McLaren & Carson Essay

Write a paper of analysis of and response to McLaren, GO, and Carson, BCEC.
Thoughtfully read the following pages in each book:
McLaren, GO, pp.70-101, and 150 pages of your choice from pp.105-297;
Carson, BCEC, pp.45-182, and 188-234.
Your paper should include the following three parts:
Describe – do not evaluate – the basic arguments and the most compelling major points of McLaren, GO, and Carson, BCEC (approx. 3.5 pages);
Evaluate the most significant similarities and differences between McLaren and Carson and your beliefs and approach to the Christian life (this is a three-way comparison and evaluation – McLaren, Carson and you) (approx. 4 pages);
Describe at least three ways in which the conclusions you draw from your evaluation (b.[2] above) might influence your personal practice of piety and/or your practice of ministry and/or the way your church engages in corporate worship and/or the way your church engages in ministry (approx. 2.5 pages).
Word Count: 3,136

Introduction
Brian McLaren’s “Generous Orthodoxy[1]” is a description of the author’s own encounter with or journey through various faith traditions. It functions as his “confession” or “manifesto”[2]. He calls others to take it up as their creed also. Identified as an influential leader within the emerging church movement, McLaren writes with warmth and insight into many issues of contemporary Christianity. He says,

“The real purpose of this book, and much of my writing and preaching, is to
try to help us realign our religion and our lives at least a little bit
more with that Someone.”[3]

It seems appropriate to point out that the emerging church movement (ECM), as represented by McLaren, has made very little impact on the Christian community in Sydney, Australia. After reading “The Younger Evangelicals” by Dr. Robert Webber[4] and McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christian[5]” several years ago, it appeared to me that the ECM was dependent on finding a significantly large community of people who identified with the Christian faith but were in some way disaffected by the current expressions of the (particularly evangelical) church. In a community like Sydney where only 3% of the population are evangelicals, approximately 3% of children attend church and 60% of the general population do not even have a friend who attends church, the ECM seems mostly irrelevant. The most popular expression of the ECM in Australia labels itself the “missional church” movement, as typified by Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost, but even it is small.

The second of the two books to be discussed, Don Carson’s “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church[6]” is the author’s analysis and response to this movement. Carson is an influential evangelical New Testament theologian who has also written extensively on the areas of hermeneutics and post-modernism[7]. Here he summarises some of his other writing into a more popular form, then engages with two examples of the ECM and concludes with some theological and Scriptural summaries.

Generous Orthodoxy
McLaren’s most basic argument is that reality, especially the reality of who Jesus is, is not adequately captured by any single expression of the Christian religion. In Chapter 1, entitled “The Seven Jesuses I Have Known”, he describes his own journey from conversion in a conservative Fundamentalist faith tradition, through Pentecostalism, to his present “unfinished” position. Along the way he has had encounters with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Liberal Protestantism, Anabaptists and Liberation Theology. This chapter is a good summary of his whole approach. McLaren seeks to show the Jesus presented in these traditions as different perspectives to the same answer, rather than alternative answers to the same question. The sixteen chapters in Part Two of his book follow the same approach – highlighting various aspects of each tradition or expression that he has encountered and found helpful for describing a “generous orthodoxy”.

McLaren is concerned that “orthodoxy” has been used define who is “in” and who is “out” of a particular group – including the group of those who are going to heaven. And that “to be orthodox [now] one has to have right opinions about far more things than one needed to have back then, when having a right attitude toward Jesus was about all it took.[8]” Rather than focus on where different traditions may have erred, McLaren seeks to find positive examples in sixteen different traditions that support his view of who Jesus is.

