The Last Word and the Word after That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity
The Last Word and the Word after That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity
A fable of a new kind of Christianity for a troubled world
This last volume in the trilogy that began with the award-winning A New Kind of Christian tells an intriguing fictional tale that raises urgent questions about hell–and about our view of God. What God do we believe exists? What kind of life should we live in response? How does our view of God affect the way we see and treat other people? And how does the way we see and treat other people affect our view of God? As Pastor Dan Poole and his friends and family grapple with these pressing questions, readers will find themselves moving beyond the tired rhetoric of denominational and theological categories to a view of their relationship with God that is more truly biblical, more faithful, more inspiring, more sensible, more evocative, more robust, more healing, more global, and more transforming.A fable of a new kind of Christianity for a troubled world
This last volume in the trilogy that began with the award-winning A New Kind of Christian tells an intriguing fictional tale that raises urgent questions about hell–and about our view of God. What God do we believe exists? What kind of life should we live in response? How does our view of God affect the way we see and treat other people? And how does the way we see and treat other people affect our view of God? As Pastor Dan Poole and his friends and family grapple with these pressing questions, readers will find themselves moving beyond the tired rhetoric of denominational and theological categories to a view of their relationship with God that is more truly biblical, more faithful, more inspiring, more sensible, more evocative, more robust, more healing, more global, and more transforming.
List Price: $ 21.95
Price: $ 21.95
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We Report, You Decide,
In “The Last Word and the Word After That,” Brian McLaren completes his “New Kind of Christian” trilogy. Since McLaren describes his writing as “creative non-fiction” readers of this review are hereby warned–if you don’t want to know how his narrative ends, stop reading now. I’d hate to spoil the plot for you. . .
“The Last Word” arrived today after lunch. I fully intended to return to my sabbatical Church history research, but couldn’t resist reading the back jacket, then skimming the book, then reading the introduction. The next thing I knew, the afternoon was over and so was the book. In other words, agree with him or not, McLaren can write. His narrative is compelling and gripping.
I found myself hunting for tissues when reading about Pastor Dan, his wife Carol, and the spiritual abuse that they suffered at the hands of their church board. I also found myself hunting for scissors at the biased portrayal of those who believe in a literal hell (more on this to come). And I found myself searching in vain for any closure to the discussion (I know, that’s his point and his style, but still . . .).
If you want permission to think deeply about God, life, judgment, grace, and doctrine, then “The Last Word” will be a breath of fresh air. If you want to be given the research and resources necessary to intelligently ponder the doctrine of hell, then “The Last Word” will leave you wanting.
McLaren clarifies that his book is not truly about hell, but about what kind of God we believe in and what kind of purposes this God has for His creation. Still, for the first half of the book, his characters explore the doctrine of final judgment. Through their journey, McLaren provides a fair introduction to the more commonly held views about the final judgment, as well as introducing his own provocative perspective.
McLaren offers the caveat at the beginning of the book that “The Last Word” will purposefully under-represents the “traditional” view of hell as literal and eternal. Unfortunately, it not only under-represents it, it tends to misrepresent it. Three main characters hold to the traditional view. Carol represents the, “I don’t want to think too deeply about it; I just want to love God” characterization. Gil epitomizes the, “I’m a cruel fundamentalist, ignorant Bible-thumper” depiction. Chip portrays the, “I’m a recovering fundamentalist; please be gentle with me while I find my brain and soul” caricature. The reader is left to assume that for the past 2000 years of Church history no thinking, loving Christian has ever held the “traditional” view of hell.
Other characters, presented with much more color-with mind and soul, life and personality-offer a composite view of what the final judgment might really be about. In the eyes of these favored characters, “hell” is not a literal place of eternal torment, but a motivational warning about a coming final judgment in which every human being stands stark naked before God to give an account of how well or how poorly she or he loved God and others and thus contributed or not to fulfilling God’s shalom kingdom purpose of reconciliation. Though the intricacies of this view are difficult to summarize, at times they seem to border on a mingling of justification by works and justification by faith. After all, McLaren says that he is “post-Protestant.”
Though I, and much of Church history (majority and minority report), happen to disagree with Neo’s proposal about the nature of hell, one of his insights represents brilliant philosophy, accurate theology, and practical spirituality. Neo explains that when we do stand before God, because God is timeless, His judgment of us will be based upon and integrate together every nano-second of our existence. Assuming this is to be applied to Christians who are judged, not regarding entrance into heaven, but for rewards, it is a potent caution against a believer who might think, “I can wait until near the end of my life, reform, and then God will judge that mature, final me.” No. God’s evaluation of our Christian pilgrimage covers the entire journey. It is required of us that we walk faithfully and lovingly (though not sinlessly) day by day, even second by second.
The second half of “The Last Word” offers “The Word After That” which reads and feels like a separate book altogether. McLaren somewhat abruptly shifts from eschatology (the “doctrine” of the last times, especially of the final judgment) to ecclesiology (the “doctrine” of the Church). His characters speak of and participate in “deep ecclesiology.”
