(Ir)religiosity

Contrary to the plethora of blog reviews I’ve read, I don’t think Brian McLaren goes too far in his newest book.  I think he doesn’t go far enough.  I’ll explain.

One of McLaren’s major claims in the book — in fact, the claim on which the entire book rests — is that traditional biblical hermeneutics have been limited to what he calls the “six-line Greco-Roman narrative” which constructs the rigid dualisms and binaries with which we are all familiar: spirit/body, heaven/earth, form/substance, good/evil, etc.  When applied to Scripture, this interpretive lens results in the following trajectory that has prevailed in traditional, conventional Christianity for quite some time: (1) perfection in creation, (2) fall into sin, (3) condemnation, (4) the possibility of salvation, and either (5) eternal damnation or (6) a return to perfection in heaven.  The picture below gives you sense of the movement of the lines.

McLaren maintains that this Greco-Roman narrative has been transposed over Scripture as a narrative overlay.  As such it guides interpretation of the text and, in turn, the trajectory of theology.  For McLaren, this is the dominant way of reading and interpreting Scripture, it is, quite literally, the water in which every Christian swims.  The deeper question, though, is whether Scripture is being circumscribed and restricted by this narrative overlay.  That is, whether the arc of the Greco-Roman narrative is actually indicative of Scripture itself or whether it has been imported to the text.  McLaren thinks it has.  And he spends a good deal of time drawing comparisons between the six-line interpretation of Scripture and Platonism.  I’ll spare you that piece and simply throw up another picture that does the trick. Read the rest of this entry »

I ran across this in Walter Kaufmann‘s prologue to his translation of Martin Buber‘s I and Thou (an introduction which stands as an excellent piece writing in its own right).

[W]hy use religious terms?  Indeed, it might be better not to use them because they are always misunderstood. But what other terms are there?  We need a new language, and new poets to create it, and new ears to listen to it. Meanwhile, if we shut our ears to the old prophets who still speak more or less in the old tongues, using ancient words, occasionally in new ways, we shall have very little music. We are not so rich that we can do without tradition. Let [those who have] ears listen to it in a new way.

Jesus’ phrase “let those who have ears hear” is perhaps one of the most fascinating and enigmatic expressions in the entire New Testament.  It is so pregnant with meaning and life.  Too often I am afraid we try to force old readings into new wine-skins and end up hurting or even destroying both.  I am convinced that is why Jesus often spoke in parables — because such a medium inherently resists a static, colonizing hermeneutic.  Parables simply cannot be reduced to simple, “in a nutshell” type meanings.  They are complex, multi-faceted, life-giving narratives that invite the reader to participate in birthing meaning, in doing truth.  Like prisms, parables — if we have ears to hear — channel divine dynamism in multiple ways depending upon one’s vantage point or angle.  They abduct us, catching us off guard if we let them, and rupture our usual, predictable mode existence with divine excess and presence (or is it absence?).  I find that it is in the parables that we learn to see the face of the Other thereby see ourselves as (an)other.

But we must have ears to hear.

I’ve been learning to do just that.  And I’m finding that it is not easy and often demands that I forsake my familiar and comfortable reading for something that is unknown — something that makes me uneasy and uncomfortable.

In the process I rediscovered some old friends and have fallen in love with them all over again:  Augustine and Kierkegaard being chief among them.

Who are you rediscovering and re-reading?  Who have you met again with new ears to listen?