Brian McLaren rocks....

Brian McLaren has a new book out. You can read about it on his website.

I also recently read an interview the Wittenburg Door did with him recently. Here's an excerpt:

"DOOR: How do you reconcile the need to affirm orthodoxy without becoming exclusionary snobs?

MCLAREN: I think we begin by deciding that we need a third alternative that rejects being careless about truth on the one hand, but that also rejects being exclusionary snobs on the other. I think a part of what's going on in these conversations requires us to look at the Bible in some fresh ways. We're not paying less attention to the Bible but we're realizing that we also need to pay attention to the ways we read or interpret the Bible. We need to go back and uncover our assumptions about how we think the Bible is supposed to function in the Christian community. For example, even though no Christian scholars that I know of support the dictation theory of inspiration—you know, that God dictated the Bible to the Biblical writers the way Muslims believe God dictated the Koran to Mohammed—I'd have to say that an awful lot of the preaching I hear sounds like it assumes the dictation theory. It's a lot more Koranic than incarnational, at least to my ears. And many of us assume that the Biblical writers must have written like reporters for The Wall Street Journal or Business Week. But maybe they were writing more like Annie Lamott writes one of her confessional books, or more like Mary Oliver writes a poem. So maybe we're learning to take the Bible literarily, not just literally, and to respect divine inspiration as an artistic reality more than a journalistic process."


I love what he says about taking the Bible "literarily" and not just literally. REading scripture in a journalistic, "just the facts, ma'am" kind of way sucks the life and beauty right out of it. It's the view of scripture I grew up with. It's not until I saw the scripture in a different way that I because excited about reading it. It's less concrete, and that makes it scary in some ways. But so much more like an adventure, and a mystery.

And here's more food for thought from David Fitch's blog. Be sure to read the rest of his entry here. I'm afraid of taking something out of context and changing his intent. But I like this portion where he talks about truth being "always on the move" and truth that is recognizable, but not controllable.":

"....I don't believe that emerging conversations never arrive at truth. If I said that I need to clarify. For I believe that the weakness in deconstructive theology (and my emergent thinker friends to the extent they use it) is that truth never "lands." I think there is a difference. Allow me to elaborate.

To say truth never arrives might be construed as asserting that deconstruction does not believe in truth (truth with a little "t" or a big "T"). I don't think this is accurate. For there is truth, truth "always on the move," truth that is recognized but not controllable. The deconstructive thinkers (which Tony Jones and Brian McLaren find helpful) DO SAY that the truth never FINALLY arrives. Yet I think there is something constructive in this part of deconstructionist philosophy. There is, in a manner of speaking, a way that truth is always provisional. There is, in a manner of speaking, a way that truth (with a small "t") is bound by context and language and is always in process of being embodied. There is, in a manner of speaking, a way in which there are always voices excluded which must be heard which change the nature of the way we communicate truth and highlight parts of it we weren't seeing before. Deconstructionist approaches to truth push for all of this. For deconstructive ways of thinking keep the truth open (in the clearing of Hiedegger's ontico-ontological difference). And so despite the detractors, there is truth here being "manifested" into and beyond the linguistic cultural structures we have been given."