The most compelling part of McLaren’s book is where he argues that by combining the various images that tribes within Christianity hold to we may end up with a hologram: “a richer, multidimensional vision of Jesus”[9]. The warmth of his appeal is expressed in his desire to recover the “simple, integrated richness I knew of [Jesus] as a little boy.[10]”

McLaren identifies thirteen positives he would draw from these traditions: the outward thrust to the whole world of the missional tradition; the passion for making a difference of the evangelical tradition; the faithful remnant idea of the Protestant tradition; the heroism of being post-liberal/conservative; the imaginativeness of the mystical tradition; the (meta-?) narrative of the Biblical tradition; the immediate experience of God in the charismatic/contemplative tradition; the commitment to reformation in the fundamentalist/Calvin tradition; the practice of spiritual disciplines and spirituality in the Anabaptist and Anglican traditions; the spiritual formation of lay people in the Wesleyan tradition; the sense of celebration in the Catholic tradition; positive engagement with all of creation of the Green movement; and the willingness to engage with those of different faiths by incarnational Christians. He also expresses such concern at Christians’ unwillingness to repent that it makes him depressed-yet-hopeful. He has a vision of an emerging alternative understanding of the kingdom of God and the unfinished work of the coming fullness of God’s kingdom.

Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church
In contrast with McLaren’s largely personal account, Carson seeks to objectively survey the ECM and provide a “mature assessment[11]”. His approach is to develop a profile of the movement, describe its strengths and weaknesses, critique the movement, especially through analysing two representative books (one being McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy) and then provide some Scriptural and theological context for evaluating the movement.

In an obvious effort to connect with a popular audience, Carson does disclose his own experiences and use simpler language than is usual in his academic tomes. He admits that neither the emerging church nor postmodernism are simple, uni-focal movements. Carson’s survey of the ECM relies heavily on published writings of representative leaders (making little reference to the plethora of emerging church material published on websites or blogs). Using these writings he provides a clear summary of the journey that various individuals have been through. From these profiles he identifies its main characteristic as protest against traditional, evangelical (often fundamentalist) churches, seeker-sensitive mega-churches, and modernism in general.

Carson does well in summarising the strengths of the movement: its understanding of the way the culture has changed, its desire for authentic expressions of faith, its acknowledgement of personal perspective, its strong desire to engage with those outside of the faith, and its willingness to explore connections with older Christian traditions.

Carson’s critique of the ECM’s weaknesses is this writer at his sharpest. Those who are attracted to McLaren’s warm winsomeness would be offended by and appalled at Carson’s cold scalpel. His vast academic background gives him the grounding and authority to dissect the arguments of the leaders of the movement. He summarises his criticism into three main points (with a fourth given as a particular example of the three). First, their understanding of modernism is reductionistic and wooden. Secondly, they mock the worst of those they are critiquing rather than providing a balanced assessment of the whole. Thirdly, the ECM’s assessment of modernism and the church under Christendom is theologically shallow because no viewpoint or system is all good or all bad. He also finds its assessment intellectually incoherent because it finds value in anything but modernism.

Slicing through their evaluation of post-modernism, Carson accuses the leaders of the emerging church movement of having labelled a whole range of social changes under the one pop-culture heading of post-modernism.

The most compelling point Carson makes about “Generous Orthodoxy” is simply that the people described by the labels that McLaren uses to head his chapters have little resemblance to the pictures he paints of them. For example, the most defining characteristic of an evangelical is not their passion. McLaren is revealed as seeking to use his own personal encounters with some (often fringe) expression of a faith tradition as evidence to support his own conclusions. Nowhere is this truer than in his depiction of the Roman Catholic Church[12]. McLaren extrapolates from his chance encounter with a woman in a garden across the whole Roman Catholic Church. But, Carson argues, he ignores the whole official teaching and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. The expression of the church in a single Californian church garden, or even in the whole of North America does not accurately reflect the Roman Catholic Church as a whole. Carson wishes that McLaren would transcend his own North American heritage by examining both the doctrinal foundations and the expressions of that doctrine in places such as Poland (or, might I add, Sydney). Carson also suggests that McLaren could have made the same point using positive examples from conservative evangelical churches, rather than other traditions.

