Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts

After setting down his alternative theological foundation, Brian launches into an exploration of “be-ology”—what it means to be as a Christian and human. (160) A natural first question after such a jarring experience with the first 5 questions is this: “What do we do about the Church?” Or more specifically: What is the Church?

Interestingly, up until this point Brian has not used the word church. I found this incredibly odd and disconcerting in a book that is supposedly exploring a new kind of Christianity. Odd that he would not use the very word Jesus Himself used to describe the group of people who are his followers, i.e. Christians; disturbing that his new theology and faith is not specifically for the Church. For someone who describes himself as “a lifelong churchgoer and a veteran pastor,” I wondered why in 160 pages (and beyond this chapter) he never utters the word. I think the reason becomes clear when we explore the answers Brian provides to his question.

He begins this section, and rightly so, describing the fear and antipathy modern culture has toward the church. The sentiments he describes reflect one which someone exclaimed in a conversation I describe in my book I had with a fellow Starbucks barista: “The church is fucked up!”¹ As Brian describes the current crisis, “When enough church leaders wake up and smell the Ben-Gay, when they realize that their faith communities are shrinking and wrinkling and stiffening, they start to ask the church questions very urgently: What are we going to do about the church?” (162)

He says that we should stop worrying about what forms the church takes (thanks you!) and start seeing “ourselves as servants of one grander mission, apostles of one greater message, seekers on one ultimate quest…What would that one mission, message, and quest be? Around what one grand endeavor can we rally? What one great danger do people need to be saved from and, more positively, what one great purpose do they need to be saved for?” (164)

In other words: Why does the church exist? According to Brian, “to form Christlike people, people of Christlike love…the formation of Christlike people of love naturally becomes the grand unifying preoccupation and mission of our churches.” (164, 165)

At one level this seems fine, but does the church in any way exist to save people as the earliest church themselves existed? Yes. According to Brian, the church exists to save people “from the great danger of wasting their lives, becoming something less than and other than they were intended to be, gaining the world but losing their soul.” (emphasis mine. 164)

In answering question 6, then, the Church must totally rethink the Her core mission and identify that mission along these terms. (165) That mission, then, is “forming people of Christlike love” (171) and “save them from…wasting their lives” (164)

That’s it folks.

It’s funny, because I thought the Church was a community of redeemed and rescued people sent on mission to reconcile the world to God through Christ.

Does not Paul explicitly explain the mission of the Church in 2 Cor. 5:11-21 when he explains the God gave “us” the community of believers the “mission of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them”? Are we not Christ’s ambassadors who have been committed the message of reconciliation: “Be reconciled to God”? Is not God making His appeal through the Church to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ? And is not the basis of that reconciliation that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”?

While I am with Brian at one level, that the mission of individual church communities is to form Christlike people. Christlike formation, however, is part of sanctification! In other words, forming Christlike people who follow the way of love happens only after that have been made new through individual “transformation moments.” What is that transformation moment? When a person choses to be “in Christ” (that incredibly key, distinctive theological rallying point for Paul throughout his letters) and the old person goes a ways and the new person begins.

For Paul humans are born “in Adam” and live out of the flesh, their sinful nature (Rom 5:12-20). They are alienated from God and His enemies and by nature people of His wrath (Col 1:21; Eph. 2:3). But “in Christ” Paul also makes clear that this condition is a past condition. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” (Col. 1:21) “Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”

These and other pieces of the Holy Scripture make plain that there was an old condition and a new condition; a moment when someone is not a believer/follower and when someone is. Even more important there is a time when someone is not reconciled to God and a moment when a person is through Christ. To put it in more exclusionary terms: a person is part of God’s community or they are not, part of the Church or not. Brian cannot voice this, however.

All of this is incredibly important to Brian’s definition and mission of the Church, which misses a vital, necessary piece: faith in Christ. The church is NOT simply a group of people who act like Christ and follow the way of love (though this is an important, vital part of having a real, genuine faith in Christ) and saved from wasting their lives. This is the Kiwanis, a great group of people who’s current motto is “serving the children of the world.” Service and love is not distinctive to the Church nor to Jesus. You could say the same thing for the PeaceCorp, though such Imperial comparisons might draw a lightning bolt or two from Brian.

