As I said on the two previous posts, I’m currently winding down my book project The End of Evangelicalism? by writing an epilogue probing the possibility what a new faithfulness might look like to emerge “from the rubble” of evangelicalism. I applaud the emerging and/or missional church movements among others. But I contend they must avoid three dangers, three traps if they (we) are to elude the traps that evangelicalism has itself already fallen into. That’s when I came up with these three clumsy terms, de incarnationalize, de-eschatologize and de-ecclesiologize. Here’s some of what I wrote (edited for a blog post with citations etc. deleted) on the second of these 3 traps using Brian McLaren to illustrate what such a danger might look like.
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Emerging church writers have spilt much ink criticizing evangelicalism’s narrow understanding of salvation. Author/pastor Brian McLaren has led the charge. For McLaren, truly the father of the emerging movement, evangelicalism has over-personalized salvation, made it into a transaction and has generally been pre-occupied with the afterlife and escaping hell. As a result, evangelicalism’s salvation message has actually distanced the believer from the salvation that God is doing to transform the unjust world. As a result, evangelicals have become dispassionate and even duplicitous in the way we lead our lives in the world. Again, in short, McLaren agrees with everything I have written in The End of Evangelicalism? concerning evangelicals and our practice of “the Decision.”
McLaren responds the status quo by admonishing evangelicals that they have forgotten (or ignored) the Jesus of the gospels and His message: the Kingdom of God has begun. We have focused instead on the Pauline/ Lutheran doctrine that we are justified by faith in Christ through his atoning work on the cross. He argues that evangelicalism’s salvation has become a personalized middle class gospel accommodated to the comforts of American prosperity. It is a message hardly recognizable in what Jesus preached in the gospels where He announces that the Kingdom of God has broken in, a new way of life with God has begun. McLaren, true to the evangelist he is, invites his readers to identify with it and join in living the way of Jesus in this new Kingdom. As opposed to an evangelical conversion that emphasizes the afterlife, McLaren says Jesus is about the work that God is doing in His Kingdom to reorder our lives now. In joining in with God and His Kingdom we can become part of what God is doing to transform the world.
In his The Secret Message of Jesus, McLaren takes this theme that is over 100 years old in New Testament scholarship and refashions it for evangelism. He invites his readers to follow Jesus into the socio inter-personal and political dynamics of the Kingdom birthed by, in and through Jesus Christ. In Anabaptist fashion, McLaren describes how God is working not through coercion or power but in the daily (even mundane) lives of committed followers of Christ willing to participate in what He is doing through love and reconciliation. To those of us tired of the individualist consumerist habits of evangelical salvation, Brian McLaren is a breath of fresh air. He offers a salvation that includes repentance and a decision, but is grandly holistic. It is a belief and practice that shapes us out of the duplicity and dispassion that has seemed so much a part of evangelicalism’s practice of evangelism.
In McLaren’s next book, Everything Must Change, he expands on this vision. He describes the message of Jesus as a new way of life founded upon “a counter story.” This story is of course the Kingdom of God, “a framing story” offered by Jesus that truly helps us see what God is working in the world. Over against the stories of domination in our world that are destroying the earth, sustaining suffering and exploitation and perpetrating gross injustice, McLaren calls for an awakening to this new framing story, the “creative and transforming story” of Jesus (EMC, 274), where God’s love, reconciliation, sacred beauty, restoration, justice and renewal takes shape among us and in the world. This is a story “that changes everything” (EMC ch. 3). McLaren calls his readers to become true believers and participants in this “framing story,” the Kingdom of God.