Similarities and Differences between McLaren, Carson and myself
Like McLaren and many in the ECM, I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family and church (Plymouth Brethren). The five fundamentals[13] were deeply held convictions by the leaders of our church. The example of mature believers’ own personal commitment was instrumental in shaping my own faith. Their commitment to knowing the Bible, sharing their faith, and having their lives conformed to the Word of God informed the way I lived my Christian life.

Similarly to McLaren, I also encountered Pentecostalism briefly before being more thoroughly influenced by Campus Crusade’s campus ministry. My church leaders had warned me the university environment could threaten my faith and they encouraged me to join a Christian group on campus. Campus Crusade matched my values of commitment to a strong personal devotional life, taking the initiative in personal evangelism and dependence on the Holy Spirit. I became convinced of the priority of the Great Commission.

In my experience, the hard-edge of my fundamentalist church was softened by the heart of its leaders for people. Their passion to make a difference, labelled as an evangelical strength by McLaren[14], moved them progressively forward. Still, a literalistic interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis and a comprehensive, rigid eschatological scheme made engagement with academic thought at the university difficult.

The strongest campus ministry in Sydney (AFES affiliated with IFES worldwide) is resourced mainly by Reformed evangelical churches, mostly from the Anglican[15] denomination. Their focus on expository Bible teaching, based in a sound Biblical theology, significantly impacted my engagement with the Bible. It took me a long time to reconcile their high view of Scripture with their overt a-millennial and theistic evolutionary interpretation. Carson is a regularly featured speaker at events organised by Sydney’s Reformed evangelical community[16] and so his teaching has influenced my thinking, both directly and indirectly.

However, it was not just my experience in Australia that shaped my thinking. Through Campus Crusade I have been exposed to ministries and leaders from several different nations – including India, Philippines, Korea, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan. In the late 1990’s, I had the privilege of serving with Campus Crusade at the University of Colorado in Boulder for 12 months. I was able to experience church and ministry in a culture far more Christian than my own. Therefore I consider myself sufficiently familiar with McLaren’s context to be able to assess it, while having enough external experiences to allow me an outsider’s perspective.

McLaren’s assessment of the state of much of the church in North America appears fairly accurate. He diagnoses the problems of the church – its firm attachment to a polemical expression of truth or a corporatisation of mega-ministry – accurately and from experience[17]. The disconnection between the culture of churches that focus on the Bible and the increasingly biblically illiterate, unchurched culture is the critical issue.

However, his proposed solution would create a major problem. As Carson writes, in his efforts to be culturally relevant, McLaren has buried the simple gospel message so deep that no one listening to him would be able to discern it. The gospel is a simple, yet profound message. A child can understand it and share it, and yet academic theologians can write thesis after thesis and never plumb its depths. The most personally significant thing I learnt from Campus Crusade was (using the “door to door sales techniques[18]”) how to articulate in clear and simple words the faith I had grown up with and adopted as my own. What I have learned from my study of theology has been the profoundness those simple words seek to convey.

I agree with Carson that emerging church leaders need to work harder at developing theology that is truly biblical. And I agree with McLaren that biblical churches need to apply Scripture to culture more profoundly. In contrast with both, I would also add that a significant role the church needs to emphasise is to expose greater proportions of the community to biblical truth regularly and in an ongoing way. We cannot just strengthen the theological understanding of the church in our present culture. And we cannot just seek to make the expressions of the church more relevant to the culture we are part of. We must engage our communities with the agenda that flows from our theology, not just in response to the popular issues of the day.

Carson’s emphasis on biblical theology[19] ensures that his agenda for engaging with culture is most influenced by Scripture. In contrast, McLaren’s agenda seems to be largely driven by experience. While acknowledging that each of us is influenced by our social location[20], I agree with Carson’s approach: that we cannot know anything omnisciently, but we can know truth accurately, at least that which is revealed to us through Scripture. An appropriate response to our limitations or pre-understandings is to engage with other interpretations of Scripture from outside our own culture, location or time. As we become aware of other interpretations and assess them in the light of the whole of Scripture, we will move asymptotically toward accurately understanding the truth of the Scripture.

