Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Question 1

What is the overarching story line of the Bible?

Kuyperians such as Al Wolters (Creation Regained) Neal Plantinga, (Engaging God’s World), and myself (Heaven is a Place on Earth) have argued rather persuasively that the evangelical church can free itself from Platonism by recovering the biblical story of creation, fall, and redemption.  So I was startled—and amused—by Brian’s claim that this creation, fall, and redemption narrative is itself the product of Platonic thought.

Why does Brian think that the narrative of C-F-R comes from Plato rather than Scripture?  He mistakenly thinks that C-F-R implies that the original creation came in static perfection and that redemption returns us to a heavenly condition where any sort of growth is impossible.  Of course, many Christians hold such a view, or something similar, which is why we Kuyperians have written our books.  But we don’t think that Brian can dismiss the C-F-R paradigm as Platonic without contending with us who have used C-F-R to defeat Plato.

Brian’s real beef with C-F-R is not the C or the R but the F.  He does not believe that there was a Fall (or original sin or total depravity or hell) but that what we have traditionally called the Fall is actually “a coming-of age story” which—wait for it—describes “the first stage of ascent as human beings progress from the life of hunter-gatherers to the life of agriculturalists and beyond.”  I have quoted him verbatim so you know I am not making this up.  I asked my Old Testament colleague where Brian may be getting this from, and he said that this sounds like modern Judaism (which doesn’t believe in a Fall or original sin), except that even it wouldn’t say that Genesis 3 represents a step up.

Brian says a lot of other things in Part 1, but as you can see, he is no longer having a Christian conversation.  He prefers the Hebrew God Elohim over the Greco-Roman God Theos, for the former prefers the messiness of story and evolution while the latter is a “perfect—Platonic god” who “loves spirit, state, and being” and is “perfectly furious” with his fallen creation and just wants to smash it all to hell.  Theos may be popular with the “fire-breathing preacher” (does anyone know anyone like this?), but he “is an idol, a damnable idol.”  Brian writes that he would rather be an atheist than believe in the God that most of us think is found in the Bible.

Four other observations:

1. Brian seems to be offering a modern Jewish rather than Christian perspective on the opening chapters of Genesis.  His flat-out denial of a Fall, original sin, and total depravity and his dismissal of Theos raises questions about his view of Paul, who clearly teaches the former in Romans 5, and the New Testament, which refers to God with the Greek term Theos.

2. Brian does not seem to believe that there was a first man and a first sin, but that Genesis 3 is a myth which describes how the entire human race became farmers.  This view fits with his acceptance of evolution, as most who embrace evolution find it hard to believe that there was a first man who rebelled in a cataclysmic Fall.  I don’t know how the farmer bit fits, but it is funny.

3. The fourth question which Brian will address in this book is “Who is Jesus and why is he important?”  Given that Brian doesn’t believe in a Fall, original sin, or hell, that is a very good question.  I can’t wait to hear why God would come and die for a world that didn’t need his help.

4. Brian seems incapable of writing a book without taking repeated cheap shots at seminary education.  He often reminds us that he missed out on seminary and is better for it, that he would not see what he sees in Scripture if he had gone to seminary.  On that we agree.

Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, Introduction

I read the introductory three chapters of A New Kind of Christianity, and so far it’s an updated version of the Brian we’ve seen before.  He claims to be “a mild-mannered guy” who is only looking for a new way to be a Christian that will boost the declining numbers in our churches, and he can’t understand why his critics respond with “fear,” “clenched teeth,” and “suspicion and accusation.”  Brian’s really good at winning sympathy, and soon I was loathing myself for ever politely disagreeing with such a nice man.

But then I remembered that this debate about the Christian faith—which he and his friends started—is not a personality contest.  You can’t dismiss what Christians have always believed and then expect a free pass because you’re likeable.  And just below the surface of Brian’s humble, can’t-we-all-just-get-along vibe is an accusatory tone that repeatedly compares his critics to a religious Gestapo whose leaders defend their conservative beliefs because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

That doesn’t sound like me.  I am an easy-going guy who just wants to love Jesus.  But to love Jesus, I have to know and believe something about him.  Jesus is not an elastic symbol for whatever we happen to value (e.g., inclusive love), but is an actual person who can be known, trusted, and loved.

So why doesn’t Brian want me to know and believe the truth about Jesus?  He says that his new kind of Christianity is led by Doug Pagitt, who isn’t sure that Jesus is God; Marcus Borg, who argues that Jesus is dead; and Harvey Cox, a Harvard Divinity professor who wants to blow the whole thing up and construct a new view of God that will connect with our secular age.

