In my last post, I surveyed several of the newer views of the “emergent” writers Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, and Rob Bell. Now, I’ll continue that survey.
For them, the Bible is not an encyclopedia of facts. Rather, it contains evolving interpretations of peoples’ experiences of, and encounters with, God. It is not that God’s character itself changes, but our views of God do. And, we encounter the mature view in Jesus. Since we understand passages through the lens of our experience, the Bible is not a catalog of timeless, universal, and inerrant truths that we can know as such.
What is God like? McLaren stresses that God is compassionate and gentle, not violent or cruel; just and fair to all, not biased. God is not tribal, imperial, or dictatorial. For Jones, God’s essence (and not just an attribute) is love. Bell explains that on the received view of (evangelical) Christianity, if people don’t believe the right things in the right ways, they’ll go to hell (Love Wins, 173). But to Bell, such a God is fundamentally unlike the One whose essence is love. God would be like “a loving father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them [yet] would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter. . . .” (Love Wins, 173-74).
For McLaren, the God of fundamentalists is jealous of rivals, exclusive, controlling, and even racist. McLaren thinks Calvinism leads to an “us-versus-them” mentality. If God can play favorites, can’t we too? Bell thinks such a God is schizophrenic; He loves us, yet can be cruel and terrifying. For Pagitt, this God is “up and out,” distant and removed from us, utterly determining all events. For this God, we have to be perfect, but that won’t happen until the after-life, leaving us without much of a focus for now. Indeed, for them, the goal of the received version of the gospel is to go to heaven when we die, leaving us just with “sin management” now.
Those of other religions can be part of God’s peaceable kingdom. Since everyone is already “in” God (on their panentheistic views), sin does not separate us from Him. Indeed, for McLaren, all people encounter the Holy Spirit, and like John Hick, all human religions are imperfect responses to God because no one has direct access to how things really are. Everything is interpretation. Moreover, the goal of all religions is a moral makeover.
So, what are the sources of evil? They largely focus on sin in terms of systemic sources, not the depravity of individuals’ hearts or the reality of demons. For instance, Jones denies the reality of a real, fallen angel known as Satan. Nor is the fall of Adam and Eve historical. Moreover, if everything is integrated in God, it just wouldn’t make sense for there to exist literal demons, for then evil would be in God.
Given these views that God is nonviolent, that we already are “in” Him, and we don’t have souls (for we are physical beings), the penal substitution theory of the atonement doesn’t make much sense. There would not be punishment for sin or a need for hell.
They do, however, affirm life after death. What then makes it possible for someone to be resurrected and still be the same person? For if we do not have souls, but are just bodies, and our bodies constantly are changing, how can we be the same person now as the one who will live after our bodies’ death? Their answer is that God will “re-member” us; God will remember our story and reconstitute us.
How does God’s kingdom advance? It surely is not by violence or coercion. Rather, it comes by nonviolent resistance and love. For McLaren, the kingdom will come to earth as we live the way of Jesus now. Jesus will return, but not in violence to conquer His foes. For McLaren, that would be a jihadist, imperialist Jesus of the received version of the gospel story.
In the next post, I will begin to assess various aspects of their newer views.