Carson focuses on the central failings of the ECM to critique culture and stand for Biblical truth. But he fails to address the underlying motivation for those engaged in the movement – to create authentic expressions of missional community in our contemporary culture. The lone exception is when he holds up Redeemer Presbyterian Church (RPC) as a positive example of a church that has effectively engaged with a post-modern generation and multiplied itself in church plants[21]. But even then he admits that RPC would not identify itself with the ECM.

While disputing over some key issues, Carson misses the main point. We now read the Bible from the perspective of post-Christendom, informed by the issues of mission to pluralistic communities, community formation with increasingly broken individuals and kingdom-thinking amidst tribal globalism. Its own meta-narrative provides the drive for the formation of missional communities. For example, God’s design for a creation stewarded by responsible human beings, who are commissioned to extend order across a chaotic, untamed world, is the impetus for those missional communities who see their mandate as more holistic than saving individuals from a future hell. Similarly, Jesus entrusted the witness of his unique and universal act of redemption to a community of believers. The effectiveness of the ECM to form missional communities – that faithfully extend the transformational good news of the kingdom to the world – must be the main point to be assessed.

Influence on Practice
McLaren’s description of his experiences through various faith traditions confirms my commitment to self-awareness concerning my own pre-understandings and the biases that come from my own background. In evaluating where these life experiences have impacted me most, I need to subject them to the scrutiny of Scripture. I need to actively seek out and genuinely engage with those whose background is different to mine, to see how their experience informs mine. The access to different opinions and experiences is virtually limitless via the internet. Intentionally seeking to humbly interact with ancient commentators, developing world believers and Christian leaders of different traditions will only further my own self-awareness.

Beyond previous life experiences, any present non-rational engagement can influence my thinking about God and the Bible. McLaren models this with his story about the conservation of turtles. My influences may be positive or negative. I am pre-disposed to endorse the music I enjoy. I am more likely to affirm the views of people with winsome personalities than of those with fractious personalities. The beauty of a sunset may move my heart to worship God. I will seek to be aware of how non-rational influences shape my awareness of God’s truth, and how I may legitimately incorporate them into my ministry. An example of this is found in 1 Peter 3:1, where the apostle admonishes wives to influence their unbelieving husbands by their deeds – without a (rational) word! Another is Paul’s own example in 1 Corinthians 9 of identifying with various cultures in order to win them to Christ. An example from my own life was a visit to a cemetery to reflect on the brevity of life.

Finally, the awareness of the shift in culture from Christendom to pluralistic, globalised post-modernism should influence my ministry and church to be intentionally missional. McLaren presents a diagram where, “[Jesus] creates the church as a missional community to join him in his mission of saving the world. He invites me to be part of this community to experience his saving love and participate in it.[22]” No longer is mission something done by people sent overseas, supported from a home church. Rather, it is the experience of each Christian every day. The vast numbers of unchurched people in my community will never be reached by holding slicker, fancier, better resourced Sunday services. The question we must wrestle with is, “how can we support the average, quiet Christian in their everyday activities, so they can be an effective witness for Christ wherever they go?” Part of our answer will include the training and encouragement of individual Christians. However, our answer must also include propagation of the building block concepts of the gospel throughout our society through the use of the media, creative arts and academic world so that people are prepared to hear the gospel shared by average Christians.

Conclusion
McLaren’s book reflects his personal journey through and encounters with various faith traditions. His major concern is that dogmatic presentations of the Christian religion by conservative fundamentalists do not reflect the reality informed by our new cultural context. He proposes a new “generous orthodoxy”. Carson evaluates the emerging church movement, and McLaren particularly, in light of historical understanding, cultural analysis and, ultimately, Scriptural truth and finds them lacking in objective analysis and theological development. He exhorts the leaders of the emerging church movement to be more balanced – less critical of the conservative evangelical church and more critical of post-modernism.

