A New Kind of Christianity? McLaren didn’t make this up. It’s worse than that!
JB on February 13, 2010 in Axiological, Cosmological, Methods & Approaches, Practices & Experiences, Provisional Closures & Systems, the descriptive - Science, the evaluative - Culture, the interpretive - Religion, the normative - Philosophy
I will cut to the chase, folks. I’ve read most everything Brian McLaren’s written. Most recently, A New Kind of Christianity. And, while I don’t go looking for them, it’s hard to ignore McLaren’s detractors, whose chief complaint has been that, when it comes to Christianity, he’s not just coloring outside the lines, he’s actually making stuff up!
Now, being very familiar with his body of work and having slowly discerned just what this so-called heretic has been up to, I’m afraid the problem with McLaren is really worse than one might first imagine. It seems that few of his critics are even remotely aware of a rather disturbing pattern in his writings, speeches and blogging, a pattern that most egregiously rises to the surface in his answering of the Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith, which is the subtitle of A New Kind of Christianity.
The not so plain fact of the matter is that Brian McLaren manifestly ain’t making all this stuff up. I say “not so plain” because, even when I tell you what’s really going on, I’m going to have to rather carefully make my case below. The plain deal is, gentle reader, that McLaren ain’t fabricating a danged thang. He stole all this stuff!
You heard me right. This ain’t McLaren’s work.
Now, I can already imagine what you Emergent loyalists are thinking and can even empathize with how you must feel. I’ve been there before. My Sweet Lord! It was 1976. No, this ain’t no exclamation invoking God in vain. I’m talking, rather, about the first solo Beatles single to hit number one. George Harrison wrote My Sweet Lord in December 1969. A US District Court judge in New York ruled in 1976 that Harrison had subconsciously infringed on the copyright of The Chiffons, who had recorded He’s So Fine. So, that’s all I’m saying about McLaren. While he didn’t manufacture his version of Christianity out of thin air, as his detractors claim, it is quite possible that he lifted a good bit of his material, some mindfully, some inadvertently, straight out of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Fortunately, for McLaren, no royalties are due because the Holy Spirit doesn’t go around charging folks with copyright infringements. If no one picked up on this before, well, that’s likely due to the fact that much of the material that McLaren has, shall we say, re-articulated, is found in the more esoteric (not to be confused with heterodox) aspects of the tradition.
Further below, I commence a rather rigorous and technical analysis of the McLaren case. Before I do that, let me direct you to some materials that are much more accessible and intended for a general audience. Click on the link, below, to access 20 Good Online Resources to Help You Understand Brian McLaren’s new book: A New Kind of Christianity —>
20 Good Online Resources to Help You Understand Brian McLaren’s new book:
the wanderings of a theoogical vagabond
State of Belief podcast interview
A New Kind of Bible Reading – bonus chapter
Making Eschatology Personal – bonus chapter
discussion questions for personal reflection and group study
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Below we continue with: A Case Describing Why Brian McLaren is a Traditionalist (yeah, no kidding!)
In answering such questions as —
1 ) theologically, who is God? 2 ) christologically, who is Jesus? 3 ) pneumatologically, who is the Holy Spirit? 4 ) anthropologically, who is wo/man? 5 ) ecclesiologically, who is the church? 6 ) soteriologically, what is the nature of our predicaments and where is the efficacy in our sacraments? 7 ) eschatologically, what might we hope for? —
we go beyond our cosmology, or Everybody’s Story, to articulate an axiology, which is an interpretive stance toward reality or an interpretive axis around which our cosmology spins.
Recall, from previous posts, how our cosmology is comprised of a descriptive science, evaluative culture and normative philosophy. Our cosmology is already a risk-laden adventure as we venture forth with our falsifiable hypotheses in science, provisional closures in philosophy and fallibilist metaphysics, all of these methodologies with inescapable epistemic risks all ordered toward human value-realizations. These values include both apparent and real goods, lesser and higher goods, the latter which are intrinsically rewarding and can be enjoyed without measure, the former being extrinsic rewards to be enjoyed only in moderation.
