Response to Scott McKnight’s critique of Brian McLaren’s New Kind of Christianity
JB on April 7, 2010 in Uncategorized, the interpretive - Religion No Comments »I am posting in reverse chronological order, latest conversation here at the top.
13 April 2010 from That Soul Sort Narrative #3 at the Jesus Creed
In #62 dopderbeck asks:”You’re Roman Catholic, and my take on what you’ve said in various places is that you’re not a deeply radical Catholic ala Mary Daly or ala radical Marxist liberation theology. (True?) You reference Boff but you also reference Lonergan. Interestingly enough, Lonergan’s critical realist theological method is popular among many evangelicals these days. So, I don’t see you at least in this thread talking about a “new” kind of Christianity. I see you talking about strands of contemporary Catholic theology that reside within the broad stream of the Christian Tradition and in particular within the Catholic Tradition.”
I abhor the co-opting of the Good News by political ideology. Marxist. Neoconservative. You name it.
I don’t consider myself radical in the pejorative sense of the word but in the best sense of being rooted. I’ve been a charismatic for 40 years, baptized in the Spirit not long after the Dusquesne Weekend (which launched the worldwide renewal in Roman Catholicism) when, in our family’s living room, prayers were said and hands were laid upon me by one of the students who attended that retreat.
As I mentioned on the first thread, I just took Brian’s book title as hyperbole and the 6LN as heuristic. As strategic rhetorical devices, I thought they were provocative. I didn’t take them literally. When I read ANKoC, my initial reviews were titled: “Everything That’s Old is New Again – this (McLaren’s ‘New’ Christianity) is truly an old time religion” and a more tongue-in-cheek: “A New Kind of Christianity? McLaren didn’t make this up. It’s worse than that! He stole it! (you know, from the Franciscans and their ilk).”
I believe the Holy Spirit has been active in all of the Great Traditions and also humankind’s indigenous religions. I believe that morality is wholly transparent to human reason, even without the benefit of special divine revelation. How we are to behave is thus old news, not what Jesus was mostly about, except that He invited us to quit being so dang minimalistic in our views of justice and to try exceeding such imperatives with this radically new idea of His: Mercy. The Good News more so gifted us with the truth that we are called to an intimate trust relationship with a very loving God, Who longed for that relationship with each and everyone of us from all eternity and for all eternity.
I believe that the symbol systems of other traditions are truth-laden. I do not ground this belief in a kantian-like transcendental thomism (e.g. Rahner, Lonergan) which employs a theological anthropology that is a tad too optimistic, in my view. Instead, I ground my belief in a Lonergan-like approach as would be amended by the insights of Peirce’s semeiotic science. I believe that Christianity best fosters what we might call the Lonerganian conversions, so to speak, allowing one to move more swiftly and with less hindrance on the journey to salvation. I broadly conceive soteriology pretty much consistent with most of the nuances that have been teased out in this thread. I believe we are called to permeate and improve the temporal order, establishing social justice in a manner consistent with Gospel imperatives.
I share the Good News – not out of fear for others’ souls, but rather – out of compassion for all of humankind with whom I experience a profound solidarity. I believe so earnestly in the manifold and multiform efficacies of the incarnation that I have always nourished a deeply held and cherished belief in the possibility that all humans will eventually enjoy some form of eternal beatitude. I raised my children with the belief that some form of eternal alienation from God must remain a theoretical possibility (only because God would not violate our freedom and coerce a relationship) but that I cannot otherwise imagine that it is a practical probability. As such, I told them that hell is a theological concept that should enjoy a much more esoteric status and not quite as much exoteric prominence as it has. Put simply, I told them to forget about it.
I reject any notion of penal substitutionary atonement but embrace such an at-one-ment as was envisioned by Scotus and the Francsicans, which is to say that I believe that the incarnation was always going to happen, so-called felix culpa or not.
All of the above stances pretty much enjoy the status of minority reports in my tradition but they are neither new nor heterodox.
