On Sunday, the NY Times reported that author and former pastor Brian McLaren led a same-sex commitment ceremony for his son and son’s new partner over the weekend. In fact such leading used “traditional Christian elements”:

Later in the day, the Rev. Brian D. McLaren, Mr. McLaren’s father and the former pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md., led a commitment ceremony with traditional Christian elements before family and friends at the Woodend Sanctuary of the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, Md.

The next day Christianity Today picked up the story in their Gleanings section online, reporting that McLaren “is among a minority of evangelical progressives who advocate that the church should abandon heterosexism and move toward reconciliation with homosexuals.” Without plumbing the depths of McLaren’s heterosexism charge—because I have no idea what he means and I don’t care—I’d like to explain why I’m not in the least bit surprised McLaren would lead a same-sex commitment ceremony for his gay son.

I’m not surprised for one main reason: McLaren doesn’t believe in the authority of Scripture.

Before I get to what McLaren means by the Bible’s authority, what do I mean by the phrase authority of Scripture? I mean what NT Wright means: “the authority of the triune God, exercised somehow through Scripture.” In other words, Scripture is authoritative to define what we should believe and how we should behave because God is authoritative, and God Himself is speaking through Scripture.

This is how the early church conceived of Scripture, believing that it is “true utterances of the Holy Spirit” (1 Clement), its human authors were “guided by the same Spirit” (Tertullian), and each book is “the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration” (Theodoret of Cyr). There is no “authority apart from the gospel and apostolic writings.” (Augustine) So God is the one speaking through Scripture and there is no authority outside of it.

This is not, however, how McLaren conceives of Scripture, which is why he would lead a same-sex commitment ceremony, why he does not view homosexual practice as sinful.

Over two years ago I wrote a multi-part series exploring McLaren’s newest book, A New Kind of Christianity. My third post examined his second part, the authority question, which sought to answer how the Bible should be understood. And how does he understand the Bible? As a “community library,” in contrast to the manner in which he claims evangelicals read the Bible, as a “legal constitution.”

This constitutional approach, used “especially in conservative settings,” is defined as: “looking for precedents in past cases of interpretation, sometimes favoring older interpretations as precedents;” arguing “framers’ intent” (or author’s intent in biblical hermeneutics terminology); approaching the biblical text “as if it were an annotated code.” (78-79)

Instead, McLaren sees the Bible as “a portable library of poems, prophets, histories, fables and parables, letters, sage sayings, quarrels, and so on…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.” (emphasis mine. 79, 81)

So for McLaren, the Bible isn’t what God is saying, it is what a culture and community are saying about God.

What about divine inspiration? McLaren writes, “to say that God inspired the Bible is to say that, for the community of people who seek to be part of the tradition of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Amos, John, Mary, and Jesus, the Bible has a unique and unparalleled role…” (83) Brian does not say that the Bible is inspired by God and is the sole textual point of God’s divine self-disclosure. Instead the Bible merely has “a unique and unparalleled role.” He also cannot say the Bible is for the entire world, but only for the “community of Christian faith.”

Is God Himself revealed through the Bible itself? Unfortunately, according to Brian, no: “This inspired library 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) Thus, the Bible isn’t about God, but about our conversation about God.

For McLaren, the Living God is not revealed through the Holy Scripture, but simply revealed in the “ongoing vigorous conversation” and “vital civl argument.” Even then it’s merely a discussion about His character. As he argues:

“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…It happens in conversations and arguments that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions across generations.” (89-90, 91)

Pay attention to what Brian has said here: McLaren believes revelation is about human conversation about God, rather than God Himself revealing Himself to humanity. Instead “the Bible is an ongoing conversation about the character of God,” and we continue the same conversation in our day that the authors of the Bible had in their day.

So rather than authority resting in the Author of Text (i.e. God, and we could also add the intent of the human author acted upon by the Holy Spirit…), authority rests in the reader of the Text; the Bible isn’t authoritative, we are.

Which is why the conversation about homosexual practice isn’t one about what the Bible says, because it is only an unevolved, ever-evolving conversation about the character of God, anyway. What the writers said in their time is not binding on our time, because the Bible is merely an ongoing conversation about God’s character.

Again, God isn’t speaking. Humanity is.

In the case of homosexual practice, the conversation in Leviticus 18 is an unevolved, temporary one. Now, however, we’re educated, civilized. We know better than to suggest sexuality is a fixed, created, biological thing. Instead it is a social construct, or perhaps a personal construct born out of our own personal choices. Thus homosexual practice is as natural of a choice as the heterosexual choice. (We could also add the transexual choice or pansexual choice, but we’re gonna keep those for another time.)

And as participants in the ongoing conversation about the character of God that people like Moses and Paul sparked in their own documents, according to McLaren we have as much authority to reveal God’s character as they did. Including what he does or does not think about two men marrying one another, not to mention having sex with one another.

So while the Christianity Today blog post is riddled with accusatory, condemnatory comments, should anyone really be all that surprised? It’s what happens when you don’t believe that God Himself is speaking through Scripture and merely believe its authority lies in our conversation about God. That perspective is not Christian, and it certainly isn’t new. It’s old, Genesis 3 old. The serpent was the first one to challenge the authority of God’s words, and thus the authority of God with his “Did God really say?” missive. And embedded in that question the permission to decide for oneself the way things should be.

And it’s the very same question and rebellious challenge McLaren himself channeled this past weekend when he led the same-sex commitment ceremony for his son.

BTW if you’re interested, beginning next week I’ll be blogging through McLaren’s latest Why Did Jesus, Moses, Buddha, and Muhammed Cross the Road, a book expect to extend his universalistic religious pluralism.