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@GagliaAC, Aaron Gaglia, Brian McLaren, Christianity, Institute on Religion and Democracy, interfaith, IRD Blog
By Aaron Gaglia (@GagliaAC)
Christians are continually grappling with how to minister in this postmodern world. Though many Christians advocate changing the approach but not the message, some are calling for a restructuring of the message altogether. Brian McLaren, a prominent voice in the emergent movement, is one who is calling for a reformulation of the Christian message. His latest offering, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World, gives a rather detailed exposition of this new way of doing Christianity. This book, released on September 11, 2012, has received the 2013 Book of the Year Award by Academy of Parish Clergy. In this book, McLaren seeks to do away with the Christianity “that spent too little energy making peace and too much erecting and perfecting walls of separation, suspicion, and hostility” (McLaren,14). He seeks to create a strong benevolent Christian identity that accepts people of other faiths “not in spite of the religion they love, but with the religion they love” (32). He tries to find the middle ground between on the one hand, throwing off Christian identity in order to be benevolent to other religions, and having a strong Christian identity that is opposed to other religions.
The book is divided into four sections: I. The Crisis of Christian Identity, II. The Doctrinal Challenge, III. The Liturgical Challenge, and IV. The Missional Challenge.
Section I lays out the premise as described above, showing the need for a new Christian approach to those of other faiths. He argues that we need to go past the us/other dichotomy that demonizes those with different views than us and embrace the other as part of the us. “To be ‘in Christ’ is to be in solidarity with all people—and all creation. That solidarity contrast starkly with the realities of being ‘in Christianity’ or any other ‘Us’ religion” (48, McLaren quoting his response in an online conversation between those of varied faiths). He then goes on to grapple with the violence done in the name of religion and comes to this conclusion: “The tensions between our conflicted religions arise not from our differences, but from one thing we all hold in common: an oppositional religious identity that derives strength from hostility” (57, italics original).
As the first step in creating a new Christian identity, he takes the reader on a tour through the horrible ways Christianity has been used to propagate violence and hurt those with differing views. He goes back to Constantine, showing how Christian faith took on imperial elements. McLaren sees much of the great evil propagated in the name of Christianity arising from a doctrine of exclusivity—“the theological conviction that one group of people—Us—carries God’s blessing and favor in a way others do not. Taken further the chosen become children of God and light; the unchosen, the children of the devil and darkness. In the stark shadows of that duality, how could hostility not grow?” (93, 94). He then spends the rest of the book showing how we should “rearticulate our core Christian doctrine…healing hostility and nourishing benevolence… to creatively renew our essential Christian liturgies so they fulfill their potential for spiritual formation. And then we will be able to rediscover our compelling Christian Mission” (95, Italics original).
McLaren redefines the following key Christian doctrines: Creation, Original Sin, Election, Trinity, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. He first conjectures that our understanding of doctrine is imperialistic, “restricting not only freedom of speech but also freedom of thought, thus promoting exactly the kind of political submission that totalitarian regimes depend on [.]” He seeks instead that the idea of doctrine be changed to be “an instrument of healing” (101).
To understand his theological system, it is imperative to understand his reformulation of the doctrine of original sin. He rejects the traditional understanding of original sin which he sums up as saying: “God views all humankind…with hostility because it has lapsed from its original perfection. According to this popular understanding, God’s particular form of perfection requires God to punish all imperfect beings with eternal conscious torment in hell. So in this popular view of original sin, God’s response to anything that is less than absolutely perfect must be absolute and infinite hostility” (106). He asserts that this doctrine fosters hostility toward the other in which we “imitate the complex attitude that we understand God to have toward…sinners…and translate these learned attitudes into actions and words” (106,107). He admits that this doctrine leads some to act compassionately toward others, but if it is for the sake of evangelism he still sees it as a bad thing.
