Wow! Thanks for posting that. I haven't really read Brian McLaren as much as I have read snippets of critique about him from the Evangelical perspective. I sense strongly from what he has described here of the tensions he has experienced in his journey with what passes for Christian orthodoxy in most of the West that he is very much on the same road that lead me from my Protestant Evangelical roots into the Eastern Orthodox Church. I think the teachings and perspective of the Saints of the Eastern Orthodox communion would likely resonate strongly with him--especially St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Silouan of Mt. Athos and certain mature Christian contemporary "Elders" who have gained a reputation for extraordinary sanctity within Orthodox monasticism within the last century, such as Elder Paisios and Elder Porphyrios. ISTM the new paradigm in which he feels compelled to understand and communicate the gospel is very close, if not nearly identical, with that of Eastern Orthodox Christian spirituality. Similarly, the Eastern Orthodox biblical mindset is a paradigm that becomes distorted when forced to answer questions framed in the juridical paradigm of Western theology.

If nothing else, it seems Brian is guilty of having a pretty man-centered theology & worldview as opposed to a theology that has God at its center.

No.
But, I wish I had a clever, nuanced and provocative way of saying "no," so that I could demonstrate how McLaren would say "no," so that I could further demonstrate why I think he can never speak plainly enough for someone to respond to a question like yours with a simple "no."

I think listening to voices like McClaren is important, but this guy gives new meaning to evasion. He truly seems confused himself as to what he believes and seems to contradict himself and/or gives off the impression that his nuance is far more superior than us dolts who have worked out our orthodoxy with fear and trembling.

no disrespect intended but...listening to mcclaren try to explain what he believes is like listening to brett favre whether he's going to retire or not.

No he did not answer the questions directly. In addition to that he was extraordinarily condescending to Scot McKnight. If I read his indirection correctly, I think he believes grace is given to all human beings so that they can then earn their salvation through works.

I really would love to give Brian the benefit of the doubt, but he really is the king of evasion and obfuscation. Not to mention that he comes across in this interview as extraordinarily arrogant towards those who "just don't understand me" and who can't see beyond their own "paradigm." Brian's problem is that he contrasts his view with the narrow fundamentalism of his youth and doesn't allow for anything in between. Not everybody who sees the faith in a traditional way is guilty of Constantinianism and therefore is guilty of various crimes against humanity. Brian hasn't really escaped his fundamentalist past. He still paints a picture of false dichotomies. He's not nearly generous enough in his orthodoxy.

The life that God created and into which God self-incarnated is provocatively ambiguous. Anyone of middle-age or older who seeks an unambiguous faith is headed either for a nervous breakdown, a crisis of faith, or both. Unambiguousness is for the young.

A few years back I met Brian. It was before he was the author and all the swirl of controversy was around him. I believe this about him. He is genuinely a kind person.

I think what often happens is when someone sees a gap or is uncomfortable in a answer they will often create a question to reveal it. For example... when uncomfortable with the concept of hell... How could a loving God do this?

When uncomfortable with a biblical stance on homosexuality... Why did Jesus never mention it?

His statement about the atonement in contrast to suffering in the world... and his idea that the main question of the bible is getting God's will done here like it is in heaven... demonstrate his frustration with his own experience of faith to the point he has changed the questions in order to get the answers he like better.

I think we look back at history and blame Constantine for much of what we have today but fail to give God credit for actually having a plan. To say we have had it wrong since the beginning (Brian says this) because we took a Jewish faith and made had it co-opted by Greco-Roman ideas is just another way of not like an answer so lets reshape the question to get an answer we like.

why doesn't he just blame Paul...

Why does is he so evasive in his answers? Brian cannot sell books to the evangelical world if he comes out and says what he believes. His provocative approach is so he does not lose an audience he is certain to lose if he were direct.

This is a teaching technique as well. If you are evasive, you draw people into your thinking enough to feed them your questions. Thus leading them to your answers.

The most powerful people in the world are not those with the answers but those who ask the questions. His influence is not form his answers but his questions.

I don't think he's NOT giving answers.

His answer is simply this (and it's pretty clear in the video):

Brian thinks we're asking the wrong questions.

That IS an answer. That's pretty clear in his responses.

This whole "your evasive" or "your evasive for reason X" is really demonstrating that many of you aren't listening well.