It is in Everything Must Change that we see, maybe for the first time, McLaren’s temptation to de-eschatologize the Kingdom. De-eschatologizing the Kingdom happens when one separates the Kingdom of God from its fulfillment in the historical (i.e.incarnate) work of God in Jesus Christ. It is in EMC that we notice that Brian is comfortable differentiating “the message of Jesus” (the Kingdom of God) from “the message about Jesus” (that Jesus Christ, in His life, death, resurrection and as Reigning Lord, is the means by which the Kingdom is taking place) (See for instance EMC 22,98). It is therefore possible to read him in this book as advocating that we must put our faith and trust in God and His framing story – the message of the Kingdom – as opposed to submitting ourselves to the one who has been exalted as Reigning Lord and is actually bringing in this new in-breaking Kingdom. Jesus becomes (if we’re not careful) the guide, the exemplar in helping us do this. This move de-eschatologizes the Kingdom and risks thwarting the formation of a politic for mission in three ways.
1.) First, de-eschatologizing sets the stage for “the Kingdom” to become another nebulous Master Signifier which can mean anything. When we separate the Kingdom from the ongoing in-breaking work of Jesus as reigning Lord, the Kingdom is set free from its moorings in God’s eschatological work. No, no longer grounded in its history in the nation of Israel and the fulfillment of that history in Christ, the Kingdom can be applied as a concept to any number of activities that one deems qualifies as God’s ‘ethic’ for bringing justice into the world. Indeed, it can become the means of another form of ideological complicity as we casually associate “the Kingdom” with various causes without discerning whether this is of Christ and His Kingdom. I have no question that some government initiatives qualify as God’s Kingdom, especially when Christians get involved. Yet how would we know apart from the church’s participation in God’s eschatological activity to bring this Kingdom to fulfillment in Christ? The Kingdom has of course become a Master-Signifier before. Some might even suggest that George Bush used evangelicalism’s amalgamation of democracy and the Kingdom to justify the Iraq War as the bringer of God’s “freedom” to the world. There is a long history of such “ Kingdom abuse.” Separated from the eschatological fulfillment of this Kingdom in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom can become just another Signifier that distracts us from God’s justice as opposed to building a politic of God’s justice/Mission in and among our everyday lives.
2.) Secondly, de-eschatologizing the Kingdom strips us of our ability to inhabit the gospel in peace and hospitality. Ironically, when the Kingdom is de-eschatologized, we are tempted to make it into a Cause which we advocate over against those who disagree with us. We are tempted to take control of history when the Kingdom is separated from the certainty that God is working to bring it to completion in history in Christ (1 Cor 15:25-28). As a result, the onus to bring in the Kingdom is shifted more onto what we do than what God is doing. We lose the wherewithal to participate in God’s work as patient and non-coercive participants as McLaren wants (I consider it a curious mistake of McLaren to give up on the second coming in New Kind of Christianity 197). It is only as we are confident of what God has in store for the world, that we can participate daily as His subjects, not as ones who need control the world. McLaren’s words in his title, “Everything must change,” reveal the stress of this de-eschatologizing. Instead, I would suggest “Everything Has Changed” already in Christ and we must now participate in what God has already begun and is bringing to completion in Christ for the world. Only in practicing such a belief can Christians avoid taking on “the Kingdom” as another cause which we must fight for over against those who disagree with us. This patience and hospitality is essential for a political presense that can participate in God’s Mission in the world.
3.) Lastly, de-eschatologizing the Kingdom loses the very dynamic that gives us hope for something different coming into the world. One of the first things I learned about the Kingdom in seminary is what we used to call “the already, but not yet” character of it. From Oscar Cullman, George Ladd and other NT theologians we learned there is a tension in the NT that acknowledges the Kingdom has come yet it is not yet completed. We then are a people baptized into the new age all the while continuing to live among the old. We are called to live under and bear witness to the new realities of the Kingdom, Christ’s Lordship, his defeat of the powers, his victory over death, sin and evil. This takes seriously the fact that something actually happened cosmically to the world in Jesus Christ yet it has not been fully manifested (it comes as a mustard seed). If we separate the Kingdom from the Reign of the living resurrected Christ, we lose this tension. If we lose this tension, we lose the wherewithal to engage the world for the transformation God is bringing in His Mission.
