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Emergent Theology: The McLaren Method of Interpretation
By Jonathan Dodson

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A Village Called Emergent
A growing Christian movement has defined themselves as “post-evangelicals,” deliberately distancing themselves from mainstream Evangelicalism. Averse to modernist forms of organization and attracted to a Post-modern emphasis on community, the most widely recognized group of post-evangelicals prefers to be described as a “generative network of relationships” over against the typical description of “organization.” These generative relationships have become a village called Emergent. Emergent has described itself as: “A growing, generative friendship among missional Christians seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” There are Emergent leaders and followers, but all strive to cultivate community in a similar postmodern ethos.

Emergent’s purpose is not polemical, as indicated by their website: “emergent’s tone and vision are post-critical and creative, positive and irenic, conciliatory and sympathetic.” (1) They are a relational and missional network. Relational, because they have chosen to focus on friendship, not organization, systems, or doctrines. Missional, because they believe that the church is more than a system of belief, it is mission. Emergent’s missional nature implies a certain way of reading Scripture, primarily with a narrative lens. Their website reads:

We believe that the best theology arises in the context of mission, and the best mission is informed by good theology, so we seek to bring reflective practitioners together with missional scholars and thinkers for mutual enrichment. We seek to avoid both unreflective activism and the intellectual cul-de-sacs that often divert reflective people from actually getting anywhere.

Due to the shift in cultural tides, the passing of modernity and the emergence of a new postmodern world, Emergent is calling for “innovative Christian leaders from all streams of the Christian faith around the world to collaborate in the development of new ways of being Christians … new ways of doing theology (emphasis added) and living biblically, new understandings of mission, new kinds of faith communities, new approaches to worship and service, new integrations and conversations and convergences and dreams.”

Describing themselves as “Christian,” in no way attempting to disconnect from historic Christianity, Emergent purports to represent “a generous orthodoxy rooted in the Scriptures and consistent with the ancient creeds of the church.” Some would aver that their orthodoxy is too generous and their biblical roots not deeply rooted enough. Many critique the Emergent Church/Village for abandoning truth in favor of culture. Is this the case?

McLaren’s Four Ideas
In advocating for new ways of doing theology and of being Christian, has the Emergent movement abandoned older, more reliable ways of theologizing and discipling? In answering this question, what better place to start than with the leading Emergent theologians? Brian McLaren is perhaps the most influential Emergent leader. He is celebrated by many as a hero of postevangelical theology and ministry, while others condemn his writings and practice, branding him a heretic.

McLaren is exemplary on numerous accounts. He sincere pastoral demeanor, engaging conversational style of communication, and willingness to ask hard questions of the Evangelical mainstream church have drawn many to him. His ability to put out a steady stream of creative and thoughtful works is truly remarkable. Yet, with all these fine qualities what should be considered most is his hermeneutic, an interpretive theological method for doing theology. It should be said that I in no way consider myself an authority on Emergent theology or even the writings of Brian McLaren. I have, however, read some of his most foundational work. It is this foundational, hermeneutical material that I am most concerned with. The rest of his writings flow from this interpretive theological method.

McLaren’s new way of doing theology deliberately involves a suspicion of Scriptural reliability and authority, which make for a disturbing hermeneutic. In The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives McLaren outlines his theological approach called the “Four Ideas”. (2) The Ideas are: 1) The Gospel as a story, 2) the Gospel as many versioned, many faceted, many layered, and Christ centered, 3) the Gospel as cumulative 4) The Gospel as performative and catalytic.

McLaren is right to point out that the Gospel is a story. It is the revealed narrative concerning the incarnation, death, resurrection and return of Jesus Christ to reconcile all things, by faith or by force, to the Father by the Spirit. McLaren points to his experience of “depropositionlization” in order to appreciate and understand the essentially narrative nature of the gospel, which in turn, became his Idea 1. This, of course, is somewhat contradictory in that all stories are comprised of propositions, yet not all propositions tell stories. Thus, we ought to retain both proposition and story when seeking to understand and articulate the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Ironically, Idea 2 comes in the form of a proposition asserting that the Gospel is “many versioned,” meaning that the gospel story was recorded and is told in a variety of ways, e.g. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or American, Asian, and African. As a result, McLaren affirms the rich diversity of the gospel’s expression throughout time and across cultures. Yet, he contends that he does not pose self-contradictory theologies, but instead asserts that all of these versions must converge upon the person of Christ, if they are to be considered the gospel.