No, the Church is the community of people who have been rescued from death through the forgiveness of their sins by faithing in the final sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, who by His own blood entered the Most Holy Place once and for all, thus obtaining eternal rescue and life for those who faith in Him. Consequently, those who are saved and believe in Jesus act as the continuing presence of Christ to spread His Kingdom Reign on earth.

That’s the Church, Brian McLaren.

As Paul writes in Ephesians 2: “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich and mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

The word “us” is used 4 times along side with/in Christ 4 times. Paul is speaking to the Church, the redeemed and the rescued and the reconciled in Christ. This is the message and banner of the Church: BE RECONCILED TO GOD IN CHRIST!

This is the very message of the earliest of the Church in Acts. They didn’t preach “live like Jesus” but “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16) In the face of Jewish persecution and Roman imprisonment they didn’t proclaim “don’t waste your life” but “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” (Acts 2) God raised Jesus from the dead, and the forgiveness of sins and freedom from sins in Christ was the consistent message of the Church, stemming from Her mission to go into all the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. (Acts 13 and Matthew 28).

In reality, Brian’s church is not church at all, but a social club devoid of any power because it is disconnected from Jesus Christ as exclusive Lord and Messiah.

This Holy Friday I am reminded how important it is for the Church to boldly, confidently shout from roof-top to roof-tops that Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again! Through the Church God is dispensing His grace and forgiveness and reconciliation and rescue from sin and death, because it is through Jesus Christ and Him alone that all of this is accomplished. The power for forgiveness and reconciliation and life transformation and individual rescue from evil, sin and death is through death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, both of which are mysteriously missing from the mission and message of Brian’s church.

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1. the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus, 37. [↩]

Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts

After insisting that a new kind of Christianity demands a new reading of the biblical narrative, Brian McLaren argues for a new approach to the Bible, because as he argues, “we’ve gotten ourselves into a mess with the Bible.” (68). We are in trouble in three main ways:

1. Scientific—”Fundamentalism again and again paints itself into a corner by requiring that the Bible be treated as a divinely dictated science textbook providing us true information in all areas of life, including when and how the earth was created, what the shape of the earth is, what revolves around what in space, and so on…This approach has set up Christians on the wrong side of truth again and again, from Galileo’s time, to Darwin’s, to our own.” (68)
2. Ethical—”The Bible, when taken as an ethical rule book, offer us no clear categories for many of our most significant and vexing socioethical quandaries. We find no explicit mention, for example, of abortion…human rights…sexual orientation…global climate change…genetic engineering (among others). If we must steer our ship by wrestling biblical passages to bear on these issues in a simple “though shalt not,” way we will find ourselves stuck precisely where we are stuck now, and largely paralyzed in solving major life-and-death-of-the-planet issues and largely obsesses with narrow hot-button feuds that feuds…” (69)
3. Peace—”Many of us are afraid that the Bible is becoming a box cutter or a suitcase bomb in the hands of too many preachers, pastors, priests, and others. When careless preachers use the Bible as a club or sword to dominate or wound, they discredit the Bible in a way that no skeptic can.” He uses the the examples of pastors pulling verses to justify the preemptive strike against Iraq, declares you could “probably turn on a Christian radio broadcast today and hear a preacher deny human rights to Palestinians on…’biblical grounds,’” and trots out the example of “how the Bible was used by the defenders of slavery in contrast with the promoters of abolition” in Western Europe in general and American in particular.” (69-70)

In light of this “triplet of troubles” “we must find new approaches to our sacred texts (Interestingly, he doesn’t particularly identify the Holy Scriptures here, but generalizes it to, perhaps, include other “sacred texts,” like the Koran?)…” (70) In the end, “this habitual, conventional way of reading and interpreting the Bible that allowed slavery, anti-semetism, apartheid, chauvinism, environmental plundering, prejudice against gay people, and other injustices to be legitimized and defended for so long…we still use the Bible in the same way to defend any number of other things that have not yet been fully discredited, but soon may be.” (76)