He then offers a new understanding of original sin based on the work of James Alison, a Catholic theologian who further applies philosopher Rene Girard’s work to theology. McLaren explains Girard’s mimetic theory and redefines original sin with this understanding: “…all human beings are caught in these subtle webs of destructive imitation, rivalry, anxiety, scapegoating, and ritualization…As a result, our very identity as human beings as individuals has been distorted from the image envisioned in the doctrine of creation” (110). Instead of seeing original sin as disobedience toward God that incites God’s wrath and requires divine rescue, he sees original sin as a decision to demonize and live in rivalry with the other and sees the Cross of Christ not as providing atonement for our sins, but of breaking the cycle of scapegoating that we humans created.
He removes from the doctrine of election the idea of “ ‘us’ as ‘the people of God’” and reformulates “God’s call as a vocation to be the other for the sake of others” (119, 121). Though Christians would agree with the idea that Christians are called to bless others, McLaren sees a Christianity that seeks to bless people by showing them that they are in a desperate need of Jesus as leading to hostility.
Also worth noting is McLaren’s Christology. He has Christ inform our view of God and not the other way around. He sees the God of the Old Testament and Jesus as incompatible. To make this point, he quotes from Rene Girard: “The gospel interpretation of the Old Testament can be summed up in this approach… the replacement [of] the God that inflicts violence with the God that only suffers violence, the Logos that is expelled….When the consequences of this substitution finally come to fulfillment, there will be incalculable results” (143)
He has good insights to offer, such as expounding on the Trinitarian idea of perichoresis, yet instead of supplementing Biblical and historical documents, he totally redefines the doctrines. He sees orthodox Christianity and a strong benevolent identity as incompatible. Instead of rediscovering the great power the traditional Gospel has in accepting the unaccepted and bringing reconciliation to groups hostile to each other through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, he reformulates the Gospel altogether.
I am going to stop there for now. In the coming days, look out for a follow-up blog post in which I’ll finish reviewing the book and provide an alternative for what interfaith relations should look like.
Rest assured that hell is not moved by opinions of what it is or isn’t, nor is the truth swayed by man’s inability to come to grips with it. We do not judge the truth; it judges us. Remember, the way is NARROW that leads to life, and FEW find it. The ways is BROAD that leads to damnation, and MANY take it. The Bridegroom is coming soon and soon the door to His wedding will be shut. “Let no man deceive you BY ANY MEANS, for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition … even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause GOD SHALL SEND THEM STRONG DELUSION, THAT THEY SHOULD BELIEVE A LIE, THAT THEY MIGHT ALL BE DAMNED WHO BELIEVED NOT THE TRUTH, BUT HAD PLEASURE IN UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.” (2 Thes. 2:3-12)
“What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
“Is there a thing of which it is said,
‘See, this is new’?
“It has been already
in the ages before us.
“There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
“of later things yet to be
among those who come after.” (Ecclesiastes 1.9-11)
Brian McLaren would do well to heed the advice of Solomon in the verses above quoted, for much of what he (McLaren) is quoted as saying is a paraphrase of what Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote much more eloquently two hundred years ago.
At the time that Schleiermacher wrote, the Church in Europe had been devastated by the Enlightenment. Schleiermacher sought to “save” Christianity from an ignominious demise after wallowing in the pit of cultural irrelevance. McLaren has discerned that the Spirit of the Age is one that does not tolerate intolerance, that excludes exclusivity, that ours is an age where all the world religions put aside their differences and come together on the common ground that we have faith in something or someone greater than ourselves. And McLaren insists that if the Christian faith is to be relevant in this age, then it must put aside all that is distinctly Christian (especially as defined by past dogmas) and to appreciate that people come with their own religious views that would be wrong for Christians to say separates them from God. In other words, Christianity must adopt as its own the ethos of the Spirit of the Age.
