The Upper Register Blog

In his latest book, Everything Must Change, McLaren talks about the biggest threats facing the globe at present — war, racism, poverty, global warming, etc. — but fails to discuss the one thing needful.  Richard Mouw has a good post that effectively responds to this nonsense. 

Scot McKnight admits (see comment 7) that Brian McLaren’s theory of the atonement is Girardian:

McLaren’s view of the cross in this section of his book, and I saw it in an even briefer form in his Secret Message, is a Girardian theory of atonement. That is, the cross exposes the unjustified violence wrapped up in turning victims into scapegoats, demonstrating that God is on the side of the victim and not on the side of the powerful. McLaren never quotes Girard that I know of; he could be absorbing this idea from Walter Wink.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on René Girard. (The reference to Walter Wink is his 1992 book, Engaging the Powers.) 

Girard’s theory of the atonement is one of the main theories (along with Christus Victor) adopted by those who reject penal substitution. The Girardian theory is particularly favored by those who are concerned that penal substitution sanctions violence. For a critique of Girard’s theory, see the helpful work of Kevin Vanhoozer:

“The Atonement in Postmodernity: Guilt, Goats and Gifts.” Pages 367-404 in The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Historical & Practical Perspectives: Essays in Honor of Roger R. Nicole. Ed. Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James III. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2004.

The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology. Westminster John Knox, 2005.

Have you seen Brian McLaren’s latest book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007)? Yikes, it’s a doozy. Scot McKnight has been summarizing/reviewing it on his blog. Basically McLaren asks “What are the biggest global problems we face right now?” (war, racism, genocide, poverty, global warming, and capitalism are high on his list) and then tries to restate the “gospel” in a way that it provides the answers. Using N. T. Wright’s work on Jesus as a guide, McLaren interprets Jesus’ message of the kingdom as a here-and-now solution to these global problems. In one appalling section of the book he compares the “conventional view” of the gospel with the “emerging view” (p. 78):

The Human Situation: What is the story we find ourselves in?

Conventional View: God created the world as perfect, but because our primal ancestors, Adam and Eve, did not maintain the absolute perfection demanded by God, God has irrevocably determined that the entire universe and all it contains will be destroyed, and the souls of all human beings — except for those specifically exempted — will be forever punished for their imperfection in hell.

Emerging View: God created the world as good, but human beings — as individuals, and as groups — have rebelled against God and filled the world with evil and injustice. God wants to save humanity and heal it from its sickness, but humanity is hopelessly lost and confused, like sheep without a shepherd, wandering further and further into lostness and danger. Left to themselves, human beings will spiral downward in sickness and evil.

Note that the conventional view is caricatured, as if it claims that “the entire universe and all it contains will be destroyed,” leaving only a whole bunch of immortal souls, some in hell and some in heaven. While there is some variation in the conventional view over the degree of continuity between the present creation and the new heavens and earth, all orthodox theologians follow Scripture and envision a future for creation and emphasize the glorification of the body.

As far as the emerging view goes, I find it interesting that McLaren regards the problem primarily in terms of sickness, confusion, wandering, and danger. There is a reference to “rebellion” at the beginning, but the focus is on structural sin and injustice in society, downplaying personal guilt before a holy God.

McLaren goes on to describe the solution (p. 79):

Jesus’ Message: How did Jesus respond to the crisis?

Conventional View: Jesus says, in essence, “If you want to be among those specifically qualified to escape being forever punished for your sins in hell, you must repent of your individual sins and believe that my Father punished me on the cross so he won’t have to punish you in hell. Only if you believe this will you go to heaven when the earth is destroyed and everyone else is banished to hell.” This is the good news.

Emerging View: Jesus says, in essence, “I have been sent by God with this good news — that God loves humanity, even in its lostness and sin. God graciously invites everyone and anyone to turn from his or her current path and follow a new way. Trust me and become my disciple, and you will be transformed, and you will participate in the transformation of the world, which is possible, beginning right now.” This is the good news.

Again, distortion. McLaren’s crass characterization of the atonement hints that he agrees with some of the criticisms currently being leveled against penal substitutionary atonement — it sanctions violence, it pits the Father against the Son, it is cosmic child abuse, and/or it does not reflect God’s love. McLaren ignores the Trinitarian and Chalcedonian context of the atonement which orthodoxy has always maintained. The Father loves the Son, even when the Son is undergoing divine wrath for us, for the Father is most exalted and most pleased by his Son’s obedience unto death. Furthermore, the giving up of his Son to bear divine wrath in order to satisfy divine justice is an expression of the Father’s own love for sinners.

