Founder and International Team leader of Salt and Light Ministries
A message of concern
In this letter I am writing specifically as a spiritual dad to our family of churches, but I am also addressing Christ’s church at large. Among their other responsibilities, leaders in the Body of Christ carry the role of “watchmen” who are to sound the alarm when danger threatens God’s people. According to Scripture, the watchman who is derelict in his duty to sound such an alarm will be held accountable. I take that very seriously, and therefore am willing to risk offending some of my fellow believers—including beloved friends—who may disagree with me.
My concern centers around two books by Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian and The Story We Find Ourselves In, in which the author uses a fictional narrative approach to cleverly present his postmodernist convictions. The stories are full of emotive situations that seductively draw the reader into responses that either blur the edges of orthodox doctrine or even argue an opposite viewpoint. As reviewer Douglas Groothuis described it, “This narrative approach makes the material more lively for those not inclined to read weighty treatises and allows the writer to suggest controversial ideas through his literary characters without forthrightly stating them.”
Since I was not reading these books for their entertainment value, I found it rather tiresome to wade through nearly 400 pages of dramatized dialogue in order to establish the author’s philosophical positions and pinpoint all his postmodern deviations from evangelical Biblical doctrine. As you may conclude from my review, I see nothing particularly new in “post modernity.” It is simply old-fashioned liberalism wrapped in a different cloak. During the mid-20th century the Baptist Union in northern
One reason I am so concerned is that this postmodernist literature is being acclaimed by evangelicals on both sides of the
Such an endorsement is disturbing (to say the least) in light of the following elements: the authority of Scripture is challenged; the penal substitution in the atonement is questioned; the final judgment is characterized as an assessment of all the good one has done; and when the fate of obvious evildoers is questioned, the response is, “Why do you always need to ask that question?” Furthermore, the Lordship of Jesus is re-interpreted; Darwinism is strongly promoted; Satan is depicted as an idea rather than a real being; and other religions like Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are viewed in a favorable light.
All through both books, any question that seeks an answer of objective truth is pushed aside with something akin to, “We don’t need to go into all that stuff; stick with the story.” (It reminds me of a comment attributed to Winston Churchill who, in a “political” moment, said to his research assistant, “Give me the facts, Ashley, and I will twist them the way I want to suit my argument.”) The main character in the story declares, “In the postmodern world, we become postconquest, postanalytical, postsecular, postobjective, postcritical, postorganisational, postindividualistic, postprotestant, and postconsumerist.”
The postmodernist teaching in both books is presented by the fictitious Dr. Neil Edward Oliver, better known as Neo. The real teacher, of course, is the author himself. If this point is missed, one can easily be misled. Recently a highly respected Bible scholar and friend told me he had read both books and found them quite stimulating. When I reminded him of some of the actual statements in the book, it was clear that he had not picked up on the implications.
Having read both books very carefully, I did find there were many things I could agree with. In that sense, I can understand why certain themes would resonate with most Christian readers. At the same time I was saddened and profoundly disturbed by the cavalier attitude toward truth displayed by McLaren’s main character, Neo, and astonished that he would be so brazen in his deconstructing efforts. The reader needs to understand that these teachings challenge the most fundamental doctrines of our evangelical faith. Here are a few examples—most of them couched in the statements of Neo:
1. The Authority of the Scriptures:
q “Well, I’m wondering whether you have an infallible text…” (p.50)
q “That oft quoted passage in second Timothy doesn’t say, ‘All Scripture is inspired by God and is authoritative,’ it says that Scripture is inspired and useful—useful to teach, rebuke, correct, instruct us to live justly, and equip us for our mission as the people of God. That’s a very different job description than we moderns want to give it. We want it to be God’s encyclopedia, God’s rule book, God’s scientific text, God’s easy-steps instruction book, God’s little book of morals for all occasions. The only people in Jesus’ day who would have had anything close to these expectations of the Bible would have been the Scribes and Pharisees. Right?” (p.52)
q “The Bible contains history….but lacks the modern concern for factual accuracy, corroborating evidence, and absolute certainty.” (p.56)
q “Old notions of truth and knowledge are being deconstructed. But we don’t need to get into all that vocabulary. The old notions are being questioned”…and “new understandings of truth and knowledge that might improve on them haven’t been fully developed yet.” (p.61)
q “Truth means more than factual accuracy.” “My goal in life is to help people love God and to know Jesus, not to hate the Buddha or disrespect Muhammad.” (p.60) “I’d have to say the world is better off having these religions than having no religions at all, or just one, even if it were ours.” (p.63)
q “I’m not against systematic theologies. I’m beginning to see them as an artifact of worship from the modern era, no less sincere or magnificent than medieval cathedrals – in fact you could call them modern conceptual cathedrals” (p.24). Neo goes on to say, “I believe that the modern version of Christianity that you have learned from your parents, your Sunday school teachers, and even your campus ministries is destined to be a medieval cathedral. It’s over, or almost over.”
q “In a post modern world we disabuse ourselves of the myth that theory precedes practice” (p.162).
