Brief thoughts on two more chapters of Brian McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN."
Previous reviews include:
0. Foreward, Introduction, Chapter 0
1-4. chapters 1-4, "Why I Am a Christian"
5-6 Missional and Evangelical
Now Chapter 7: "Why I am a Post-Protestant"
Here McLaren gives two meanings for "Protestant": Protestant as Protest and Protestant as Pro-Testifying.
On Protestant as Protesting, McLaren agrees that there were indeed reasons to protest some Roman Catholics in the 1500's. Indeed, he points out that Roman Catholics today would agree.
Then he notes that Protestants started protesting each other. They had opened a consumer model of Christianity where you market your version and compete with the others for consumers. You compete over interpretations of the Bible.
As Pro-testifiers or post-Protestants, McLaren suggests we become better known for what we stand for rather than what we stand against. He hopes we'll get over a restorationist attitude that sees our little group as the true, righteous remnant. Moses offered to die for those who weren't in the remnant when he had a chance to be the remnant. He didn't gloat in his remnantness.
Chapter 8: "Why I am a Liberal/Conservative"
No doubt some will have trouble with McLaren's attempt to applaud what he sees the good in both conservatives and liberals. The liberals, he argues, have dealt with many challenges before conservatives. Liberals tried to address evolution before conservatives. Liberals were tackling civil rights and women's rights when many conservatives were embarrassingly fighting on the wrong side of the issue.
But conservatives have spirit and drive and get stuff done, while liberals can tend to fade away in ineffectiveness and withering congregations. Liberals had civil religion in the first half of the 1900s. The conservatives had it the second half.
He ends the chapter with a parable meant to show how that both have aimed to address similar problems, but both have failed to address them on their own. Perhaps they could regroup and help each other the rest of the way.
Showing posts with label Brian McLaren. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brian McLaren. Show all posts
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Generous Orthodoxy 5-6 A Missional Evangelical
I doubt anyone's been pining for it, but here are very brief thoughts on two more chapters of Brian McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN."
Previous reviews include:
0. John Franke's Foreward, McLaren's Introduction, and his Chapter 0: For Mature Audiences Only.
1-4. chapters 1-4, "Why I Am a Christian"
Now briefly,
Chapter 4: "Why I Am Missional"
McLaren isn't a missional guru, but he gives a fair taste of the missional thrust. The mission of the church, he says, is "To be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in authentic community for the good of the world" (117). The last phrase is what is missional.
Being missional, for McLaren is about living for the good of the world rather than for personal salvation or an inward looking focus.
One questionable part of the chapter is where he says the question of whether everyone is saved, few are saved, or more are saved than have explicitly confessed Christ is the wrong question. On the one hand, I appreciate a sense that we are to be going for the good of the world regardless. That I agree with.
But it might very well make a very big difference. If I believe the world is headed for massive judgment and have a narrow view of who will be saved... further if I believe my bringing the good news can make the difference between salvation and condemnation... if these things are true then it matters a great deal that I redouble my missionary efforts.
What I am saying is that this is only an unimportant question if everyone is saved or is saved regardless of my bringing the gospel.
A final interesting quote in the chapter is from one of McLaren's mentors, "in a pluralistic world, a religion is valued based on the benefits it brings to its nonadherants" (121). We shouldn't live because we want the rest of the world to like us, but I understand what the statement is saying. The world will be more attracted to us if we are bringing value to it.
Chapter 6: "Why I Am an Evangelical"
McLaren seems happy to wear the title "evangelical," especially if it is defined the way Robert Webber does in his excellent book we have reviewed here, The Younger Evangelicals. He admits he no longer really understands the big E Evangelicalism of his youth, but he doesn't want to give up on the little e evangelical.
The positive definition he likes is an evangelical as 1) someone who highly respects the Bible and 2) emphasizes personal conversion, 3) emphasizes intimacy, a "personal relationship" with God, 4) wants to share their faith with others. (Let me reiterate if I haven't before, this McLaren knows some stuff, despite his attempts to pass himself off as a slacker)
What he likes the most about evangelicals is their passion, a passion that leads them to cross oceans and even lose their lives for what they believe.
Previous reviews include:
0. John Franke's Foreward, McLaren's Introduction, and his Chapter 0: For Mature Audiences Only.
1-4. chapters 1-4, "Why I Am a Christian"
Now briefly,
Chapter 4: "Why I Am Missional"
McLaren isn't a missional guru, but he gives a fair taste of the missional thrust. The mission of the church, he says, is "To be and make disciples of Jesus Christ in authentic community for the good of the world" (117). The last phrase is what is missional.