Again, he IS answering...he's rejecting the questions themselves and saying so and saying why.

we might not like it, think it's ill advised or just plain wrong, but this whole "he's evasive" line is really tired.

The Wang thinks Nathan stole his answer. Christians are so insistent on people identifying explicitly their answers to binary questions. 'Yes' or 'no'? Are you 'for us' or 'against us'? Why do they care so much about what other people believe and think? So they can pat themselves on the back when they find agreement and exclude/tear down the other person when there is disagreement.

Matt, in response to your suggestion that Brian's theology is 'man-centred', Bart suggests that THAT is what theology is at its core. Humanity's best efforts to explain God. It is based upon human experience, ideas and insight. God is not bound by it. Besides, God tells us that the universe is 'man-centred' - He didn't need us, He wanted us!

I would like to point out that Jesus answered those who loved b/w answers to the wrong questions (i.e., more often than not the oh-so-theologically-correct-in-their- own-eyes Pharisees) with His own questions as well. Brian is following in Jesus' tradition quite well in this respect.

I have also found that when I am particularly accusatory toward someone else, if I look deeply enough into my own heart and motivations I find I am, without exception, guilty myself of the attitude or action I condemn. This just seems to be some sort of infallible spiritual law of the heart ISTM. Some of the comments above seem to me like pure projection and a case in point of the problems Brian points out with some of his critics. Brian is accused here of being arrogant and so on, yet someone who has actually met the guy has found him kind. I think if we were to remember the limitations of this kind of venue (and our own sinful limitations) for actually seeing into someone else's heart, we might be more temperate in our words and circumspect in our judgments.

Wes, most Christians throughout history would not consider belief in a traditional understanding of the classic creeds of Christian Orthodoxy "liberal theology." Did Brian ever say that those creeds are subject to reinterpretation like the infamous Bp. Spong of the American Episcopal Church? I am asking a sincere question here. I didn't read A Generous Orthodoxy, but ISTM it was inferred in this interview that he accepts a traditional reading of those Creeds, just not necessarily certain theological inferences and theories using those traditional readings as a point of departure in which he finds distortion of a straight reading and understanding of the true biblical emphases in the gospel.

So...if McLaren says we're asking the wrong questions, perhaps asking the question "is McLaren putting the questions about his beliefs to rest," is really the wrong question too...
(Now I got it!)

I think dialogue is lost all too often, but this is an example of when dialogue should have ended a long time ago. It is not like there is a lack of people trying to give McLaren a chance. He has had a chance. It is time to stop the conversation until he even knows where he is at, let alone how to communicate it to others.

If this educated man does not know how far removed from orthodox Christian doctrine he is, then there is something wrong. If this educated man knows how far he is from it, then lets just use a label of heretic and call for repentance. Until then, the Church needs to stop providing a platform for his fallacies and disfigured doctrines. There is enough noise in the Evangelical/Orthodox Church as it is, why allow a platform to a man who is obviously careless with his seeking scripture in preference to how he wants to see the world.

What's particularly striking is how many times McKnight (no theological liberal he) says, "I agree..."

Every time Brian McLaren opens his mouth or moves his pen he continues to express how detached from evangelical orthodoxy he actually is in life.

Thanks for the posting the clip. There is so much wrong with his statements and so much loaded in we really get to see the the Emergent group which he is a leader is simply nothing more than vacuous, old, tired, defeated liberalism from last century. There absolutely is nothing new in McLaren's liberal Christianity.

I tire of this fool. If for no other reason than he refuses to engage theologically with those asking him legitimate questions...just like in the video.

"fool"?

how disappointing.

You may be frustrated that he's critiquing the very questions asked, but that doesn't make him a fool nor does it mean that we are excused from basic courtesy.

We can disagree with his rejection of the questions, but his rejection of the questions only calls us, if we are convinced of their importance, to raise gentle arguments demonstrating their value.

the dismissive tone in our community is only one of the many reasons people use to ignore us.

we need to learn to listen well, engage people where they are, as they are, and to stop wrapping our cookies in barbed wire.

To imply that because Jesus (SOMETIMES) answered questions with questions that McLaren is justified in answering questions indirectly is absurd.

Let's be certain, that Christ was CLEAR in his questioning of questions about essential issues. McLaren is not.

How is a question that essentially says, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way?" the 'wrong' question to someone who self-identifies as a Christian?