Our axiology, then, will involve our attempts to augment our realization of such values as truth, beauty and goodness via an amplification of the risks we’ve already undertaken in our cosmology, in our science, culture and philosophy, via a new adventure of faith, hope and love. If our cosmology describes, evaluates and norms WHAT we see when we approach reality, our axiology then interprets HOW we see when we approach this reality writ large. And our axiological risk-amplification will add nothing whatsoever to our cosmology if it does not measurably augment such value-realizations as truth, beauty and goodness in a manner that can be cashed out in terms of human growth and development, or what Lonergan called conversions: intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious.
Scott Peck once described reality as a cosmic boot camp where we are learning how to love. It is hard for me to think of a more apt description. If we conceive of both the cosmos and humankind, in general, and each human person, in particular, as sojourners on a grand cosmic adventure, then a transformational dynamic will very quickly come to the fore of our cosmological, anthropological and theological considerations. Such a dynamic, at first glance, invites a more organic and less mechanistic view of reality writ large. And we should keep this in mind. At the same time, we must not lose sight of the platonizing tendency in modern cosmology, which recognizes an atemporal aspect to a reality, which, best we can presently discern, points to such a singularity as t=0. The practical upshot of this tension between a more static, necessitarian, deterministic or platonic view and a more dynamic, latitudinarian, probabilistic or aristotelian view plays out well in the human problem-solving, dualistic mindset, which Brian McLaren well-describes as one aspect of the Greco-Roman narrative in A New Kind of Christianity, wherein he also chronicles the successes and failures of this narrative, when applied to our ultimate concerns and religion.
Now, if there is anything characteristic about our problem-solving dualistic mindset, it quickly reveals itself in its approach to cosmic irony and paradox. The strategies most often employed by the dualistic mindset include resolution (for example, through such as an Hegelian dialectical synthesis), dissolution (for example, through such as a Kuhnian or Copernican paradigm shift or Heisenbergian perspectival shift via either Copenhagen or Bohm interpretations of quantum theory) or even evasion (for example, through such as ignoring, for all practical purposes, Humean challenges to our common sense notions of causality and induction, sophistic challenges like solipsism or nietzschean challenges like nihilism).
There is, then, quite simply nothing in the world, or even beyond it, that the Greco-Roman narrative imagines it cannot process and regurgitate for our vulgar consumption. This, then, describes the legacy of modernism. It came to full bloom in our cosmology in the various epistemic maladies we eventually were able to recognize and name as logical positivism, rationalism, radical empiricism and scientism. In short, these stances were nothing less than an arrogant epistemic hubris. To make matters worse, other dysfunctions blossomed even in our Christian axiology, whether in the form of its full blown epistemic retreat into fideism or its ill-conceived capitulation into an incredibly naive scholastic realism. The saddest irony of all emerged as a radical deconstructionism which, far from being truly postmodern, was hyper-modernistic in that it prescribed an excessive epistemic humility as the cure for all of these modernistic excesses that ailed both our prevailing cosmology and axiology. The only hermeneutic it exempted was its own reductionistic anthropology, wherein its cynical conclusions were already embedded in the very terms it employed in its incoherent, self-subversive premises, which it considered humankind’s only successful references to reality.
Now, this is not the whole story of Christianity’s journey into the 21st Century. In fact, it is, rather, the story of Christendom, which many others have already well-critiqued. If we take a less casual view and peer into the more esoteric aspects of the tradition, I think we can discover an enduring presence of a Spirit-guided saving remnant. There are parts of our tradition that, in my view, very well pulled off such a balancing act as would be required to avoid either the insidious over- or under-emphases of either our speculative or affective engagements of ultimate reality. This is to suggest, then, that there has never been anything inherent in our Christian axiology that would, in principle, necessarily lend itself to rationalism (an overemphasis on the speculative and kataphatic), encratism (an overemphasis on the speculative and apophatic), quietism (an overemphasis on the affective and apophatic) or pietism, including an insufficiently nuanced fideism (an overemphasis on the affective and kataphatic).