And what exactly is “this habitual, conventional way of reading and interpreting the Bible”? Reading the Bible as a legal constitution. This constitutional approach, used “especially in conservative settings,” is defined as: “looking for precedents in past cases of interpretation, sometimes favoring older interpretations as precedents;” arguing “framers’ intent” (or author’s intent in biblical hermeneutics terminology); approaching the biblical text “as if it were an annotated code.” (78-79)

Instead, we need to see the Bible as it actually is: “a portable library of poems, prophets, histories, fables and parables, letters, sage sayings, quarrels, and so on…it’s the library of a culture and community—the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The biblical library is a carefully selected group of documents of paramount importance for people who want to understand and belong to the community of people who seek God and, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.” (emphasis mine. 79, 81)

At this point, I want to ask Brian these questions:

1. Is the Holy Scripture authoritative for defining how we are to relate to God and others?
2. Is the Holy Scripture God’s Textual act of Divine self-disclosure?
3. Are there other texts through which God reveals Himself?
4. Is the Holy Scripture Christocentric? Meaning: Does not the whole of the Holy Scripture center exclusively on Jesus Christ, rather than simply “the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.”

Let’s see how Brian answers these questions:

“The biblical library has a unique role in the life of the community of faith, resourcing, challenging, and guiding the community of faith in ways that no other texts can. It is uniquely valuable to teach, reprove, correct, train, and equip us for love and good works, as the apostle Paul says. It provides a kind of encouragement that is central and unique to the community of Christian faith.” (emphasis mine. 83)

He then goes on to acknowledge that Plato, Muhammed, and the Buddah “all say interesting and brilliant and inspiring things,” and he can “learn a lot from their words,” as much as from Clement, Luther, Calvin, Borg and Crossan. “But to say that God inspired the Bible is to say that, for the community of people who seek to be part of the tradition of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Amos, John, Mary, and Jesus, the Bible has a unique and unparalleled role that none of these other voices can claim.” (83)

OK, Brian, but why does it simply have a unique role? And why does it have a central and unique role only for the Christian faith? Why isn’t the Holy Scripture the sole textual authority for the entire world?

Brian cannot (bring himself to) say that the Bible is inspired by God and is the sole textual point of God’s divine self-disclosure, only that it has “a unique and unparalleled role.” He also cannot say the Bible is for the entire world, but only for the “community of Christian faith.” Somehow, God “breaths life into the Bible, and through it into the ‘community of faith’ and its members, and into my soul,” without even explaining what this even means. While it sounds nice, it makes no sense. How does God do this? What is he “breathing?” Is He Himself even saying anything? This leads to a more important, fundamental question: Is God Himself revealed through the Bible itself?

Unfortunately, according to Brian, no. “This inspired library preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed.” (83) The Living God then is not reveal through the Holy Scripture, but simply the “ongoing vigorous conversation” and “vital civl argument.” He says this very thing when he argues against reading the Bible in away that says “God’s message is supposed to be found in the plain words of the biblical text:”

“revelation occurs not in the words and statements of individuals, but in the conversation among individuals and God. It happens in conversations and arguments that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions across generations. Revelation accumulates in the relationships, interactions, and interplay between statements.” (91-92)

Pay attention to what Brian has said here: McLaren believes revelation is about human conversation about God, rather than God Himself revealing Himself to humanity. He says that in the Hebrew Scriptures “we have so many voices, and voices of different kinds…in the Christian Scriptures we have several gospels…and we have many other voices as well.” In an effort to push this conversational framing of the Text, he uses the Book of Job as a rhetorical device, wondering aloud, “Could Job be a fractal of the whole Bible, then: many voices arguing, debating, stating, and counterstating, asking and answering?” He goes on to say, “Could it be that God’s Word intends not to give us easy answers and shortcuts to confidence and authority, but rather to reduce us, again and again, to a posture of wonder, humility, rebuke, and smallness in the face of the unknown?” (93)