McLaren’s character claims the Scriptures are not authoritative, but when you examine how Paul or Jesus used the Old Testament Scriptures, you find that they viewed Scripture as inerrant and completely authoritative. This was never more evident than when Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. Of all people, Jesus could have rebuffed Satan by using His own authority. Instead, He takes the sword of the Spirit (that Scripture which had been treasured in His heart and was now about to be spoken through His mouth) and says, “It is written…” The authority of Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit were more than simply “useful”; they were powerful weapons against which Satan had no recourse.
If you were the general of an army at war, and you wanted to render the opposing army defenseless, what would you do? You would make sure they had no weapons. That was exactly what the Philistines did in removing the blacksmiths from
Brian McLaren may not realize it, but by challenging the authority of the Word of God he is disarming God’s people and rendering them vulnerable to the enemy’s attack. By contrast, note how the New Testament church flourished as they trusted the authority of God’s Word: “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11).
J. I. Packer says, “A church in which scriptural teaching is no longer authoritative is already going with the world and has no ground on which to stand against it. If today’s trend cannot be reversed, then the outlook for tomorrow’s world is bleak indeed” (Truth & Power, IVP). This truth was foundational to the Reformation, as we see in this famous statement by Martin Luther: “My conscience is captive to the Word of God: to go against conscience is neither right nor safe; here I stand, there is nothing else I can do; God help me; Amen.” One of the great early Church fathers, Augustine, summarized it in this prayer, “What your Scripture says, you say.”
Packer writes further, “Jesus taught the absolute divine authority of the Jewish Scriptures. Some two hundred references in the Gospels combine to make his view of our Old Testament crystal clear. He saw the books as having human authors and a divine author, so that, for example, commands that Moses presents as the word of God are indeed such (Mk 7:8-13), and an expository comment in Genesis 2:24 can be quoted as what ‘the Creator…said’ (Mt 19:4).”
“From Scripture he [Christ] resolved questions of doctrine… and ethics… he justified the acts of his ministry… discerned his personal calling… So, having taught and enforced Scripture throughout his ministry, he went up to
2. The Lordship of Jesus:
q “Christianity started as an Eastern religion, Middle Eastern anyway. The word ‘guru’ is pretty close to the word for a Jewish rabbi in those days—a ‘master.’ That’s where we get the word ‘Lord.’ It doesn’t mean ‘master’ in reference to a slave, but master in the sense of…in the sense of a master of martial arts, for example, or a master craftsman or a violin master” (p.120-121 The Story…).
Apart from the fact that McLaren’s mouthpiece, Neo, is incorrect in his exegesis of the Greek text, the Bible itself takes a very different view of Lordship: “Behold my servant (bond-slave)…” (Isaiah 42:1). At the beginning of his letter to the Romans, Paul describes himself as the bond-slave of Jesus Christ, and writes to the church, “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification” (Rom. 6:22). And to the Philippians he wrote, “Wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10).
3. The sovereignty of God:
q McLaren´s character Dan, prays, “So God, whatever a person in ancient times would have meant by saying, ‘God is in control’(if he would have said such a thing at all) it is almost certainly very different from what we mean today. For him, your control was associated with farmers controlling animals or parents controlling children or perhaps a king controlling subjects—all very different from an operator controlling a machine ‘like clockwork.’ So if we say the Bible speaks of you being in control (a word that doesn’t even appear in the old King James Version according to my concordance), we run the risk of importing and imposing all our modern conceptions of clockwork, operation, mechanism onto you. We end up thinking of you in a way that may really distort both your nature and our situation in relation to you” (p.23 A New Kind…).
Actually, what Brian McLaren wrote in the above paragraph is a classic example of distortion. He claims that the word “control” does not even appear in the old King James Version. Well, as he should know, it most certainly appears in other versions of the Bible.
