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At the same time, he wants Kerry to see that the contrast between an ideal spiritual realm and a corrupt physical world, so influential in Western thought from Plato onward, is not biblical. The natural world, in fact, is treated almost religiously in the book. When Neo and Kerry spot a tortoise one day, they "slowly sat down, cross-legged on the grass, almost in reverence. 'Amazing,' Neo said, and they sat in silence for several minutes."

This evolutionary, humanistic emphasis continues in Neo's interpretation of the New Testament, so it is no surprise that when he starts explaining Christ's atoning work, it is Abelard's notion of moral influence, and two similar theories, that are given the most prominence. In these theories, the atonement is not ultimately about how Christ alters a metaphysical rupture in the universe but how his death affects us existentially and morally: "The cross," says Neo, "calls humanity to stop trying to make God's kingdom happen through coercion and force, which are always self-defeating in the end, and instead to welcome it through self-sacrifice and vulnerability."

Such themes can indeed be drawn from the enormously rich and complex legacy of the Christian tradition, and it may be helpful to have them highlighted at this time. Yet even when creatively packaged together, they do not constitute the story we find ourselves in, but only certain aspects of a larger story.

Repeatedly in the book Neo warns Kerry,  "Try to stick with the story as it is preserved for us in Genesis, without all the overlays and interpretations." But it's pretty clear early on that in Neo's reimagining of the biblical story, we are getting plenty of "overlays and interpretations," and a few just plain misinterpretations along the way.

One example will have to suffice: Neo at one point moves from explaining the first-century social meaning of rabbi to defining the word Lord. "It doesn't so much mean 'master' in reference to a slave, but master in the sense of … in the sense of master of martial arts, for example, or a master craftsman or a violin master."

This may apply to rabbi, but it is an odd reading for Lord, as any dictionary of New Testament Greek will show. Those who are subject to a kyrios are very much in the mode of obedience, from the personal—"Why do you call me 'Lord,'" Jesus asks his disciples, "and do not do what I tell you?" (Lk. 6:46)—to the cosmic: every knee will bow and tongue confess that "Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil. 2: 9-11). Obeisance is certainly the context in such passages as these, as is all of Paul's talk about his being a "slave" of Jesus Christ.

I wonder what tempted McLaren to suggest that Neo's own readings were not full of overlays, especially when he has Neo say in his previous book, "Our interpretations [of the Bible] reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about us. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question."

Without conceding everything to such hyper-relativism, I would agree. This book, then, tells us a little bit about the gospel, and a whole bunch about Brian McLaren's passions. One of those is expressed eloquently in the middle of the book, when Neo talks about "the story":

"It's the story of becoming, of unfolding, of novelties emerging and possibilities being explored and diversity flowering. And best of all, it's not finished yet. We're still in process, still young, still moving toward what we're going to be when we're all 'grown up.' And each of us, through our lives, through our choices … plays a part in the continuing evolution of God's creation."

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April (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47