Brian says that Cox’s new book, The Future of Faith, divides church history into the Age of Faith (pre-Constantine), the Age of Belief (from Constantine until today), and the Age of the Spirit (yeah!  That’s us!).  This tripartite division of history sounds similar to the system taught by Joachim of Fiore (a medieval Jack Van Impe), except that Joachim said that the Age of the Spirit would climax around 1260 (about 700 years before Jack’s first miss).

The benefit for Brian is that Cox’s model enables him to dismiss everything from Constantine until now—ecumenical creeds, councils, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and Piper—as belonging to an imperialistic Age of Belief when doctrine was used to “burn and banish heretics.”  We now live in the fresh air of the Spirit, who frees us from our confining and mean-spirited, doctrinaire past.  Brian says that A New Kind of Christianity will show the way forward by responding to 10 essential questions—which sounds like a great plan for a book (see Don’t Stop Believing).

On Tuesday I will begin blogging through Brian’s questions.  I wonder if I’ll know and love Jesus better when I’m done?

your brain on google

Last night I watched the first 30 minutes of the Frontline episode, “Digital Nation,” in which MIT and Stanford professors discussed the deleterious effects which the Internet and virtual reality have on their students’ ability to think (if you don’t know the meaning of the big word in that last sentence, maybe you’ve been spending too much time on the Web).

As one of the professors observed, some concepts require deep, concentrated thought, which people who are continually multi-tasking are losing the ability to do.  Some of the students who were interviewed seemed to illustrate the problem, as they spoke in loud, rushed sentences, as if they felt hurried to get through their content so they could get on to the next text or tweet.  Has anyone else noticed that it is becoming difficult to hold a normal, courteous conversation with people who are always wired?

One of the professors said that he felt constrained to use multi-media technology in the classroom to keep the students’ attention.  I think that this may be the last thing we want to do.  If multi-tasking and media blitz are the reason why students can’t think, then shouldn’t we be intentionally low-tech if we want to engage our students in deep thought?

One other anecdote.  One of the profs (from Stanford, I think) said that he quizzed students on the reading and lecture, asking general questions which anyone who was paying attention should have easily known.  The average for the class was 75%.  His point was that we aren’t able to multi-task as effectively as we think.  We need to do fewer things, and do them well.

our beyonce

Congratulations to our very own Matthew Westerholm, a GRTS student  who arranged a song, “The Power of the Cross,” on Heather Hadley’s CD, which Sunday night won a Grammy for best contemporary R & B/gospel album.  Matt also got his picture taken with Taylor Swift (he prudently avoided being photographed next to a half naked Beyonce), so he is probably too good to ever stop by this blog again.  But if you know Matt and want to offer your congratulations, I will deliver your well wishes to his people, who will see that he gets them (can’t promise that he will read them, as he no longer takes directions from me).

Matt’s next project, should he accept it, is to expunge all the Platonic elements from our hymns and choruses.  Wish him luck, and the long life he will need to complete it.

this I believe

I am doing some theological consulting for a church that is revising its doctrinal statement, and I’m collecting samples of solid or strange statements of faith.  If your church’s doctrinal statement makes you cry for either of these reasons, would you mind emailing it or its weblink to me? (mwittmer@cornerstone.edu).

By the way, it is interesting how many churches do not post their doctrinal statement on their website.  I’m not sure why that is, but it’s something I have noticed.

it is what it is

Has anyone else noticed that this phrase is only used to describe something bad, like the Michigan economy, the Detroit Lions’ defense, or the futile search for Osama bin Laden?

You never hear:

“Sex.  It is what it is.”

“Snow day tomorrow!  It is what it is.”

“Jesus is coming!  It is what it is.”

Maybe we should “redeem” this phrase (thanks, Kuyper) by using it to describe things we like.  If nothing else, it may startle others and bring some humor to your day.  Can you think of any other funny examples that might work?

evangelical philosophers

I’ve been teaching apologetics for the past two weeks, and the experience prompted me to reflect on the current state of evangelical philosophy.  I write this as an outsider—I took a few doctoral classes and passed a comp in philosophy, but my expertise is in historical and systematic theology.  These are only general observations, written from my subjective experience—and I welcome comments from those who have experienced something else.

Evangelical philosophers are:

1. Provocative, passionate, and stimulating.  The most interesting papers at the Evangelical Theological Society are typically read at the sessions of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, which is why I spend most of my time there.