This is not just for McLaren. This is for anyone self-identifying as a follower of Christ. And why are these questions the 'wrong' questions? Because McLaren said so?

Are you serious?! Puh-lease, stop drinking the Kool-Aid.

Yes, Nathan and Matt. The question posed by Out of Ur presupposes the (non-biblical) Greco-Roman narrative that Brian calls into question in A New Kind of Christianity. Brian is saying that we need to ask what questions the biblical narrative itself presupposes and asks, such as how does God's will get done in my life, now and forever? If we can't understand why Brian's "ambiguity" is actually a very clear position, we're not really capable of true dialogue with him. He is calling us out of a predefined, non-biblical ideology into a more biblical way of thinking and believing.

I appreciate you posting this interview. In fact, I wish there were more opportunities to see interviews such as this, where both people are civil but have genuine disagreement. There is something very healthy about this.

Why does McLaren's concern about poverty, orphans, the environment, suffering, and oppression insist that it must divorced from sound doctrine? You can be concerned with all of those things and healing those things, and they'll all be dirty rags before God if your life isn't committed to Jesus Christ.

It also aggravates me that, throughout all of McLaren's talks and books, he says that the "Greco-Roman Narrative [and mindset]" is something added to the Bible a couple of centuries after the fact, when all of Judea was heavily influenced by Greco-Roman thinking. He rejects the "soul-sort narrative," when a significant percentage of everything we have recorded of what Jesus spoke of speaks of EXACTLY that, i.e.; separating the wheat from the chaff.

And in all of this, he seems to make the same sort of error Muslims did centuries ago and Mormons did 150 years ago in that they assume we somehow got the Bible wrong without considering that the Holy Spirit is on earth and has preserved God's Word in man's heart and in the Bible. I won't doubt that there are layers of inaccurate cultural assumptions that are placed on the Bible, but I don't think the core of orthodox theology has altered it.

OK Mark, the whole "non-biblical Greco-Roman vs. biblical narrative thing" sounds pretty heady.

Break it down for me.

A guy at the plant where I'm working, flat out asks, "Do you believe in hell?"

What do I say?

Matt wrote, "No.
But, I wish I had a clever, nuanced and provocative way of saying "no," so that I could demonstrate how McLaren would say "no," so that I could further demonstrate why I think he can never speak plainly enough for someone to respond to a question like yours with a simple "no."

Brilliant.

This captures my overall frustration with everything Emergent. Less words please. More clarity please. Less using words and media streams to critique the weakness of words and media streams.

In sales one of the things you never do is answer a direct question. A car salesman will meet you on a lot and you will ask about a particular car... His response will be something like... so is safety an important feature for you? You ask another question and he will say... How important is gas mileage?

The idea is to foster a tension in you that their product meets.

This is much of McLaren's tactic. Let me foster in you a tension... So I can steer you into a New Kind of Christian...

The holes we have in our faith, he blames on systems, on points in history, on republicans... On those who are still under the old paradigm. The church was messy in the book of Acts, it struggled to feed widows and orphans from it's inception. Not because of its structure but because it is filled with people and people, even regenerated people, are messy.

James had to remind the scattered believers that they needed to make sure their religion included the poor and widows and orphans. (not something the Jewish people were known for in the time of Jesus)

McLaren is looking for someone to blame for the fact we have ignored the brokenness of people. He can look at me, but not because I buy a system, but rather because I am selfish. God is not done with the good work he started.

I think McLaren sincerely believes what he is saying. I think he does believe we have gotten it all wrong and that we need a new kind of Christian. His thinking is what is shaping how he views and interprets history not the other way around. This is dangerous.

What a mess!

Karen,

A Generous Orthodoxy hints, and A New Kind of Christianity confirms Brian's disagreement with historic "traditional reading" of the Creeds - let alone with the traditional reading of Scripture. I'd suggest you read him yourself and decide. I've done so, and I think it's abundantly clear that Brian's outside the camp... and by the way, that's the concern Scot raised in his article as well. I mean no ill will towards Brian personally, but I do hate the confusion and damage he does to the people who follow him in his error.

Bart Wang says: "Besides, God tells us that the universe is 'man-centred'..." Perhaps you should give Colossians 1:16 another read. The universe, like theology, is God-centered and this is precisely Brian (and your) foundational error.

instead of railing against McLaren, it would be useful to interrogate his construction of the "Greco-Roman Narrative"...here's a hint, it's grounded in a basic mis-reading of Plato/Neo-Platonic thought.