I resonate with Brian, theologically. But he’s also made some sociologic claims, which are empirical, about what people have been taught and what they believe. People can reasonably agree to disagree about his hypothesis. Questions will nonetheless persist: Why is there so much polarization and demonization in our country and around the world? Increasing incivility in the public square? These are important questions. What hangs in the balance might be our planet and civilization as they go out in either a nuclear bang or an ecological whimper.
Are the liberation themes that shape the vision of Brian McLaren ideological or theological? subverting or incarnating the Gospel?
Liberation must primarily be interpreted in terms of a freedom gifted by grace, a gift that frees us from the slavery of sin which robs people of their dignity. This slavery is certainly experienced as marginalization and oppression in our socio-economic-politico-cultural sphere but in its most “radical” form it is experienced as a slavery to sin, where other forms of slavery find their “root.” How do we distinguish, though, between an authentic theology of liberation as rooted in the correctly interpreted Word of God and an ideology of liberation that corrupts the essential Gospel message?
As Christians with a robust pneumatology, we believe that the Holy Spirit is the source of all renewal and that God is the Lord of all history. Our Gospel ecclesiology professes faith in a Kingdom begun here on earth in the Church, but takes account (with science, even) that this earth will pass away. Our eschatology professes faith in a Kingdom not of this world, where we have no lasting dwelling. In our soteriology, while we recognize with Lonergan that human conversions grow us as individuals – intellectually, affectively, morally, socially & religiously – from image to likeness, at the same time, we do not identify the Kingdom’s growth with progress in science, culture and philosophy. We grow, rather, as Brian described, via Bernardian love, from love of self to sake of self to love of God for sake of self, to love of God for sake of God and love of self for sake of God. And it is this same Spirit-inspired love, which is animated by our faith in Christ’s riches and hope in things eternal, that concerns us with social justice in the welfare of all who inhabit this temporal earthly city, where we seek to permeate and improve our temporal order with a preferential option for the poor and the young.
With a radically incarnational view, human dignity is grounded in the individual and celebrated in community. This, in turn, grounds the subsidiarity principle, which holds individual liberty in a creative tension with socialization processes, all ordered toward the common good. Still, both social justice and injustice is located in the hearts of people, where God indwells, and not in the structures of institutions, whether social, economic, political, cultural or even religious. It is thus an ideological -not a theological- vision that is reflexively and partisanly biased, whether for or against, regarding socialization processes. Charles S. Peirce was correct, I believe, in suggesting that we should speculate boldly regarding theoretical matters but should proceed cautiously and tentatively in our vital (or practical) affairs. Thus we find the Church, I believe, properly biased toward tradition and our prudential judgment properly biased toward a conservative approach. This honors our belief that the Spirit has been active in our world among its people. But such biases toward the traditional and conservative are not, at the same time, absolutes. They are, instead, weakly truth-indicative and not robustly truth-conducive. As Brian has suggested, our institutions thus conserve the past fruits of the Spirit, while our movements are the vehicle for present novel works of God among His people. Brian has described certain sociological and psychological patterns that emerge as institutions and movements interact. There is a certain irony in the fact that the dynamics Brian has described somewhat mirror Scott’s own account of the psychology of conversion.
There is another irony here in any charge that Brian’s vision has been shaped by liberation themes. Are we saying ideologically shaped or theologically shaped? Let me explain.
Another way to interpret Brian’s critique of the 6LN is to look at it as a charge that an authentic theology has been corrupted by a partisan ideology. In essence, he is suggesting that a certain cohort of Christianity has allowed ideological elements of a particular socio-economic-politico-cultural sphere to corrupt the essential theological message of the Gospel.
It is important to note that he is NOT arguing against an inculturation of the Gospel as it might have otherwise profitably assimilated Hellenic philosophy and Roman culture, for example, to Western civilization’s true edification. Rather, he is protesting a subversion of Gospel imperatives by certain ideological absolutes that were propagated as viral memes within those societies.