One of the greatest gifts in the entire book is found here as McLaren shares the “five queries” that his spiritual formation group ponders together. They are well worth repeating: “How is your soul? How have you seen God at work in and through your life since we last met? What are you struggling with? What are you grateful for? What…
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|A dangerous book–in a good way,
This is the third book in McLaren’s trilogy of narratives involving Pastor Dan and “Neo,” here called by his given name Neil. Thankfully, this book drops the near-worship of Neo that was so irritating in the previous volumes.
Although not a scholarly work per se, I do appreciate the research behind it, just as I appreciate a sermon that shows solid research and is not just a bunch of half-baked ideas based on unrelated scriptures taken out of context and strung together. There is a simplified synopsis of the possible origins of the belief in hell. There is the interesting idea that Jesus was using the Pharisee’s doctrine of hell and turning it on its head. There is a helpful table on scriptures from the Gospel that indicate either hell or some type of judgment that people have often contrued as hell, and boils them down to the actual point. If you think that Christianity needs the threat of hell to win converts, this might be considered a dangerous book. Even more dangerous are the hints that evangelical and reformed Christianity might have it wrong, and that the book of Romans has been misinterpreted over the years to support a concept of cheap grace while devaluing works. If there is a fourth volume to this “trilogy” (I know that’s an oxymoron), that may be a fleshing out of the concept, as one character put it, that salvation is by grace but judgment is by works.
However you come down on the issue of hell (and if you read this as the narrative that it purports itself to be, you’ll notice that not all characters agree, particularly the pastor’s wife), it’s important not to miss the main point: that the preoccupation with heaven, hell and the afterlife has resulted in an unfortunate de-emphasis of the quest for justice and God’s righteousness here on earth. A serious reading of the teaching of Jesus will lead to the inescapable conclusion that his main concern was the Kingdom of God breaking in to the here and now, and not just the sweet by-and-by.
Although I consider this by far the strongest book of the trilogy, it is not perfect. There is a superfluous character named Pat early in the narrative who must have been borrowed from Julia Sweeney’s character on Saturday Night Live, except Sweeney’s Pat didn’t write awful poetry. The issue of homosexuality in the church is not the point of this book and could be dealt with better in some of McLaren’s other writings. The narrative itself has an almost unbelievably happy, sappy ending. And most irritating of all is in the chapter where McLaren quotes scholarly works on the doctrine of hell. He actually INVENTS phony sources for some of the quotes. I was scrambling trying to find the original quotation, only to read in the ending commentary that he made these up. That borders on dishonest, and is almost insulting to the serious reader.
I must add this, also. I am very distressed to notice that the watchdogs of fundamentalism are on constant alert, giving helpful votes to reviews that just give a scripture passage and don’t review the book at all, and giving non-helpful votes to thoughtful, serious reviews, all based on the star rating (and actually that pretty much go unread, I suspect.) Remember that the votes are for “helpful” and “not helpful,” not “I agree” or “I disagree.” Keep that in mind, Einsteins.
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|Still processing this book…,
As my title says, I am not sure what to think of all the doctrinal points this book raises. Part of the confusion, of course, is that McLaren doesn’t answer nearly all of the questions he asks. Therefore, it was slightly frustrating to be left with so many questions (although, on the positive side, it strengthens our analytical and research skills, rather than just spoon-feeding us readers.)
In defense of this book, I have to begin by saying that I think many of the negative reviews were based partly on the fact that readers assumed they knew McLaren’s opinion just because he questioned things they (and even I) considered orthodox. In other words, it seems that many people simply assume that McLaren, by wondering whether the “orthodox” beliefs about hell are really biblical, is bashing these beliefs. You see, I’m not sure the book is that cut-and-dry. We need to take it for what it’s worth: a book that gets us thinking about whether American fundamentalism (which, like it or not, is really the basis for many modern evangelical beliefs) is really as biblical as we’ve been brought up to believe.
This brings me to my next point, which also has to do with readers who, in my view, are reading certain incorrect things into McLaren’s writing. “A new kind of Christian,” which has become one of this author’s catch phrases, has, I think, been radically and dangerously misunderstood by most of McLaren’s critics. Nowhere in his writing does he seek to destroy the Bible or Jesus. In fact, he seeks to understand the historical and theological context of the Bible’s writers and subjects. This is offensive to many conservative evangelicals, who understand the Bible as a codebook on doctrine whose every word was literally dictated by God. McLaren seems to understand the Bible as divinely inspired but also highly historically situational, which throws a wrench into the fundamentalists’ works. Therefore, “A new kind of Christian” is not something that seeks to destroy the orthodox ways of being a Christian, but rather tries to do two things: First, make Christianity relevant and understandable to people in our society. And second, bring a greater understanding of what the early Christians, those before the Roman Empire’s near-fatal corruption of the Church, believed and lived. Of course, many American evangelicals have little understanding of the early Church, and they seem to believe that what they’ve been taught is truly “orthodox.” Until we’re willing to accept that we may, in fact, not know the ultimate truth about everything, we’ll never become as humble as Jesus clearly called us to be.
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