Being missional, for McLaren is about living for the good of the world rather than for personal salvation or an inward looking focus.
One questionable part of the chapter is where he says the question of whether everyone is saved, few are saved, or more are saved than have explicitly confessed Christ is the wrong question. On the one hand, I appreciate a sense that we are to be going for the good of the world regardless. That I agree with.
But it might very well make a very big difference. If I believe the world is headed for massive judgment and have a narrow view of who will be saved... further if I believe my bringing the good news can make the difference between salvation and condemnation... if these things are true then it matters a great deal that I redouble my missionary efforts.
What I am saying is that this is only an unimportant question if everyone is saved or is saved regardless of my bringing the gospel.
A final interesting quote in the chapter is from one of McLaren's mentors, "in a pluralistic world, a religion is valued based on the benefits it brings to its nonadherants" (121). We shouldn't live because we want the rest of the world to like us, but I understand what the statement is saying. The world will be more attracted to us if we are bringing value to it.
Chapter 6: "Why I Am an Evangelical"
McLaren seems happy to wear the title "evangelical," especially if it is defined the way Robert Webber does in his excellent book we have reviewed here, The Younger Evangelicals. He admits he no longer really understands the big E Evangelicalism of his youth, but he doesn't want to give up on the little e evangelical.
The positive definition he likes is an evangelical as 1) someone who highly respects the Bible and 2) emphasizes personal conversion, 3) emphasizes intimacy, a "personal relationship" with God, 4) wants to share their faith with others. (Let me reiterate if I haven't before, this McLaren knows some stuff, despite his attempts to pass himself off as a slacker)
What he likes the most about evangelicals is their passion, a passion that leads them to cross oceans and even lose their lives for what they believe.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Generous Orthodoxy 1-4: Why a Christian?
Let me slip in here a Friday book review. Last week I started reading Brian McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN."
Last week I reviewed John Franke's Foreward, McLaren's Introduction, and his Chapter 0: For Mature Audiences Only.
This week I want to look at chapters 1-4, which form Part I: "Why I Am a Christian."
Chapter 1: "The Seven Jesuses I Have Known
This chapter continues the playful introduction and the fun tone of what has come before. The controversy for me does not come quite yet. The seven are semi-autobiographical and are:
1. The Conservative Protestant Jesus
McLaren grew up with this one. Emphasis on the cross, he says, by which he means penal substitution and an emphasis on God's punishing justice. He accepts this theology as a piece of the puzzle, but you can tell his enthusiasm has dulled for it.
He mentions Joel Green and Mark Baker's book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, in a footnote. This is a book that should be read. My sense is that the emphasis he mentions is more true of Calvinist conservatism than my own.
2. The Pentecostal/Charismatic Jesus
Here an emphasis on the dying Jesus, but on the Jesus whose real presence is with us still today through the Holy Spirit.
3. The Roman Catholic Jesus
He pictures Roman Catholicism emphasizing the resurrection, the fact that "Jesus changes forever the whole equation of existence" (53). He mentions the "Christus Victor" approach to atonement, Christ as victor over evil.
Not sure I would have pegged RC as emphasizing the resurrection. After all, the RCC keeps Jesus on the crucifix and my impression is that in third world catholicism, Good Friday is a far more important day than Easter. I see RC emphasizing the life of Jesus more.
4. The Eastern Orthodox Jesus
He sees EO emphasizing the incarnation. God taking up humanity into himself and bringing divinity into humanity.
5. The Liberal Protestant Jesus
He sees the good in liberal Christianity an emphasis on Jesus as a good moral example in his life (minus the miracles). An interesting quote: "Scratch the paint of a liberal and you'll find an alienated fundamentalist underneath" (59).
6. The Anabaptist Jesus
The thing that McLaren likes about the Anabaptists is their pacifism. It is a focus on the life of Jesus, but not like the liberal Protestant. It takes Jesus' ethic (understood in a pacifist way) as the way we should live today. He mentions the influence of John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, again, a book that should be read.
7. The Jesus of the Oppressed
One small step from the Anabaptist is the (non-violent) liberationist. "Jesus works for liberation of all oppressed people" (63).
"I tell the story of my encounters with Jesus to say that now, after many years of following Jesus and learning from many different communities of his followers. I'm just beginning to arrive at a view of Jesus that approaches the simple, integrated richness I knew of him as a little body--picture Bible on my father's lap" (66).