Do some of McLaren's critiques have resonance/validity about how the Faith has been put in service to harmful things? YES.

But his deployment of this "GR narrative" is pure fiction and doesn't help his case.

"I think McLaren sincerely believes what he is saying."

Since Brian clearly doesn't know what he believes, how can he 'sincerely' believe it?

Since Brian claims we're asking the 'wrong questions' what gives him the authority to claim that he is asking the right ones? Isn't it hubris to tell others that they are wrong when he claims no one can know anything for sure? Brian knows one thing for sure, and that is that he has found a great way to get rich without holding a real job. Brian continually proves that he is a snake oil salesman and many commenters here seem to really like snake oil.

Matt - Here's my best shot without having a lot of time to re-read A New Kind of Christianity. In a word, his Greco-Roman Narrative is a story line that has been taken from those cultures and imposed on the Bible when we interpret it. For Brian, the GRN is: perfection - fall from perfection - condemnation- salvation of some who go to the heaven of perfection and no salvation for those who go to hell. The Biblical Narrative consists of creation and reconciliation (as in Genesis), liberation and formation (as in Exodus), and in the progress of God's kingdom as foretold by the prophets.

More for Matt - So when asked about hell, McLaren would say (as he suggests in the interview) that that's not what the Bible is about. He might say, Where did the question of going to hell come from? I've just started a not-too-technical book by Sharon Baker called Razing Hell which argues for McLaren's very point. NT Wright's Surprised by Hope is in a similar vein. Wright and other writers show how many NT passages traditionally understood as being about hell are really about the judgment on Jerusalem by the Roman army in 70 AD.

So rather than ask, Do you believe in hell?, we can respond, Do you believe that the God who made you is at work in your life to free you from everything that keeps you from being fully human in his image, that he is working to see you reconciled with him and and with difficult people in your life (as Joseph was in Genesis), and that through you he aims to spread his reign to others ?

More for Matt - So when asked about hell, McLaren would say (as he suggests in the interview) that that's not what the Bible is about. He might say, Where did the question of going to hell come from? I've just started a not-too-technical book by Sharon Baker called Razing Hell which argues for McLaren's very point. NT Wright's Surprised by Hope is in a similar vein. Wright and other writers show how many NT passages traditionally understood as being about hell are really about the judgment on Jerusalem by the Roman army in 70 AD.

So rather than ask, Do you believe in hell?, we can respond, Do you believe that the God who made you is at work in your life to free you from everything that keeps you from being fully human in his image, that he is working to see you reconciled with him and and with difficult people in your life (as Joseph was in Genesis), and that through you he aims to spread his reign to others ?

OK Mark thanks, don't know how long you want to keep going but I do have some questions:
Let's say the plant guy says "yes" to your last paragraph. That means what for him?

And what if he says, "Excellent, no hell! So what happens to me when I die."

What do I say then?

So where did the video go?

Matt, I like this guy of yours! But this is where I can't try to speak for Brian anymore. I'm sure in his books on evangelism he indicates how he would respond to those reactions. My approach: What your guy needs now is to fill out the story. What are the implications of his being a creation of God? What is God like and what does it mean to become like him? What relationships in his life (especially his family of origin) need reconciliation? What can he do to the end? And, in and through and above and underneath all these: the Lord Jesus Christ, the Reconciler, the Image of God. And make no mistake, his love is a consuming fire that will not relent until it has burned away all that is not holy in him

Wes, thanks much for your response. Orthodox Christians are so adamant about a traditional reading of the Creed, and upon a unanimity (and unity) in the Body of Christ before important decisions about what constitutes a proper and authoritative expression of dogma may be accepted and used by the Church that we repudiate even the historic insertion of the "filioque clause" in the Nicene-Constantinoplian Creed (which was adopted only in the West)! :-) On that we perhaps differ from Brian, but I sense something very Orthodox about his heart in the questions he is asking and in why he is asking them.