That’s the irony here insofar as Brian has similarly been charged, to quoque, with a subversion of Gospel values by a liberation ideology. I would counter that Brian has not embraced a subversive liberation ideology but has articulated a sound theology of liberation, as systematically consistent with his other Franciscan sensibilities ( see Leonardo Boff’s Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor) and wholly in line with my brief sketch above. As Brian put it to me, for the gospel to incarnate into a culture is very different from a culture co-opting the gospel.
There are ways, in my view, to hold a nuanced particularism in a creative tension with a nuanced religious pluralism. So, too, we hold in tension the Kingdom now and to come. We can also better nuance what the early fathers called apokatastasis as a legitimate hope for universal salvation, affirming, as a theological necessity, the belief that God leaves us free and would not coerce us into an eternal relationship. Finally, a great deal of our God-encounter is mediated via our participatory and imaginative engagement of symbol systems, which we inhabit existentially (or not). This is where I locate most of my resonance with the Evangelical approach. So much of the disagreement is articulated in a conceptual form that, sometimes, tends to overemphasize the more propositional aspects of our belief system. Those are not unimportant but, if we do not pay heed to all that we share vis a vis our participatory imaginative engagements, I think we risk despairing of a deeper unity, losing sight of all that we do have in common, like the riches that we share in Christ and the hopes we share for things eternal.
We can reasonably expect that all of us will be more or less influenced by our socio-economic-politico-cultural milieu, sometimes allowing it to subvert the Gospel in our lives, but hopefully, most of the time fostering the Gospel’s incarnation into our culture. Which cohorts have allowed the Gospel to be co-opted for how long and to what extent makes for quite a discussion. The sociological and psychological dynamics that might be involved are very interesting and the ones discussed in this context seem pretty intuitive even, providing a rough composite mapping of what many of us have encountered over the years, generally speaking. It is with some peril, however, that we apply such diagnostics to any given person in particular. For one thing, such analyses can be facile. For another, we do need to be sensitive to such a framing and description of another person. Which groups of people believe what, however, do lend themselves to sociologic analysis. No need to trade anecdotes; see
Many Americans Say Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life
Christianity has always had its “minority reports” & successful marriages of the exoteric to the esoteric, which have preserved its essential message & core praxes, but it’s more than a little disingenuous to deny the role that Brian’s 6LN has played in that part (the largest) of the tradition that Merton would describe as being far more about socializing people & much less about transforming them. The Emerging Church will likely similarly be salt & leaven & not likely ever the whole loaf. As for who’s saved … if you have to ask …
God invites us beyond socialization to transformation, but how far one travels is His business. You, my friends, are good enough and beautiful enough, to me! (Not to deny that certain of you may have to have your behavior coercively interdicted from time to time for the common good.)
In That Soul-Sort Narrative 1, Scott McKnight critiques Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Below is my response:
ANKOC did not, in my view, describe mainline Christianity, which is muddling along fairly well as the pilgrim church it is. So, the very title of the book amounts to hyperbole. Extrapolating from that rhetorical strategy to the 6 line narrative, one might suspect hyperbole, again, oversimplification. No author, in that amount of space, likely ambitions a robustly explanatory account. All one can reasonably hope to accomplish is to offer a rather vague heuristic device, a skeletal outline of conceptual placeholders, to get a good conversation going. So, even where fundamentalism is concerned (the book’s real over-against), it will only be able to map that trajectory very roughly. And it did map fairly well.
Certainly the Gospel narrative was implicitly read into his philosophical account or should have been by any who properly received McLaren’s critique within – not apart from – the overall context provided both in the remainder of the book as well as his entire body of work, taken as a whole. There is an efficacy in McLaren’s abstracting the philosophical presuppositions from the Gospel narrative as he did. Such an abstraction reveals in starker relief how theological concepts, categories and even conclusions can be impacted, for better or worse, by one’s philosophical approach.
