A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [142]
8. This discussion brings me back to the first chapters of the first book I wrote over a decade ago. In the second edition of The Church on the Other Side (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), I explained my own pilgrimage in thinking about the essential mission of the church, which I articulated as “being and making disciples, in authentic community, for the good of the world.”
9. This unifying vision challenges us to name what are the actual, though often covert, missions around which we are currently gathered. They may include: (1) the defense of a list of dogmatic pronouncements by some group of the revered dead, recently or long deceased; (2) the perpetuation and support of a clergy and/or scholarly class; (3) the maintenance of real estate—from the humble cemetery behind an old country church to the sparkling headquarters of prosperous denominations; (4) the sustenance of an ethnic or tribal identity or a political or economic ideology; (5) the shared enjoyment of a beloved living leader or the memory of one dead; (6) the continuation of a liturgical form deemed beautiful by some, living or dead; (7) the continued opposition to an enemy, existent or extinct; and (8) the obligation to fulfill a debt to one’s parents, grandparents, and other ancestors by preserving something they loved. A list like this (expanded as necessary) could be a useful tool of self-examination for congregations and denominational bodies.
10. The New Catholic Catechism (http://www.christusrex.org/www1/CDHN/ccc.html) captures this grand vision beautifully (albeit with masculine diction) in Article 294, also quoting Irenaeus: “The glory of God consists in the realization of this manifestation and communication of His goodness, for which the world was created. God made us ‘to be His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace’ (Eph. 1:5–6), for as St. Irenaeus states: ‘The glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man’s life is the vision of God: if God’s revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word’s manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.’ The ultimate purpose of creation is that God, ‘who is the creator of all things, may at last be all in all, thus simultaneously assuring His own glory and our beatitude’ (1 Cor. 15:28).”
11. I’ve written most directly about the spiritual life in Finding Our Way Again (Nashville, TN: Nelson, 2008) and plan to return to this subject in the near future.
12. In speaking of “knowing as I am fully known,” Paul may be alluding to sexual intercourse, which was often referred to as “knowing” in Hebrew literature. Maturity, he may be suggesting, is not simply subject-object knowing, any more than making love is a subject-object affair. If it isn’t relational, one-anotherly, mutual, it is neither true love nor true knowledge.
13. N. T. Wright calls this “an epistemology of love”: “We dare not, as Christians, remain content with an epistemology wished upon us from one philosophical and cultural movement, part of which was conceived in explicit opposition to Christianity…. We should allow our knowledge of [Jesus], and still more his knowledge of us,