Radical Emergent Theology: An Evangelical Response

By Raymond Hundley Ph.D.

What is Radical Emergent Theology? Who leads it? What does it teach? What are its goals? Why is it so revered by some and so reviled by others? How do evangelical theologians evaluate it? Cambridge scholar Dr. Raymond C. Hundley, after three years of painstaking research, has published a work that clearly and truthfully answers those questions. Hundley has brought to bear his fifty years of experience studying and teaching theology and world religions to the meticulous study of Radical Emergent Theology founder and spokesman Brian D. McLaren's prolific writings. The result is a readable work that will inform laypeople, students, seminarians, pastors, church leaders, and theologians about McLaren's radical views on: inspiration, conversion, evangelism, missions, heaven and hell, homosexuality, atonement, miracles, evolution, eschatology, his famous "pick-and-choose" exegesis, and much more. This book is destined to become the classic revelation of the methods, beliefs, and goals of Radical Emergent Theology. It will make the choice between this theological revolution and evangelical biblical doctrine crystal clear so that informed readers can make their own decision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781645592167

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Radical Emergent Theology

An Evangelical Response

Raymond C. Hundley, Ph.D.

ISBN 978-1-64559-214-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64559-215-0 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64559-216-7 (Digital)

Copyright © 2019 Raymond C. Hundley, Ph.D.

All rights reserved

First Edition

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Autobiographical Paradigm Shift

Chapter Two: Epistemology

Chapter Three: Hermeneutics and Normativity

Chapter Four: Doctrines

Chapter Five: System of Beliefs

Conclusions

Bibliography

Index of Topics and Authors

About the Author

Dedication

It is difficult to understand the journey of writing a book like this one. It represents a three-year process of reading, analyzing, and critiquing the works of another author. It means trying to enter into that author’s mind-set, presuppositions, preunderstandings, and goals by carefully, objectively, and sincerely interpreting his words. It entails a conscious attempt not to distort his message by overemphasizing certain aspects of it, or underemphasizing others, to prove a point. It is a constant question of balance between charitable fairness and critical evaluation. It is an arduous and demanding task.

Were it not for my wife’s constant encouragement, calling me back to the task at hand, reminding me of the importance of finishing this book, and editing every word I wrote with her excellent graduate-level writing skills, I could never have carried it out. She has been the fuel that has kept my literary furnace burning for the three years it has taken to accomplish this goal. I am forever grateful.

So with a heart full of love and appreciation, I dedicate this book to my wife, Sharyn. Without her, it would not exist.

As this book was being written, I received the heartbreaking news of the death of Professor Grant Osborne. He was an incredible author and lecturer, and a wonderful friend to me. He had kindly agreed to write an endorsement of this book. He will be missed by all of us whose lives were transformed by his teachings and writings on hermeneutics and New Testament theology.

Introduction

This study will focus on one of the earliest proponents and the primary spokesperson of the Radical Emergent Theology Movement: Brian McLaren. Since his writings not only launched the movement, but continue to guide it, I have done an exhaustive study of his works and his personal biography. As is Brian McLaren, so is the Radical Emergent Theology Movement. He not only helped start the Radical Emergent Church Movement, his writings, including at least one major book published per year for twelve years, have formed the guiding principles for the Movement’s growing number of adherents. For many, his works constitute a growing manifesto—marching orders for the army of followers he has recruited for the Radical Emergent Church Movement. His ability to challenge, confront, awaken, and persuade is formidable.

One of the many elements of Brian McLaren’s work I deeply appreciate is his uncanny ability to weave theology with biography. He personalizes his theological reflections with anecdotes, memories, impressions, and significant events from his own life, illustrating the evolution of his thought processes. He allows the reader to take a peek into the convergence of influences that have moved him to where he is today.¹

In keeping with that method of introspection and self-revelation, I have decided to follow his lead in this work about him and give a brief summary of the life events that have influenced my own thinking and colored my perspectives on the Christian faith. My hope is that, as a result, the reader will more easily identify both my personal convictions and the unique combination of influences that have drawn me to attempt a critical assessment of McLaren’s unique theological revolution.

I was raised in a liberal Protestant church where some of our pastors openly taught that the Bible is mythological, but useful for personal inspiration and godly example. Religion meant nothing to me at that time, other than a chance to be with my church friends. I joined a neighborhood gang when I was twelve, for my own protection, and spent much of my free time fighting and playing dangerous games throwing knives and hatchets.

