Dear Brian McLaren,
After reading A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith, I am writing you to share what I see as the practical implications of your ideas within the context in which I minister.
I’m 30 and finishing seminary. I’m in the ordination process in the Anglican Mission in Americas (AMiA) and I intern at Desert Mission Anglican in urban Phoenix, giving 10 hours weekly to ministry.
I minister to Bhutanese refugees in urban Phoenix. These refugees are ethnic Nepalis who have been in refugee camps since being forced out of Bhutan in the years of 1990-1992. They speak Nepali, are Hindu, and are lower in the caste system.
We started out wanting to build relationships with this community, and quickly they asked us if they could come to our church. What happened next astonished us. Some of them reported experiencing something new while in church. One friend, 24-year-old Kumar, called his experience “miraculous.” We then bought a Nepali Bible and a few from the church started to teach them about Jesus. In March four households, including Kumar, decided they wanted to put their faith in Jesus.
What follows are a few implications I see your ideas having on this community.
Reading the Bible
As we teach them from the Bible, and teach them the Bible, I agree we have to our friend not to read the Bible as a constitutional document. Reading the Bible in that manner does not take into account genre and context (historical, cultural, etc). Our chapter and verse system can hinder our ability to read (or hear!) the Bible as a whole.
However, if we are to read the Bible honestly, in its literary parts and as a whole, I do not think we can throw out the theological implications of the New Testament. Reading the Hebrew narrative up to Christ is very helpful, but the New Testament, including Jesus, interpret the spiritual world and salvation in a non-universalist manner. God doesn’t appear to be a universalist in the Old Testament either, choosing judgment and mercy, not judgment then mercy.
I see you identifying discontinuities between the Hebrew Old and Greek New Testaments, but logically, discontinuities do not render one or the other invalid. I don’t see you identifying the continuities. Theos of the New Testament (and granted, the NT Theos may be different than the idolized Greco/Roman Theos you describe) is Elohim is YHWH. If not, why include the New Testament in our faith?
Understanding God
You make the observation that among the writers of the Bible there was an evolution in their understanding of God that is reflected in the narrative. This claim makes the writes the active force as observers, and this then diminishes God’s activity of revelation. Now the ability to understand God is dependant on one’s economic, political, and historical context.
What does this mean for my refugee friends? Do they have a deficient ability to understand God due to their context? Is it up to them as the observer of God as the revealer? I would argue that due to their testimony of the miraculous happening in a way no Americans observed, God as revealer is the active party, not the human as observer.
As I’ve identified some gaps in what you posit, I want to ask what you want say about those gaps. How does the New Testament contribute to the narrative that begins in Genesis? What can we learn about the character of God from the continuities and discontinuities between Elohim/YHWH and Theos?
Thank you for helping us thank more critically about our faith.
Greg – thanks for your response to the book. Your experience with the refugees from Bhutan reminds me very much of experiences we had over twenty years ago serving Cambodian, Laotion, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, and other refugees in our then-fledgling faith community. Beautiful things are happening, thanks be to God!
On the issue of universalism … reading your response makes me think I didn’t succeed in conveying to you the difference between the conventional framing story or narrative and the one I’m proposing. Exclusivist, Inclusivist, or Universalist would be three choices within the conventional narrative. But within the alternative three-dimensional narrative I’m exploring, those three options simply don’t arise. Everyone faces God’s mercy and judgment … all humanity is included in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection … but that doesn’t mean everyone is a disciple. In the alternative narrative I’m proposing, the calling of the church is to make disciples … followers of Jesus, people living the way of the kingdom of God, people living in the fullness of the Holy Spirit … exactly what you’re doing, and exactly what I’m seeking to do. I know this is terribly hard to see, because paradigms limit what we can see while we are within them, but perhaps this will at least make clear that outside the conventional narrative where I’m exploring, universalism is no more fitting a category than exclusivism.
Perhaps this will help: I evangelize to save people from wasting their one and only lives on “wood, hay, and stubble” – things that make no eternal difference and that will disappoint them in the end. I evangelize to help people find what the Spirit of God is drawing them towards. I evangelize so they’ll become less involved in the problems of this world, and more involved in the solutions, as agents of God’s love and truth and justice. I evangelize because I follow Jesus, and he sends me in the world with the good news of the kingdom of God. I evangelize because I believe his way is true and good – and the only hope for humanity and planet earth. I evangelize not to make adherents to the Christian religion, but to help people become disciples of Jesus, whatever their affiliation. So evangelism is tremendously important to me (I wrote a book about it, called More Ready Than You Realize) … but not for the reasons that motivate people within the conventional narrative: for other reasons that I find more in harmony with the Bible.
On the continuity question, you’re right when you say that the “theos” I’m critiquing isn’t to be equated with the term “theos” in the New Testament. As I explained in my little diagrams using a Bible held at different angles, I’m in no way minimizing the importance of the Epistles and so on. But I’m asserting the primacy of Jesus as the highest revelation of God for Christians. So I see the Old Testament as being a schoolteacher, leading us to Christ. And I see Acts and the Epistles and Revelation as showing us how the life, teaching, and work of Christ began impacting the early believers. In this, I’m following Luther who said that the Bible is like the manger upon or in which Christ is presented to the world.
I’m just getting ready to jump on a series of planes that will eventually land me in Africa in a few days … I wish I could offer more, but I hope this helps. Thanks again for your letter.
Sounds like exciting things are happening in the lives of the people you mentioned you are currently in relationship with. I don’t think I would categorize what you are labeling discontinuities between the Old and New Testaments as such. Rather, it seems like the nature of the continuity Brian describes in his book does not fit into the conventional six point narrative that the church has ascribed to and been shaped by.
Greg & Brian,
Great questions, and a great response from Brian too! I’m really impressed, Brian, that you’ve taken the time to respond here. Thank you for modeling a humble dialogue.
Greg, your story about the Bhutanese and their experiences reminds me of the opening of Galatians Chapter 3, where Paul alludes to the experience with the Spirit that the Galatians disciples have had. I see this as Paul’s most forceful argument against ethnic/religious division, “You’ve already received the goal – the Spirit of God among you – so why turn away from that?” In other words, it was their actual experience of the long-promised blessing of Abraham that stood as the ultimate apologetic.
Having said that, it occurs to me that it also stands as a good example of how the experience of the Spirit didn’t save the Galatians from misunderstanding scripture and the gospel. So, I tend to think that while the Holy Spirit among us may be an “active party,” we are also “active” in the relationship and must always endeavor to read scripture faithfully realizing that God’s self-revelation does not preclude our ability to err due to a cultural gap.
What do you think? Am I wrong?
Thanks again for a thought provoking post!