In life and ministry, the impetus for engagement with this new cultural context must be driven from the Scriptures. Those Scriptures must be understood in the context of a whole world of perspectives. Still we can know truth accurately, if not completely. The mission of God must be expressed by the people of God through missional communities who holistically engage the whole world with good news of the kingdom.

ENDNOTES
[1] McLaren, Brian D. A Generous Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004. [GO]
[2] GO, back cover.
[3] GO p.26, where the “Someone” is identified something in the church that he loves, i.e. Jesus.
[4] Webber, Robert. E. The Younger Evangelicals. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002.
[5] McLaren, Brian D. A New Kind of Christian. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001.
[6] Carson, D.A. Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. [BCEC]
[7] For example, Carson, D.D. The Gagging of God. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.
[8] GO, p.33
[9] GO, p.74
[10] GO p.73
[11] BCEC, back cover.
[12] BCEC p.172-177
[13] GO p.220
[14] GO p.128-130
[15] Anglican is the equivalent to Episcopalian. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney is one of the few thoroughly Reformed evangelical Anglican dioceses in the world. Their seminary, Moore College, produces many works in the field of Biblical theology.
[16] Two of Sydney’s leading evangelical writers, Philip D Jensen and Tony Payne, feature in “Telling the Truth – Evangelizing Post-Moderns” edited by Carson, published by Zondervan 2000.
[17] Carson probably agrees with McLaren’s assessment of many fundamentalist churches and other expressions of so-called “evangelicalism”, yet he never admits as much.
[18] GO p.132
[19] Carson DA, “Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2003 p.89 provides an example of Carson’s particular emphasis in biblical theology.
[20] BCEC, p.51
[21] BCEC, p.55-56.
[22] GO, p.118.

What use is theology?

Recently I was asked what positive contribution theology made to ministry. Of course, there must be some sympathy with the question. Theology can often seem dense and confusing. It feels like it takes understanding the Christian faith beyond the grasp of the average person. It seems to reside in a world of dispute and academia.

And evidence seems to support the criticism. Studies have shown that there is an inverse relationship between the number of years of formal theological study and the growth rate of the churches those professional ministers lead. For example, in countries where access to formal theological training is very limited, e.g. China and South America, the church is exploding.

Yet there are also counter examples. Pastors like John Piper and Tim Keller in the USA are former seminary professors who have been very successful pastors while using their theological training.

What do we mean by theology?
Formally, theology is the study of God (theos). God is the ultimate reality. Our challenge in ministry is to live and lead in conformity with that reality.

How do we discover reality?
The fallacy of modernism is that reality is discovered using only the scientific method. As the limitations of this approach were discerned we fell into the second fallacy, that of post-modernism - which held that knowledge of reality is lost and all we are left with is a collection of personal perspectives which are equally valid.

The Biblical position is that God (as ultimate reality) has revealed himself to us through his written word, the Bible. Although our understanding of that revelation (and more general revelation) will always be limited and imperfect, we can approach an approximation of that reality by engaging with that revelation.

The term "hermentuetical spiral" refers to the process whereby we propose a theory of reality based on our present level of understanding and then test that theory in light of the revelation. Our theory will be affirmed or adjusted based on the feedback we receive and that will allow us to propose other theories. Over time our understanding shifts more in line with revelation, approaching absolute reality like an asymtote.

The Community of Discoverers
We are not the first people to seek to discover reality, or to live in light of it. Other Christians have worked hard at advancing and understanding the revelation too. Some have summarised their findings into propositional statements that are designed to reduce the complexity of the whole picture of reality into simple points that we can grasp quickly.

These propositional statements are like a quick sketch of a full rich oil painting. They reflect the true picture but they do not completely contain the full richness and majesty of the whole painting.

In Student Life we summarise the gospel (in the Knowing God Personally - KGP - booklet) into four simple points which we cover in 12 small pages. But the four questions addressed by these points (the nature and purpose of God, the nature and purpose of human beings, the nature and purpose of Jesus Christ, and how we are to respond to the previous three points) have occupied the most brilliant minds for centuries and have produced hundreds of thousands of pages of writing. Their efforts were to try to portray that reality with greater depth and clarity.