The apophatic influences in Christianity draw not only from Gospel and Pauline narratives but also Jewish and neoplatonic influences. Because of its embrace of theosis (a divine mode of existence) rather than henosis (a unity with God), Christianized neoplatonism more so resembles our modern conceptions of panentheism rather than pantheism. At any rate, from our early church fathers through Pseudo-Dionysius, then medievals like Meister Eckhart and Duns Scotus (who gets a bum rap from some in Radical Orthodoxy, by the way), there are rudiments of a semiotic perspective that also appear in the works of Popper and Wittgenstein but which blossom most fully in the ouvre of America’s greatest philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce. In the mid-20th Century, perhaps no one better grasped the cosmological and anthropological significance of this Peircean semiotic perspective, as it might impact our axiological, hence theological, interpretations, than my fellow Louisianian, the novelist, Walker Percy. Now, as the 21st Century dawns, few have taken hold of Percy’s insights and none have better incorporated them and so wonderfully articulated them for a wider audience than Brian McLaren.
There is something about the postmodern critique that, more than being a corrective lens for a modernistic presbyopia (pun-intended), constitutes, rather, a retrieval, revival and renewal of our ancient traditions. There is something about our modern semiotic perspective that, more than being any kind of epistemic therapy for all manner of rationalism, arationalism and irrationalism, resonates with the wisdom embodied in the more esoteric and mystical cohorts of all of the world’s great traditions. That something reveals itself in the sharpest relief when we examine the approach of these wisdom traditions to life’s deepest mysteries and most profound paradoxes and then contrast it with the approach of the dualistic mindset described herein-above. Rather than engaging in a facile attempt to resolve, dissolve or evade paradox, which is what we reflexively do when trapped inside our Greco-Roman narrative with its inescapably dualistic approach to reality (which is great for scientific & philosophic problem-solving), the more esoteric and mystical threads of our great wisdom traditions, instead, exploit paradox. That is to say that a nondual, contemplative stance, rather than instinctively moving into our empirical, rational, practical or even moral problem-solving modes, exploits paradox by nurturing the creative tension that inheres in its ironies, contradictions and incommensurabilities. This is the legacy of our early Christian fathers and mothers, the Jewish kabbalists, the Islamic sufis, the Greek neoplatonists, the Hindu vedantists, the Zen Buddhists, the Chinese taoists and shows up even in our world’s indigenous mysticisms, such as those of our Native American Lakota, Navajo and Apache peoples.
In a tradition filled with charges and counter-charges of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, our apophatic legacy bids us to contemplate such mysteries as the Incarnation not to solve them. Nothing more poignantly captures the dualistic mindset’s preoccupation with problem-solving than the schematic McLaren describes as the six-line Biblical narrative, which is, in essence, a theory of Incarnation. It is a story of falling and rising, articulated in the Greco-Roman narrative, rearticulated in the Christian theory of redemption via a penal, substitutionary atonement. It is a story of a dualistic problem-solving, which cannot tolerate ambiguity, abide with paradox, contemplate mystery or creatively nurture tensions.
It is not that a properly conceived natural theology cannot help us get the right questions; we discussed in a previous post how it very much can help us frame arguments. But we also took Peirce’s counsel not to confuse argument-framing with argumentation, itself, which aspires to proceed syllogistically to indubitable proofs, an aspiration Peirce rightly considered a fetish. Rather, our nondual approach first encounters the ineffable and is silenced by the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (fearful and fascinating mystery). When it does “effable” about the Ineffable, the contemplative stance traffics in iconography, in signs and symbols that conceal what they reveal, employing analogs and metaphors that all eventually collapse, always vigilant via a self-critique that keeps its icons from decaying into idols. If we have articulated truth in creed, we take care not to let our dogma devolve into dogmatism. If we have cultivated beauty in the celebration of cult and liturgy, we dare not let it decay into ritualism. If we have preserved goodness in code and discipline and law, we eschew their degeneration into legalism. If we have enjoyed fellowship in community, we avoid at all costs any decadent institutionalism.