As I said last post, the emerging church shows much promise for leading post-evangelicalism into a new faithfulness for Mission. McLaren, and many other emerging leaders, teach us a salvation of the Kingdom that breeds hospitality and authentic witness to what God is bring to the whole world. He takes the foundational teachings of Jesus and writes them for a new evangelism in our time. My concern is for a new post –evangelcial political presence of faithfulness in our culture. I suggest McLaren contributes to such a new presence. If there is to be such a politic in our future however, we must avoid the trap of de-eschatologizing our belief and practice of salvation.
What do you think? Does Brian McLaren commit the ideological “trap” of de-eschatologizing the Kingdom? rendering the gospel of the Kingdom impotent for shaping a politial presense in the world?
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i like the 'de-eschatologizing'. while many churches have an over-realized eschatology, yes, it seems that many in the emerging church have a severely under-realized eschatology it is hard to know if God has really done anything, if God has really given himself to humanity, to the world, for the sake of the world, or if God still is hoping somehow to give himself.
Excellence all around David. Thanks.
Just a brief comment of what I've observed in the trend I"m seeing…
The issue of de-eschatologizing has three levels:
distancing justice from the Just One,
distancing God's kingdom from God's Church,
and distancing the "now" from the "now but not fully yet."
Great post Dave, in both content and spirit. I especially resonate with and feel like I see the truth of your second point. I think giving up on the reality of the second coming and overemphasizing the "already" aspect of the kingdom at the expense of the "not yet" aspect easily leads us into a false utopian kind of thinking that believes that if we could just bring about the right set of circumstances through human effort, then the reality of the kingdom would arrive.
I also see a parallel in my own life on a personal level. I grow impatient with God and the way he is working, and I want the answer or the solution NOW. I think this de-eschatologizing often arises from the same impatience. We think that God isn't doing enough, fast-enough, to bring about an end to evil and suffering in the world, so we decide to take matters into our own hands and make things happen. This is a temptation that plagues people across the theological and political spectrum, and, historically, attempts to bring about the kingdom through human effort have resulted in vast amounts of human suffering and oppression.
Dave: Fine, insightful work. It seems to me that in trying to forge a new way, if your analysis is correct, that Brian McLaren and others are just continuing on a traditional evangelical trajectory. One of evangelicalism's most central themes, it seems to me, is a constant pendulumic, perhaps even Hegelianesque vacillation, from trend, to counter-trend, to new trend. Some people might even want to describe it as a constant dance from ditch to ditch. The challenge, and often the truth, however, is found not in the ditch but in staying on the road. Evangelicalism's current great eschatological test is the challenge of adequately granting the biblical message of both the kingdom that is at hand and the kingdom that is yet to come. Given human tendency and the human desire for surety and simplicity, this constant tension will often be compromised at the altar of one or the other. Now, how does one keep the appropriate weighting of one and the other?
I look forward to hearing more from you on this.
"It seems to me that in trying to forge a new way, if your analysis is correct, that Brian McLaren and others are just continuing on a traditional evangelical trajectory. One of evangelicalism's most central themes, it seems to me, is a constant pendulumic, perhaps even Hegelianesque vacillation, from trend, to counter-trend, to new trend."
Agreed. I've thought this very thing for some time now; that much of the emerging movement displays a character that is typically evangelical in its reactionary swing away from more conservative views.
This is exactly what I have been trying to say (poorly) in my current writing on the Sermon on the Mount, especially in respect to the second point. Jesus describes this in Matthew 5, culminating in the wholeness (perfection) of God in love. As our inner city community seeks to participate in the Kingdom that is breaking through, we have to resist primarily being defined by activism (though it can have its place), but instead be shaped by love. And as you mention, peace & hospitality have been central to that formation. This is really encouraging. Can't wait for the book.