Yet, what gospel and which Christ are they to converge upon? In an effort to heed the epistemological warnings of postmodernism, McLaren states that he can not know that the records of Jesus are accurate with “absolute, undoubtable, unquestionable certainty.” (3) If he is, indeed, uncertain about the reliability of the Scriptures which authoritatively convey the gospel of Christ and infallibly describe the Christ of the gospel, what then can he rely upon to determine just what is the gospel? If we are left with only personal reason and postmodern hermeneutics, it is impossible to know how or where many versions of the gospel can converge…upon which Christ and in what gospel?

Idea 3 is a rather New Testament focused understanding of the gospel. McLaren underscores the cumulative nature of the gospel story, pointing out that the story began before the incarnation and that it continues well after the resurrection. He supports this claim by rightly pointing out that the story begins with creation and ends with consummation. He further underscores the cumulative nature of the gospel by pointing to the link between Luke’s two part history in the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. McLaren simply notes that the Gospel of Luke recorded, “all that Jesus began to do and teach,” while the Acts of the Apostles reveals a Spirit-enabled continuation of the ongoing acts of Jesus Christ in his church and apostles.

The fourth and final Idea celebrates the trans-formative power of the gospel story, that it is action in time and space. Indeed, we possess a gospel with power. As a result, McLaren argues that the community of faith welcomes new people into its faith from various cultures and backgrounds, making the story richer and different. Richer yes, but different? McLaren even goes as far as to state that these intersections of gospel and culture change the gospel message. This final Idea indicates that McLaren is not only proposing a new way of theologizing, but also promoting a redefinition of the message of the gospel. (4)

Four Hermeneutical Concerns
Above I have offered a running critique regarding McLaren’s Four Ideas. Below I have simply reduced them to four hermeneutical concerns, one for each Idea:

1.    The abandonment of propositions for an exclusive view of the gospel as a story.
2.    Belief in a many-versioned gospel that is rooted in suspicion and doubt concerning the reliability and authority of Scripture.
3.    While belief in the cumulative nature of the gospel story is important, we must be careful to also affirm the historic act of God in Christ at the cross and in the grave for salvation.
4.    Openness to culture changing not just the forms of Christianity but also the message of the gospel content.

Must Everything Change?

While it is difficult to discern what McLaren means by “changing the message,” it is possible that he simply recognizes what missiologists have been advocating for some time, namely the creation of indigenous, contextualized theologies. However, contextualized theology seeks to articulate biblical truth in the cultural forms of a given context without changing the message of the gospel. Syncretism, on the other hand, changes the message of the gospel by mixing it with cultural beliefs, not just cultural forms. To change the message is to syncretize the gospel.

To be sure, the gospel is proclaimed in real space and time; its expression varies from culture to culture, time to time. However, this expression should not alter the inspired kerygma but simply clothe and re-clothe it throughout time. African scholar John Mbiti has said:

The Gospel is God-given, eternal and does not change. We can add nothing to the Gospel. For this is a eternal gift of God; but Christianity is always a beggar seeking food and drink, cover and shelter from the cultures it encounters in its never-ending journeys and wanderings. (5)

Theology can and often must change in order to address contextual challenges, but the kerygmatic gospel does not. On this point McLaren is incorrect. Not everything must change.

(1) All information regarding Emergent taken from: http://emergentvillage.com/
(2) See Leonard Sweet, ed. The Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 198-206
(3) Ibid, 201
(4) Ibid, 192-197
(5) Kwame Bediako, Christianity in Africa. The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion (Edinburgh: University Press), 117

Jonathan Dodson is happy husband to Robie and proud father of Owen and Ellie. He is also the church planting pastor of Austin City Life in Austin, Texas. Jonathan holds a B.A. in Anthropology, M.Div and Th.M degrees in Theology and has published articles in various journals and webzines such as The Journal of Biblical Counseling and Boundless. He likes listening to Midlake and M. Ward, blogging, reading, watching philosophical and cheezy sci-fi, and living the missional life locally and globally.

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