There can be no doubt that an impoverished epistemology and sterile metaphysics, or even bad science, can lead to some very poor theology. How we integrate the autonomous methods of science and philosophy with religion will affect our theology, pneumatology, Christology, anthropology, soteriology, ecclesiology and eschatology. That’s one of the practical take-aways of McLaren’s message. He may not have precisely determined exactly HOW so much of Christianity is outright failing in this integration (whether via Greek, Roman, Continental or Eastern influences or even Rorty’s vulgar pragmatism) but McLaren’s diagnosis THAT it is failing in many sectors is no caricature. And I find McLaren’s prescriptions right-on!
follow-up comment:
@dopderbeck #115 asked: “But what I’m unclear about in reading your book is the extent to which (if at all) you’re borrowing from process theology. I hear echoes of Moltmann in what you’re saying (and I like Moltmann to a certain degree) but I also seem to hear echoes of Whitehead. … This is my main concern at this point: is God still the Triune God who is “other” than creation? This isn’t a rhetorical challenge. I genuinely was left a little unsure from the book. If so, and if the world is still sin-scarred, and if Jesus is still uniquely as the second person of the Trinity the savior from the scars of sin — then I’d ask how the narrative you want to offer is so different from that of the broad historic Christian Tradition (as you so paint the outlines of that tradition, say, in A Generous Orthodoxy)? <<<
I’m not sure if Brian will be dropping back in but I do recall that he’s expressed an appreciation for Jack Haught’s work, such as in God After Darwin. While Jack’s approach is distinctly whiteheadian, unlike others who appropriate Whitehead for the purposes of doing a natural theology, Jack begins, rather, from a stance within the faith and thus articulates, instead, a theology of nature, which is confessional and very explicitly related to his own high Christology. Beyond that, Brian would have to say how much more he resonates with Jack or would distance himself from some of his views.
Of course, Jack is Catholic and views creation from a radically incarnational perspective, which is to say that creatures are good but wounded. This is not a theological anthropology of total depravity. Regarding the concept of original sin, not all Catholics buy into the “majority report” that the incarnation was occasioned in response to some felix culpa as some grand cosmic repair job for some great ontological rupture that happened in the past. Instead, some, like Jack, follow Scotus and the Franciscans in believing that the Incarnation was in the divine cards from the cosmic get-go and that we are moaning and groaning in one great act of giving birth in a grand teleological striving oriented toward the future. This view would not in any way challenge the salvific efficacy of the incarnation. Such views remain Christocentric and profusely pneumatological even as they trade in exclusivistic outlooks for a more inclusivistic stance regarding the salvation of nonChristians and even nonbelievers. Such an approach does not conceive God in classical fullness of being terms but, rather, asymmetrically (cf. Robert C. Neville). This is not the rather conventional “creation as broken symmetry” conception.
Hi, all – I was going to reply to 115, and then I realized that John Sylvest in 120 said exactly what I would have said, but more intelligently and articulately.
John knows that my intellectual and theological outlook was deeply influenced by my engagement with Walker Percy, where I imbibed a lot of Catholic creation-as-sacrament thinking.
So – rather than radically separating God from creation the way that some do, and rather than conflating God with creation as others do, I see God in loving, dynamic, unbreakable relation with creation – both as its faithful creator, and as the one who has entered and embraced creation through incarnation.
Interestingly, I get on a plane in a couple hours to spend the weekend with Fr. Richard Rohr who continues to extend the tradition of St. Francis and Duns Scotus, where this incarnational, sacramental view of creation has been most celebrated.
115 asked another great question. Is my view really so different? Why not just improve the traditional narrative and speak of a refreshed or renewed old kind of Christianity?
I think that the negative response to the book seen among some here and many elsewhere suggests that my view is pretty different, but not simply for the reasons many people jump to.
I think the differences become clearer when you tease out the social, political, and ecological implications of the traditional narrative and the alternative I’m exploring.