Chapter 2: "Jesus and God B"
The "God B" thing was puzzling to me and McClaren doesn't tell us what it means until the end of the chapter. "... the experience of God in Jesus was so powerful that it forever transformed what followers of Jesus meant when they said the word God... Eventually, after a few centuries of reflecting on God as revealed and experienced through Jesus..., the church began to describe God as Father-Son-Spirit in Tri-unity or the Trinity. For them, God could no longer be conceived of merely as "God A," a single, solitary, dominant Power, Mind, or Will, but as "God B," a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society/entity of saving Love" (76).
This was the first chapter where McClaren left me less than enthusiastic. I don't know where he's headed. He takes the titles, "Son of man" and "Son of God" to mean "carrying the essence of humanity" and "carrying the essence of God." These statements are quite possibly true (orthodox) but they could also be something quite different. Of course these phrases more naturally referred originally to Christ's kingship (Son of God) and in some places his role as God's end time king (Son of Man).
However, I was not disturbed by McClaren's observation that "God is not a male" (74). God has no sexual organs. He has revealed himself in history primarily in male categories, but this is only to be expected given the patriarchal orientation of most cultures. "God is not a male or female, whatever pronouns we use" (75). And this is certainly the case.
Chapter 3: "Would Jesus Be a Christian?"
I was somewhat underwhelmed by this chapter as well. It's a great question. I hope McClaren actually addresses it somewhere. He's right that it is a question an aweful lot of people are answering "No" to today.
He gives three nuances of the word Lord in Jesus' day: 1) authority and kingship (but a good king in contrast to the more usual very bad ones). McClaren certainly has no room for Calvinistic determinism. "His kingdom, then, is a kingdom not of oppressive control but of dreamed of freedom, not of coercive dominance but of liberating love" (83).
2) a master in relation to a servant or slave. He has some good things to say here. There's no neutral ground. Not to serve Jesus as Lord "one can actually be serving darkness" (85).
3) a master teacher or rabbi.
One other statement caught my eye, "We retained Jesus as Savior but promoted the apostle Paul (or someone else) to Lord and Teacher" (86).
I guess McClaren's point in this chapter is that many Christians to not have a proper sense of God's Lordship.
Chapter 4: "Jesus: Savior of What"
I liked this chapter better than the previous two.
So if McClaren doesn't think a lot of Christians are properly thinking of Jesus as Lord, McClaren doesn't think they're thinking of him properly as Savior either. Save basically means "rescue" or "heal" (93). OK, he's right here.
1. God saves by judging--that is, he stops people doing injustice to us from doing injustice. That's a nice spin on judging.
2. God saves by judging because He then forgives. So judgment helps us correct course, which is good.
3. God saves by teaching and revealing.
"Jesus enters into the center of the thunderstorm of human evil and takes its full shock on the cross" (97).
There are some great thoughts in this chapter about saving. He has a great story about a turtle that wasn't growing correctly because of something someone had put around its shell when it was little. As it grew, the plastic kept the shell from growing out. When someone snapped the plastic, McClaren notes, the turtle's shell didn't change at all in that moment. But those people had saved the turtle... years later in that moment.
McClaren convincingly argues that to think of salvation mostly in terms of avoiding hell will have a tendency to skew our focus.
I close with one further thing he discusses. At the beginning of the chapter, and I'm not sure it fits in this chapter, he gives an argument that theology should grow "out of the experience" of Christians in a particular culture. "Praxis must be prior to theology" (92). I wouldn't say that this claim is completely false, but it is probably only half of the story. In theory, however, all a culture needs is for the Holy Spirit to fill Christians in it genuinely, and they would be able to say how the gospel plays out there. In practice, however, it is hard to know exactly which people are filled with the Spirit and which aren't.
Last week I reviewed John Franke's Foreward, McLaren's Introduction, and his Chapter 0: For Mature Audiences Only.
This week I want to look at chapters 1-4, which form Part I: "Why I Am a Christian."
Chapter 1: "The Seven Jesuses I Have Known
This chapter continues the playful introduction and the fun tone of what has come before. The controversy for me does not come quite yet. The seven are semi-autobiographical and are:
1. The Conservative Protestant Jesus
McLaren grew up with this one. Emphasis on the cross, he says, by which he means penal substitution and an emphasis on God's punishing justice. He accepts this theology as a piece of the puzzle, but you can tell his enthusiasm has dulled for it.
He mentions Joel Green and Mark Baker's book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, in a footnote. This is a book that should be read. My sense is that the emphasis he mentions is more true of Calvinist conservatism than my own.
