A Fuller Seminary Take on Brian McLaren

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 5:01 pm by Tony Jones

A Fuller Seminary Take on Brian McLaren 2015-03-13T17:01:56-05:00 Tony Jones

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

There’s a great new blog that you should add to your reader. It’s called the Burner Blog, and it’s put out by Fuller Seminary’s Center for Lifelong Learning (for whom, I’m happy to report, I will soon be teaching. Watch here for details.)

I am a proud alumnus of Fuller and happy to be joining the faculty as an adjunct professor. Honestly, it’s unlike any seminary I know of because of its size and its wildly diverse faculty. While yes, it is “evangelical,” it is broadly so. Therefore, the Burner Blog has a deep roster upon which it can draw for high-quality posts.

One post that will interest many readers of this blog is a review of Brian McLaren’s new book, A New Kind of Christianity by Marianne Meye Thompson (from whom I took Exegetical Methods and a class on the Johannine writings back in the early 1990s). Thompson, the George Eldon Ladd Professor of New Testament, is admittedly not reviewing the entire book, but only McLaren’s cornerstone argument that much of our current understanding of the Bible is wrongly intermingled with a Greco-Roman storyline. McLaren thinks that we should extricate the biblical narrative (read, Jewish/Hebrew) from the Greco-Roman one. Thompson, like McKnight before her, argues that McLaren is reading things just as selectively as he accuses others of doing.

Here’s a taste:

My point is not that McLaren’s (admittedly invented) Greco-Roman narrative is actually the entire narrative of the Bible, but rather that parts of this narrative that trouble him are actually Jewish and Biblical, and for those reasons they have found a place in some Christian construals of the biblical narrative. This does not take away from McLaren’s concern that the questions of “final destiny” may have too dominant a place in some contemporary Christian belief and reading of the Bible, and that the Bible has a deeper and richer story to tell. But he does seem to simply ignore biblical evidence – found in the Gospels, Paul and elsewhere in the NT – that fundamentally challenge his take on the matter.

I’m not going to weigh in one way or the other. I, myself, have spoken often of the predominance of (neo-)Platonic thinking in the Western world and the damage it’s done to the biblical narrative. But I also respect Thompson and McKnight as a couple of evangelical biblical scholars from whom I have learned much. And, regardless of where one lands on this question, McLaren’s latest demands to be read.

bible

books

brian mclaren

fuller theological seminary

jesus creed

Previous Post

May 3, 2010

Dissertation Table of Contents

Next Post

May 5, 2010 The Extent, and Limits, of Practice

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category bible blogging books christianity in america church church history dissertation divorce Dog Training education emergent church essay family funny glbt jopa productions ministry minnesota movies music parenting philosophy politics Prayer publishing Questions That Haunt random same sex marriage speaking spirituality Teaching technology television theology Travels Uncategorized writing youth ministry

Select a Month January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 June 2006 May 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 June 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 August 2004 February 2004 January 2004

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What Christian group reads the Book of Mormon?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Baptists Latter-day Saints Jehovah’s Witnesses Pentecostals