One associate pastor who came to our church was an ardent evangelical, and he had a strong influence on my life. When I was sixteen, I attended a summer camp where the Gospel was preached with great fervor and invitations were given to receive Christ as Lord and Savior. The third night, I went forward at the invitation and prayed to give my life to Christ. I experienced such an overwhelming sense of God’s love, forgiveness, and presence in my life that my former violent nature was transformed in an instant. Later, that associate pastor took me with him on pastoral calls and I learned how to lead people to faith in Christ. With his encouragement, I attended a small evangelical college where I came under the influence of a saintly Hebrew professor who introduced me to the writings of Francis Schaeffer and C. S. Lewis. While in college, I went on ministry trips many weekends and even pastored a small country church for a year. My major in college was English literature. I married my college sweetheart the summer before my senior year.

My wife and I went to Colombia, South America, as missionaries after my college graduation. I was raised bilingually in Miami, Florida, so the Spanish language came easily to me. We did youth ministry and traveled extensively in the country, including many trips to minister to congregations in the jungles of Colombia. We met a young missionary couple and became best friends. He was a very well-educated evangelical scholar, and his influence on my life as we talked together late into many nights was incalculable. I began to develop a strong theological foundation for my faith based on a commitment to the authority of Scripture and careful exegesis of the biblical text.

To ensure clarity, please permit me to take a moment to define what I mean by evangelical in this theological context. After more than five decades of theological study and reflection, I find that I identify with and support the description of evangelical belief established by the National Association of Evangelicals in 2017. That is, I subscribe to the four statements that the NAE has identified as defining an evangelical Christian:

The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.

It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of sin.

Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.²

I not only affirm those views, but I also use them to evaluate other theological belief systems like that of Brian McLaren, as do most evangelical scholars.³ As I read theologians’ writings, I am constantly asking: what do they believe about the authority of the Bible; how do they see the role of evangelistic ministry to non-believers; do they affirm the central New Testament doctrine of Jesus’s atoning death as sacrifice for our sins; and do they affirm the biblical doctrines of judgment, heaven, and hell? Along with many other questions, those four will be applied in this work to the writings of Brian McLaren.

Getting back to my autobiographical introduction, after two years of youth ministry and teaching in Colombia, we returned to the US, and I studied for a master’s degree in biblical literature, which included Greek, Hebrew, historical/cultural background of the Old and New Testament, and a rigorous course of detailed biblical exegesis and exposition. Returning to Colombia, I began teaching exegesis in the evangelical seminary there. During those years, Liberation Theology began to be introduced into the Colombian churches, and our seminary took a strong stand against the Marxist dogma that formed an integral part of the more radical version of that theological movement. At the same time, the writings of the liberationists opened our eyes more clearly to the plight of the Colombian poor. Our seminary began to attempt to improve our understanding of the biblical approach to social service to the needy that would avoid violent Marxist revolutionary practices while helping local churches to have a more integral ministry of evangelism and discipleship, while also being active in compassionate ministries to the poor and needy.⁴

With the encouragement of my fellow faculty members, I went to England and studied for a time under Dr. Donald Guthrie, author of classic evangelical works on New Testament Theology and Introduction. Later, I was admitted to the University of Cambridge, and my tutor, Professor Ernst Bammel, set me on the rigorous schedule of disciplined, meticulous research for which Cambridge is famous. I pursued studies in theology culminating in a thesis, A Hermeneutical Study of Selected Latin American Liberation Theologians, for which I received a master of letters degree in theology.

I turned the thesis into a book (Radical Liberation Theology: An Evangelical Response), which was published in English and then in Spanish (and other languages), with the result that, thanks to the writings and conferences of various evangelical theologians, the Liberation Theology movement was halted among many Latin American evangelicals as well as among many Christians in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia. I spoke in many conferences on Liberation Theology in Latin America, the US, Europe, and Asia, and was a resource person for the World Evangelical Alliance Conference on Liberation Theology in Singapore in 1986 (the WEA is the largest evangelical organization in the world).

Returning to Colombia, I began teaching in the seminary full time. I taught biblical exegesis, social ministry of the church, modern hermeneutics, and a course on liberation theology. According to one of our seminarians (a former secretary for the M-19 guerrillas), the notoriety of my book and conferences on Liberation Theology caused the guerrillas to place my name on a hit list and target me as one of the ten people they most wanted to assassinate. After several years of living under that threat (and a nearly-successful kidnap attempt against one of our children), the mission board we served with asked me to return to the US for other ministry positions.