2. The Pentecostal/Charismatic Jesus
Here an emphasis on the dying Jesus, but on the Jesus whose real presence is with us still today through the Holy Spirit.
3. The Roman Catholic Jesus
He pictures Roman Catholicism emphasizing the resurrection, the fact that "Jesus changes forever the whole equation of existence" (53). He mentions the "Christus Victor" approach to atonement, Christ as victor over evil.
Not sure I would have pegged RC as emphasizing the resurrection. After all, the RCC keeps Jesus on the crucifix and my impression is that in third world catholicism, Good Friday is a far more important day than Easter. I see RC emphasizing the life of Jesus more.
4. The Eastern Orthodox Jesus
He sees EO emphasizing the incarnation. God taking up humanity into himself and bringing divinity into humanity.
5. The Liberal Protestant Jesus
He sees the good in liberal Christianity an emphasis on Jesus as a good moral example in his life (minus the miracles). An interesting quote: "Scratch the paint of a liberal and you'll find an alienated fundamentalist underneath" (59).
6. The Anabaptist Jesus
The thing that McLaren likes about the Anabaptists is their pacifism. It is a focus on the life of Jesus, but not like the liberal Protestant. It takes Jesus' ethic (understood in a pacifist way) as the way we should live today. He mentions the influence of John Howard Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, again, a book that should be read.
7. The Jesus of the Oppressed
One small step from the Anabaptist is the (non-violent) liberationist. "Jesus works for liberation of all oppressed people" (63).
"I tell the story of my encounters with Jesus to say that now, after many years of following Jesus and learning from many different communities of his followers. I'm just beginning to arrive at a view of Jesus that approaches the simple, integrated richness I knew of him as a little body--picture Bible on my father's lap" (66).
Chapter 2: "Jesus and God B"
The "God B" thing was puzzling to me and McClaren doesn't tell us what it means until the end of the chapter. "... the experience of God in Jesus was so powerful that it forever transformed what followers of Jesus meant when they said the word God... Eventually, after a few centuries of reflecting on God as revealed and experienced through Jesus..., the church began to describe God as Father-Son-Spirit in Tri-unity or the Trinity. For them, God could no longer be conceived of merely as "God A," a single, solitary, dominant Power, Mind, or Will, but as "God B," a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society/entity of saving Love" (76).
This was the first chapter where McClaren left me less than enthusiastic. I don't know where he's headed. He takes the titles, "Son of man" and "Son of God" to mean "carrying the essence of humanity" and "carrying the essence of God." These statements are quite possibly true (orthodox) but they could also be something quite different. Of course these phrases more naturally referred originally to Christ's kingship (Son of God) and in some places his role as God's end time king (Son of Man).
However, I was not disturbed by McClaren's observation that "God is not a male" (74). God has no sexual organs. He has revealed himself in history primarily in male categories, but this is only to be expected given the patriarchal orientation of most cultures. "God is not a male or female, whatever pronouns we use" (75). And this is certainly the case.
Chapter 3: "Would Jesus Be a Christian?"
I was somewhat underwhelmed by this chapter as well. It's a great question. I hope McClaren actually addresses it somewhere. He's right that it is a question an aweful lot of people are answering "No" to today.
He gives three nuances of the word Lord in Jesus' day: 1) authority and kingship (but a good king in contrast to the more usual very bad ones). McClaren certainly has no room for Calvinistic determinism. "His kingdom, then, is a kingdom not of oppressive control but of dreamed of freedom, not of coercive dominance but of liberating love" (83).
2) a master in relation to a servant or slave. He has some good things to say here. There's no neutral ground. Not to serve Jesus as Lord "one can actually be serving darkness" (85).
3) a master teacher or rabbi.
One other statement caught my eye, "We retained Jesus as Savior but promoted the apostle Paul (or someone else) to Lord and Teacher" (86).
I guess McClaren's point in this chapter is that many Christians to not have a proper sense of God's Lordship.
Chapter 4: "Jesus: Savior of What"
I liked this chapter better than the previous two.
So if McClaren doesn't think a lot of Christians are properly thinking of Jesus as Lord, McClaren doesn't think they're thinking of him properly as Savior either. Save basically means "rescue" or "heal" (93). OK, he's right here.
1. God saves by judging--that is, he stops people doing injustice to us from doing injustice. That's a nice spin on judging.
2. God saves by judging because He then forgives. So judgment helps us correct course, which is good.
3. God saves by teaching and revealing.
"Jesus enters into the center of the thunderstorm of human evil and takes its full shock on the cross" (97).