This iconography is advanced, then, much less so through our propositional cognition and much more through our participatory imaginations. That is to say that we can only go so far in our natural theology vis a vis any conceptual map-making before we must surrender to the hometown-knowledge of our participatory imagination, which communicates through narrative and story-telling, and our theology of nature, which issues forth in psalm, parable and even highfalutin systematic theologies like Jack Haught’s and Joe Bracken’s, which proceed via analogical imaginations and not literal constructions. McLaren goes on to reconceive the Biblical narrative with all of these insights and caveats in mind. What is striking to me is how, in its thrust or overarching storyline (as he calls it), he is square within the middle of the mystical strands of all of the great wisdom traditions (which abound in linguistic insight), in general, and wholly within the always-abiding and ever-guiding trajectory of Judaeo-Christianity’s semiotic tradition, in particular. When I say semiotic tradition, I think immediately of the Kabbalah and Plotinus, Origen and Pseudo-Dionysius and John Scottus Eriugena, John Duns Scotus and John of St. Thomas (Poinsot), Charles Sanders Peirce and Walker Percy. Percy, for his part, draws an important distinction, which he gathered from Kierkegaard, which is that between information and news. If any theme of Percy’s recurs again and again in McLaren’s outlook, it is the performative significance of the Good News, which invites a response with our life, itself. It is news that changes everything but only if we actively participate in bringing about the imperative that everything must change.
I suspect it is no accident, then, that when McLaren reconceives the overarching storyline of the Biblical narrative that, whether wittingly or unwittingly, he articulates a theory of Incarnation that resonates with one of Catholicism’s “minority” reports, which is that of John Duns Scotus and many of his Franciscan brothers and sisters. As McLaren describes it, most succinctly, God became man in pursuit of a social agenda. This positively resonates with the Scotistic view that the Incarnation was not a response to any human felix culpa (oh, happy fault), as if Jesus was being sent on a grand cosmic repair job because of some ontological rupture that took place in humankind’s past. Instead, Scotus believed that the Incarnation was in the divine cards from the cosmic get-go and was part of a teleological striving oriented toward the future, Jesus joining us as God-with-us, Emmanuel, the Logos & Spirit with us in the beginning even. And we are empowered as created co-creators and participants in this divine initiative of giving birth to a kingdom. What happens when we change our theory of Incarnation is that Everything Must Change (cf. McLaren). Our views of Jesus, of the Gospel, of the Holy Spirit, of being Church, all change. How we view our predicaments and our sacraments changes (cf. Walker Percy). McLaren shapes a vision for our future that is clearly grounded in the traditions of our past and places a strong emphasis on the Eternal Now and how to be now-here (cf. Richard Rohr, also).
With apologies to the Beatles, McLaren’s a real now-here man, making all his now-here plans. Now-here man, the world is at your command! Thanks for yet another labor of love in sharing your vision of A New Kind of Christianity!
Disclaimer: Brian McLaren didn’t make anything up, as I’ve tried to say even if poorly. However, there ain’t a snowball’s chance in the Superdome that I didn’t make this whole thing up. Contrary to my attempt at satire, above, McLaren has been very purposefully immersed in the vision of Walker Percy and has been very consciously articulating Percy’s anthropology and basic theological thrust for many, many years. Our mutual love for Walker Percy has created an additional bond between us, perhaps only exceeded by our mutual love of Jesus, whom we both call the Christ, and whom we’ve both encountered in the Genesis, Exodus and Isaiah stories (cf. McLaren), and whose Spirit hovered over the primal creation, evoked text from the chaos of human writers and runs through us like a current today, at this moment (cf. McLaren, New Kind of Christianity, pg 95). At least that is my prayer and hope, as I hit send and fling these electrons through cyberspace.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Footnotes:
This is not quite the cause for scandal that one might at first imagine. In fact, while I haven’t engaged other emergents with the same zeal that I’ve applied to McLaren’s work, I have suspected much of the same dynamic at work in their thoughts, which I may further explicate in a future expose’.
