Like a lot of Protestants,* for many years I "knew" what the gospel was. I "knew" that the gospel was the message of "justification by grace through faith," distorted or forgotten by those pesky Catholics, but rediscovered by our hero Martin Luther through a reading of our even greater hero Paul, especially his magnum opus, the Letter to the Romans. If Catholics were called "Roman Catholics" because of their headquarters in Rome, we could have been called "Romans Protestants," because Paul's Roman letter served as our theological headquarters. As its avid students, we "knew" without question what it was about. To my embarrassment, though, about fifteen years ago I stopped knowing a lot of what I previously knew. -137
He goes on to add in the next paragraph (via a conversation he had with a friend), Most Evangelicals haven't got the foggiest notion of what the gospel really is. So what is the gospel? McLaren is clear to remind us not to look to Paul for the answer to that question, but to Jesus. For Jesus, he argues, the gospel was very clear: The kingdom of God is at hand. That's the gospel according to Jesus. Right? (138)
In order to understand McLaren, one must understand what he means by the Kingdom of God. God's Kingdom stands at the center of all that McLaren believes. The age old debate regarding what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of God centers on the timing of the Kingdom. Is it here now, or is it a future reality? Or, is it both?
Though McLaren has suggested that he affirms the traditional answer that the Kingdom is a present reality and at the same time a future hope, he can no longer hide behind that lie. Clearly, McLaren believes that the Kingdom of God is exclusively a present reality. This means that the Kingdom is here and now and we are not looking for a future Kingdom. And being that McLaren defines the gospel as "The Kingdom of God is at hand," this definition is central to his understanding of the gospel.
The activists makes this clear early on in his book. He mocks the idea of the Kingdom being future (and the gospel being about heaven) by commenting on how ridiculous it sounds to think Jesus said, Listen guys. Here's my real agenda. We're going to start a new religion, and we're going to name it after me (139). The footnote to this comment adds, It's even more ludicrous to imagine him saying, 'And we're going to eternally torture anyone who doesn't accept this new religion named after me.
So instead of preaching the gospel that dealt with our eternal destinations and with our present lives (as we anxiously await living in God's presence), McLaren simply presents a Kingdom of the here and now and not the there and then. He writes:
Instead, [Jesus] came to announce a new kingdom, a new way fo life, a new way of peace that carried good news to all people of every religion. A new kingdom is much bigger than a new religion, and in fact it has room for many religious traditions within it. This good news wasn't simply about a new way to solve the religious problems of ontological fall and original sin (problems, remember once more, that arise centrueies later and within a different narrative altogether). It wasn't simply information abotu how individual souls could leave earth, avoid hell, and ascend to heaven after death. No, it was about God's will being done on earth as in heaven for all people. itw as abut God's faithful solidarity with all humanity in our suffering, oppression, and evil. It was about God's compassion and call to be reconciled with God and with one another - before death, on earth. It was a summons t rethink everything and enter a life of retraining as disciples or learners of a new way of life, citizens of a new kingdom. -139
So the gospel according to McLaren is, at the end of the day (and regardless of how many time he may reject it) is a postmodern version of the social gospel as proclaimed by people like Walter Rauschenbusch. When the Kingdom is only about the here and now, then Christianity is only about serving the poor, uniting all religious traditions, fighting for peace and justice, and stopping global warming. And after we have been active in bringing the kingdom of God to earth, we die and that is pretty much it. And even if there is life after death, social gospel proponents (whether modern or postmodern) always lean or embrace universalism.**
The rest of McLaren's discussion is how Paul affirms this message (he focuses primarily on the book of Romans) of reconciliation. To McLaren, Romans is not a definition of the gospel, but a response to some of the problems the gospel raises namely, Gentiles are now considered a part of the Kingdom, not just the Jews.
So what I want to do is just refute McLaren's heresy, but to present that Jesus did in fact Justification by Faith alone primarily in 2 texts: Luke18 and Luke 15.
In Luke 18 we find the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in the temple praying. Jesus contrasts these two people. The Pharisee looks up into heaven and boldly brags how great he is. He brags that he isn't a sinner (unlike that tax collector) and instead fasts more than the Law requires and tithes more than the Law requires. The man is so bold in his prayer that Jesus tells his audience that the man was, in reality, praying to himself.
The tax collector on the other hand, gave a different prayer. He looked down at the ground (confronted with the shame of his unholiness) and beats his chest in shame. All he can say is, "God be merciful to me a sinner."
Tax collectors, needless to say, where the worse sinners in the world to the Jewish culture. If there was anyone not deserving grace and salvation it was a tax collector. Pharisees, on the other hand, were the religious of the religious. They kept the Law and even kept the laws they added to the Law making it even more difficult to do. These men prayed to God and read their Bible unlike anyone else (most would have had it memorized).
