I was going to send this as a private email, but I figured that it would be a good item to “blog”.

I came across this dialog (3 part series) on Hell this morning.

Brian McLaren’s Inferno: the provocative church leader explains his view of hell

This is the kind of thing where McLaren really loses credibility with me (with regards to “teaching” anyway). He is so obsessed with the “teachings of Jesus” (which understandably are vitally and centrally important) that he excludes the Holistic totality (to use his own vocabulary) of not just the New Testament (epistles, Revelation, Acts) but the entirety of the Old Testament. Most of his points about Hell isolate and separate what Jesus said from the rest of the text of the Bible. Like one commenter said, “I wish McLaren would look at the apostle Paul [or John] “in a fresh light” …”

Tony Compolo, on the other hand does give a very balanced view of Hell which seems to correlate more with the whole of scripture (and my opinions as well!). To read the two of them together [eg. "Adventures in Missing the Point"] really emphasizes what McLarens role in the EC is. McLaren is the “dreamer” or “visionary” but doesn’t strike me as one who has much of an authoritative view, Compolo strikes me as one who has a more thorough familiarity with scripture and is much more credible (in my opinion) for interpretation. They make a good team.

Don’t take this as a downer on McLaren, I just think people need to take his ideas as a launching point for a paradigm change but look carefully at his interpretations; heed his call to re-look at scripture for ourselves with new eyes . I think it’s risky to look to him however for “answers” (eg about Hell, etc.). Actually, from what I’ve read from him so far, that is exactly what he is promoting. I don’t think McLaren really want to be an authority on scripture. We don’t want to switch from holding onto beliefs which were handed to us from our modern tradition, to holding on to beliefs handed to us by McLaren. The idea is to search scripture ourselves from a “clean” perspective.

What concerns me however is this line from the introduction to the first part of the series: “Part one of this post also features fellow prophet Tony Compolo.”  Like I’ve said many times, I like them both a lot. I think they are playing an incredibly important part in the future of the church; however, I would never put either one in the same category as Isaiah, Elijah, Jeremiah, or John the Baptist. I know, I know, “prophet” is just a word….