I then attended Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, receiving a PhD in systematic theology. My doctoral dissertation, Toward an Evangelical Theology of Contextualization, centered on how to communicate the Gospel in other cultures without fusing it with American cultural values and practices. Since that time, I have taught in American colleges and universities, ending with ten years teaching college courses on World Religions, Introduction to the New Testament, and Apologetics in the State College of Florida. Now retired, I have dedicated myself to pastoral work, teaching, and writing.

When the Emergent Church Movement began to arise in 1997, I became very interested in its concepts and practices.⁵ I was especially interested in the writings of Brian McLaren, since he and I share so many life experiences: studies in English literature and modern interpretive methods, an evangelical background with exposure to liberal Protestantism, eye-opening travels in Latin America, study of modern biblical hermeneutics, detailed knowledge of liberation theologians, and a burning desire to communicate the Gospel to contemporary generations. As I read his works, I was impressed with some of his insights and troubled by others. As D. A. Carson, eminent evangelical professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has put it in his exceptional book, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church:

Whenever a Christian movement comes along that presents itself as reformist, it should not be summarily dismissed. Even if one ultimately decides that the movement embraces a number of worrying weaknesses, it may also have some important things to say that the rest of the Christian world needs to hear.⁶

I could not agree more with Carson. McLaren has definitely hit a theological nerve in his writings, and his presentation of the gospel resonates strongly with many in this generation because it answers their questions and confirms their personal perspectives. His writings appeal directly to the view of reality espoused by many postmoderns who are interested in Christianity, but reject the institutional church and traditional evangelical theology. McLaren’s theology speaks to them in their own language and confirms many of their thoughts, feelings, and criticisms. As evangelical leader Andy Crouch has observed, not since the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s has a Christian phenomenon [the Emergent Church Movement] been so closely entangled with the self-conscious cutting edge of US culture…a growing number of churches are joining the ranks of the ‘emerging church.’⁷

Of course, there is always the danger of a new theology being swallowed up by the very philosophical context it seeks to impact. As the famous theologian Charles Hodge once wrote: Any man, therefore, assumes a fearful responsibility who sets himself in opposition to the faith of the church universal.⁸ McLaren and his colleagues have definitely assumed that responsibility, especially in their opposition to evangelical faith and conservative Roman Catholic faith, which are the dominant doctrinal frameworks of the vast majority of Christians around the world today. Many modern evangelical scholars see much in McLaren’s radical emergent theology that acts as a wake-up call to evangelicals about how our living out of Christian faith is both practiced and perceived in this postmodern era. As evangelical scholar R. Scott Smith of theologically conservative Biola University has expressed it, The more I read Brian McLaren, the more I am convinced that he has put his finger on some crucial issues facing evangelicals.⁹

At the same time, many have commented on how difficult it is to accurately define the Emergent Church Movement. Some of its adherents refer to it as a conversation rather than a movement because it is still in the process of defining itself.¹⁰ D. A. Carson, has described the three streams of thought that he believes converged in the Radical Emergent Church Movement and serve to define it as

A Protest against Evangelicalism: discontent with modern evangelicalism and a desire to protest against its absolutism and theological isolationism and exclusivism, moving toward a more authentic, open, vulnerable, humble perspective.

A Protest against the Mega Church and Seeker Church Movements: although many emergents applaud the efforts of seeker churches to relate the Gospel to people’s real needs, they often feel that many of those churches are still trapped in modernism with its absolutes, traditional worship, answer-book mentality, and preacher-centered worship services.

A Protest against Modernism: "The majority view, however, is that the fundamental issue in the move from modernism to postmodernism is epistemology—i.e., how we know things, or think we know things…. Modernism is hard-edged and, in the domain of religion, focuses on truth versus error, right belief, confessionalism; postmodernism is gentle and, in the domain of religion, focuses on relationships, love, shared tradition, integrity in discussion." Carson observes that the Emergent Church Movement rejects the approach of modernism, and celebrates the approach of postmodernism.He has concluded that, in order to reach postmoderns with the Gospel, the more radical emergent theologians have incorporated a great deal of postmodern values and epistemological understandings into their walk of faith and their methods for doing theology.¹¹

A helpful explanation of the various strands in the Emergent Church Movement has been created by Ed Stetzer, a Baptist theologian and leader, who has identified three groups of emergents: Relevants who are taking the same Gospel in the historic form of church but seeking to make it understandable to emerging culture. Reconstructionists who are taking the same Gospel but questioning and reconstructing much of the form of church. And Revisionists [like McLaren] who are questioning and revising the Gospel and the church.¹²

