book.  If we remove the fall and the problem of death, we’re left with classic liberalism that Jesus was and is entirely about social justice.  By framing it this way Brian will create a problem for himself and allow many to excuse the book out of hand.  It seems like Brian’s response to the traditional problems of atonement is simply to say it wasn’t needed, although I don’t remember him explicitly saying that and I could be misreading him.

I would agree with two of Brian’s central points regarding the Garden. First, we need to frame the Garden as good, not perfect.  When we frame it as perfect, we’re directly contradicting the text and ascribing something to it that is NOT there.  Two, Brian argues that God never abandons humanity in the Garden.  I loved this point and think it is one of the THE most important parts of the story, but wonder if most people will miss this important point because they are pushed back by his earlier arguments that nothing happened.

I would suggest the problem is dualism, which is represented in the Tree of Knowledge.  But traditional evangelical Christianity, which is heavily influenced by Greco-Roman perspective locates the problem entirely wrong.  If we understand the root problem in the Garden, it becomes easy to see how our historical perspectives of the atonement are a natural outcome of the fall.  In other words, we locate the problem incorrectly because of the fall.  I’m going to be speaking more about this in coming months and in my new book coming out this May.  I am suggesting there is a six line narrative but not in the way we traditionally think.  For now, it will have to remain a teaser.

More to follow on Monday.