2. Largely Arminian.  Perhaps in part to the influence of the Biola school, the great Alvin Plantinga, or the need to figure it out (philosophers who punt too quickly to divine mystery may lose their union cards), but I don’t know many evangelical philosophers who would call themselves Calvinists.  In Grand Rapids, labeling the other side an Arminian is the shortest way to win an argument.  Outside of Grand Rapids, it is the quickest way to lose.

3. Not always constrained by the biblical text.  Here are a few examples from Reason for the Hope Within, a textbook written by philosophers that I used for my apologetics class.

a. Several philosophers claimed that divine silence is necessary to protect human freedom.  They wrote that if God pulled out a celestial megaphone and announced to the world that he existed, then we would have no choice but to obey him.  This claim seems hard to reconcile with numerous examples in Scripture—such as Adam, Pharoah, and the children of Israel—all of whom had indubitable knowledge of God and managed to disobey anyway.

b. One philosopher said that Romans 1 teaches that because of their sinful suppression, some people honestly don’t know that God exists (try to make theological sense of that).  Another philosopher in another textbook said that Romans 1 was true at the time it was written, but it is no longer the case that everyone knows that there is a God (consider the implications of this hermeneutic).

c. And then there are the unforced errors:  One philosopher read the parable of the vineyard exactly backwards, using it to teach that those who are saved the longest are the ones who most enjoy their salvation.  Another didn’t know how to fit the Potter and the clay analogy into his Arminian theology, so he observed that Scripture more frequently compares God to a Shepherd.  That may be true, but don’t we still have to make sense of the Potter analogy?

4. Overly enamored with what is logically possible.  One philosopher said that it’s possible that there is a reason for the existence of evil, and as long as it’s possible, then he has defeated the problem of evil.  Another philosopher in another book explains the resurrection by saying that it’s possible that at our death God makes a duplicate of our body by splitting its simples in two, so that one body is a lifeless corpse and the other is already resurrected in heaven.  I guess this is possible, but it’s not terribly convincing—or biblical.  Which leads to another observation:

5. Reluctant to say enough.  The philosophers in Reason for the Hope Within do a fine job of showing that we are rational for believing in Jesus and Scripture, but can’t we go further and also explain why we are right?  I’m glad to know that I’m permitted to believe in the Christian God, but I’d also like to say that everyone is obligated to do the same.

This is one reason why I like presuppositional apologetics.  Cornelius Van Til may have promised more than he delivered, but he was on to something important.  See Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, p. 240, for an articulation of Van Til’s fundamental insight that without God it is impossible to know anything.

6. Sometimes more concerned with being accepted than with being Christian.  This is the temptation of every evangelical academic:  will you argue your views from a Christian perspective, even if you lose credibility, or will you lay your Christian beliefs aside in an impossible quest for neutral, common ground?  Alvin Plantinga has shown the way forward with his “Advice to Christian philosophers” (Faith and Philosophy 1: 253-71) and his fight against both metaphysical and methodological naturalism, but some of his protégés have not followed suit.  In their quest to win approval in the broader academy, they sometimes settle for limited arguments that say more about the rationality of the speakers than the rightness of the view they are defending.

In so doing they let non-Christians off the hook, telling them that they are just as rational for not believing in God or miracles or the truthfulness of Scripture as Christians are for believing the same.  This is an improvement over where we stood only a few decades ago, but we can do better.  We can say more, as Van Til and Plantinga have made clear.

chicken s*** for the soul

I’ve been reading Victor Stenger’s new book, The New Atheism, and found his eschatology to be interesting if not exactly inspiring.  He writes:

“Atheism offers no promise of salvation or eternal life.  This life is all we have.  Most people consider that depressing and unappealing…If you accept atheist materialism, then you have to learn to live with the conclusion that human consciousness and self-awareness reside in a purely material brain and nervous system.  They may even be a trick the brain plays on us anyway, without having much to do with reality at all…In any case, all thoughts will cease when the brain and nervous system stop operating and begin the process of rejoining the dust of Earth from which they arose.  This is a terrifying prospect for many and I am not offering it as an attractive substitute to eternal life.  I don’t expect to convert a single believer to atheism by this argument.  Here I am talking to those who have already recognized the undoubted fact that there is no eternal life and I am suggesting a possible way to cope with it” (p. 221-22).

Stenger then advocates Buddhism, an atheistic religion which teaches its followers to stop caring about their personal selves and lose their individuality in the oneness of the impersonal universe.  Stenger concedes that this is difficult for him to accept, because he is happily married, in good health, with a fulfilling career, and has two children and four grand children who “are beautiful and intelligent…What else can a man want?  I wouldn’t mind continuing it forever.  But I can’t.”