I think that when you divide the world in two – the saved us who are God’s beloved people of light versus the damned them who are Satan’s people of darkness – you unleash a pandora’s box of trouble. The saved and the lost are, in this view, ontologically different and will be so for eternity. You can’t get much more different than that!
This kind of social dualism is complicit in, I think, exactly the non-Christ-like violence we’ve seen in “Christian” history, from anti-Semitism in the past to anti-Palestinianism in the present, from the enslavement of Africans to the genocide of Native Peoples in the past to the vilification of gay people and the second-class status of women in many churches today, from the Crusades to the Iraq War (not to make these pairings morally equivalent).
It’s very easy for white and male Christians to minimize this, but if you really listen to our Jewish and Palestinian neighbors, our Native American friends, our neighbors in the third world, our non-heterosexual-male and non-white neighbors, and if you look back over history from their viewpoint, you get a feeling for what this has meant to them. I get the feeling from reading many of the comments here and elsewhere that I’m seeing the response of privileged people who have never tried to see the world from the position of “the other” much before. I believe we “Western Christians” have a profound ethical responsibility in a post-Holocaust and post-colonial world to face the possibility that our narrative has been flawed … in hopes that our next two thousand years will be better than our first.
Some, when they begin to see the impact on our us-versus-them narrative in the past, leave the faith entirely. I understand why they do this – not simply as a “falling away” from faith, but as an ethical decision not to ally themselves with an oppressive and violent narrative. But I remain passionately committed to Jesus and his gospel, and I think this narrative has been unfaithful to Jesus. So I’m seeking to be more faithful to Jesus and his gospel while fulfilling what I (as a white male Christian with all the privileges that come with that status) have come to see as my ethical responsibility.
In my view, what is so absolutely radical and beautiful in Jesus (among many other things), is that he proclaims and embodies not a narrative of “us versus them,” or “us instead of them,” or “us over them,” but rather “us on behalf of them,” or “us sacrificing and even dying for them,” or better yet, “some of us for all of us.” But that’s the topic of a future book.
dopderbeck (#128) wrote: “I think the question of whether sin was an “ontological rupture” is one of the key questions on which I’m regrettably going to have to differ here. It certainly is not necessary to elide the ontological consequences of sin in order to incorporate the findings of mainstream science. Yes, there was no “literal” paradaisical state — young earth creationism and so on is a failure. But ontology is much, much more than merely the material. The narrative of Haught and of other process / panentheistic theologies seems to me thoroughly compromised by modernity’s cramped ontology.”
I’m not sure we differ on your first point. I set forth a theory of incarnation, not a recharacterization of the nature of sin.
We may not differ on your second point either. I resonate with Neville’s critique of process theology. I call my own theology of nature a pan-SEMIO-entheism. I wholly agree with what Brian said so beautifully:
“So – rather than radically separating God from creation the way that some do, and rather than conflating God with creation as others do, I see God in loving, dynamic, unbreakable relation with creation – both as its faithful creator, and as the one who has entered and embraced creation through incarnation.”
My approach prescinds from any robustly metaphysical description to a much more vague phenomenological perspective. In advancing a view THAT creation and Creator are intimately in relationship, I positively eschew any appeal, whether to substance or process approaches, that ambitions a description of HOW. The SEMIO in my pansemioentheism designates my attempt to recover and reemphasize the notion that profound religious symbols can grip people and engage them with the Ultimate.
To be clear, when I say prescind from metaphysical description, I personally subscribe to a metaphysical agnosticism even while I defend such a metaphysical realism as would affirm anyone’s right to “do ontology” as long as it proceeds hypothetically and with a contrite fallibilism. My own theological perspective does not see Christianity inextricably intertwined with any particular ontology, for example, vis a vis the nature of the soul, a philosophy of mind, a design inference, super/naturalism, contra-causal free will and so on. For example, in my view, an essential Christianity needn’t resolve in favor of a robustly Cartesian ghost-in-a-machine vs a nonreductive physicalist account of the im/mortal soul. What could be less “cramped” than that?