While the Holy Scripture certainly does not give easy answers and does leave us in speechless wonder, Brian completely dismisses how the Church has views God’s revelation for centuries: God is not unknown and has deliberately disclosed Himself to humanity; God Himself is deliberately speaking to us through the Text. The Bible is not simply a conversation among many different voices, but one Voice speaking to us in a variety of ways. I do agree with Brian that the Bible is unlike any other book: it is a very diverse body of genres and voices through which God is speaking. Far from being simply a “record of a vibrant conversation, and a stimulus to ongoing conversation,” however, it contains the voice of God itself as He has chosen to speak to us about Himself.

Though it will become far more apparent in the next question—at which point Brian blatantly says that “the Bible is an ongoing conversation about the character of God“—let’s be clear: from the looks of it, according to Brian the Bible neither contains the real voice of God, but rather the voices of individuals speaking about God, nor is it a real, single authority for understanding God properly, since it is merely an evolving conversation about Him in which varying people give varying perspectives.

The greatest travesty of Brian’s perspective is this line on page 81:

It’s the library of a culture and community—the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The biblical library is a carefully selected group of documents of paramount importance for people who want to understand and belong to the community of people who seek God and, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.

Here Brian reduces the Christian faith to one among three who, “trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Furthermore, somehow Brian reduces the Church simply to a pluralistic “community of people who seek God, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.” The problem with his logic is that for Brian the Bible is really all about God, not Jesus Christ.

Like the biblical narrative itself, which he fails to exclusively root in Jesus Christ, Brian refuses to root the Bible’s self-disclosure of God in Him, too. According to Brian, the “community of people who seek God” in the Bible apparently are not seeking it in Jesus Christ alone, but rather simply the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This allows Brian to include Jews and Muslims in his “community of people” tent of those seeking God.

Unfortunately for Brian, the Christian faith has insisted for generations that the God found in the biblical text is not simply “the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.” The God found in the Bible is Jesus; Jesus Christ is the God of the Holy Scripture around whom the Text itself pivots. And unless someone acknowledges this, they really are not seeking after the one true God.

The one true God has supremely revealed Himself in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore, neither the knowledge nor revelation of God can be divorced from the knowledge and revelation of Jesus Christ. Indeed knowledge of Jesus Christ is the ultimate, only access to the knowledge and revelation of God. Why doesn’t Brian acknowledge this? Why does he divorce the authority of the Text and revelation of God found in it from Jesus Christ Himself? Why does he not simply say, “The Bible reveals God, in the person of Jesus Christ”?

So far, it is apparent that for Brian the Story and Revelation of God is not really about Jesus Christ, but about a generic, vanilla World-Spirit god. This will become far more apparent when Brian discusses God Himself in question 3, The God Question. Using the question, “Is God violent?” McLaren reveals his belief that the Bible progressively reveals an evolved understanding of God, rather than God Himself. This view ultimately cashes out in the person of Jesus, who is simply an evolved likeness and revelation of the character of God, rather than God Himself.

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Spoiler Alert! Throughout this post I give away some of the movie themes and toward the end of this post I give away the ending. If you don’t want to know what happens, read no further

A week ago my wife and I watched the engrossing movie The Book of Eli. It is an American post-Apocalyptic film in which the main character, Eli (played by Denzel Washington), is on mission to bring a book to the West Coast. That book turns out to be the last remaining Bible, the last remaining Bible, a King James Bible no less. Along the way another man, Carnegie (playes by Gary Oldman), seeks to recover the book to use it for his own powerful purposes.