So, too, said Schleiermacher. In order to become relevant to the realities of 19th century Europe, the Church was obliged to adopt the ethos of 19th century Europe as her own, or so said Schleiermacher. And the European Church, after having lost tremendous cultural influence during the Enlightenment, did indeed adopt the ethos of 19th century Europe. As William Ralph Inge once said, “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” And that is the fate of the Church in Europe. She accommodated herself to the ways of the world in order to make herself relevant to the world, but in so doing, she made herself utterly irrelevant. The lesson from history would suggest that paying homage to the god of relevance is like “praying to a god that cannot save.” (Isaiah 45.20) And to paraphrase George Santayana, those who fail to learn history’s lessons are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
Yet McLaren evidently has failed to learn history’s lesson. Like Schleiermacher, he seeks to fit the Church into the world’s mold in order to be relevant. Like Schleiermacher, he empties Christian doctrines of their Biblical meaning and fills them with meaning that is relevant to the world. And like Schleiermacher, he believes the religion of the Old Testament to be an inferior religion, that the God of the Old Testament is incompatible with the Jesus of the New.
But like Schleiermacher, McLaren fails to recognize that the Jesus of the New Testament is no model of post-modern inclusivity and tolerance. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth,” He said. “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 10.34-39)
Moreover, He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not as the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” (John 6.53-58) Even many of Jesus’ own disciples (not the Twelve) took offense at this. But He said to them, “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is of no avail. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. … This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6.62-65) “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” (John 6.66) And what is more, Jesus said that at the end of history, He Himself “will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” (Mt. 25.32) McLaren might want the Church to do away with an “us versus them” mentality, but Jesus Himself creates that mentality by what He Himself teaches. Christians are, indeed, called to love non-Christians in spite of their non-Christian religions, not with their non-Christian religions, as McLaren would have us do, for their non-Christian religions separate them from the saving love of God that is found only in Jesus Christ (Isaiah 45.20-21, Matthew 28.18-20, John 14.6, Acts 4.12).
Finally, I cannot close this post without pointing out the irony of what McLaren is trying to do. He deplores the “us versus them” mentality he sees in many Christians, but he must posit a Christianity (actually, it’s Pluralism, a rival of Christianity) of which he himself is a part that is opposed to the Christianity that employs the “us versus them” mentality, thus perpetuating the “us versus them” mentality that he purports to deplore.
The Biblical Heaven and Hell must be allegorical because we certainly have no credible answer as to where or what they are.
That’s exactly right. When the Russians launched their cosmonauts into space, the Russian press reported that they confirmed there was no God up there, so that settled the matter, didn’t it? If it isn’t up there in the sky, then it doesn’t exist at all, right?
So based on your sarcasm, you have no answers. I am just saying as Christians it would be nice if there was some reasonable answer when people ask what Heaven and Hell are, or even what God is. Based on the erudition of the commentators here, I was hoping someone would proffer a decent answer. No such luck I guess.
Probably because we don’t think it’s a big deal. We know enough, based on the Bible. We don’t feel any obligation to do what Dante did and write a 300-page poem describing heaven and hell in detail. I don’t think my going to heaven hinges upon my foreknowledge of what it’s going to be like.
No it doesn’t. Nonetheless you believe you ( either your soul or your body, depending on your belief system) will be going to someplace that you don’t know what it is. How do you, or rather what is the best way to explain to a skeptic how you rationally developed that belief.
Why do you assume a skeptic would be rational?
Good response, Mark. It reminds me of Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God, where he demolishes the skeptics’ delusion of being objective and unbiased and totally rational. Everyone walks around with a cloud of “givens” floating around him, assumptions they never bother to question. The skeptic tries to seize the high ground – I’m so brilliant, I see things as they are, and everyone else is mired in superstition. Ain’t I wonderful?
Actually I think both the skeptics and the religious are guilty of a similar attitude which acts as an impediment to any meaningful theosophical discussion.
That’s because in your theology, you assume that the infinite God who created the heaven and earth, and yes, a hell in which Satan would eventually be sent to has to be bound by His finite creation and that if He cannot show me where heaven and hell are physically located, they do not exist. In Christian theology, we accept that God is above everything He created and that His eternal realms exist apart from this physical world.