Let us read what the Bible has to say about God’s sovereignty (using the old King James Version, if you will): “For I know that the LORD is great. And that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, He does, in heaven and in the earth, in the seas and in all deeps.” I suppose McLaren might put this verse under the heading of poetry, and therefore not consider it authoritative. But Romans 13:1 says, “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”
4. Satan:
q “You know, if you go back into the most ancient parts of the Old Testament, there is no concept of Satan. That idea comes along much later. It seems to have been borrowed from the Zoroastrians, actually. Maybe it’s no sin to think of Satan as a metaphor—a horribly real metaphor for a terrible real force in the universe, mind you. I think it would be a terrible sin to dismiss Satan as something stupid or inconsequential.” (p. 103 The Story…) [This last sentence sounds like a thoughtful, cautionary statement, but note the word “something” rather than “someone” in reference to the devil.]
q Carol, one of the characters in the story asks, “What about the Garden of Eden? Who tempted Eve?” “Actually,” Neo replied, “in the story itself, the tempter is never referred to as Satan, just a snake. Later on of course—“ The conversation is cut off at this interesting moment by Dan, a budding disciple of Neo, who says, “I think we’re getting off on a bit of a tangent… We’re all agreed that evil is a personal phenomenon, something very real and very, very dangerous. Sounds a bit like the ‘Ying’ and the ‘Yang’ personal phenomenon…”
One of the key Scriptures about Satan says this: “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him” (Rev. 12:9).
5. Creation versus Darwinism:
q “The Jewish story says the world as created was good, even very good. But it doesn’t say perfect. Perfect is more of a Greek concept. Can you see that? Perfect has all the baggage of Greek idealism: ideal, unchanging, complete, fully formed and all that stuff. But that’s not the universe God creates” (p.52 The Story…).
These comments are misleading in several ways. First of all, the “Jewish story” is actually the Bible’s story, which is God’s story to us. Secondly, Neo (or more accurately, McLaren) inserts his own preconceived ideas into the text. Duane Harder points out that the Hebrew term for “very good” (dam bwT tob meod) is a powerful expression of the perfection of God’s creation. “Very” in its root form is translated “to bend, turn, surround, or strong.” However, when it is in the masculine declension it takes on the idea of “excess, excess of excess, or exceedingly. The word “good” is defined as “pleasant, agreeable, excellent, rich, right, or beneficial.”
When you put the two together, you have the idea of totality or the summation of all that is good—good as to senses, benefits, intellect, prosperity, etc.: that is, the totality of all that you could say is good. In other words, everything was formed to the utmost of perfection so that nothing could be added to or taken from it. The terms God uses here are in direct opposition to the theory of evolution in which life (including mankind) is seen as the product of “slime plus time.”
This description is also in sharp contrast with the fallen world we see today—a creation that was “subjected to futility” (Rom.
q “You know I’m going to tell the kids that I think evolution is one of God’s coolest creations, and that’s going to get some of the parents upset, if not some of the kids” (p.155 New Kind…).
q “For me, Carol, we can’t be faithful to God unless we are faithful to the facts, faithful to the data, if you will. And so instead of hiding from evolution, I think we’d be more faithful to God to look it right in the eye and learn from it.”
q “After all, as you well know, we humans are little more than hairless primates” (p.24 The Story…).
q “Bottom line: Go back before creation. If God is the only thing that exists, the only being that is, then God has to create some kind of neutral space, very literally, and God needs to create time, so that the universe can be itself, become itself, with some kind of freedom and authenticity. Otherwise, it’s just a puppet universe, just a simulation. Do you see it? So if God wants to make a universe that’s real, I think we would expect it to happen just as evolution says: the universe would develop, over time, writing its own story, so to speak. It’s a story of becoming, of unfolding, of novelties emerging and possibilities being explored and diversity flowering. And best of all, it’s not finished yet. We’re still in process, still young, still moving ahead toward what we’re going to be when we’re all ‘grown up.’ And each of us, through our lives, through our choices, by cooperating with God or by withholding our cooperation, plays a part in the continuing evolution of God’s creation. That’s not so bad, is it?” Carol responds, “…you’re blowing my mind. So for you, evolution isn’t the big enemy. It’s…. Wow, you’re blowing my mind” (p.98 The Story…).
Well, the only thing that will blow the mind of a discerning Christian is the notion that God created a universe that can “become itself.” That idea certainly doesn’t align with the God of Scripture who was intimately involved in all of creation. Nor does it square with the overwhelming evidence for “intelligent design” that scientists in our day continue to discover, particularly in terms of the “fine tuning” required to create the world we live in—where life depends on a multitude of factors being “just right” (out of billions or trillions of possibilities).
Regarding the description of humans as “little more than hairless primates,” I find a very different view in Scripture. We were created in the image of God, created to be part of God’s eternal family, to rule and reign with Him. Whether you listen to the voice of God in the Scriptures or in the natural world He created, you will find no “neutral space” where the universe is “becoming itself” or “writing its own story.” Instead, we find a God who “wrote the story”—including the part that includes free will—long before any of this (or any of us) even existed.
