Brian McLaren, part 2

A few days ago I posted what I liked about McLaren's A Generous Orthodoxy. Today, as promised, I'll talk about those matters where I felt McLaren went seriously adrift of what's proper and/or Biblical...

[Warning: this is long. If you want to skip the details, just scroll to the bottom and read my brief summary.]

Having listed the chapters I liked before, here are those I really didn't:

Bad Things

Chapter 2: Jesus and God B - Here McLaren contends that God should not be seen as merely "'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" (p.85).

If that isn't terribly confusing enough, there's more: "In English, there just isn't a personal pronoun to express this kind of Life/Personality that isn't either exclusively male or exclusively female. The only nongender pronoun in English is impersonal (it)" (p.83). I especially dislike this quote because it implies to the average reader that such a pronoun exists in the original Greek manuscripts, but not in English. As grammar would have it, though - there is no such pronoun in Greek either!

I found many occasions in this book when McLaren's lack of theological training became obvious. This chapter was one of those.

The truth is that - to use McLaren's somewhat odd language - the God of the Bible is both God A and God B. The Bible clearly paints Him (not It) so.

Chapter 10: Why I Am Biblical - How in the world could I have problems with this, you might ask. It's because (even though he denies it on p.177) McLaren clearly has what throughout Christian history would be called a low view of the Bible. This seriously jaded paragraph speaks volumes:

We wanted a simple, clear, efficient, and convenient plan for getting to heaven after death. Between now and then, we wanted clear assurance that God didn't like the people we didn't like, and for the same reasons we didn't like them. Finally, we wanted a rule book that made it objectively clear, with no subjective ambiguity, what behaviors were right and wrong for all time, in all places, and among all cultures, especially if those rules confirmed our views and not those of people we considered "liberal". (p.178)

McLaren has apparently taken too many postmodern pills (yes, even I believe one can take too many). Much of what he writes mockingly really is what God's Word provides. The Bible is clear about the path to Heaven and many, many "rules" about our conduct here on earth, for all time, in all places and cultures. It's not as black and white as many would like it to be, but McLaren is painting with way too broad a brush here.

Did I mention his lack of Biblical training earlier? Here's another example: "To say Scripture is God-breathed is, then, to elicit this primal language of creation" (p.179). His point is that traditional understandings of inspiration have missed the point - this from the same guy that thinks the "street version" of Calvinism is double predestination! More on this in a minute...

This chapter gets worse, frankly. He goes on to posit a strange sort of "peace and love" view of inspiration. In his view, the fact that God sometimes commanded violence in the Old Testament doesn't have any bearing whatsoever on our modern day issues of war and peace. In fact, God - according to McLaren - seems to have evolved with His people, so that today we no longer have any Biblical mandate for violence - that was just a cultural accommodation of times long since gone.

But isn't the whole reason that God sent the Israelite to destroy the people of the land of Canaan precisely as judgement for their sins?! Yet McLaren doesn't even touch this truth. In his eyes, violence is clearly unacceptable and he therefore cannot posit a God that might use violence to accomplish His aims.

Moreover, what about Revelation? Does McLaren's theology ignore the many, many violent references in the Bible's final book? Don't get me wrong - I don't want random acts of violence any more than the next guy. But McLaren can't turn the God of the Bible into a peace-at-all-costs advocate, no matter how hard he tries.

Chapter 12: Why I Am A Fundamentalist/Calvinist - McLaren goes loopy in this chapter. He has the audacity to completely rewrite the famous TULIP acronym, filling it with warm-fuzzies and calling it merely a "doctrinal distinctive". As mentioned above, here McLaren says that "street version" of Calvinism is double predestination (p.208). I don't personally know anyone who's a true double predestination guy, and I'm firmly in the Calvinist camp.

To be brief about it, McLaren displays his lack of theological training for all to see, and seems to be proud of it too!

Chapter 13: Why I Am (Ana)Baptist/Anglican - This chapter makes many good points, noting - for example - that Anabaptists historically have viewed their faith as a way of life, not merely a religion. But then he gets out his peace-at-all-costs horse again and beats it to death. This says it all:

"... if pacifism is not required for all followers of Christ just yet, it should be as soon as possible" (p.232)

Chapter 17: Why I Am Incarnational - Those that know me will likely be shocked that I'd be agitated at a chapter with this title. It starts out well. McLaren tells us that "Jesus' incarnation bound him ... to all humanity, including people of other religions" (p.281). He's not going Universalist here, trust me - he's making a good point. He then reminds us that "Pharisees didn't understand the difference between love/acceptance and approval..." (p.282), another great point to remember today.

But things start getting shaky. In a footnote (p.286), he claims that "many" Christians believe in a manual dictation theory of Biblical inspiration. Just like his assertion that double predestination is the norm, this one fails the test of complete honestly. Hyperbole? Perhaps. Ignorance? Perhaps more likely.

I love this quote, too: "In the old modern-colonial world ... non-Christians could be seen as stubborn rebels who refused to capitulate to the dominating truth" (p.289). This, to McLaren, is a terrible way to view folk! Oddly enough, it's exactly how Stephen paints the Jews of his day in Acts 7. If McLaren were merely trying to say that we should be slower to judge folk as "stubborn rebels", I'd be with him. But he seems to be saying much more about the very nature of judgement.

He completely misses Jesus' command to "shake the dust from your feet" when a town refuses the message of the Gospel, too. Instead, we have a picture of Jesus who told his Disciples to "simply move on". Again, lack of training on display.

Chapter 20: Why I Am Unfinished - Here McLaren wants to invert the traditional Christian "pyramid" of learning. He states (correctly) that most folk would say Doctrine comes first, which informs Mission, which informs Ethics. Then he says it should be the other way around. Given the seeming disdain that McLaren has for theology proper, this comes as no surprise. Again, if his point was that far too many of us are settling for merely having "sound doctrine" and thinking that we therefore don't need to get off our collective butts and do something with what we know, then I'd say AMEN! But that's not what's going on here.

McLaren admonishes us to pursue truth - sounds noble, right? Not really, because he's assuming that it's an ever-elusive goal that "happily" recedes further from our grasp the more we pursue it (p.336). The Biblical conception of truth is that it's there, right before, plain as day - screaming from the rooftops, even. Our goal, then, is to pursue righteousness on the basis of the truth we are given in Scripture.

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This turned out to be much longer than originally intended. If you've suffered through these 1,300-odd words, thank you for your diligence to my sometimes wandering mind.

Here's my summary of A Generous Orthodoxy: McLaren makes some great points, but his book is basically too "generous" with the truth to be truly orthodox.

Read with caution.

Hatushili