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Why Brian McLaren’s Greco-Roman Narrative is NOT a caricature of modernistic aspects of our religious traditions:

St. Bernard described a developmental trajectory for our relationship with God: 1) love of self for sake of self 2) love of God for sake of self 3) love of God for sake of God and 4) love of self for sake of God.

Thomas Merton described a similar trajectory in our stages of humanization, socialization and transformation. Humanization and socialization help form what he called our False Self. Transformation forms our True Self.

Richard Rohr draws a distinction between our problem-solving, dualistic mindsets and our nondual, contemplative stance toward reality.

Such distinctions describe the faith journeys of all of our great traditions with their various exoteric and esoteric aspects.

The exoteric dimension engages reality in a more propositional way. That is to suggest that it engages reality with empirical, rational, moral and practical methods. It establishes and defends boundaries. When it encounters paradox, it makes an attempt to resolve, dissolve or evade it. It provides answers to many of our most fundamental questions.

The esoteric dimension engages reality in a more participatory and imaginative way. That is to suggest that it engages reality from a more personal, relational perspective. It negotiates and transcends boundaries. When it encounters the paradox in life’s deepest mysteries, as they impact our most profound values, most cherished longings, most insistent urges and most ultimate concerns, it exploits this paradox by nurturing its creative tensions. It abides in trust and ponders life’s ultimate questions with awe, reverence and love.

One might say that the more exoteric aspects of our traditions provide us with the answers to the question of why we should love God, which is to say, for the sake of self. These answers form in us an enlightened self-interest. Early on our journey, our faith is thus more clear but tentative.

The more esoteric aspects of our traditions provide us with the answer to the question of why God loves us, which is to say, because we are fashioned in His image and likeness. This answer transforms us and puts us in touch with our True Self. Later on our journey, our faith is thus more obscure but certain.

The later stages of Bernardian love do not negate the earlier. Our True Self does not annihilate our False Self. Our nondual, contemplative stance goes beyond but not without our problem-solving dualistic mindset. The earlier stages of our journey are necessary but simply not sufficient. They are especially insufficient when our goal is a growth in relationship, in intimacy, whether with people or with God.

Our Greco-Roman Narrative, in very many ways, has everything to do with our love of self for sake of self and love of God for sake of self. It is all about our humanization and socialization. It very much engages our problem-solving, dualistic mindsets with their empirical, rational, moral and practical methods. It very clearly establishes and steadfastly defends all sorts of boundaries. When it encounters paradox, it makes every attempt to resolve, dissolve or evade it. More than anything, this narrative makes an attempt to provide answers toward the end of comprehensively describing and exhaustively norming our engagements with reality. This narrative largely comprises the grand storyline of modern science, philosophy and classical liberal politics. This is a storyline with a great many successes but no too few failures. Some of these failures were of epic proportion and were well chronicled in the writings of Walker Percy, who keenly diagnosed our postmodern malaise.

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!.

The parallel I wish to offer here is that McLaren’s invitation simply mirrors that of St. Bernard, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Walker Percy and many others in our Christian tradition and, indeed, that of the mystics of all of the Great Traditions. This is an invitation to engage not only the more exoteric but also the more esoteric dimensions of our tradition. And this will have everything to do with our love of God for sake of God and love of self for sake of God! It is all about our transformation and True Self! It will very much engage our nondual, contemplative stance toward reality with its robustly personal and deeply relational approach! When it encounters the paradox in life’s deepest mysteries, it nurtures its creative tensions in abiding trust. With an open mind it negotiates all sorts of boundaries, with an open heart transcends them and with open arms welcomes the marginalized! This is the storyline of creation, liberation and reconciliation. THIS is our story! THIS is our song!

Now, clearly, McLaren’s Greco-Roman Narrative does not describe the best our tradition has had to offer when its exoteric and esoteric dimensions have been properly integrated. Clearly, this integration has indeed been preserved in varying degrees and transmitted to varying extents by manifold and diverse elements of our tradition. To deny this would indeed be a caricaturization. But this is not what I see McLaren doing. Instead, what I take away from his critique is the same lament that’s been heralded in our prophetic tradition since the days of old: God is offering us SO much more! But way too many of us are settling for so much less! That is to say that we need to go deeper and to better integrate the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of our religion.

The challenge, as I discern it, is for our institutional structures and non-institutional vehicles to better foster ongoing intellectual, affective, moral, sociopolitical and religious development and conversion (cf. Lonergan & Donald Gelpi). As created co-creators, our work is to foster True Self-realization and authentic transformation of individuals and society, liberating and reconciling all.

Yes, progress has been made.

But, if anyone imagines that the critiques of modernistic religion by such as Thomas Merton and Walker Percy, now Richard Rohr and Brain McLaren, are mere caricatures, where MOST religious practitioners are concerned, they are incredibly naive. (Keep in mind, no one is judging the disposition of anyone’s soul; this is a conversation regarding developmental stages of the journey.) Are we robustly engaging our esoteric dimensions? Rather, do we bog down in the exoteric and render our religion, then, moralistic, legalistic, ritualistic, rationalistic? Take a look around. Listen to the rhetoric – not just in the pews, but – from our pulpits! What are we mostly talking about? What best describes our predominant way of engaging our God?

A few comments prompted by an NPR story and forum:

Jesus, Reconsidered. Book Sparks Evangelical Debate

Julie Lambert (JulieDLRE) wrote: “What McLaren is describing is Universalism, the doctrine that all are saved through God’s love, that blood atonement was not necessary for salvation.”

Julie, what McLaren describes comes close to that but, in my view, requires more nuance. Some early church fathers & mothers did advocate what was called apokatastasis or apocatastasis, which does speak to the utter efficacy of God’s love and incredible benevolence of God’s salvific will.

There may be three related dynamics involved here:

1) Duns Scotus and many (most?) of his fellow Franciscans believed that the Incarnation did not result from God’s response to some ontological rupture (big word for our being separated, cut-off or alienated) located in the past, what some call the Fall or a felix culpa (happy fault), but rather was dealt into the cards from the cosmic get-go as a teleological striving oriented toward the future (big word for the universe unfolding as it should in one great act of giving birth and w/no small amount of moaning and groaning). IOW, the Incarnation was God’s longing to be One with us and creation from the start = at-ONE-ment as opposed to the view of penal substitutionary atonement.

2) It is not heterodox to believe that Hell is an indispensable “theoretical” construct if only to serve the purpose of ensuring that no one would ever be coerced into a relationship with God but that for all “practical” purposes His love will be utterly efficacious and appealing. IOW, God respects our freedom which is an indispensable element in any authentic love relationship.

3) Finally, there is a difference between universalism and what is otherwise known as an inclusivistic Christianity, which believes that nonbelievers and nonChristians can be saved and that God’s Spirit has a salvific effect even in other traditions. What McLaren advocates is that folks should abandon their ecclesiocentric exclusivisms (big word for thinking that the Spirit only operates in their church).

So, McLaren is in line w/Scotus & Franciscans re: the purpose of atonement, w/early church fathers re: probability of universal salvation and w/inclusivistic versions of Christianity. None of this is heterodox, for example, in Roman or Anglican Catholicism or w/ the Orthodox or mainline progressive Protestantism.