For starters, Doug Pagitt‘s so-called quasi-universalism, is very reminiscent of the doctrine of apokatastasis of the early church fathers.
And Tony Jones‘ take on original sin? Really makes me feel like he’s been reading rather bland mainline stuff like: Evolution, Evil and Original Sin.
As for Peter Rollins? Whoa! Sounds like the greatest hits of Meister Eckhart, n’est pas? And who can seriously argue with the nuanced way that Peter denies the Resurrection? I similarly deny it.
Don’t get me started on Phyllis Tickle, who once told Becky Garrison: “Christian nation is such an offensive term that I can hardly speak it, even.” Gimme a break! Tickle lifted that one right out of the nonestablishment clause of the 1st Amendment.
Shane Claiborne? You say you wanna revolution? Well, you know, Shane, we all want to change the world. But you, Shane, are just an ordinary radical! You can’t kid a kidder, lil’ buddy! Everyone knows that radical means from the roots and your agenda is plainly rooted in following Jesus. You’re busted dude.
Kester Brewin I had hope for. Clearly, there is no way he could’ve lifted his plea for Christian piracy from any other source, not even unwittingly? As any native of the Big Easy knows, however, right here in the Vieux Carre, fronting Jackson Square, on one side of St. Louis Cathedral/Basilica runs a narrow street named Pere Antoine Alley and on the other is a street named — what? You guessed it. Pirate Alley. Coincidence? I hardly think so. Shame on you, Kester. Not to mention, anyone can Google the syntax: +Christian +pirate and get over 7 million hits!
Richard Rohr has this theory of the Incarnation. Not your run of the mill penal, substitutionary atonement stuff, to be sure. I promise you, my sweet Lord, that he lifted that straight from his fellow Franciscan, Duns Scotus! Other than that, well, I often wonder if he’s channeling Thomas Merton … hmm.
Well, I am time-constrained by Mardi Gras obligations (evil grin) and need to get on with making my case against McLaren. But, before I do, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the chap most responsible to, albeit inadvertently, giving me the rosetta stone that allowed me to piece together the hermeneutic of the emergent illuminati such that I could uncover their hidden sources. When it comes to Christian orthodoxy, at least from my rather “c”atholic perspective, these folks have jumped the shark and are as guilty as sin, which is to say they’re orthodox enough for me. And when I say sin, I don’t mean original. They are terribly and embarrassingly unoriginal! I mean seriously, folks, it’s all there in our Christian tradition. Some of it esoteric, to be sure. Much of it coming from various minority reports, no doubt. But Mike Morrell, you rascal. You knew this all along from the moment you first serendipitously came across christiannonduality.com ! As for your compadres Tim King and Kevin Beck? They’re swimming on the deep end of the pool at Bethesda and are herding untold numbers through the old sheep-gate to the same Good Shepherd whom the psalmist foretold. As far as heretics go, what can I say? Y’all (that means you guys north of Baton Rouge) are bor-ing.
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This is a fantastic article, John. It took me a while to read it and I now have a much better grasp on the historical/philosophical context of the present conversation within the Christian faith community. I confess that were it not for Google and Wikipedia I would not have been able to understand many of the points you made; and I think that demonstrates how desperate the situation is within our community. I read more than most and yet realize now that I have only a rudimentary understanding of the Christian faith. So I am not sure how these ideas could possibly reach a more general audience so that they understand both the context of their faith and the important perspective that you present in this article.
The one line that surprised me was: “It came to full bloom in our cosmology in the various epistemic maladies we eventually were able to recognize and name as logical positivism, rationalism, radical empiricism and scientism. In short, these stances were nothing less than an arrogant epistemic hubris.”
