In his fourth chapter, McLaren asks what salvation means exactly. He then goes on to explain that salvation means God coming in judgment to deliver us from the evil oppression of others, God confronting us with our own sinfulness and forgiving us, and God teaching us. And McLaren affirms that God does all of this …
McLaren the Ungenerous
In this next chapter of McLaren’s he makes a number of good points which, taken in isolation, would simply be good. But in the context he places them in, the direction is quite dangerous. It is kind of like admiring the discipline and marksmanship of a pirate crew. “Yes, quite. That was well done. But …
The Old “Me and C.S. Lewis” Ploy
In Chapter 2 (Chapter 3, but who’s counting?) Brian McLaren starts to say some good things about the manifestation of God in Christ. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t get very far. Compared to the superlative language of less generous orthodoxy, his praise sounds comparatively anemic — “I believe God was in Jesus in an unprecedented way” …
Rich Christians In An Age of Expensive Authenticity
Chapter One of A Generous Orthodoxy is actually Chapter Two, because of that odd Chapter Zero, and is a chapter which, for our purposes here, I will be calling Chapter Six. No, not really. The chapter is titled “Seven Jesuses I Have Known,” and is an outstanding example of the dabbler approach to truth that …
McLaren the Censorious
There are book reviews and there are book reviews. As I undertake a review of Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy, I believe that it is best for us to be frank. As my son put it in a discussion last night, my review mode is that I have apparently put on the hockey mask and …
A Picture Can Be A Thousand Times As Logocentric
For those who eschew definitions and logocentrism, but who still want to know what emergent is.
Reading Carefully
I am posting this here so that I don’t run into my own word limit (!) in the comment boxes. I don’t believe that Michael is reading McLaren carefully. And I know that he did not read or respond to my penultimate paragraph in the “What Actually Is the Case” post carefully. In his comment, …
What Actually Is the Case
The title of McLaren’s book, A Generous Orthodoxy, comes from a phrase coined by Hans Frei. And while there are serious objections to what Frei argues for elsewhere, he certainly has a firm grasp on the nature of pre-critical Christian thought. As he puts it, “In the earlier Protestant interpretive tradition, we have noted, the …
Inerrancy Too Weak
In the past I have criticized the inerrantist position (as popularly conceived) as being too weak. And in dealing with the assumption that theological conservatives somehow want the Bible to be their foundation for certainty about universals, thus making me a “foundationalist,” which I hotly deny, I find that I still have to explain how …
Christ the Foundation
I suppose that if believing in Jesus Christ as the cornerstone makes one a foundationalist, then I am a foundationalist. But otherwise not. Andrew Sandlin wants to describe an aspect of the contemporary conflict this way. “Today’s battle between us Christian postmodernists on the one hand and some Christian foundationalists on the other is at …