Stenger concludes his chapter with the most unsatisfying advice you’re ever going to read.  “So, it is going to be very difficult for me to practice what I preach, which is directed to other atheists as they approach the end of their lives:  take up the Way of Nature and achieve a state of mind where the self does not matter and nothingness is approached with peace of mind.  But don’t do it too soon!  Live life first” (p. 222).

Theological observation:  the new atheists, including Stenger and Sam Harris, note the similarity between their position and Buddhism.  Even Richard Dawkins calls pantheism nothing more than “sexed-up atheism.”  This is a point we must not forget, especially considering that certain forms of pantheism may becoming increasingly popular in some evangelical circles.

Pastoral observation:  doesn’t your heart break for Stenger?  Romans 1 teaches that Stenger has suppressed his knowledge of God, and he’s been doing it for so long that now he truly believes it.  How sad to be this lost!  His example reminds us that regeneration requires an act of God—for all of us.

who is carrying who?

English majors:  should this title end in “who” or “whom”?  My initial thought is “whom,” but then I think that this is one of those cases where the right answer is the opposite of what you think, unless I’m out-thinking myself.  I’d be happy for any help here, either with the grammar or the more important theology of this latest entry for Our Daily Journey.

who is carrying who?

read > 1 Samuel 5:1-12

But when the citizens of Ashdod went to see it the next morning, Dagon had fallen with his face to the ground in front of the Ark of the LORD!  So they took Dagon and put him in his place again (v. 3).

A sea of smartly dressed businesspeople packs the Kanda Myojin shrine in Tokyo on the first business day of the year.  They come in waves—those in front clasp their hands and bow deeply, pleading with the gods for a prosperous new year—and then they file to the side to make way for the thousands who are pushing behind.

I understand why they come.  Their business success depends on many factors beyond their control:  Will others in their company pull their weight?  Will customers buy what they are selling?  Will the world’s economy support a stable market for their product?  In the face of such uncertainty, they will grasp for help wherever they can find it.

But judging by the anguished desperation on their faces, this Shinto shrine is more of a burden than a blessing.  That’s how it is with false gods.  Idols demand our constant care and protection.  We cannot depend on them because they depend on us.

The Philistines should have learned this by the second time they propped up their fallen god, Dagon.  As they were gluing his head and hands back onto his torso, someone should have asked whether their god was more trouble than he was worth.

Idols cannot bear our weight—if we rely on them we inevitably crush them.  Worse, idols are heavy things that weigh on us.  Isaiah observed that the Babylonians of his day loaded their gods “on ox carts” so that “the poor beasts stagger under the weight.  Both the idols and their owners are bowed down.  The gods cannot protect the people, and the people cannot protect the gods” (46:1-2).

Are you bent over from bearing the weight of a false god?  Or do you feel the lightness that comes from going limp in the arms of your heavenly Father?  Who is carrying who?—Mike Wittmer

more > Exodus 32:11; Isaiah 40:28-31; 44:10-20

next > Considering the crushing burden of tending our impotent idols, why are we tempted to put our trust in them?  Rather than wait for your weight to crush them, how can you proactively smash the idols in your life?

monday morning quarterback

It’s Monday morning, time to evaluate and grow from the sermons you delivered yesterday.  It may be hard to tell when you’ve done well, for the best sermons are like time bombs that go off later in the week.  But you can spot the bad ones right away. 

 In that regard, here are the top ten signs that should tip you off that your sermon isn’t going well.  I prepared this a couple of years ago for our seminary’s spring banquet, and, to give every faculty a speaking part, stretched it to 15. 

 Top Fifteen Signs Your Sermon Isn’t Going Well

 15.  Your associate pastor is warming up in the bullpen.

 14.  The praise band begins playing you off the stage.

 13.  You are using PowerPoint.

 12.  When asked to read from the King James Version, you involuntarily blush every time you say the word “ass.”

 11.  The congregation is filling in the blanks of your outline before you get there.

 10.  You think the lyrics to a bluegrass song are really connecting with your audience.

 9.  When you pause for dramatic effect, several people giggle.

 8.  Your cell phone starts ringing, and you answer it.

 7.  The person signing for the deaf just pulled on mittens.

 6.  When the children are dismissed to junior church, most of their parents go, too.

 5.  Your sermon took shape over a glass of wine and volume three of Left Behind.

 4.  Your interpreter just rolled his eyes and put your last statement in quotation marks.

 3. Desperate mothers are pinching their babies.

 2.  The ushers are handing out refunds.  

 1.  You began your sermon with “Top 10 signs your sermon isn’t going well.”