6. Hell:
q “Maybe it’s not that there are two places beyond the door of death, heaven and hell. Sometimes I wonder whether hell is just what heaven feels like for those who haven’t learned in this life what this life is intended to teach. I believe with all my heart that God is not willing for even one person to miss out on the joys and glories of heaven. I believe with all my heart that if there is any way for individuals to be rescued from their wrong choices in this life, I believe they will be rescued and redeemed. But I also believe that we have the sober responsibility of realizing this: as Pascal said, we are embarked. We are becoming on this side of the door of death the kind of people we will be on the other side” (p.91 New Kind…).
q Dan challenges Neo with: “Back to the tape, it sounded like you were saying that everyone goes to the same place, heaven, but experiences it differently, when Scripture makes it clear that there are two roads and two destinations, two different destinations.” Neo laughed: “Well now you know why that was one of my last sermons! I tried to be more forthcoming on my way out! But seriously, Dan, don’t you think that all of the language about heaven and hell is evocative language, not technical description? I know that moderns don’t have much capacity for poetry, having been enslaved to modern technical correctness for so long. But Jesus—Jesus was allowed to be evocative in his language. Shouldn’t we?”
q A few lines later he quotes Jesus as saying that even prostitutes would enter the kingdom before Bible scholars (p.95).
q In the chapter entitled “It’s none of your business who goes to hell” Neo says: “I yoke pluralism and relativism together because pluralism alone can mean many things. (For example, when it means acknowledging that there are many different cultures, many different approaches to religion, pluralism must be a positive thing. After all, it means that we are beginning to see the world the way God has always seen it! Yoked together, the terms refer to a popular approach to questions of heaven and hell that says, ‘There may or may not be a God, a heaven, a hell, and so on, but there are many beliefs about each, and all are valid for those who hold them. No one belief has superiority over the others.’ I placed this approach below the line because it is often a mood more than a logical position. But if you pinned it to the ground and forced a confession of faith about hell, I think it would say that since no one can prove anything either way or the other, you can choose whatever belief you want as long as you accept other’s rights to do the same” (p.126 A New Kind…).
q “Let the imagery of hell remind you that life is serious business.”
q “I have a feeling that if we knew more of the historical background of the concept of hell, we’d have a very different understanding of Jesus’ statement on it. The same goes for heaven” (p.127 A New Kind…).
7. Evangelicals:
In both books, McLaren repeatedly equates Evangelicals with the Scribes and Pharisees, portraying them as narrow-minded, trapped to the past, and ineffective in our contemporary world—a distinctly myopic view in which Evangelicals are represented by American TV evangelists begging for money.
I would like to pose a few questions: Who does he think the 100 million believers in
These are people who believe in the infallible Word of God as their only rule for faith and practice. Many of them face persecution and hardship every day of their lives and yet believe with all their hearts in the sovereignty of God. I say this having met the widows of martyred husbands and parents who have lost children. I recall one father in whose home Janette and I stayed whose little three-year-old girl was killed by a gunman’s stray bullet. The morning of his little daughter’s death, his pregnant wife was rushed to hospital and gave birth. In the afternoon he stood at the grave of his precious child and declared, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.” He believed in the sovereignty of God and therein was greatly comforted. I frequently feel I’m not worthy to even clean the shoes of these saints. Brian McLaren may be sincere in his comments about Evangelicals, but I have to say that I find these books an insult to their incredible courage and faith.
8. Re-mapping history:
McLaren’s view of historical periods is very telling. He sees the world in terms of five periods: (1) Prehistory; (2) Ancient World beginning c. 2500 B.C.; (3) Medieval World beginning c. A.D. 500; (4) Modern World beginning c. A.D. 1500; and (5) Post Modern World beginning c. A.D. 2000.
In so doing, he totally ignores Biblical history, the Old Testament, the nation of
She was right, of course. The cross marks the end of the Old Covenant and the beginning of the New, which—from God’s perspective—represents the turning point in His purposes on this earth. Rather than adopting the historical view of agnostics and humanists, or offering one’s personal opinion, we should be taking our cues from the Creator of the world who also happens to be the Lord of history.
In Ephesians 3:9-11 we read of the “mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus.” That Jesus Christ and God’s people (both
Conclusion:
Having read with increasing concern A New Kind of Christian and The Story We Find Ourselves In, I would have to agree with a reviewer for the Christian Research Journal, Douglas Groothuis, who referred to McLaren’s writing as “an unabashed apologetic for importing postmodernism into evangelical Christianity,” noting that objective truth and apologetic engagement are two of the main targets.
For a theologically trained evangelical reader, Neo’s comments may readily be recognized as a departure from Biblical truth. But for others, they can undermine the very foundations of their faith. A long time ago, someone asked a seemingly innocent question, “Did God really say…?” My prayer is that God will help us be on guard against any variations on that theme, be they modern, postmodern or otherwise, and that He will grant us discernment and “wisdom from above.”