There are some great thoughts in this chapter about saving. He has a great story about a turtle that wasn't growing correctly because of something someone had put around its shell when it was little. As it grew, the plastic kept the shell from growing out. When someone snapped the plastic, McClaren notes, the turtle's shell didn't change at all in that moment. But those people had saved the turtle... years later in that moment.
McClaren convincingly argues that to think of salvation mostly in terms of avoiding hell will have a tendency to skew our focus.
I close with one further thing he discusses. At the beginning of the chapter, and I'm not sure it fits in this chapter, he gives an argument that theology should grow "out of the experience" of Christians in a particular culture. "Praxis must be prior to theology" (92). I wouldn't say that this claim is completely false, but it is probably only half of the story. In theory, however, all a culture needs is for the Holy Spirit to fill Christians in it genuinely, and they would be able to say how the gospel plays out there. In practice, however, it is hard to know exactly which people are filled with the Spirit and which aren't.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Generous Orthodoxy 0: Introductory Stuff
My blogging is going to have to slow down over the course of the summer and into next year. I will still plan to post at least one entry a week. Until then, I hope to continue several threads.
For Wednesdays or Thursdays in the meantime, I have been wanting to read Brian McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy for a while. I bought it over a year ago. But since I've been taking off on the name (my Generous Ecclesiology idea), I thought I should go ahead and read the book.
The subtitle is "Why I Am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN."
Yesterday I read John Franke's Foreward, McLaren's Introduction, and his Chapter 0: For Mature Audiences Only. Let me start off by saying, what a refreshing and uplifting read these pages were! I'm sure I won't agree with everything McLaren says, but after wading through Viola's book these last weeks, McLaren is such a breath of fresh air. If you want to know what form of orthodox Christianity has the best chance of surviving and possibly thriving in Western culture in the days ahead (the real stuff will of course survive regardless of what we do), it is this kind of Christianity.
Although it goes against the spirit and warnings of the book in terms of generosity, let me take the Wesleyan troops aside for a second and say, this book is so Wesleyan in spirit. I know there are some corners of my fellowship that see this book as part of the problem. And let me say that I hope they will reconsider. There are no doubt things associated with words like "postmodern," "emergent," "tolerant," and so forth that are worth worrying about. But the problem with using labels to dismiss ideas ("socialist," "communist," "Democrat," "Republican") is that doing so almost always ends up dismissing good things with the bad, almost always, almost without exception! Let the person wanting to honor God with their thinking beware!
I do not think that McLaren--as far as I can tell so far--embodies any of the bad you might find in any labels you might try to affix to him. I fear that using such labels to dismiss him--without engaging in what he has to say--is not only bad thinking, is a poor representation of Christ to good thinkers. But I believe it is bad Christianity, potentially giving Satan an opportunity to manipulate us to where we ignore things God wants us to hear. There are things McLaren has to say, I believe, that are what God thinks. Just in case, we should open our hearts and minds to what he has to say. If he doesn't, then close them back off.
Foreward by Franke
The phrase "generous orthodoxy" doesn't actually come from McLaren. It comes from Hans Frei, a "post-liberal" theologian. As far as I can tell, the focal difference between a "post-liberal" and a "post-conservative" is where you came from. I come from a conservative background, so if you called me a "post-conservative" you would mean that I was a person from a conservative background trying to move beyond the older stilted categories of conservative and liberal. A "post-liberal" is doing the same coming from the other direction.
A great quote from Frei is this: "Generosity without orthodoxy is nothing, but orthodoxy without generosity is worse than nothing" (14). I wholeheartedly agree and think all in the Wesleyan tradition should.
Here are some quotes from the foreward:
"... postmodern theory does not support the rejection of rationality but rather supports rethinking rationality in the wake of modernity" (10).
"Foundationalism refers to a conception of knowledge that emerged during the Enlightenment and sought to address the lack of certainty generated by the human tendency toward error and to overcome the inevitable, often destructive disagreements that followed... The assumptions of foundationalism, with its goal of establishing certain and universal knowledge, came to dominate intellectual pursuit in the modern era" (10-11).
I might say that I have no problem with looking for models that aim to encompass reality universally, so I am not so much opposed to the looking for universal foundations as to thinking of them as actual explanations for the world. Beyond our perceptions is only faith and mystery. But there is great usefulness in foundational language, as long as we recognize its limits.
Franke tells us that the book "maintains a focus on Jesus Christ as the center of the Christian faith" (12). I have actually heard of Christians who warn people who say such things. I understand what they mean--they see such rhetoric as a backdoor way of undercutting the Bible. But it seems obvious to me that this statement is beyond debate. As important as the Bible is, it is the word of God, while Jesus is the Word of God.