As for Haught’s narrative, an aesthetic teleology, perhaps you did not grasp (or do not buy) my distinction between natural theology and a theology of nature? Jack, in his own words, eschews any
“attempt on the part of finite humans to grasp the infinite and incomprehensible God in rational or scientific terms. These arguments diminish the mystery of God, seeking to bring it under the control of the limited human mind. For religious reasons, therefore, we should be grateful to Darwinians for helping us get rid of the pretentiousness of natural theology.”
A natural theology can be, as you say, “thoroughly compromised by modernity’s cramped ontology.” However, a theology of nature belongs to the genre of poetry, not ontology. A theology of nature is analogical and metaphorical, to be sure, like much of science and metaphysics, but it is mostly lyrical. It’s like St. Francis’ hymns to nature, like the metaphors of the psalmists, like the allegories of the Bible but brought up to date with modern references to nature. One could say that “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” is a cramped ontology but that would be a category error because it’s a hymn not an ontology.
In my view, the problem with radical fundamentalisms, whether the sola scriptura variety of Protestantism, the solum magisterium of my own Catholicism, or even that of a radical Islamism, is essentially epistemological. It may very well be that our people are being taught and evangelized by those who are trained as critical realists (of whatever school) but that so many of the faithful are receiving these teachings as naive realists, who employ a folk-psychological understanding that is incapable of processing what are critical nuances.
Brian mentioned the late Walker Percy, my fellow Louisianian, whom we both loved. Percy’s novels and essays articulate, in an engaging and accessible way, the insights of Charles Sanders Peirce, perhaps the greatest American philosopher, who was also largely inspired by John Duns Scotus. Robert Cummings Neville, whom I mentioned above, has been similarly inspired by Peirce and his semeiotic realism. Neville’s Realism in Religion: a Pragmatist’s Perspective (SUNY Press 2009) well chronicles what he calls “liberal theology as a near miss” and well critiques the neo-liberalisms of the Whiteheadians as “still near misses.” None of this means that he finds Barthianism attractive, either. I employ what I call my Peircean-Nevillean Integral Axiological Epistemology in an exploration of my own pentecostal sensibilities, which could hardly abide with a cramped ontology!
I hope we can continue to vigorously explore these critical naunces without too cursorily or facilely applying our different sort-narratives, whatever their philosophic origins, to decide who’s in and who’s out. I suppose that’s a tall order once considering how Christianity has splintered into SO MANY denominations. It WOULD be a RADICALLY NEW kind of Christianity that would thus cease and desist from such sorting and over-against engagement! I think that’s what Brian really hopes for. I know I do.
dopderbeck (#135) asked: “But is it ‘dynamic’ in that God’s essential nature changes and develops as creation changes and develops? And is it ‘unbreakable’ in that creation and God are ‘part of’ each other?”
Semeiotic realists (e.g. Peirce, Percy, Neville) view essentialism and nominalism as the obverse sides of an epistemic dualism that will generally extend, respectively, to either a substance or process metaphysic, neither which cashes out much value for science. They thus launch a critique of process approaches because of their nominalism. Neville argues against another flaw in process theology as an instance of a theological conception of God as a determinate entity and suggests that the ground for determinateness in reality is not being but the act of creation, creatio ex nihilo.
At any rate, there is a parsing required for any who aspire to articulate a panentheism (I don’t because I cannot imagine how) and it speaks directly to the questions you raised. There are indeed some who subscribe to a panen-theism, which sees God as part of all things but more than the sum of all things; others speak of a pan-entheism, which sees God indwelling in all things. Only the latter parsing would be considered orthodox per our Nicene formulations. But it’s precisely because of all of the problematics aforementioned that I prescind to a panSEMIOentheism and reject both essentialistic and nominalistic categories, substance and process approaches.
