A follow up to “A New Kind of Christianity”

by The RevNo Comments
I saw this today and that it would be great to link these four posts for you. Emergent Village did an interview with Brian McLaren. So, if you are not reading his book you can at least hear him talk in his own words. I thought it was a good interview and will help give you more insight into his positions. While many of my own issues are not dealt with, he gives you more to think about.Melvin Bray and Brian McLaren — Pt. 1Melvin Bray and Brian McLaren — Pt. 2Melvin Bray and Brian McLaren — Pt. 3Melvin Bray and Brian McLaren — Pt. 4...
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So what? or The What-Do-We-Do-Now Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the tenth and final post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The What-Do-We-Do-Now Question: How can we translate our quest into action?The final question that McLaren presents us with is really not a question that the Church is asking but is the question that the movement he is calling for needs to ask. This full out application, how do we move forward in light of the answers given to the previous nine questions? To answer this question McLaren turns to historians to help frame his answer. Specifically he calls on the macro-historian to help us understand where we are in the human quest. He labels each movement of humanity with...
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Why Don’t You Eat Cows? or The Pluralism Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the ninth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Pluralism Question: How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?McLaren begins his chapter on pluralism by setting the stage with this statement: “If we want to get on the right side of the life-and-death divide, we need to start with some sober, serious, old-fashioned repentance, starting with this admission: Christianity has a nauseating, infuriating, depressing record when it comes to encountering people of other religions (and a not much better record when encountering people of other brands of Christianity either). (208)” The question he determines to answer is, “how do we find a better approach to the religiously other...
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Where’s that Magic Eight Ball? or The Future Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the eighth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Future Question: Can we find a better way of viewing the future?McLaren now sets to go to work on dispensational eschatology in his third question regarding the application of a new kind of Christianity. He paints a humorous and relatively accurate picture of the dispensational premillenial understanding of eschatology. McLaren sees in this understanding of the eschaton the inherent willingness to destruction and war because Jesus is coming back and will be setting the world right through massive bloodletting in the war of the apocalypse.If this is the old way of understanding the future, then what is the right way?...
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You get up on Sunday and do what!? or the Church Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the sixth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Church Question: What do we do about the church?This is the first of five questions on how McLaren sees his vision of A New Kind of Christianity working itself out practically in the real world. McLaren paints a sad and realistic picture of the church. He says that owe are “divided, immature, confused about our purpose and identity, in danger of fragmenting our way into nonexistence, all at once bending over backwards and straddling fences, stiff of neck and soft of spine, and otherwise twisted and contorted in compromise. We have financial problems, sexual controversies, pride problems, schism threats, excesses...
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Extra, Extra, Good News!!! or the Gospel Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the fifth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Gospel Question: What is the GospelThe question of the gospel is critical. It is critical because in his letter to the Galatians, Paul says it is. McLaren specifically sets out to refute the following line of reasoning: I had always assumed that “kingdom of God” meant “kingdom of heaven, ” which meant “going to heaven after you die,” which required believing the message of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which I understood to teach a theory of atonement called “penal substitution,” which was the basis for a formula for forgiveness of original sin called “justification by grace through faith.” (138) This description...
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Who’s the long haired freak? or The Jesus Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the fourth post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The Jesus Question: Who is Jesus and why is he important?In this the fourth question, the Jesus question, McLaren seeks to find an authentic representation of who Jesus is in the Scriptures. The issue is particularly stated: Among those who become more self-aware about the danger of distortion, and understandable fear arises: if all of us (not just “all of them”) are tempted to make Jesus in our own image, then we should be extremely cautious about compromising, letting Jesus be reimaged according to contemporary tastes…By holding a presumptive hostitlity to new views of Jesus, which may indeed reflect contemporary biases, we...
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Who’s the Big Guy Upstairs? or The God Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the third post interacting with Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. Please remember that I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.The God question: Is God violent? God is a tribalistic, violent, cosmic child abuser. Do you believe that? This is the question that McLaren undertakes in the third part of A New Kind of Christianity. He says that as you read the Bible we bump into God doing or at least sanctioning genocide and violence. This seems to contradict the picture that we find in the life and person of Jesus. This leads to the natural question, “how can this be?”Beginning with this question, McLaren, begins to apply to theological questions his understanding of the overarching storyline of the Bible and...
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What’s the Story Jack? or The Narrative Question

by The RevNo Comments
This is the first of ten posts on Brian McLaren’s, “A New Kind of Christianity”. As we begin this little quest of ours I want you to know that I am not commenting on the introductory chapters and just diving into the “red meat”, so to speak. Also, I cannot reproduce the book in these posts. I will do my best to summarize without being overly simplistic or reductionistic. Each post will be two parts. The first will be a summary of McLaren’s discussion and the second will be my reflections.Without further ado… The Narrative Question: What is the overarching storyline of the Bible? For us to make sense of any book we must come to some conclusion about what is its main idea. We do this so that we can make interpretive decisions regarding a text’s finer details. To answer this question McLaren contrasts two ways of understanding the overarching storyline. The first way is that of the “Six Line Diagram”:This...
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A New Kind of Christianity

by The RevNo Comments
I have been reading Brian McLaren’s newest book, A New Kind of Christianity. It has totally engaged me. My mind is wrestling through the challenges that he has laid out. I am about half way through the text and I am very frustrated that he end-noted instead of foot-noted, I have a callous now from marking my place at the end-notes (OK not really, but you get my point). I am going to write ten more posts on the book and in each one I am going to interact with the question that McLaren proposes.Here’s your chance to look into the future: What is the overarching story line of the Bible? How should the Bible be understood? Is God violent? Who is Jesus and why is he important? What is the gospel? What do we do about the church? Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it? Can we find a better way of viewing the future? How should the followers of Jesus relate...
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