I understand how these could be perceived as “arrogant epistemic hubris”, however much of the theories derived from these epistemologies do appear to represent reality in a much richer way than, say, fideism. It is unlikely that we could ever have put a rocket on the moon through prayer and faith in a God that may not exist in metaphysical reality (pressupposition: absence of evidence does provide evidence for absence – logical positivism, I believe). The utility of the scientific method does appear to be superior in many respects – especially, when it comes to interacting with the natural world in a way that is predictable and efficacious.
Hi John, I’m only half way through the book, and although I didn’t find it as ” new “, I suspect fro many it will be a shocking view of christianity. I say that because I think most evangelical, or even non-evangelical have no idea of the well of wisdom from much of “its” historical past…many do not think outside their denomination box, or past their denominational origins. Sadly many of the leading seminary NT theologians are writing much of McLaren’s not new view of christianity of as heresy. My question is, ” how do we get out of this seemly inescapable greco-roman narrative/ 6 line narrative? It is a huge rut that the church has traveled for a long long time. How does an institution pull itself out of such a rut? That is the what fuels the thinking in seminaries, and there is no fresh thinking coming out of it. Anyways, I’m enjoying the book, and although not ” new ” I applaud Brian for at least bringing it to a broader audience. I suspect for many it will not be easily digested, and cause a lot of heart burn.
Thanks for your kind words, Stephen.
Such reflections as I have shared here would require a great deal of unpacking, such as into a small book, in order to be more generally accessible. But that’s exactly what McLaren has done with this book. He has unpacked these types of ideas. What I was doing was really writing some notes to myself regarding why, from my perspective, McLaren’s ideas are eminently defensible both philosophically and theologically. Too many people facilely engage his work and cursorily dismiss his ideas. I am VERY optimistic that this type of approach can be made widely accessible. Toward this end, I highly recommend Transforming Christian Theology for church and society by Philip Clayton in collaboration with Tripp Fuller. All should visit Homebrewed Christianity to see what Tripp and Chad Crawford have been up to in this regard.
Regarding science, the distinction I would offer is that it is a method. The maladies I listed were bankrupt philosophies. As an autonomous method, I find science very exciting. I studied neuroendocrinology in graduate school and remain a committed scientist. I just don’t confuse it or conflate it with another autonomous method we call philosophy.
Finally, our dualistic mindset is our problem-solving approach to reality. It is a good thing. It is an indispensable thing! When it comes to engaging reality as a whole, however, while it is necessary, it is simply not sufficient. So, the thrust of what I am saying is that we must go BEYOND our dualistic approach to engage reality also with a nondual perspective. But we must not, at the same time, ever imagine that we can go WITHOUT it.
Ron, I think of a similar problem. Merton spoke of our True Self and our False Self, the latter representing the self that was formed to help us function in society. The terminology was unfortunate insofar as it left folks with the impression that the False Self was bad. But the False Self is not anything we can do without. It’s just that God loves us for reasons that far transcend anything our False Self can accomplish. He loves us for our True Self, the imago Dei, in that we are made in His image and likeness. So, again, we go beyond but not without the False self when we realize our True Self. Living out of this False self in our relationship with God has many of us stuck in a rut. Some spend more time spinning their wheels in this rut than others, but we all keep going off of this particular road, forgetting what it is about us that God loves more than anything else. Imagine if your children thought you loved them only because they made good grades and always behaved. Would they ever be missing the boat regarding the depth of a parent’s love!
How do we get anyone out of such a rut?
I think we need a full court press on our whole being, an integral, holistic approach. For the head, one could listen to Thomas Merton tapes or Richard Rohr cds about the True Self. For the heart, we need good liturgy and contemplative prayer practice. We also need good fellowship in a like-minded, similarly-hearted community, which mediates God’s love to that True Self of ours and that abides with our character flaws, personality foibles, radical human finitude and sinfulness. In other words, we need both catechesis and evangelization.
How might this recast our question about the Greco-Roman narrative?