Many things could be said about the movie, but six things stood out, three good and three not so good. First the good:

1. A consistent theme was the idea of walking by faith and not by sight. Throughout the movie the only thing Eli knew was that he was to go from the East Coast where he came to the West Coast where he was to complete his mission by bring the Book there. He did not know what he would encounter or how he would survive. He only knew he would (because of the promise of survival and provision from the Voice who told him to ‘Go!’) and that he had to do this thing to which he was called. The same is true for us on our own journey called Life.
2. On that note, his blindness plays a significant role in the ending: at one point Eli is forced to give up the Book he spent half a life-time defending and protecting to the man who wanted it for powerful, malicious ends. He finally gives it up, but when the villian goes to read it, it’s in brail. I can’t help but think of Jesus’ line, “Let those who have ears, here.” Likewise, “Let those who have eyes, see.” It was impossible for Carnegie to “see” the Holy Scripture because he did not have the eyes necessary to understand and interpret it, much less read it. I could be wrong, but that stood out to me. In the end we also find out he has memorized the entire thing, which leads to the last point and the ending.
3. One line from Eli got me: “I’ve spent so long guarding and protecting this Book that I forgot to live out it’s teachings.” WOW! How true for much of Christianity! How many of us have memorized large portions of the Holy Scriptures, yet it never finds itself pouring out of our life? Toward the beginning there was a point when Eli stumbled across a husband and wife who were being harassed and assaulted by a marauding group of savages. Eli hid behind a rock and did nothing, right after he slaughtered a group of people to protect the Book inside his bag. He could defend the Book but not the people the Book told him to love. Reminded me of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Though the idea of defending the Text and caring for people in the process is not mutually exclusive (meaning we should only care about loving people at the expense of loving and defending what the Text says about how we are to live) it also reminded me how often we defend Scripture at the expense of other people.

Now for the three disappointing things:

1. The Book/Bible is portrayed as a weapon used by the powerful to gain/maintain authority and power over the weak. This was captured in Carnegie’s lust to get hold of this Book at all cost, including murder. Carnegie believed that what was contained within the Book could make him powerful and he could use it to control the masses in order to achieve his powerful aims. This is consistent with Michael Foucault’s deep hermeneutic of suspicion of Institutions that characterize our postmodern culture, including the Institution of Christianity. As I wrote elsewhere, our postmodern culture pictures the Church in the form of Christianity as a Warring Despot hell bent on using any powerful means necessary to bring all people and people-groups in subjection to their version of normalcy, which is through “The Bible says…” I am not suggesting this is true, but it does reflect our cultures institutional angst, much less Christianity angst.
2. The movie also suggested violence was justified to protect and guard the Book in order to carry out Eli’s mission. Throughout his journey to fulfill his mission, Eli killed or maimed in order to protect and defend the Bible. This movie, then, appears to be a scathing indictment against the ways in which Christianity has used violence to defend and promote its aims. While I understand many have done horrendous things in the name of Christianity (like the Crusades of a distant memory or abortion doctor killings of recent ones.), this is neither the Way of Christ or the Church at large. Though I could be misunderstanding this plot device, I am disappointed the movie would make this suggest Christians as individuals or the Church as a whole is simply about using violence (rather physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual) in order to live out its mission. Come on!
3. Finally, ending basically ruined the whole thing for me. It was quite disappointing, though utterly predictable (though as a committed Christian, I am confused why Denzel would even do this film!). As I’ve written in three other posts regarding the trend within even Christianity to dismiss the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. In the end, Denzel recites the Bible verbatim and a Curator of Culture (stationed at Alcatraz of all places) copies it by hand and reprints it using a Gutenber-style press. It was then brought to a book shelf and placed alongside three other books: the Tanak, Torah, and Koran. In fact, there was a space already created between the Torah and Koran, suggesting that the Bible is one more book among many, one faith-option among a myriad of options.This doesn’t surprise me in the least for Hollywood to produce a film that sends this message. It makes sense. Our culture believes that the Bible and Christianity is one option among many. I am surprised and deeply disappointed, however, that a self-proclaimed Christian would star in a lead role in a film that pushes this message. In his new book, “It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian,” another self-proclaimed Christian and director of a Christian faith community, Samir Selmanovic’s, says the same thing when he writes, “to say God has decided to visit all humanity through only one particular religion is a deeply unsatisfying assertion about God.” (pg. 9) In fact, “As long as those of us who are Christians insist on staying enclosed in our own world of meanings, we have nothing more to say to the world. Without recognizing God, grace, and goodness outside of the boundaries we have made and without the possibility of expanding our understanding of God, grace, and goodness, we have come to a place where Christianity as we know it must either end or experience another Exodus.” (60-61).