One controversial aspect of the book is apparently the possibility McLaren holds out (and Lessle Newbigin) that while the revelation in Jesus Christ is unique, it might be possible for some outside the faith to be saved (through him). This is a controversial issue. It is important to recognize that this position is not clearly heretical. It amounts to the old Wesleyan (and Quaker) sense that people will be judged according to the light they have. Beware, Wesleyans, of the extent to which your thinking has been influenced by other traditions without you/us realizing it. I take no official position myself on this issue, since I scarcely can speak with the authority of God. I can only say that I think a person with the heart of Christ would be hopeful that it is true.
Introduction and Chapter 0
Here McLaren positions the book in terms of audience. I like his style. He obviously likes G. K. Chesterton, and I can see elements of his style that mirror him. He tends to use hyperbole a lot and playfully puts himself down. In his "For Mature Audiences Only" he goes through all the reason why you might want to take the book back to the bookstore. Just to give you a sense of his style:
"Speaking of smoke, this book suggests that relativists are right in their denunciation of absolutism. It also affirms that absolutists are right in their denunciation of relativism. And then it suggests that they are both wrong because the answer lies beyond both absolutism and relativism. I'll bet that sounds like nonsense to nine of 10 readers, which should bring the words store credit to mind" (38).
At the end of Chapter 0 he assumes you have either taken the book back to the store before you got there and checked the box agreeing that you agree to put up with the strangeness of the book. Then he tells us who he is really writing the book for: people who are about to leave Christianity and spiritual seekers attracted to Jesus who don't think there's any room in Christianity for them (39).
Lots of great quotes and partial insights into McLaren's personality, but let me stick to some thoughts:
The approach of the book, "which might be called postcritical, seeks to find a way to embrace the good in many traditions and historic streams of Christian faith, and to integrate them, yielding a new, generous, emergent approach that is greater than the sum of its parts" (18).
The word emergent throws some people off. Beware again that labelology is bad thinking! You cannot logically dismiss an idea by labelling it. If there are bad things about emergent thought or some who call themselves emergent it is because there are bad things about emergent thought and about some who call themselves emergent. Labelling someone as "emergent" does not separate the good from the bad.
McClaren believes the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds (28) and "(this is so Protestant) that Scripture itself remains above the creeds and that the Holy Spirit may use Scripture to tweak our creedal understandings and emphases from time to time." He hasn't said anything that will allow you to call him unorthodox yet and certainly he has said nothing yet that a Wesleyan can object to.
This is a great postmodern statement--and it is exactly the attitude I think we should all have: "I'm sure I am wrong about many things, although I'm not sure exactly which things I'm wrong about. I'm even sure I'm wrong about what I think I'm right about in at least some cases" (20-21).
He quotes with approval the late Stanley Grenz quoting the late Hans Frei: "My own vision of what might be propitious for our day, split as we are, not so much into denominations as into schools of thought, is that we need a kind of generous orthodoxy which would have in it an element of liberalism...and an element of evangelicalism" (23-24). The mention of liberalism is scary, I know, but didn't the liberals of the early twentieth century pay more attention to helping the needy than the conservatives did? OK, there, I've found at least one liberal thing where they were more Christian than the conservatives. We'll have to see where McLaren takes that thought...
I should give you McLaren's somewhat unique understanding of orthodoxy. It is quite postmodern, but I think we can and should mostly go with it: "To link orthodoxy with a practice, as the previous paragraph does, further makes this book seem ridiculous because many orthodoxies have always and everywhere assumed that orthodoxy (right thinking and opinion about the gospel) and orthopraxy (right practice of the gospel) could and should be separated... In contrast... Absurdly (to some at least), this book seems to approach orthodoxy as a tool or means to achieve orthopraxy. You want to know the rules, not so you can blow whistles as a referee, but so you can have a lot of glorious good clean fun as a player, throwing passes and making assists and sinking three-pointers and layups without fouling out. In sum, this book seems orthopraxy as the point of orthodoxy--again, a concept so unorthodox as to encourage a good many readers to abandon this book right now" (30-31).
There are some American Christian traditions that are almost entirely oriented around ideas and cognitive things. Indeed, they are the power holders in neo-evangelicalism since the 40's. These are groups where "orthodoxy could be articulated and debated by scholars or officials who had little responsibility to actually live by or live out the orthodoxy they defended" (30-31). Again, as an aside to those in the Wesleyan tradition, that is not us. We have always emphasized behavior and personal piety as equally important to our ideas. Other traditions might decry McLaren on these points, but we should applaud him.