So the question remains, who went home justified? The shocking answer would have blown the mind of the original hearers and it should shock us: the tax collector. What did the man do to earn salvation? Nothing. What merit did he have? None. Why was he justified? He humbly repented in sorrow of his sins in light of the holiness of God. What unites the two men isn't their prayer or their lifestyle. What unites them is their equal standing before God. They were both sinners. What changed in the parable wasn't that they were sinners, but that one sinner was forgiven (justified) by God while the other remained justified only in himself.
Is this not the same message of the New Testament and of the gospel as traditionally proclaimed? The Early Church preached belief and repentance more in the book of Acts than they did the Kingdom of God. Why? Because without belief and repentance, one cannot enter the Kingdom of God.
The second passages comes from Luke 15 and regards the parable of the prodigal son. I won't have the time to go into all of the detail, but I hope this helps. The youngest asks for his inheritance from his father (which means he wished his dad was already dead) and the father surprisingly gave it to him. The boy went out and wasted it all on all sorts of sin. Eventually he runs out and a famine hits the land. All this Jewish boy can do is find a job feeding pigs (the most unclean animal according to Jewish Law). The boy is so hungry that he would have eaten the pigs food if he could. His sin has brought him to rock bottom.
At that point he remembers: even the lowest servants of my father have enough to eat tonight and yet here I am starving. He then tells himself that he will leave the pigs, return to his father, tell him that he doesn't deserve to be called his son, and instead offer to pay all the money he took back by becoming one of his hired servants. And with that, the boy sets off for home.
All along the father has been seeking his son always looking over the horizon for a glance of his son's shadow. Eveyrone else would have had a funeral for the boy, but not the father. And when he sees his son far off he doesn't do what everyone would have expected. Normally, because he brought great shame on the father and his family, the boy would enter the community and be spat upon and shamed by the people. The purpose was to shame the boy for the shame he brought to his family. Once he reached home the father would refuse to see his son adding to the shame. But that is not what the father does.
Before the boy can enter the gates of the city and walk through the gauntlet of shame waiting for him, the father ran (a shameful act for a father to do) to the boy and hugged him and kissed him (another shameful act). The reason for these actions was because the father wished to take the shame the boy deserved and place it upon himself.
At this point the boy starts his speech: "Father, I have wronged you and I am no longer worthy to be called your son." And he stops. The father doesn't let him finish his speech. Instead, his father takes the ring off his finger and places it on his son making it clear that the boy was granted at that very moment full sonship in spite of what he had done in the past. In other words, the father granted grace apart from works. The boy could never pay his father back and he could never earn to be his son again. What he needs is grace. What he needs is for his father to carry the burden of his shame for him. And that is exactly what happens.
Is this not the gospel? In this story we have imputation, justification, forgiveness, wrath, mercy, redemption, adoption, propitiation, expiation, and all of the other giant gospel-centered words. Jesus is telling his audience that the reason he eats with sinners isn't because his kingdom is about uniting sinners, but about granting grace to repentant sinners. Like the Pharisee in Luke 18, many have refused to repent (like the old son in the Prodigal parable) and thus remain separated from God. But those, like the prodigal and the tax collector, humbly repent before their heavenly father, will be given mercy. Not because of any merit or worth, but because that is how God saves. Our sin is imputed onto Christ at the cross while His righteousness is imputed to us at the resurrection.
This is the gospel. This gospel is both a present reality and a future hope. And it is only when we understand the finish line can we run the race set before us. This is what McLaren misses. He tells us to run without any hope. The truth is, man alone will not bring Utopia. We have been trying to for thousands of years. What we need is for God to intervene and change us from the inside by giving us a new heart. He did that through Jesus Christ's cross and resurrection. There we were granted forgiveness and given the assurance of reconciliation and a future life with our Savior. Now if Christ was so gracious to die for us, shouldn't we be willing to die for others?
McLaren wants the ends, but he rejects the means. So long as McLaren is looking for a Utopia apart from repentance and belief, he will utterly fail like those before him. McLaren is a fool for turning the grace of God into humanitarian aide alone. The gospel is not just about saving the planet from global warming. It begins with our relationship with God. Once that is set right, then we can be focused on the mission God has for us here and now.
Southern Seminary was right when they declared in a panel discussion on McLaren's book: McLaren's book is not a new kind of Christianity, but an old kind of heresy.
* Didn't McLaren say that he was a Catholic in A Generous Orthodoxy?
** See the book A Heretic's Guide to Eternity in which McLaren endorsed.
For more:
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Narrative Question - Part 1
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Authority Question - Part 2
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The God Question - Part 3
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Jesus Question - Part 4
Theology - Hamilton: McLaren and Whole Food Stores
Theology - The Gospel According to Emergents: An Insightful Article
Theology - What Does It Mean to Be a Christian?
Theology - The Postmodern Social Gospel: McLaren Proves My Point
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