With regard to his own view, notice the inherent moralism of his gospel. One simply changes his or her current path and becomes a disciple of Jesus with the goal of trying to transform the world. In other words, repentance means switching from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, switching from being a gas-guzzling, capitalist consumer to a Prius-driving, recycling, African-orphan-adopting, war protestor.

Further clarification is provided in the next section (pp. 79-80):

Purpose of Jesus: Why is Jesus important?

Conventional View: Jesus came to solve the problem of “original sin,” meaning that he helps qualified individuals not to be sent to hell for their sin or imperfection. In a sense, Jesus saves these people from God, or more specifically, from the righteous wrath of God, which sinful human beings deserve because they have not perfectly fulfilled God’s just expectations, expressed in God’s moral laws. This escape from punishment is not something they earn or achieve, but rather a free gift they receive as an expression of God’s grace and love. Those who receive it enjoy a personal relationship with God and seek to serve and obey God, which produces a happier life on Earth and more rewards in heaven.

Emerging View: Jesus came to become the Savior of the world, meaning he came to save the earth and all it contains from its ongoing destruction because of human evil. Through his life and teaching, through his suffering, death, and resurrection, he inserted into human history a seed of grace, truth, and hope that can never be defeated. This seed will, against all opposition and odds, prevail over the evil and injustice of humanity and lead to the world’s ongoing transformation into the world God dreams of. All who find in Jesus God’s hope and truth discover the privilege of participating in his ongoing work of personal and global transformation and liberation from evil and injustice. As part of his transforming community, they experience liberation from the fear of death and condemnation. This is not something they earn or achieve, but rather a free gift they receive as an expression of God’s grace and love.

McLaren gets the conventional view right when he says that Jesus saves people from the righteous wrath of God, a view that he obviously rejects. I’m not sure about the comment at the end that obeying God produces a happier life on earth; that may be true of the prosperity gospel, but biblical Christianity teaches that suffering, cross-bearing, self-denial, and dealing with adversity are an integral part of what it means to live in union with Christ.

Regarding his own view, I love the slogan that Jesus came to save the earth. Apparently, this is meant literally. Why not say, Jesus came to save the whales. Or, Jesus came to solve global warming. Or, Jesus came to prevent genocide. If that is why he came, his coming doesn’t seem to have been terribly effective. Of course, the orthodox view does affirm that all evil will be expunged from this physical creation and that a renewed, glorified creation will emerge out of the fires of judgment at the end of time. But that is something that we must patiently wait for at the parousia of Christ. We cannot work for it.

In addition, McLaren never answers his own question, “Why is Jesus important?” If God’s goal was to plant a seed of grace that will prevail to overcome all the evil and injustice in this world, why was the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God necessary? If the conventional view is correct, that Jesus came to accomplish the salvation of the elect through the atonement, then the incarnation, death, and resurrection make sense. But if the emerging view is correct, there is no reason for it. On McLaren’s view, Jesus would seem to be relevant merely in the sense that he taught some good things about loving our neighbors, turning the other cheek, and being non-violent. But there would seem to be no evident need for the pre-existent Son of God to be born of a virgin, to take a true human nature into personal union with himself, to become obedient to the point of death thus undergoing the wrath of God in our place, to be raised on the third day, and to be vindicated and exalted at the right hand of God. That’s a pretty elaborate metaphysical Rube-Goldberg machine on McLaren’s view. All God really needed to do, in Bob Newhart fashion, was to send a new prophet to tell the planet-destroying, violent, racist, capitalist world to “Stop it!”

I also detect a hint of Open Theism here. God is working with the world and with us in order that we might together create the world that God dreams of. God isn’t a coercive God. So he invites us participate with him in this creative, transformative enterprise. We don’t know if it will work, but we can know that God aches over the pain, evil, suffering, and injustice in the world as much as we do. But we have hope because Jesus planted a seed that will grow — if we nurture it.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather stick with the “old, old story” of personal guilt, God’s holy wrath, Christ’s atonement (obedience unto death), and the hope of the resurrection. Yes, Christians ought to be deeply involved in doing good deeds that are helpful to our neighbors — all kinds of good works, from adopting unwanted babies, to seeking racial reconciliation in our communities, and even to recycling if need be. But we do so in order to bring glory to Christ and to adorn the gospel, not to save the earth. We leave that job to Christ at the end of the age.

HT: Way of the Master

David Kirkpatrick’s recent article The Evangelical Crackup in the NYT is worth reading. He cites various reasons to hope that the Religious Right’s stranglehold on the Republican Party may be showing signs of loosening. The article cites a number of factors that might be behind this:  disillusionment with the war in Iraq, the passing of the first generation of Religious Right leaders, and churches growing weary of holy war sermons to rally the troops for yet another anti-abortion or anti-gay political campaign.