It makes sense our world would deny Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. I expect nothing less, to be honest. It doesn’t that self-proclaimed Christians do, which is what these Christians are saying when they say God is revealed outside of Christianity. Christianity is a straw-man, anyway. The point isn’t Christianity. The point is Jesus Christ and the Holy Scriptures (Old and New) tell of God’s complete Story of Rescue which points to Jesus Christ and Him alone.

A few weeks ago I wrote how I am taking a more hyperlocal focus with novus•lumen. While this post seems to be outside that new focus, it isn’t: I am deeply troubled by the trend within the local, West Michigan Church that is trending toward discounting and downplaying the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. In the interest of Inter Faith dialogue and religious accommodationism, it is not longer really about Jesus Christ, but It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian http://www.amazon.com/Its-Really-All-About-God/dp/0470433264″>really about God, a generic way of accommodating any and all expressions of God, which is really idolatry.

As Karl Barth said in His Church Dogmatics, “[God] is wholly and utterly in His revelation in Jesus Christ.” (CD II 1:75) “Any deviation, any attempt to evade Jesus Christ in favour of another supposed revelation of God, or any denial of the fulness of God’s presence in Him, will precipitate us into darkness and confusion.”(CD II,1:319). Why can’t Grand Rapids Christians proclaim this with as much boldness and courage as Karl? Or the apostles? When they (specifically Peter) was confronted by the religious leaders of his day, this is how he responded:

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them: “Rulers and elders of the people! If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple and are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He is ” ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone.” Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.

Then the Scriptures say that these leaders were “astonished” when they say the courage of the ordinary man Peter. Courage is what we Grand Rapids Christians need, not religious accomodationism. Tolerance of other beliefs and faiths, sure. I have no problem with that. Not at the expense of courageously proclaiming that “Jesus is Lord” and God raised Him from the dead and exalted Him to His right hand. I only wish Denzel had the guts to make this proclamation. Will the Grand Rapids Church?

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A 4 week series based on a paper called “DIGGING UP THE PAST: KARL BARTH AS FOE TO THE EMERGING CHURCH ON THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION.” Non-identified citations relate to Rollin’s It’s Really All About God CD equals Barth’s Church Dogmatics.

Series Posts
1—Introduction
2—“God Speaks”
3—“God’s Revelation is Jesus Christ”
3—Conclusion

“GOD’S REVELATION IS JESUS CHRIST”

Not only do leaders within the emerging church question our ability to know God and wonder about the extent to which God has truly spoken, the center of that knowledge and speaking is questions, too. The historic Christian faith has taken seriously Jesus’ own claim in John 14:9 that, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” In the past, it was believed that God the Father is revealed in God the Son, the One True God is only found in Jesus Christ. Now, however, even this central idea to the Rule of Faith is questioned.

In an essay in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, Samir Selmanovic participates in this questioning when he claims, “We do believe that God is best defined by the historical revelation in Jesus Christ, but to believe that God is limited to it would be an attempt to manage God. If one holds that Christ is confined to Christianity, one has chosen a god that is not sovereign.”(emphasis mine) (129) In fact, he writes elsewhere that the revelation of the grace of God through Jesus Christ, which is so central to the Rule of Faith of historic Christianity, is not exclusively limited to that faith or person, either. “We Christians have insisted that our revelation is the only container and only dispenser of grace. The rest of the world, graced from within, has been steadily proving us wrong. Grace is independent.” (52) The revelation that has come through the Holy Scriptures and Jesus Christ himself are not the only containers of God’s grace; grace is found outside the Christian Story. According to Selmanovic, neither the revelation of God Himself nor of His grace is contained or confined to Jesus Christ.

