There have been a lot of reviews of Brian McLaren's latest book, "A New Kind of Christianity," but I believe that Scot McKnight has one of the best. McKnight writes as a sort of insider. When reading him, I oftentimes find myself pulling out my hair when I read him (when he leans toward Emergent ideals) while other times I am shouting Amen! This is one of those moments when I like what he is saying. I am in full agreement with McKnight when he criticizes McLaren's understanding of God as evolving.At the outset, the idea that God evolves is not a new idea. It is as old as liberalism and for McLaren to make an argument does not open the Church up towards a new Christianity, but an old Christianity with new flavors. The language is fresh, but the heresy is not. Certainly the belief that God is evolving is not new within the Emergent Church. Kester Brewin made this very clear in his book, Signs of Emergence. There, Brewin argues that the problem with the church is that it is "locked into stony immutability," whereas, "God has been evolving, adapting, and decentralizing" (Brewin, Signs of Emergence, 63-64). To many Emergents, God has always evolved. The God of the Old Testament "emerges" into the Gos of the New Testament. Brewin is not arguing for Marcionism but rather denies the immutability of God. God changes and so does man and culture.
McKnight pointedly identifies the problems with this view in his review and critique of McLaren's most recent work. McKnight writes:
In particular, the evolutionary theory of God contains another fatal flaw. It's not the fact that it was tried out in the 19th-century Religionsgeschichtliche Schule ("history of religion school") of Germany and has been shown inadequate (though it finds an occasional admirer in folks like Karen Armstrong). And it's not the fact that the category of "evolution" is about as modernistic and imperialistic of a category I can think of. No, the singular flaw is this: The flow of the Bible is not neat. It doesn't fit into an evolutionary scheme. There are as many mercy passages in the Old Testament as there are grace-and-love passages in the New. What's more, passages about God's grace stand side-by-side with passages about God's wrath (e.g., Hosea 1-3; Matt. 23-25). The evolutionary approach doesn't work because that's not how Scripture's narrative works. There is wrath in Revelation and there is covenant love in Genesis. And Jesus talks more about Abba and hell than does the rest of the Bible combined.
McKnight is right. It is impossible to find an evolving God between the Old and New Testaments. This was the problem that Marcion and others have run into. The complementary texts of the Old and New Testament pushes towards a belief in God's immutability, and if God is immutable, so is the gospel; something that McLaren, Emergents, and theological liberalism misses completely.
McKnight concludes: "For me, Brian's new kind of Christianity is quite old. And the problem is that it's not old enough." Amen!
Read the whole review here: Brian McLaren's "A New Kind of Christianity"
1 comments:
"This was the problem that Marcion and others have run into."
Wrong, because Marcion had his own canon that preceded our present canon. Marcion didn't run into the problem that "There is wrath in Revelation" since he didn't accept the book of Revelation. And as for the inconsistency of the OT god, that was Marcion's reason for rejecting him, not that he saw the OT god as wholly evil but as inconsistent.
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