But there is a troubling dimension to this alleged crackup. The most important factor that Kirkpatrick cites is the rise of the evangelical left, of which emergent is a significant part. This is a very real phenomenon that we must come to grips with. They tend to hold policy positions similar to those of the Democratic Party with a focus on tax-supported, governmental solutions to poverty, health care, and so on. The problem is not with the positions per se, which could be argued pro and con on rational, secular, evidence-based grounds. The problem is the way the evangelical left attempts to theologically justify their policy positions by proof texts — typically, in the case of care for the poor, to various measures that were instituted in the theocracy of Israel. In addition, denizens of the evangelical left also tend to be committed pacifists in the Mennonite-Anabaptist tradition (I’ve seen this at Fuller). So one finds regular appeals to the Sermon on the Mount, as if turning the other cheek was Jesus’ carefully crafted position on how nation-states ought to engage in foreign relations.

The one area where I tend to resonate with the evangelical left is when they critique the theocrats on the Religious Right. But then they completely lose me when they simply exchange a theocracy of the right for a theocracy of the left. So even if a crackup is in the offing, it may not make much of a difference from the point of view of those like myself who hold that civil government ought to be religiously neutral. We’ll just have Republican theocrats and Democratic theocrats duking it out over “what theocracy would Jesus do” (WTWJD).

The evangelical left includes people like Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, Rick Warren and now even Bill Hybels. Quoting now from the Kirkpatrick piece:

[Hybels] described the message of his Willow Creek Association to its member churches in terms that would warm a liberal’s heart.

“We have just pounded the drum again and again that, for churches to reach their full redemptive potential, they have to do more than hold services — they have to try to transform their communities,” he said. “If there is racial injustice in your community, you have to speak to that. If there is educational injustice, you have to do something there. If the poor are being neglected by the government or being oppressed in some way, then you have to stand up for the poor.”

I can’t help but comment here. Full redemptive potential? What the heck is this guy smoking? Even if we succeed in making a difference in our communities by helping the poor or getting improved schools, we have only succeeded in helping on a this-worldly plane. We have not redeemed the culture. True redemption is eschatological and ushers us into the world to come. It cannot be effected by tinkering with this world.

Furthermore, how can we even begin to say that the church has redemptive potential? Don’t we preach that we have no redemptive potential in ourselves, and that our only hope of redemption is found in Christ and his cross and resurrection? “We do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Cor 4:5). Yes, we can and must preach Christ, not only with words, but also with good deeds that bring glory to Christ. Paul even exhorts Titus to “speak confidently” so that his people will be zealous to engage in good deeds which he describes as “good and profitable for men” (Tit 3:8). But “having redemptive potential” isn’t mentioned. Our good works can “adorn” the gospel (Tit 2:10) but they are not the gospel.

Okay, back to Kirkpatrick’s reporting: 

In the past, Hybels has scrupulously avoided criticizing conservative Christian political figures like Falwell or Dobson. But in my talk with him, he argued that the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement had lost touch with their base. “The Indians are saying to the chiefs, ‘We are interested in more than your two or three issues,’ ” Hybels said. “We are interested in the poor, in racial reconciliation, in global poverty and AIDS, in the plight of women in the developing world.”

He brought up the Rev. Jim Wallis, the lonely voice of the tiny evangelical left. Wallis has long argued that secular progressives could make common cause with theologically conservative Christians. “What Jim has been talking about is coming to fruition,” Hybels said.

Conservative Christian leaders in Washington acknowledge a “leftward drift” among evangelicals, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and the movement’s chief advocate in Washington. He told me he believed that Hybels and many of his admirers had, in effect, fallen away from orthodox evangelical theology. Perkins compared the phenomenon to the century-old division in American Protestantism between the liberal mainline and the orthodox evangelical churches. “It is almost like another split coming within the evangelicals,” he said.

In a forum on the state of evangelicalism over at Touchstone magazine, Darryl Hart seconds the motion and also sees the handwriting on the wall:

Arguably the greatest tension within Evangelicalism currently concerns the movement’s relationship to electoral politics. The older generation of Evangelical spokesmen, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson, is gradually being replaced (informally and mainly through the mainstream media) by a younger generation, including people like Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Jim Wallis.

The younger (though hardly youthful) Evangelical leaders are reluctant to participate in the culture wars and have embraced causes fairly distinct from those that defined the Religious Right. A Left-Right political struggle could well be the next fault-line within Evangelicalism.