Funny, I wonder if you have the same requirements for proof of the existence of the human soul.
Actually I put no limitations on God. All I am saying is we don’t know what God, Heaven, Hell and yes the soul actually are. But then again we don’t know what consciousness is either. I think someone should try to posit cogent answers to these interesting questions. And mostly because without answers the skeptics think we believe in nothing or these are man-made constructs. What we are left with is faith, which I don’t have a problem with personally. However, the faith concept is also interesting because we never discuss how to develop or build faith. The reason we should try to answer these questions is because it is difficult for most people to have faith in something which not only can’t be perceived with the five senses, but also can’t even be defined or explained. I also realize our connection to the material rather than a spiritual connection is much stronger then the material connection of humans in antiquity. The material spiritual balance has been tilted dramatically toward the material due to the development of science and the industrial age.
This is a very interesting article, and I appreciate Aaron doing the groundwork to present McLaren accurately.
I also would compliment Gabe and JS Lang for providing very insightful comments.
I do think JS is on to something when stating “I’m just a tad suspicious that people always sniffing out hatred and hostility might be smelling themselves.” It’s amazing how dualistic these emergents/progressives can become in condemning dualism.
It’s also mind-boggling how self-styled theologians like McLaren are so ignorant of history. If they took the Ecclesiastical proclamation more seriously perhaps they would discipline themselves to study the great heresies (like Gnosticism and Marcionism) more rigorously: there is nothing new under the sun.
Mr. McLaren is rediscovering the wheel and claiming it will get us to Mars.
Not to say we cannot learn something from McLaren, but why doesn’t he just admit he’s a Unitarian?
Mark, I think he’s gone beyond Unitarian, probably Deist, or maybe Democratic-Deist, since his god seems to exist solely to rubberstamp whatever the political left is pushing for.
Aaron, I give you all the credit in the world for braving through this nonsense. Thank you for your review and I look forward to the rest of your review. A few months ago, someone posted a small part of a talk that McLaren did when this book was released, his words were simply stunning.
“Also worth noting is McLaren’s Christology. He has Christ inform our view of God and not the other way around. He sees the God of the Old Testament and Jesus as incompatible.”
It’s funny that this guy thinks he is so deep when he is just spouting out the talking points of Marcionism. Those were long ago discarded, and I will be that one day McLaren’s viewpoints will be discredited and forgotten. While I have no intention of wasting my time in reading this book, I wonder what McLaren does with Christ’s assertion that “before Abraham was, I am.” This idea that Christ was of the same essence of the Father, came from the Father, and was the One about whom all of the Old Testament prophecies spoke (even back to Genesis 3 where God promised Adam and Eve that one day one would come who would crush the serpent’s head) surely clashes with McLaren’s assertion that the God of the Old Testament and Jesus are incompatible.
I would recommend anyone who wants a good book to read Alistair McGrath’s book “Heresy”. As he takes you through the initial heresies that the church encountered, you’ll see that McLaren is just bringing us past failed ideas. Or as the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge said “All new news is old news happening to new people”
It is hard to read the Bible with any contextual logic and not conclude the gods of the Old Testament certainly do not always reference the the same God of the New Testament.
Evidently it’s hard for you to read the Bible with any contextual logic, period. A major distinguishing characteristic of the Hebrews was that they were monotheistic (i.e., there were no “gods” except pagan gods).
What an answer! That the God of the New Testament is different than the gods of the Old Testament…this needs clarification. As Mark said in the comment above, there are no qualms in saying that the Lord is different than the false gods of Molech or Chemosh or Baal. The point that I think you are making is that the God of the Old Testament (as in the creator of the world, the One who was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the One about whom the Old Testament is written) is different from the New Testament God.