In his newly released book, It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian, Selmanovic continues his initial thoughts on God’s Christian containment by arguing, “to say God has decided to visit all humanity through only one particular religion is a deeply unsatisfying assertion about God.”(9) In order to protect his argument in favor of religious pluralism, he claims that none of us are in charge of God, God refuses to be owned and to comply with our religious constructs. (16, 18) In fact, “As long as those of us who are Christians insist on staying enclosed in our own world of meanings, we have nothing more to say to the world. Without recognizing God, grace, and goodness outside of the boundaries we have made and without the possibility of expanding our understanding of God, grace, and goodness, we have come to a place where Christianity as we know it must either end or experience another Exodus.” (60-61)

In experiencing another Exodus, Christians must acknowledge that God is everywhere—in every person, every community, and all creation—otherwise we will loose the basis for seeing God anywhere. (61, 64) Ultimately, Selmanovic insists that “the Christianity that claims exclusive possession of God’s revelation in the person of Jesus has hijacked that same God from the world.”(68) After reducing Christianity to one of three monotheistic “religions,” Selmanovic shows his real hand: “People want God, but not one who is the captive of a religion. They want an unmanaged God. Free God. That’s where hope comes from.” (90, 92) Apparently, Selmanovic also desires a God free from religion, Christianity, Jesus Christ.

Barth paints a very different picture in his Dogmatics, however. He boldly asserts that God’s revelation is only, exclusively in Jesus Christ. While Selmanovic believes that God is simply best defined by the historical revelation in Jesus Christ, Barth insists God is only defined by Jesus Christ. To suggest that God is not limited to “the historical revelation in Jesus Christ” is foreign to the Holy Scriptures and historic Rule of Faith. Barth argues this very point when he writes, “[God] is wholly and utterly in His revelation in Jesus Christ.”(CD II,1:75) He also makes plain that we must know Jesus in order to know God, because “in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). (CD II,1:252) Furthermore, Barth makes clear that what he describes in his Dogmatics is the knowledge of God as found in the knowledge of Jesus; unless Jesus Christ is the reference point for the revelation of God, “we have not described it in faith, or as the knowledge of faith, and therefore not in any sense as the true knowledge of God.” (CD II,1:252)

While Selmanovic may believe that “Grace did not start with Christianity and will not end with Christianity. It is a common thing in this world,” (51) Barth argues, “When we appeal to God’s grace, we appeal to the grace of the incarnation and to [Jesus Christ] as the One in whom, because He is the eternal Son of God, knowledge of God was, is and will be present originally and properly.” (CD II,1:252) For Barth, the revelation of God through grace is intimately and only connected to Jesus Christ because His own act of divine self-disclosure is bound up with Him, too. Jesus Christ is given to the whole being of God, not simply a part of Him, and God is not known at all unless He is known in His entirety as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Creator, Reconciler, and Redeemer. (CD II,1:51-52) It is in His grace through Jesus Christ that God is known as Reconciler and Redeemer. Rather than experiencing the knowledge of God and His grace apart from Jesus Christ, both are intimately connected to Him. It is only in Jesus Christ that we know and understand God and His grace, which is revealed in the gospel that defines life.

Selmanovic goes on to rhetorically wonder, “Is our religion the only one that understands the true meaning of life? Or does God place his truth in others too? Well, God decides, and not us. The gospel is not our gospel, but the gospel of the kingdom of God, and what belongs to the kingdom of God cannot be hijacked by Christianity.” (“The Sweet Problem of Inclusivism,” 194) In this argument Selmanovic does two things: 1) the Kingdom of God is not connect simply to Jesus; and 2) the Kingdom of God itself is a vehicle of what Barth call’s “divine immanence.”

