Everyone’s talking about Brian McLaren’s new book, The Last Word and the Word After That. So I sacrificed the $20 and thought I would give the book a shot. It was a quick read. I like the narrative genre. Very readable. If you want to get a feel for the book I’m sure you could google it and find plenty of reviews. I won’t give you another. Instead, I want join the conversation McLaren provokes and invites: “I am…interested in generating conversation…believing that conversations have the potential to form us, inform us, and educate us” (xv). So, for what it’s worth, in the next few days my posts will converse with some points McLaren raises that prod my thinking.
The goodness of God. I think that’s a great place to start. McLaren writes, “I have never overestimated how good God is because God’s goodness overflows far beyond the limits of human understanding” (xi). The trouble with talk about hell and sin is that it easily steals the drama, dominates the conversation. McLaren refuses to let the Fall set the terms of God’s work to redeem the world. If anything, the emphasis on God’s overflowing goodness might jostle the evangelical mind from overly anthropomorphic conceptions of God’s nature—that is, the way we tend to make a ‘God’ in our own image: God’s judgment looks like our ways of judgment.
But this is far from a new kind of christianity or whatever people mean by postmodern. This good news of God’s merciful judgment is quite old. That’s what I just don’t get about McLaren’s die-hard following, and his watch-dog critics. What’s the big deal? During the 14th century Julian of Norwich in her Revelations of Divine Love weaves together all the orthodox resources at her disposal to invite us into a vision of a God whose very nature is kenotic self-gift, a God whose supposed wrath is exceeded by the overflowing mercy revealed in the passion of the Son. For her the Son reveals a God we don’t deserve, a God who shatters our images of wrathful vengence. The goodness of this God overflows all our claims to know what God’s anger looks like. In a Julian-Norwich moment, Dom Sebastian Moore describes how the God revealed on the cross breaks free from our wrathful constructions of the divine:
We want a God who supports us in our lust to dominate each other, who is thus a grandiose version of ourselves. And this is a God who is angry as we are, who differs from us only in having limitless power to impose his will and to punish. This is God-like-us, and it is the whole purpose of God’s self-disclosure to show us that there is no such being, which gives to our mind a huge breath of fresh air called Holy Spirit. (Poetry of the Word, p. 16)
5 responses so far ↓
1 Jason // Aug 4, 2005 at 1:27 pm
I think McClaren would say, “exactly right, this isn’t some new liberal doctrine.” Rather, it’s a remembering and a rethinking of something quite old. The problem is that we, evangelicals especially, are not very good at learning and appreciating church history. Really, when’s the last time you heard a sermon reflecting on what Julian of Norwich teachus us? First, she’s Catholic, second, she’s medieval, third she’s a woman. Not a good candidate for making it into an evangelical sermon.
Anyhow, enough soapboxing. I do think McLaren is on to something when he says that in the current evangelical church we have a harder time believing God’s goodness and mercy than God’s judgement, and from personal experience I think that a large part of this is we don’t know how to hold together the contradiction(?) of a wrathful God who is sending a good number of people to hell and a God who loves us enough to live, suffer, and die as one of us. What I’m curious to see as I read McLaren’s book is if the early church also found this a contradiction/difficulty.
2 Drew // Aug 5, 2005 at 10:25 am
That’s what I asked myself as I was reading The Last Word, “What’s the big deal?” It just feels like we’ve collectively lost our way, and that we don’t necessarily need to invent, we need to rediscover. I think I liked his A Generous Orthodoxy better, if for nothing else, for the insight it gives into his thinking about all these current issues.
3 jared // Aug 9, 2005 at 9:13 am
Guys, i think you have over looked a small detail in why these books are making such a big impact on the evangelical world. Most people have not read any of the books by the authors you are referring to. Most Christians have read very little early Christian writing, especially writing that express diversity from the reformed theology preached today. Most writers in the recent past that have brought up any of the questions that Mclarean’s books have raised have been labeled in some way that keeps them from the Christian mainstream. Mclareans books come from a seemingly acceptable Evangelical pastor. This is giving many people permission to finally question and yet still stay faithful the Christian faith. I don’t mean this to sing his praises, i just think the reason people love his books so much despite their old message is pretty simple to see. For most people it is a new message. Sometimes we take for granted the fact that we might have read an ancient Christian father’s writings that 90% of Christians have and will never read.
peace, jared
4 isaac // Aug 10, 2005 at 9:50 pm
Jared, thanks for the comment. From what you said, I can see why McLaren is a hit. He is a breath of fresh air to those whose faith has been suffocated by totalitarian theology. I hear that. I like him for some of the same reasons, and maybe others as well. I hope to post on that when i get back home and find some time and some wireless.
You also leave me thinking about authority in the Evangelical church. It seems like McLaren has some sort of authority with a lot of evangelicals. He is a figurehead of sorts. I think his authority it highlighted by all these folks getting all up in arms about what he is saying so they have to write this books to combat his so-called “dangerous” theolgy. So, how does the Evangelical church these days work out who has authority over their church? From the churches i’ve been to you C.S. Lewis seems to be the man. (I call him the Evangelical Pope). Or maybe it’s somebody like Piper. I don’t know. It all seems so arbitrary to me. Why Lewis? Why McLaren? Every time I read them I think to myself, “Oh, X (Augustine, Barth, Athanasius, Luther, fill in the blank) says it so much better.” But how do i figure out who has the authority? The Roman Catholics got that one figured out (i.e. the promise to Peter). And, on the other side of the ecclesial spectrum, the Mennonites have it figured out (i.e. agents of memory, communal discernment, and consensus). But what do Evangelicals have? Whoever has the loudest voice wins? I am sure that is far too stark a vision of the situation. But Nathan Hatch (see his DEMOCRATIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY) makes the case that American Christianity is rooted in the democratization of America around the time of the Revolution when tradition and hierarchy is abandoned as aristocratic, and people were left to “think for themselves,” which really ment they where at the whim of the propagandizing locutionary powers of charismatic leaders. Is the N. American evangelical church still haunted by the same spectre? Some man or woman has authority because they are good speakers, or have a big church, or write lots of pop-y books?
5 jared // Aug 11, 2005 at 4:03 pm
isaac i can’t agree with you more that the authoritative voices in our churches hold all the power. And i would also agree that authority goes to those with the loudest voice speaking the correct language. There is a specific language one most use when speaking “evangelical.” The language convinces us that at any moment God will become uncontrollably mad at us, that it is more important top be right than compassionate, and that any one who does not speak our language is the enemy. Using this language you can convince people of all most anything, just look at the evangelical stance on today’s issues; we shouldn’t care about people who die trying to come to our country illegally (it’s more important to be right than compassionate), we should go to war to solve our problems (others don’t speak our evangelical language so they must be our enemy), and any one who does not think this way is not a true Christian (fear that God will become mad). Language doesn’t really have to have much theology behind it as long as it is persuasive.
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