Mark, your book sounds interesting. You might enjoy the posts in the links below. I will add the caveat that the first contains a critique of a certain reading of historic theological developments in the West that has a particular cultural and historic context not familiar to most in the West, and thus a much more harsh and polemic tone than would seem appropriate to most of us. That is to say, most Orthodox, especially in the West, would recognize much more nuance in the theology of most of their Western Christian counterparts. (So, take that part with a grain of salt!) Otherwise, I believe it is a faithful representation of a patristic and Orthodox interpretation of the deeper spiritual reality that underlies all the biblical metaphors and images about hell and judgment.

http://silouanthompson.net/2008/06/river-of-fire-kalomiros/

http://silouanthompson.net/2008/08/river-of-god/

Matt, the above articles might suggest the broad outlines of an Orthodox response to the question of the guy you mention. IMO, it wouldn't be too far from Mark's above.

Thanks for accomodating my guy at the plant. However, I fear he is not compelled. Neither am I. My final thot: The guy at the plant I created is the guy most people talk to. James MacDonald was quite right when he said of his church in Chicago:

"Hardy anybody goes, 'Yea, I was really into my culture. I was postmodern…' I haven’t met that guy yet. Most of the people I meet are like, 'Yea I was working over at the factory, and my life sucked, and my marriage was falling apart, and I figured out I was an idiot…' That’s the kind of people who get saved around here. I don’t know where these other people are. I guess somebody should reach them. But I just never really meet those people. The people I meet are going along doing their thing, and they figure out their things not working, and so their looking around for something else, and somebody who loved them enough found them and told them they could have their lives changed for all eternity.

Indeed. And "these guys" are rarely looking for "a new kind of Christianity," which "exposes the wrong narrative." Sorry man, there's no power to transform there. And while such "conversations" may resonate sitting on a stool drinking Desani and talking to eager conference-goers. It makes little sense or difference in the life that guy at the plant who is asking the tough questions. Questions that are best answered by an old kind of Christianity with, pardon the arrogance, right gospel words and the right gospel walk...

"I think there is more food for real wisdom about Brian and Scripture here:"

For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him. -2Corinthians 11:4

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. - Jude 1:3

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. -Jeremiah 6:16

ETS said: "How is a question that essentially says, "Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way?" the 'wrong' question to someone who self-identifies as a Christian?"

ETS, your point is well taken that Jesus did not answer all questions with a question. Only certain kinds. The only thing I can answer to your question above is to relate an experience I had in my mid-20s as a "Bible-believing," Evangelical Christian, graduate of a major Evangelical institution of higher learning and recently returned from a two-year stint on the mission field in European campus evangelism with my denomination. I definitely believed then, as I do now, that "Jesus is the only way (John 14:6)." I was visiting my brother who had for some years been caught up in what is known as the "Boston Movement." If you are unfamiliar with this group and their MO, I suggest you do some research--anyway they are a movement for "restoration" within the "Campbellite" tradition of the Churches of Christ "non" denomination. Anyway, one of my brother's fellow church members accosted me (and I do mean accosted) with a question that went something like this:

"Ephesians 4: 3-6 says 'for there is ONE faith, ONE Lord, ONE baptism and ONE God and Father of us all. . . .' The Bible says there is only one church, not many denominations. What do you say to that, Karen?

My sincere answer was that I believed Ephesians 4:3-6 with all my heart, which stumped him for the moment as he was expecting me to make some sort of apology for my own denomination's perspective perhaps. But this was very unsatisfying to both of us because he clearly believed that implied that his group was THAT church, and I was rather deeply convinced that despite the fact that their beliefs about God, Christ and the Bible on the surface of things fit into what most conservative Christians (like me) believed to be "orthodox," the implications they drew from those beliefs about their own faith community and what it meant to live with integrity as a Christian in today's world were problematic for me (as I believe they would be to most people who are a part of this blog community.)

I suspect that Brian sees some things about the practice and application of the orthodoxy of many modern conservative Christians that lacks something compared to what he finds in the Scriptures and which he is trying (for better or for worse) to address in an honest way. I'm not trying to defend Brian or his evasive style so much as to relate my own experience to what is going on in this interview with Scot. I think Scot, (unlike a few of the commenters here, unfortunately), comports himself in this interview as a consummate Christian gentleman, and I found his book, A Community Called Atonement (which I read on the recommendation of a friend of mine, Dr. Brad Nassif, an Orthodox colleague of Scot's), insightful (and also well on the way to a more comprehensive and fully Orthodox understanding of our salvation in Christ and the meaning of the Atonement, btw.).