Theology missing the point
Theology that ignores the issue of how we live or lead in light of reality misses the point of why we do theology. That is not to say that every theological discussion must be immediately applied. There is great value in having academics work hard at refining some point of theology and correcting other misconceptions which have distorted or misrepresented reality.

Personalising Theology
But in ministry, theology is the study of reality and must be applied to life.

Each of us who have shared the KGP with someone else know that the ideal presentation is not one that sticks verbatim to reading through the propositional statements written on the page. We constantly ask ourselves the question, "how do I personalise this presentation to connect best with the person I am sharing with?". That leads us to adding our own explanations or illustrations of the various points.

Assuming we are confident that the propositional statements accurately reflect God's revelation, the question becomes, "how do we know our additions to the presentation are accurate representations?" The answer is that we must know more than the propositional statements. Our grasp of the big picture must be richer and deeper than the simple statements in the booklet.

The more of the picture beyond the booklet we know, the more confident we can be when we adapt our presentation of the simple concepts to the present situation.

The Danger of Theology
The danger of having a grasp of the big picture is that we try to convey all we see or know as we present the gospel. This is the same problem that teachers have all the time. After hours and hours of study, a good teacher knows far more about what they are speaking about than they will have time to cover in a talk. They have to be selective about what to present so that it meets the needs and abilities of the audience.

The simple sketch picture, as I describe the booklet, is very useful for giving someone a quick overview of reality. We cannot lose that simplicity, no matter how expert we become in the whole picture.

For example, if I, as an amateur, want to understand how my computer works I am most helped by someone who describes to me the various components - the mother board, CPU, hard drive, keyboard, screen, etc. - and how they work together, but who doesn't go into all the technical jargon comparing bit speeds, bios logic and pixel frame rates.

Theology for Ministry Leaders
Those who take on responsiblity for directing a group of people in how to live in light of God's reality must necessarily have a greater grasp of that reality than the average person. Without a clear picture of reality they could lead the whole group astray - with wrong thinking or wrong living.

Also, leaders are bombarded with lots of pressure from many different sources that seek to influence their direction. Those sources may be secular societal pressures - values of material prosperity, academic success, cultural compatability. They may be from other Christian organisations who seek like-minded partners in ministry, or seek to market their ministry product, or seek validation of their own experiences.

How do leaders decide the value of various options or directions? It must come from a rich and deep appreciation of the greater reality.

I have experienced this in various ways over the past 15 years. When I first encountered the seeker service approach to evangelism, I was quite taken. I wanted to replicate that in my own area of influence. As I attempted it, though, I encountered the reality that the results were significantly different. That led me to review my understanding of the seeker sensitive approach to ministry and modify my application of those principles to my current context.

Also, when someone criticises the Knowing God Personally booklet, which occurs regularly, I am able to respond to those criticisms because my knowledge extends beyond the pages of the booklet. I am also sensitive to when someone uses the booklet inappropriately - for example, assumes that just because someone "prays the prayer" at the back of the booklet they are "saved".

So far I have said that theology is the description of reality with reference to God's revelation through the Bible. And that is the primary source and ultimate measurement of reality. However, the doctrine of general revelation encourages us to explore other avenues that also inform our perception of reality. (All these other avenues must, ultimately, be verified, where possible, by the Bible). Other avenues include sociology, anthropology, history, organisational theory, etc.

A good leader will have engaged with as much information about reality as possible and processed it in light of biblical revelation and moved a significant way towards approximating ultimate reality in many of the areas that their leadership affects. This is obviously a process that continues for a life-time and the more a leader does it the better their leadership is.

Conclusion
Is theology useful for minsitry? It is, and it is essential for leaders. But it is not theology for theology's sake. It is theology that leads us to a greater appreciation of the one who is ultimate reality and how he has designed the world to work.