Well, analogous to our False Self, we might affirm that this dualistic, problem-solving mindset is a good thing, as far as empirical, rational, practical and moral problem-solving are concerned. When it comes to our cosmological questions, we want to very much affirm the efficacies of resolving, dissolving and evading paradoxes! But we need to realize that, where the God-encounter is concerned, this Greco-Roman narrative, which I profitably employ in neuroendocrinology and field ornithology (bird watching) and also natural theology, is necessary in life but not at all sufficient.
Heck, it is not only not sufficient for dealing with God and theological paradox. Here on Valentine’s Day, one would do well to remember that it is no way to approach one’s relationship with one’s wife and the female paradoxes we encounter! Of course, I am more broadly conceiving this narrative in terms of the creative tensions I profitably exploit between our platonic and aristotelian approaches (much less kantian and humean, linguistic, analytic, phenomenological, pragmatic and so on) and not strictly addressing McLaren’s specific six-lines.
Breaking out of this narrative needs to be addressed on several fronts. When it comes to debunking philosophers, theologians and seminarians, what I like to do is to try to inhabit their prevailing philosophical and theological systems (even when I don’t fully accept or endorse them) and then demonstrate how they self-subvert from within. So, this involves writing these types of essays in their type of lingo. Where a wider audience is concerned, this type of thinking can be made more accessible through the telling of new stories. For example, we need more books and short stories, in my view, like The Shack. And we need to engage such ideas in small groups and communities that reinforce such visions. The great novelist, Walker Percy, said that the trick is to help people recognize what they already know but didn’t know they knew it! That’s what The Shack did for people. Anyone who has ever been a parent and has loved a child probably already has a different image of what a Father should be like, whether earthly or heavenly? We need to get people in touch with THAT Father-image, which they know in the depths of their being, to replace the image that inheres in the 6 line narrative.
I dunno. What do you think?
John, I agree with the tension between the true self and false self. It seems to me much of ” religion ” to day is to exterminate the false self. I mean the the Greco-Roman narrative, and the six lines of process ones journey, all seem and mental and physical attempt of perfection of the true self. Real faith is likely more apt to be found living in the suspension between the two.
I think when it comes to debunking the theologians, and seminarians, it will have to be done from within…People like Mclaren, Rohr. But even then they do not yield much influence. I no many of the NT theologians of today, are attacking Brian’s not so new musings on theology. But, I guess that is to be expected.
But, my hope is in the wider audience.I wonder if we did a survey talking to the number of people who have left the church in the last 10+ years as to why they left? I’m sure some of it would have to to with the structure of the institution, but, I suspect many left because they lost interest, or there was no mystery, paradox to capture the human imagination. In a sense every thing was solved, and resolved. The story line didn’t parallel any real life line. I may have for a while, and then unraveled, or the seam ripped apart, and people were left holding two pieces of something in each hand. I suspect many opted for “real” life. I hope that makes some sense.
The Shack, was a wonderful example…it was amazing how many people related to that book. People from such diverse backgrounds. I think there is a deep knowing woven into the very fabric, like the DNA of humanity. I think books like the Shack are filled with a profound redemptive imagination that have the ability to flip the switch into the on position, and people get it. It made the reader confront something and ask questions. I know my friend Bill Dahl keeps telling me, ” we need far more imaginative writing of there.”
Sorry, back one more, I just wanted to comment how much I enjoy Philip Clayton’s thinking, and wondering if you heard or read any of Brain Swimmer’s works?
Brian Swimme is a great poet (and cosmologist, of course) precisely because he is deeply in touch with “Everybody’s” Story! His inspiration comes from the great Catholic theologian, Teilhard de Chardin.
This is a takeoff of a thread running in response to this post on my FaceBook page:
We can draw a distinction between such as essentials and accidentals, or what is indispensable or dispensable, or non-negotiable and negotiable. Then we can bring our discernment to bear on how, on one hand, there can be a tendency to treat accidentals as if they were essentials, while, otoh, we might see a tendency to treat essentials as if they were accidentals.
There are clearly some aspects of our tradition that are fundamental. FundamentalISM treats ALL aspects of a tradition that way. There are, also, aspects that are relative to time and place and context. RelativISM treats ALL aspects of a tradition that way. Of course, these types of tendencies present in varying degrees that begin to approach untenable extremes.
