For Brian McLaren, the point of orthodoxy is orthopraxis. So, he wants to know why it was easy for many modern-era Christians to participate in a host of unethical activities and mindsets, such as racism, colonialism, environmental irresponsibility, mistreatment of women, carelessness toward the poor, etc. To him, we have inherited a version of the gospel story that has been filtered through the lens of a different framing story, one that predates and helped shape modernity’s own overarching story and subplots.
In this inherited version, first, there is a shift from a view of creation as good to its being a perfect, unchanging, Platonic ideal, or state. Second, the fall is not merely about disobedience. Rather, it’s a change from Platonic perfection to Aristotelian change and becoming.
Third, God’s character is like a perfect, Platonic god, who loves spirit and perfection, but hates matter and becoming, which is imperfect. As such, God wants to destroy creation. Fourth, original sin implies God is hostile toward us. He must “punish all imperfect beings with eternal conscious torment in hell…. God’s response to anything that is less than absolutely perfect must be absolute and infinite hostility” (McLaren, Why Did Jesus … Cross the Road? 106).
Fifth, salvation means being forgiven. Souls are restored to perfection, so that there is no more “becoming” or stories. Thus, God can love them again. But, sixth, hell also is an ongoing state. Taken together, McLaren sarcastically describes this story as the “good news” taught by much of western Christianity (A New Kind of Christianity, 41–44). And, he is not alone; Doug Pagitt sees a similar influence from Greek and Roman sources.
This “version” of the gospel includes many dualisms, such as God and creation, heaven and hell, body and soul, and natural and supernatural. Instead of embracing such dualisms, McLaren embraces a holistic approach, in which there is a deep interrelationship between God, matter, and life. Sin involves disintegration and disharmony in this interrelatedness, but not separation, for as Pagitt says, we are “In God” (see his Flipped). Moreover, Pagitt thinks we are made of matter (i.e., energy packets). Rob Bell also picks up this theme of holistic integration, describing God as energy and creation as energy and made of matter. For Tony Jones, too, we are not embodied souls; rather, we are physical beings. It seems all four authors have embraced a kind of physicalism about humans and creation.
These holist views suggest they have moved away from theism to panentheism, in which creation is embedded in God (and not pantheism, in which all is God). As such, we are not separated from God; rather, we already are in relationship with Him. But sin has disrupted that relationship, and human ones too. Since we are not separated from Him due to our sin, we need to work on practical, ethical living in these relationships.
Thus, we do not need a penal, substitutionary, atoning sacrifice for our sins. Jesus’ death on the cross, therefore, was not to atone for our sins. Rather, His work can be described in terms of imitation, such as on René Girard’s mimetic, scapegoat theory, or perhaps as a moral example for us to follow.
Pagitt describes the received view of God as removed, distant, and not intimate with us; loving us conditionally; and unmovable. We have to be perfect for this God. But, that will not happen until after our deaths, which leaves us with a faith that focuses on the afterlife, and not living for Christ now.
In contrast, as a bedrock assumption, McLaren holds that God is good and just, yet He cannot be violent. God works to liberate us from oppression, but He never acts directly to do that. God is not a dictator, as would be the case, McLaren thinks, if God exhaustively determines the future. McLaren is an open theist, so history is unscripted. Bell also claims that while God judges, it always is to restore people to relationship with Him. In the end, God’s love will win.
In the next post, I will explore more aspects of McLaren’s, Pagitt’s, Bell’s, and Jones’s newer views.