Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts

Over the last month I have begun reviewing Brian McLaren’s new book, A New Kind of Christianity. At this point it is no secret that I am at odds fundamentally with the foundation beneath the new Christianity Brian is constructing. As I and others believe, the version of Christianity that he is pushing scantily reflects the Holy Scriptures and actually subverts the historical Rule of Faith that believes Jesus Christ is exclusively Lord and Messiah.

As I wrote in my intro to the series:

Though Brian wonders aloud “How did a mild-manner guy like me get into so much trouble” (2) and insists he “never planned to become a ‘controversial religious leader,'” (3) he is the one to blame. He is the one who has shifted and engaged in this current theological endeavor. This theological enterprise is not accidentally garnering unwarranted criticism because there is nothing accidental about Brian’s theological endeavor: Brian’s book is a bold, intentional rhetorical tour de force that strikes at the very heart of the historic Christian faith, parodying the faith that both the Communion of Saints and the Spirit of God has given the 21st Century Church; his work pushes a version of Christianity that falls far outside the witness of the Holy Scriptures to Jesus Christ as exclusive Lord and Savior.

At every turn in Brian’s theological tour de force, Brian’s faith isn’t really about Jesus Christ, but about a vanilla, generalized pan-deity god that is no longer rooted in the historic Christian faith of Jesus Christ. Rather than faith in Jesus Christ, it is now faith in God, divorced from Jesus and pluralized to include room for other religious faiths, especially for the community of people who seek to be part of the tradition that flows from Abraham.

The theological foundation Brian has laid is made of the following beliefs:

1. He does not believe the biblical narrative is shaped by creation, fall, redemption, because according to him that’s platonic (35).
2. He rejects the historic understanding of original sin, insisting instead the the fall is actually a “classic coming-of-age story,” (51) in which “God pushes them out of the nest.” Rather than a fall, it is “the first stage of ascent as human beings progress from the life of hunter-gatherers to the life of agriculturalists and beyond.” Instead of a fall what happens is an awakening.
3. His version of the biblical narrative is Christless, centering on the story of Abraham, thus reducing God to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, instead of Jesus Christ. (65)
4. In the Bible itself, God does not actually reveal Himself to Humanity. Instead it is a cultural library that “preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed.” (83)
5. He reduces the Holy Scriptures to human conversations about God, rather than God Himself revealing Himself to humanity. This is clear when he writes, “revelation occurs not in the words and statements of individuals, but in the conversation among individuals and God. It happens in conversations and arguments that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions across generations. Revelation accumulates in the relationships, interactions, and interplay between statements.” (91-92)
6. According to Brian the Bible neither contains the real voice of God, but rather the voices of individuals speaking about God, nor is it a real, single authority for understanding God properly, since it is merely an evolving conversation about Him in which varying people give varying perspectives.
7. Like the Story, Brian believes the Bible is about a general, pan-deity God, rather than the God revealed through Jesus Christ. “It’s the library of a culture and community—the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The biblical library is a carefully selected group of documents of paramount importance for people who want to understand and belong to the community of people who seek God and, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.” (81)
8. For Brian the Bible is not God’s self-revelation, it “is an ongoing conversation about the character of God,” rather than the revelation of God Himself.”
9. The God presented in the Bible is not a single, complete, unified revelation, but a patchwork of evolved human concepts of God; it is a “record of a series of trade-ups, people courageously letting go of their state-of-the art understanding of God, when an even better understanding begins to emerge.” (111)
10. Consequently, Jesus Christ, unlike the historic Christian faith which says He Himself is God, is merely a “more mature and complete image” of God (114).
11. For Brian Jesus Himself is not God, but only like God, “bringing us to a new evolutionary level in our understanding of God.”
12. Even more damning: Jesus simply reveals the character of God, rather being God Himself (114,118) This is clear from his deliberate refusal to say this is the case, but also in that he willfully leaves out an incredibly key description of Jesus Christ when he quotes Col. 1:15-20: “the first born over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities: all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning and the first born from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.”
13. While Brian believes the gospel is entirely about the Kingdom of God, he divorces that kingdom and rule from Jesus Christ and Him alone. He audaciously asserts that Jesus came to announce a kingdom to all people of every religion, a kingdom that has “room for many religious traditions within it.” (139)
14. For Brian, anyone may embrace the Kingdom of God through faith. This faith is positively pluralized and never specifically invested exclusively in Jesus Christ as Lord and Messiah. Paul now points both Jews and Gentiles toward the way out: not a new doctrine, not a new religion, and not trying harder at the old religion either, but faith. Religious laws and practices are inherently exclusive; you’re either circumcised or not, and either you keep kosher or you don’t. But faith—having reverent confidence or dependence on God—is an option available to everyone.” (emphasis mine. 148)
15. Brian claims that “Paul is a ‘Jesus and the Kingdom of God’ guy from first to last.” Here Brian is preaching the Kingdom of God along side Jesus, rather than Jesus Christ alone.
    

Half-way through the book it is clear that for Brian, like many other leaders within the Emerging Church, it really is not about Jesus Christ, as exclusive Lord and Messiah. The theological foundation upon which Brian has built his faith is foreign to and inconsistent with the historic Rule of Faith, Holy Scriptures, and gospel of Jesus Christ entrusted to the apostles.

And here’s the thing: he wants to take the rest of us captive, clueless Christians down the rabbit hole with him. He is the liberator of the evangelical Gestapo and oppressive orthodoxy. He essentially frames his conversation on the foundation with his introduction to Book One. Here is what he writes:

You can’t go on a quest if you’re locked in a closet, cell, or concentration camp. And you wont go on a quest if your captivity is sufficiently comfortable. That’s where we find ourselves: in a real-life version of the classic movie The Truman Show. We live in a comfortable captivity. Everywhere we turn we are surrounded by padded chairs, nice broadcasts of music and teaching, pleasant lighting and polite neighbors, all designed and integrated to keep us content under the dome. Life inside the dome is so perfect that every day we feel little more afraid of the cold, unedited world outside.

The chains, locks, bars, and barbed wire that hold us are usually disguised so well that they have a homey feel to us. We see our guards not as guards at all, but as pleasant custodians in clerical robes or casual suits. They’ve been to graduate school where many of them mastered the techniques of friendly manipulation, always with a penetrating smile and a firm, heavy hand on the shoulder. We like them. They like us.

The high-tech security system that holds us inside the dome can be unlocked, should we ever wish to leave. The key is a question. When you ask it, something clicks. and you are free.

Unfortunately, freedom is not what Brian is bringing with his new kind of Christianity. Freedom comes from the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ alone. Brian’s Christianity is about god, not Jesus, which in the end really isn’t about Christianity at all.