That leaves us with some uncomfortable situations since Christ used specific language from the Old Testament (especially the prophecies) and referred to Himself using an Old Testament name for the Lord (I AM). So based on this, was Christ mistaken in who He was? If so, why should any of us take anything He said seriously? Did the God of the New Testament replace the God of the Old Testament? If so, why is that not mentioned in any of the scriptures (and how was the God Old Testament replaced?) Should we then disregard the 1st of the 10 commandments?
If you are right, either we live in a polytheistic world or Christ was lying or fooled about who He was.
I don’t think this is a forum for a dissertation, but some of the gods in the Old Testament had different characteristics than the God Jesus referenced. The two most notable differences are: one of the gods of the old testament was belligerent, and the other is He talked to people. Neither characteristic is present in the new Testament.
McLaren cites the story in Acts of Peter “crossing the boundaries of otherness” to meet with the pagan Cornelius – overlooking the crucial fact that Peter’s sole purpose in meeting Cornelius was to convert him to Christianity, and that Cornelius was already a “God-fearer,” i.e., a Gentile practicing the Jewish religion. MacLaren opposes making converts, but Peter sure didn’t. Also in Acts, Paul resists when some pagans try to offer sacrifices to him and Barnabas – hardly a case of “crossing the boundaries of otherness.” You have to wonder how the apostles would have reacted to this book. These men put their lives on the line in proclaiming the gospel. They did not hate the people they evangelized – obviously they loved them and wanted them to find salvation. And yet they had no hesitancy in saying to pagans (and Jews), “You’re wrong! Let me show you the way to God!” This is not the version of Christianity presented in this book, which envisions all religions coming together working for “liberation” of the marginalized. Salvation in the biblical sense is not on this author’s agenda.
I had to laugh at the book’s section on the Roman emperor Constantine, who legalized Christianity, ending long years of persecution, paving the way for the Roman empire to become, in time, officially Christian – and, in time, persecuting non-Christians. Constantine had good intentions – but the end result was a church-state marriage that had very bad results. On this the author and I could agree – but what puzzles me is why he and other liberals have convinced themselves that conservative Christians today admire Constantine and what he achieved. Putting it bluntly, we don’t. I have moved in evangelical circles for decades, and I never heard any evangelical approve of what Constantine accomplished – nor have I ever heard any evangelical express the desire for a “theocracy” or “state church” in America. Again, this author boasted of being “scholarly,” but there are no footnotes to back up any of these assertions.
Why do people like this author assume (with no evidence) that Christians “hate” another person’s religion? (I’m just a tad suspicious that people always sniffing out hatred and hostility might be smelling themselves.) They cannot grasp what ought to be obvious: it is in fact possible to (1) hold dearly to your faith and believe it is the one way, or at least the best way, to God, and yet (2) treat people of other religions respectfully. It happens every day. My aunt, a very conservative Christian and occasional lay preacher, has a job that involves constant interaction with Hindus who operate mom-and-pop convenience stores. She doesn’t hate them or look down on them, yet she believes the one way to salvation is Christ. A contradiction? Not for her. But it appears that for this author there are only two options for Christians: (1) come out and say publicly that all religions are equal, there is no hell, all people will be saved, and I’m ashamed of Christianity, or (2) hate other religions. In trying to divide Christians into “us” and “them,” he can’t see that there is a wide middle ground between “hate” and “full acceptance.”
This book is not about how to be a better Christian. It’s a pat-yourself-on-the-back-fest, written to assure you that the more Christian beliefs and practices you discard, the better you are – that is, imitate the author, who loves the attention he gets from unbelievers and who ranks that much higher than getting the approval of God. (Paul in Romans 12:2 called this “conforming to the world” and did not approve – but then, liberals hate Paul.) A really inspiring book would challenge you to be a better person, to demand more of yourself. This book makes no demands, it only urges you to do something very easy: dislike Christians who are different from you. That has to be the cheapest kind of “spirituality” imaginable, especially since it is based on a lie: that a lot of American Christians hate people of other religions.