Also, there is the problem of defining the essentials before we do this little exercise in discernment; not all are going to agree with our non-negotiables. But, at least, folks can imagine how much their different sets will overlap and get some idea of how much they have in common and how much they might actually differ.
A radical deconstructionism is a problem epistemologically (as a bankrupt theory of truth) before it ever gets around to doing its incoherent theology. This is what most people think of in the common parlance, where postmodern has become a bogey-man of sorts, a synonym for a practical nihilism, moral relativism and such. That is something WORTH being afraid of and protecting our children from!
I think you’re exactly right that this results from both cultural conditioning and education. There’s a noticeable difference, imo, between our American processing of the Enlightenment and the Continental experience, which was insidiously secularistic with its Enlightenment fundamentalism and postmodernistic backlash. Our American approach actually and properly strengthened religion’s influence on public discourse, while it was marginalized in Europe.
So, I want to say that, in Europe, one can more easily absorb this through cultural conditioning while, in America, parents need to invest a hundred thousand dollars or more for their children to be educated into this nonsense, maybe not so much in philosophy departments, where they know better than to take Rorty literally (even I take his emotional malaise seriously), but in such as English departments, where they get trapped inside of texts and con-texts.
But I said all of this to draw an important distinction, again, between a vulgar postmodern approach and a constructive postmodern approach, which shares our classic theory of truth, affirms both moral and metaphysical realism over against moral and epistemic relativisms, and, when sufficiently nuanced, can help retrieve, revive and renew the wisdom of our ancient tradition, navigating the shoals of fundamentalism and relativism.
Some call this a post-foundational or even nonfoundational epistemology, but a more apt description, I think, is a weakened foundational approach.
Bottomline, for example, is whether or not non-negotiables are affirmed or denied, e.g. Resurrection, Creeds, sacraments, distinction between Creator and creature, salvific efficacy of Incarnation, presence & fruits of Holy Spirit, reality of Church as mystical Body and of Kingdom as already here-still arriving.
Another take-off from FaceBook thread:
For those not initiated into what Fr. Rohr has taught regarding our nondual stance, they will likely interpret it ontologically, which is to say, as an affirmation of “identity” between creature & Creator, e.g. a pantheism (and that is not even mostly what is going on in the Eastern traditions, although that is a widely held misconception b/c westerners are imposing metaphysical categories on what are otherwise merely phenomenal experiences).
The nondual approach, which doesn’t negate our dualistic stance and tasks, is not ontological but epistemic. It simply means that there is value to be mined from our encounter with reality that is more than we can otherwise retrieve empirically, rationally, practically or even morally. I hope many of us retrieved that kind of value, for example, on Valentine’s Day
The nondual approach to reality is, then, robustly relational. It describes a knowledge “of” that adds to our knowledge “about.”
It realizes the spontaneous joy in the presence of the other (also “O”ther) in a moment of raw awareness where our problem-solving mind is not at the fore, where we are enjoying the intrinsic truth, beauty, goodness and unity in self-forgetful love (Mary) without processing the moment in our busy-body, task-oriented way (Martha). We affirm both the Mary and the Martha in each of us as indispensable, each deserving its due. This is also the approach we take to life’s deepest paradoxes – not solving them all but, rather, pondering them in our hearts, like another Mary.
Hello- I’m an organizer of the Boston Emergent Cohort, and found you through the Catholi-mergent site that just started up. Looks like you’re doing some really nuanced work here to relate Mclaren’s new book to the richness of the Christian tradition, and I thank you for that. I definitely look forward to reading further in this study of yours.
[...] I have already drawn parallels to McLaren and Percy. See, for example: Everything That’s Old is New Again – this (McLaren’s “New” Christianity) is truly an old time religion and also the more fleshed-out, tongue-partly-in-cheek version: A New Kind of Christianity? McLaren didn’t make this up. It’s worse than that!. [...]