Monday, December 2, 2013

Brian McLaren On Bible as Story, Doctrine, and Methodology

Jennifer Riley reported in an article some time back for the Christian Post entitled Brian McLaren: Postmodern Christianity Understood As Story. The title itself caught my eye because I have always viewed those terms as separate categories. Christianity has its own discourse making it incompatible with Postmodernity, Modernity, Premodernity, and any other totalizing discourse.  That is not to say that there haven't been some who attempted to impose their discourse on to Christianity and that might be what well intending "Postmodern" Christians are attempting to do.  But the problem is Postmodernity and Christianity represent two distinct and incompatible discourses.

The article also seeks to open what Brian McLaren believes to be a new and innovative understanding of Bible as story and down playing doctrine as well as methodology. I realize this article is not the complete case that McLaren is trying to make but I couldn't help but noticing certain misunderstandings. The idea of "Bible as story" has been understood for centuries. It has only been recently that some have referred to the Bible in practice as something like a reference tool. The question over Bible as narrative is whether or not on believes its real or not. In this article McLaren wasn't very clear on this.

Give it a read tell me your thoughts.

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