Barth, however, makes it clear that God’s Kingdom is not known at all apart from Jesus Christ, and doing otherwise establishes a Christian heresy. As he warns, “Christian heresies spring from the fact that man does not take seriously the known ground of divine immanence in Jesus Christ, so that from its revelation, instead of apprehending Jesus Christ and the totality in Him, he arbitrarily selects this or that feature and sets it up as a subordinate centre: perhaps the idea of creation…or even the kingdom of God.” (CD II,1:319)

First, Selmanovic clearly describes the kingdom of God in terms that are utterly disconnected from Jesus Christ alone. Secondly, he has selected the feature of the kingdom of God and believes it as a revelatory ground of “divine immanence,” instead of Jesus Christ alone. Barth counters that such people are “oblivious of the fact that [divine] immanence both as a whole and in its parts has Christian truth and reality only in so far as it is founded in Jesus Christ and summed up in Him, so that if, as a whole and in its parts, it is affirmed, preached and believed as a centre in itself and alongside Christ, the Church will inevitably be led back into heathendom and its worship of the elements.” (CD II,1:319) Selmanovic affirms this devastating indictment by claiming the Kingdom is not exclusively limited to Jesus Christ:

Many Christians believe that the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke about is inseparable from knowing the person of Jesus. If so, the question begs to be asked: Is the Kingdom of God present in all of life, among all people, throughout history, or is the Kingdom of God limited to the historical person of Jesus and thus absent from most of life, most people, and most history? The answer to this question depends greatly on whether Christians are willing to make their religion take a backseat to something larger than itself. (76-77)

Selmanovic completely disconnects God’s revelation from the person of Jesus Christ and makes it no longer exclusively connected to him, too. In light of these observations it seems clear enough from Selmanovic’s arguments that the kingdom of God, as part of divine immanence, has been wrested from its moorings in Jesus Christ and is “affirmed, preached and believed as a centre in itself and alongside Christ.” God is now revealed in the kingdom of God and alongside from Jesus Christ, not through Him alone.

Not only does Selmanovic believe that the kingdom of God apart from Jesus Christ reveals God, he denies that God is revealed fully and exclusively in Him. Selmanovic both favors another revelation of God apart from Jesus Christ (the kingdom of God) and denies that the fulness of God’s revelation is in Him alone. As Barth reminds us, though, “Any deviation, any attempt to evade Jesus Christ in favour of another supposed revelation of God, or any denial of the fulness of God’s presence in Him, will precipitate us into darkness and confusion.”(CD II,1:319) According to Barth, then, Selmanovic’s belief that God is revealed in a separate act of divine immanence (the kingdom of God) apart from Jesus Christ “will precipitate us into darkness and confusion.” Likewise, his assertion that God is not revealed wholly, simply, exclusively in Jesus Christ will have the same result. At this point it is clear Selmanovic’s belief in the revelation and knowledge of God largely departs from the historic Rule of Faith of the Church. In response Barth would adamantly declare it is really not all about God. It is really all about Jesus Christ.

Popularity: 5% [?]

So apparently there are more people interested in my book than I thought The GREAT GIVEAWAY is over. I hope those who were able to get free copies are inspired by the Jesus and Story I try to paint in those pages. Enjoy!

I have been pleased with my initial ‘sales’ and reception of my book “the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus” after its release last October (watch some vids and read about the book and an excerpt ). I am excited that people are ‘getting it,’ both young and old, conservative and progressive, and are reconsidering how they show Jesus and tell His amazing, hopeful Story. I’ve recuperated my initial investment and then some, so I thought I’d do something fun to celebrate

I have a few extra cases in my basement and want to get the books out into peoples hands. This is where you come in.

I want to give you and a friend a free copy. I even want to pay for the shipping! All I ask is two things: 1) Read it and write a review on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. It can be 3-4 sentences or 3-4 paragraphs, 2 stars or 5, doesn’t matter to me; 2) Give the second copy away to someone you know.

If you want to partake in the goods email your name and address to: jeremy [at] novuslumen.net or leave a comment here. I have 32 slots (64 books total) to fill so act fast!

Enjoy!

-jeremy

Popularity: 3% [?]