Final thought for the introductory stuff is that McLaren is obviously a pretty smart guy, no matter what he says of himself. Disagree with him we may, but it seems is heart is in the right place, and that is far more important to God than whether his head is correct on every issue... at least that's what we Wesleyans believe.
For Wednesdays or Thursdays in the meantime, I have been wanting to read Brian McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy for a while. I bought it over a year ago. But since I've been taking off on the name (my Generous Ecclesiology idea), I thought I should go ahead and read the book.
The subtitle is "Why I Am a missional + evangelical + post/protestant + liberal/conservative + mystical/poetic + biblical + charismatic/contemplative + fundamentalist/calvinist + anabaptist/anglican + methodist + catholic + green + incarnational + depressed-yet-hopeful + emergent + unfinished CHRISTIAN."
Yesterday I read John Franke's Foreward, McLaren's Introduction, and his Chapter 0: For Mature Audiences Only. Let me start off by saying, what a refreshing and uplifting read these pages were! I'm sure I won't agree with everything McLaren says, but after wading through Viola's book these last weeks, McLaren is such a breath of fresh air. If you want to know what form of orthodox Christianity has the best chance of surviving and possibly thriving in Western culture in the days ahead (the real stuff will of course survive regardless of what we do), it is this kind of Christianity.
Although it goes against the spirit and warnings of the book in terms of generosity, let me take the Wesleyan troops aside for a second and say, this book is so Wesleyan in spirit. I know there are some corners of my fellowship that see this book as part of the problem. And let me say that I hope they will reconsider. There are no doubt things associated with words like "postmodern," "emergent," "tolerant," and so forth that are worth worrying about. But the problem with using labels to dismiss ideas ("socialist," "communist," "Democrat," "Republican") is that doing so almost always ends up dismissing good things with the bad, almost always, almost without exception! Let the person wanting to honor God with their thinking beware!
I do not think that McLaren--as far as I can tell so far--embodies any of the bad you might find in any labels you might try to affix to him. I fear that using such labels to dismiss him--without engaging in what he has to say--is not only bad thinking, is a poor representation of Christ to good thinkers. But I believe it is bad Christianity, potentially giving Satan an opportunity to manipulate us to where we ignore things God wants us to hear. There are things McLaren has to say, I believe, that are what God thinks. Just in case, we should open our hearts and minds to what he has to say. If he doesn't, then close them back off.
Foreward by Franke
The phrase "generous orthodoxy" doesn't actually come from McLaren. It comes from Hans Frei, a "post-liberal" theologian. As far as I can tell, the focal difference between a "post-liberal" and a "post-conservative" is where you came from. I come from a conservative background, so if you called me a "post-conservative" you would mean that I was a person from a conservative background trying to move beyond the older stilted categories of conservative and liberal. A "post-liberal" is doing the same coming from the other direction.
A great quote from Frei is this: "Generosity without orthodoxy is nothing, but orthodoxy without generosity is worse than nothing" (14). I wholeheartedly agree and think all in the Wesleyan tradition should.
Here are some quotes from the foreward:
"... postmodern theory does not support the rejection of rationality but rather supports rethinking rationality in the wake of modernity" (10).
"Foundationalism refers to a conception of knowledge that emerged during the Enlightenment and sought to address the lack of certainty generated by the human tendency toward error and to overcome the inevitable, often destructive disagreements that followed... The assumptions of foundationalism, with its goal of establishing certain and universal knowledge, came to dominate intellectual pursuit in the modern era" (10-11).
I might say that I have no problem with looking for models that aim to encompass reality universally, so I am not so much opposed to the looking for universal foundations as to thinking of them as actual explanations for the world. Beyond our perceptions is only faith and mystery. But there is great usefulness in foundational language, as long as we recognize its limits.
Franke tells us that the book "maintains a focus on Jesus Christ as the center of the Christian faith" (12). I have actually heard of Christians who warn people who say such things. I understand what they mean--they see such rhetoric as a backdoor way of undercutting the Bible. But it seems obvious to me that this statement is beyond debate. As important as the Bible is, it is the word of God, while Jesus is the Word of God.