Of course, again, Brian can speak for himself (but he’s in Albuquerque for a few days), but what I affirm in Jack Haught’s theology of nature is its radically incarnational approach and its robustly analogical imagination. This is a kataphatic affirmation that can balance an overly dialectical imagination and such a radical apophaticism as would suggest that God is not only wholly incomprehensible but cannot even be partly apprehended. I do know that Brian has also shown some interest in the work Amos Yong has done regarding what Amos has called the pneumatological imagination, which may well have profound significance for interreligious dialogue. (Amos is my collaborator-mentor in articulating an integral axiological epistemology.) All of this resonates, too, with Jamie Smith’s views on our participatory imaginations. I’m sure that none of us subscribe to every detail of the others’ perspectives but we can recognize and affirm what we have in common and advance our understanding where we differ!
My Part of a Recent Exchange with Brian:
I’ve been scratching my head questioning how I could interpret your thrust as grounded in and consistent with what I see as a long (and continuous) semiotic tradition in Christianity, dating back to the early church fathers, running through the medieval church and influencing our postmodern outlook (e.g. Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scottus Eriugena, John Duns Scotus, John of St. Thomas /Poinsot, Charles Sanders Peirce, Walker Percy, Robert Cummings Neville, Amos Yong), while others imagine you’re simply reiterating old liberal and neoliberal arguments. You’re much closer to being a medieval Franciscan!
I can only reckon that it was my foreknowledge of our kinship with Walker Percy that innoculated me against that rather insidious viral meme that paints you as the reincarnate Adolf von Harnack.
You wrote: “We want to try reading the Bible frontward for a while, to let it be a Jewish story that, through Jesus, opens to include all humanity. We believe it is time to firmly escort the Greco-Roman reframing of the biblical narrative to the door …” (pg 45 ANKoC)
Are you lamenting inculturation? Are you advocating an idealized Semitic Christianity? Are you exalting the Semitic imagination with its mytho-poetic-practical mind and thoroughly denigrating Hellensitic rationality?
I do not see any of this in what you said in ANKoC or elsewhere! That would be so un-Peircean of you!
It seems that some are confusing your argument against a subversion of the Gospels by Hellenic philosophy and Roman culture for a position that, instead, eschews any Christian assimilation of Hellenic philosophy via an inculturation process. For the life of me, I cannot see how anyone could ever imagine that one, with as broad an ecumenical vision as yours, would ever argue against inculturation. Clearly, rather, both from the specific case that you argued in ANKoC and the context provided by your extensive written oeuvre, which is radically integral, you are objecting to a particular “SUBVERSION BY” and not, rather, to the general “ASSIMILATION OF” Greek philosophy and Roman culture.
You inventory the subversions (e.g. the epistemological, ontological and social dualisms coupled with an a prioristic, rationalistic, apodictic certainty). You employ the assimilations (e.g. abductive experience, biblical exegesis, religious pluralism, biological evolution, Wesleyan quadrilateral). Makes sense to me.
Finally, I wouldn’t apologize for using hyperbole and vague heuristics as rhetorical strategies, whether in the title of the book or the description of the soul-sort narrative. This book is accomplishing far more via its stimulation of vigorous (and occasionally erudite) conversation than you could have possibly imagined.
Enjoy your Franciscan immersion this weekend,
John
post script:
By the way, to the extent just exactly who is buying what version of Christianity is an empirical sociologic question that others can debate anecodotally ’til they’re blue in the face, the latest Pew Forum data reveal even a recent backward trend re: exclusivity among many Americans, perhaps reflecting increasing polarizations (dualistic thinking & social structures):
Many Americans Say Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life
I’m afraid all protestations to the contrary re: your 6LN, at least in most of Evangelical Protestantism, you have the problem nailed. It reminds me of the old saw that those who excuse themselves thus accuse themselves. I’m afraid that some are, as the Bard put it, protesting a little too much.
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I consider Brian’s responses privileged and will leave it to him to publish them or not. But I know he won’t mind me sharing this one nugget, that says it all in a nutshell regarding subversion by and assimilation of a culture:
For the gospel to incarnate into a culture is very different from a culture coopting the gospel.
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