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

So far, Brian believes both the Bible and its Story is really all about God, rather than Jesus Christ. When we come to the question of God and why is he so violent, Brian continues to fail to root God in Jesus Christ, but rather a generalized version: “the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus.” He continues perpetrating the false construct Theos over against the Hebrew God Elohim in declaring that “nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures do I find anything as horrible as Theos.” While Brian doesn’t want to excuse or defend the divine smiting, genocidal conquest, and global flooding of Elohim in the Hebrew Scriptures, those crimes are far less serious than those of the false rhetorical construct Brian calls Theos. (98-99)

While Brian’s understanding of God mirrors the evolving conception found in process theology, he goes one step further by declaring, “our ancestor’s images and understanding of God continually changed, evolved, and matured over the centuries. God, it seemed, kept initiating this evolution.” (99) Here Brian creates a quarterback sneak around the thorny prospect of God Himself evolving and instead postulates that our ancestor’s images evolved. His innovation is built upon a conception of Biblical authority in which God Himself is not directly speaking, but rather biblical writers conversing about God. In fact, Brian lists 5 specific lines of evolution supposedly found in the biblical writer’s understanding of God, all without giving any primary or secondary sourcing (100-102):

1. There is a maturing in their understanding of God’s uniqueness, moving from seeing God as one/our God among many to only one God for all.
2. There is an important shift in understanding God’s ethics, moving from seeing God as primarily concerned with religious and ceremonial fidelity to one who is passionate about social justice.
3. We see a pattern of growth in understanding God’s universality, conceiving God as tribal and only favoring “us” to viewing God as creating and loving all people, choosing one group not at the exclusion of others but for their benefit.
4. Next the biblical writers evolved in their understanding of God’s agency, moving from viewing God as distant and absent to hyperpresent.
5. Finally, the biblical writers matured in their regards to God’s character, creating images of God that range from “violent, retaliatory, given to favoritism, and careless of human life” to “loving justice, kindness, reconciliation, and peace.” According to Brian, “over time, the image of God that predominates is gentle rather than cruel, compassionate rather than violent, fair to all rather than biased toward some, forgiving rather than retaliatory.

For Brian, the biblical writers “matured” in their understanding of God. Those who would challenge this unsupported view, however, are written off as fundamentalists who “find it difficult to acknowledge this kind of progression in understanding across the centuries.” (102) As such, the God of the fundamentalists is: a competitive warrior, superficially exacting, exclusive, deterministic, and ultimately violent, “eventually destined to explode with unquenchable rage, condemnation, punishment, torture, and vengeance if you push him too far.” (102) While I role my eyes at yet ANOTHER gross caricature and straw man, I’ve come to expect such over-the-top, intellectually hollow language from Brian. But we continue…

Again, without giving any scriptural proof of his arguments, Brian asserts, “Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestor’s best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God.” By viewing the Text as a community library through which humans converse about their understanding of God—rather than the vehicle through which God Himself reveals Himself to humanity—Brian is able to attempt to get away with arguing we learn from its evolutionary process. And since we are conversational partners with the Bible—rather than relying upon the author’s originally intended words and arguments, which the historical understanding of biblical hermeneutics has assumed for generations prior to postmodernism—”we might even “participate in [that evolutionary process].” (103)

In fact, “we have no reason to believe that the process has stopped unfolding, even at this very moment as I write, as you read, and we have ever reason to believe that even now we are in a stage of understanding that is a step above where we used to be, but a step below where we could venture next.” (105) While he gives zero biblical support for this assertion, it make sense in light of his view of the Holy Scripture. Again, for Brian the Bible is not God’s self-disclosure of Himself to us, it is our written “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) Again, for Brian the Bible is not God’s self-revelation, it is purely a record of humans evolution in their understanding of God. In his own words: “the Bible is an ongoing conversation about the character of God,” rather than the revelation of God Himself. This is diametrically opposed from how the Church has viewed the revelation of God for centuries. This is simply not Christian.

From here, Brian’s innovations get far worse. Because Brian cannot handle the Holy Scriptures witness of God that is judgmental, exclusive, holy AND forgiving, universal, and gracious/loving he suggests there is a trajectory within Bible that evolves its portrait of God. “For us as Christians (suggesting he does not mean for the world/everyone)” we can discern God’s character in a mature way from the vantage point of the end of the story as seen in the light of the story of Jesus. (114)

The problem with this perspective, however (which we’ll explore in greater detail in question 3), is that for Brian Jesus Himself is not God, but only like God, “bringing us to a new evolutionary level in our understanding of God.” In Jesus we do not find God or see God, we merely “experience” Him. He quotes a Quaker scholar, Elton Trueblood, and insists his insight is the “best single reason to be identified as a believer in Jesus:” (114)

“The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.” Brian goes on to say, “[this insight] is an unspeakably precious gift that can be offered to people of all faiths. The character of Jesus…provides humanity with a unique and indispensable guide for tracing the development of maturing images and concepts of God across human history and culture. [The character of Jesus] is the North Star…to all people, whatever their religious background. The images of God that most resemble Jesus, whether they originate in the Bible or elsewhere, are the more mature and complete images…(114)

It is clear at this point that Brian believes that Jesus is neither ontologically God nor that God is wholly and utterly revealed exclusively in Jesus Christ. If he believes it he in no way shape or form says it, which is a devastating refusal indeed. Both McLaren and Trueblood are wrong: historic orthodoxy says Jesus is God and God is Jesus. Jesus is not simply a gift to all faiths to help them better understand the character and image of God. Jesus Christ is the single Lord and Messiah that utterly desolates any and all faiths; anyone who submits to an alternative faith is called to deny it and bow before Jesus Christ as God, as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Jesus doesn’t simply give us “the highest, deepest, and most mature view of the character of the living God.” Jesus is God, words which Brian cannot bring himself to mouth. What a travesty, indeed!

One of the most telling signs of Brian’s intellectual and biblical dishonesty is the way in which he quotes two passages of Scripture then leaves out key sections. First, look at what he does with Col. 1:15-20:

He quotes the first portion “The Son is the image of the invisible God” but then leave leaves out an incredibly key description of Jesus Christ, which I find unbelievable:

“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.”

He ends with 18-20, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”

Why oh why, Brian, would you leave out one of the key sections from one of the single greatest hymns to Christ? Do you realize that by leaving out this section you implicitly deny that Jesus Christ is the first born over all creation, that He Himself is the Creator of everything in the universe, and that as God he is head over only the Church? To this question there is only one answer: Why yes! It fits perfectly with his agenda to universalize God and divorce Him from Jesus Christ. If, as Paul writes here in Colossians, Jesus Christ is the exclusive Lord over all, then Allah is not. If Jesus Christ is exclusive Lord and Messiah, then he looses the Jewish vote, because then YHWH is also Jesus, which they deny.

Contrary to Brian’s innovations, the God presented in the entire Holy Scriptures is the same God, unevolved in both Being and human understanding. While I am as uncomfortable at times with God’s revelation in the Hebrew text as the next guy, including Brian, I am forced to wrestle with that revelation. More importantly I am forced to wrestle with the God revealed through that revelation.

You cannot simply dismiss the exclusive and “violent” (in Brian’s words) characteristics of God as unevolved human understanding. It’s there. He’s there, in the tension of the exclusion and inclusion, judgment and forgiveness, holiness and love. The God of the Bible is God Himself. Not human understanding, but God revealed to humanity, ultimately in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus is not simply an evolved understand of God. He is God. Unfortunately for Brian and his readers, he does not believe this is the case. Rather, Jesus simply reveals the character of God, which we will explore next in question 4, the Jesus question.