It seems that many evangelical theologians accept several of the changes and new perspectives of emergent relevants and reconstructionists, but reject the radical reinventions of the Gospel and the Church proposed by emergent revisionists like McLaren. Professor Jim Hamilton of Southwestern Baptist Seminary has described McLaren’s presentation of Christian faith as wholesale rejection of the gospel.¹³ And Bruce Ware has condemned McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity as an old apostasy, not a new kind of Christianity.¹⁴ Ware has gone so far as to describe Brian McLaren as a wolf in sheep’s clothing who has now shed his sheep cover and revealed the wolf.¹⁵

It is acceptable to most evangelical theologians to question traditional evangelical worship styles and use modern methods, techniques, and media tools in worship to reach postmoderns, using the kind of technology that appeals to them, but they object to the radical secularization and wholesale reenvisioning of the Gospel message proposed by McLaren and some of his revisionist colleagues.¹⁶ In particular, many evangelicals reject the liberal theological positions of the Emergent Village group of theologians, and other groups like them. Some evangelicals have adopted the shorthand description, I’m emerging, but I’m not emergent.¹⁷

In summary, McLaren’s radical, revisionist branch of the Emergent Church Movement is an attempt to speak the Gospel into the epistemology, values, practices, and attitudes of postmodern society. McLaren’s ability to understand, articulate, and demonstrate what a postmodern living-out of Christian faith would look like has caused many Christians to applaud his efforts and join his movement; while other Christians have rejected his emergent project as a dangerous surrender to postmodern philosophy, ethics, and values, and a rejection of the clear teaching of Scripture.¹⁸

In 2005, McLaren and six of his emergent colleagues co-authored a response to D. A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, in which they wrote:

[B]ecause most of us write as local church practitioners rather than professional scholars, and because professional scholars who criticize our work may find it hard to be convinced by people outside their guild, we feel it wisest at this juncture to ask those in the academy to respond to their peers about our work. We hope to generate fruitful conversations at several levels, including both the academic and ecclesial realms. If few in the academy come to our defense in the coming years, then we will have more reason to believe we are mistaken in our thinking and that our critics are correct in their unchallenged analyses.¹⁹

Believing in the sincerity of McLaren and his colleagues’ invitation to assess their work, it seemed fitting for me to do a thorough study of McLaren’s writings and produce a book that would objectively disclose the biographical, epistemological, hermeneutical, doctrinal, and theological foundations of his mission to reinvent Christian faith from a radical emergent perspective. This book is the result of that decision. It will endeavor to trace the effects of McLaren’s personal history on his theological project. To explain his theology, we will look at his understanding of epistemology, his hermeneutical methods of biblical interpretation and contemporary application, his doctrinal conclusions, and the theological system he has erected to convey his emergent message to the world. It is hoped that such a study will correctly demonstrate McLaren’s methods and conclusions, providing the readers with ample criteria for deciding on their validity and appropriateness.

McLaren has made it very clear in his writings that he has not been trained in traditional theological studies, but in English language and literature:

Throughout my quest for a new kind of Christianity, I’ve had what seems to me (some won’t agree!) an accidental advantage working for me: I wasn’t formally trained in theology. Now, I love theology, and I read it constantly and with great pleasure (unlike many of my seminary-trained friends, who seem to have exceeded their saturation point while in school.) My background was in the liberal arts, especially in the study of English language and literature.²⁰

The result of that educational background is that, when McLaren comes to the text of Scripture, he tends to approach it as a literary critic would do, not as a traditional biblical interpreter.²¹ That interpretive realignment forms the very core of his method and message. He pointedly contrasts his own literary approach with traditional biblical exegesis by setting out five divergences in his own methodology from that of conventional exegetical methods:

My training taught me to read for scenes and plots, not doctrines; for protagonists and antagonists, not absolute and objective truths; for character development and conflict resolution, not raw material to be processed into a system of beliefs; for resonances and common patterns among many texts and traditions, not merely for uniqueness, or superiority of one text or tradition; for multiple layers of interpretation, not merely one sanctioned one.²²

Here McLaren has detailed the five central tenets of his entire theological program. He has revealed a conscious choice between two alternative ways to do theology: conventional exegesis versus his own brand of modern literary-critical interpretation. As he puts it, he was taught to read:

for scenes and plots, not doctrines;

for protagonists and antagonists, not absolute and objective truths;

for character development and conflict resolution, not raw material to be processed into a system of beliefs;

for resonances and common patterns among many texts and traditions, not merely for uniqueness or superiority of one text or tradition;

for multiple layers of interpretation, not merely one sanctioned one.