Question Dave: regarding your third point on the nuance between the "already there, but not yet" dimension of the kingdom — or what some have termed the "new heavens and new earth" — how does one faithfully articulate the latter dimension of the "not quite yet" aspect without falling into the ideological trap of your rough-and-ready term "de-eschatology?" If McLaren and co. fuzzily see this part as "Christ-the-guide" which de-emphasizes Christ's inbreaking gospel, then how do we articulate this without belittling the kingdom's presence here and now? What if the church emphasized a more creational theology? I realize the danger here too, but I wonder if a close reading of Scripture, aside from the usual theology which has been co-opted by the metaphysical, dualistic postulations of the West, supports such a cosmic claim.
davidmdavid … I don't quite get the way you've described things. I see the issue being that we must maintain the tension .. stay within it … to over-realize or then agains to make the Kingdom entirely furture … is to make the classic mistakes of history … this is of course, to overuse the phrase, the logic of the incarnation again … I see either kataphatics or apophatics as cases of making the same error (over realizing or under realizing) what God has done by entering into humanity in Jesus Christ … am I hitting anywhere near around where you're throwing?
I am not quite sure if the "already-there" and "not-yet" dimension of the kingdom is held together by a "tension," as you describe it. That logic sounds like a Western Hegelian antithesis/thesis gearing or rattling progressively and unilaterally toward synthesis. Instead of "tension," I wonder if "dialogue" is more like it; the interconnectedness of heaven and earth, and the interconnectedness of fall and redemption offers up an integral movement toward eschaton that is more complex and real to life — thus Paul's appeal that we can help "hasten" the eschaton which will "unveil" Christ. It is more complex and real because it stands on the solid footing of creational theology, and even amid sin and death's arrival on the scene of this "very good" creation human agency is comprimised but not crippled.
– You describe the here-and-now of it as an "unjust world," but I wonder if it is a just world which is compromised by human acts of injustice?
David,
Nice piece. I want to circle back to that point you made concerning McLaren emphasizing the message of Jesus over the message about Jesus. One of the dangers of creating that dichotomy is that while the message of Jesus points you toward the right goals or desires, precious few resources are left to address HOW to seek those goals or desires. Incarnation, cross and resurrection among other things related to the person of Jesus, help keep us critical about the means offered to us for realizing the Kingdom. I find the question of means to be more theologically interesting than the desire to simply see the world 'become a better place.'
dmd
these are good questions for me …I don't agree that "tension" negates creation … I don't agree that the fall negates creation … just as a doctrine of the fall does not negate creation … there is now the reality of sin, evil, and of course death, and so the unfolding of history in Christ reveals an eschatological in breaking of God fulfilling his promises … … One can see the metaphsyics here in terms of an hegelian dialectic … but … but I don't … is this a process, a dialogue? between who? when Paul uses the word "unveil" is there a more eschatolgical Jewish allusion than that? just my initial reactions …
Is your problem with "eschatological" that it presumes a fallen world, wherein God must intervene in Christ to fulfill all creation?
Thanks for the dialogue …
If one is to take the creation account in Genesis 1 as a bedrock theology which gives solid ground to the rest of the canonical sweep of fall and redemption, then suddenly the movement toward final eschatology is not so otherwordly. Creation is so profoundly wrought by the sound artistry of God that it can naturally withstand the historical presence of sin; it can thus make way for redemption/re-traction of its goodness in a more subtle fashion. This is why I do not see "tension" as the acting force between eschatology and the here-and-now, as the two realms of heaven and earth, of God and humankind, are drawn to each other naturally, even at times effortlessly so (hence "dialogue")…
In this way, the message of/about Jesus via McLaren isn't so dichotomous, as JMorrow has pointed out. And now we can act out this idea in profound ways.
Now, this has many implications for how we disciples practice, say, penology; are we really in need of degrees in architecture of maximum prisons? I wonder if the prison system today is bringing in people that are lost/confused and sending them out hardened criminals — nobody can deny that reoffense is a real problem. Restorative justice may be a more natural and sound alternative in a kingdom bound earth.
Does this make sense?
[Concerning creation theology, see A.M. Wolters "The Foundational Command: "Subdue the Earth!"; J. Richard Middleton, The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1.]
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