One controversial aspect of the book is apparently the possibility McLaren holds out (and Lessle Newbigin) that while the revelation in Jesus Christ is unique, it might be possible for some outside the faith to be saved (through him). This is a controversial issue. It is important to recognize that this position is not clearly heretical. It amounts to the old Wesleyan (and Quaker) sense that people will be judged according to the light they have. Beware, Wesleyans, of the extent to which your thinking has been influenced by other traditions without you/us realizing it. I take no official position myself on this issue, since I scarcely can speak with the authority of God. I can only say that I think a person with the heart of Christ would be hopeful that it is true.
Introduction and Chapter 0
Here McLaren positions the book in terms of audience. I like his style. He obviously likes G. K. Chesterton, and I can see elements of his style that mirror him. He tends to use hyperbole a lot and playfully puts himself down. In his "For Mature Audiences Only" he goes through all the reason why you might want to take the book back to the bookstore. Just to give you a sense of his style:
"Speaking of smoke, this book suggests that relativists are right in their denunciation of absolutism. It also affirms that absolutists are right in their denunciation of relativism. And then it suggests that they are both wrong because the answer lies beyond both absolutism and relativism. I'll bet that sounds like nonsense to nine of 10 readers, which should bring the words store credit to mind" (38).
At the end of Chapter 0 he assumes you have either taken the book back to the store before you got there and checked the box agreeing that you agree to put up with the strangeness of the book. Then he tells us who he is really writing the book for: people who are about to leave Christianity and spiritual seekers attracted to Jesus who don't think there's any room in Christianity for them (39).
Lots of great quotes and partial insights into McLaren's personality, but let me stick to some thoughts:
The approach of the book, "which might be called postcritical, seeks to find a way to embrace the good in many traditions and historic streams of Christian faith, and to integrate them, yielding a new, generous, emergent approach that is greater than the sum of its parts" (18).
The word emergent throws some people off. Beware again that labelology is bad thinking! You cannot logically dismiss an idea by labelling it. If there are bad things about emergent thought or some who call themselves emergent it is because there are bad things about emergent thought and about some who call themselves emergent. Labelling someone as "emergent" does not separate the good from the bad.
McClaren believes the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds (28) and "(this is so Protestant) that Scripture itself remains above the creeds and that the Holy Spirit may use Scripture to tweak our creedal understandings and emphases from time to time." He hasn't said anything that will allow you to call him unorthodox yet and certainly he has said nothing yet that a Wesleyan can object to.
This is a great postmodern statement--and it is exactly the attitude I think we should all have: "I'm sure I am wrong about many things, although I'm not sure exactly which things I'm wrong about. I'm even sure I'm wrong about what I think I'm right about in at least some cases" (20-21).
He quotes with approval the late Stanley Grenz quoting the late Hans Frei: "My own vision of what might be propitious for our day, split as we are, not so much into denominations as into schools of thought, is that we need a kind of generous orthodoxy which would have in it an element of liberalism...and an element of evangelicalism" (23-24). The mention of liberalism is scary, I know, but didn't the liberals of the early twentieth century pay more attention to helping the needy than the conservatives did? OK, there, I've found at least one liberal thing where they were more Christian than the conservatives. We'll have to see where McLaren takes that thought...
I should give you McLaren's somewhat unique understanding of orthodoxy. It is quite postmodern, but I think we can and should mostly go with it: "To link orthodoxy with a practice, as the previous paragraph does, further makes this book seem ridiculous because many orthodoxies have always and everywhere assumed that orthodoxy (right thinking and opinion about the gospel) and orthopraxy (right practice of the gospel) could and should be separated... In contrast... Absurdly (to some at least), this book seems to approach orthodoxy as a tool or means to achieve orthopraxy. You want to know the rules, not so you can blow whistles as a referee, but so you can have a lot of glorious good clean fun as a player, throwing passes and making assists and sinking three-pointers and layups without fouling out. In sum, this book seems orthopraxy as the point of orthodoxy--again, a concept so unorthodox as to encourage a good many readers to abandon this book right now" (30-31).
There are some American Christian traditions that are almost entirely oriented around ideas and cognitive things. Indeed, they are the power holders in neo-evangelicalism since the 40's. These are groups where "orthodoxy could be articulated and debated by scholars or officials who had little responsibility to actually live by or live out the orthodoxy they defended" (30-31). Again, as an aside to those in the Wesleyan tradition, that is not us. We have always emphasized behavior and personal piety as equally important to our ideas. Other traditions might decry McLaren on these points, but we should applaud him.
Final thought for the introductory stuff is that McLaren is obviously a pretty smart guy, no matter what he says of himself. Disagree with him we may, but it seems is heart is in the right place, and that is far more important to God than whether his head is correct on every issue... at least that's what we Wesleyans believe.
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