This apparent rejection by McLaren of absolute and objective truths, doctrines, a system of beliefs, the uniqueness or superiority of one text over others, and interpretation based on layers of interpretation rather than exegesis of the original, fixed meaning of the author (as we will see below) forms the theoretical framework of his theological revolution. Those five programmatic revelations indicate how sweeping the theological reinvention he proposes actually is. Although, as we will see, he is not totally able to escape from many of the conventional methods he professes to reject, his devaluing of those elements offers a useful portrait of the kind of direction he is following in his reinvention of the Christian faith.

In order to be fair in evaluating his methods and message, I have used this five-fold self-portrait of his method as the outline for presenting and evaluating his theological program of reinvention. The four chapters that form the core of this work deal with each of his five tenets: objective truth (epistemology), hermeneutical study of a normative text, doctrines, and a system of beliefs.²³ By faithfully demonstrating his own presentation of what he seeks to do and what he seeks to avoid in his system, it is hoped that a clear, honest, and fair evaluation of his works will result. Additionally, the first chapter in this book describes the influence of his own personal paradigm shift as he moved from conservative evangelical faith to a radical emergent understanding of the Gospel.

Writing a critical evaluation of a fellow theologian is a work that requires patience, humility, honesty, careful research, and objective fairness. I have sought to practice those goals as I have done a chronological study of his books and written this work. The reader can judge my success or failure. I hope to fulfill what Dr. Donald Guthrie recommended to me when he tutored me in his office in London, as I was evaluating the theologies of Latin American liberation theologians: Write as if the man is standing behind you, reading your text over your shoulder, and nodding his head. One of the liberationists I wrote about, Rubem Alves, read my chapter on his theological presentation and later, when we met in Brazil, hugged me with appreciation for doing exactly that. Thank you for being so fair to me, he said. You have captured my thoughts.²⁴ I can only hope that Brian McLaren will feel the same way.

Scott R. Burson, in his excellent work, Brian McLaren in Focus, describes the danger of evangelical assessment of contrary theologians’ views:

It is one thing to critique the content of an opponent’s theology, but it’s quite another to presume to know the content of an opponent’s character or what animates his motives. Such strident and ad hominem arguments do nothing to advance the cause of Christian scholarship; rather, they serve to confirm McLaren’s contention that aspects of modern Evangelicalism are virulent and in critical need of debugging…. While the following engagement with McLaren’s apologetic project [Burson’s own book on McLaren] does not shy away from critique at certain points, it is the hope and intent of this author to follow Mills [David Mills—The Emerging Church…] in adopting a constructive and appreciative hermeneutic of charity rather than a cynical and virulent hermeneutic of suspicion.²⁵

I too hope to be constructive, appreciative, and charitable in my hermeneutical analysis of McLaren and his theological revolution. At the same time, I believe that somewhere between appreciative and virulent, there is a middle ground in which the person assessing a theology with which he disagrees does so objectively, fairly, and clearly. This work will not avoid strong condemnation of destructive distortions of the Gospel and the core of Christian faith revealed in the New Testament, but it will do so with care and honesty, both in description and in evaluation.

Although many authors have quoted McLaren and analyzed parts of his books, or even an entire book, to my knowledge, no one has produced a thorough assessment of (1) his life story and its influence on his theology (biography); (2) his view of truth, true knowledge, absolutes, objective interpretation of Scripture and the possibility of accurately understanding the biblical text (epistemology); (3) the use of Scripture in his theology and his views on inspiration and normativity (hermeneutics); and (4) the doctrines and systematic theology that he has produced using those hermeneutical methods (doctrines and system of beliefs). The purpose of this book is to make those aspects clear from his own writings, and to evaluate those theological results as a committed evangelical theologian.

Many evangelical leaders seem to have concluded that McLaren is now to be forgotten, heaped on the garbage pile of liberal theology, and not worthy of any further analysis by evangelicals. Prominent Calvinist author David Wells, when asked by McLaren evaluator Scott Burson, What does Brian McLaren have to offer Evangelicalism? replied,

If [conservative Calvinists] know McLaren at all, they revile him. As he has increasingly moved toward the old Protestant liberalism he has increasingly alienated himself from many evangelicals. My view is that McLaren was a flash in the pan.²⁶

I believe that my friend David Wells is mistaken. McLaren’s fame is spreading, not only in the United States, but around the world. His influence, especially on younger evangelical leaders, is growing