[Wrote this over a year ago but had it in drafts - mostly quotes from McLaren's book...guess I need to finish reading it and draw some conclusions.]
Over 10 years of searching McLauren found much that was real about Christianity but struggled to find what it was that did not feel right to him. It was so obvious that it eluded him.
Since the 5th or 6th century western Christians have been required to believe that the Bible presents one very specific story line, a story line by which we assess all of history, all of human experience, all of our own experience.
[He has a simple 6-line drawing to depict this] "We start on the left with absolute perfection in the Garden of Eden. Then comes something called the Fall into original sin, "The Fall" and "original sin" [like absolute perfection] begin terms that are never found in the Bible, but are fundamental to Catholic and Protestant Christian faith as we know it. The bottom is a trough, in which we are now living, is a state of condemnation we could call the fallen world, human history, or life on earth. Next comes an ascending line, which we might call salvation, redemption, justification, or atonement [depending on our tradition], leading us to the top line on the right, known as heaven or eternity. Of course, for many people, perhaps the vast majority according to some servsions of this conventional story line, the ending is not so happy. Instead, after everything they've suffered in this life, they face damnation to hell, defined by most Western Christians as eternal conscious torment, supremely chilling words in spite of the fiery imagery they evoke."
"Few of us acknowledge that this master narrative starts with one category of things - good and blessed - and then ends up with two categories of things: good and blessed o the top line and eveil and tormented on the bottom. Might we dare to ask if this story can be reduced to a manufacturing process - producing a finished product of blessed souls on the top time with a damned unfortunate by-product on the bottom line? Could this be the story of a sorting and shipping process, the purpose of which is to deliver sols into their appropriate eternal bin?"
"Can we dare to wonder, given an ending that has more evil and suffering than the beginning, if it would have been better for this story never to have begun?"
Many people have tried to tweak this model, questioning its details. "But seldom do we question whether this shape as a whole is morally believable and whether it can be found in the Bible itself. Did Abraham hold it, or Moses, or Jeremiah, or Jesus, Paul, or James? Is it ever explicitly taught in Scripture? was it held in the first three centuries of Christian history? Does it help make sense of the Bible - revealing more than it conceals? Does it contribute to higher vision of God, a deeper engagement with Christ, a more profound experience of the Holy Spirit? Does it motivate us to love God, neighbor, stranger, and enemy more wholeheartedly?"
"It dawned on me only gradually that the answer to each of the above questions was no.Up until that point, this narrative shape had been like my glasses, through which I saw everything, but of which I was largely unconscious nearly all the time."... Now after much consideration..."we stare at this narrative, scratch our heads, and with a bewildered look ask, "how in the world, how in God's name, could anyone ever think this is the narrative of the Bible?"
Nobody in the Hebrew Scriptures ever talked about original sin, total depravity, "the Fall," or eternal conscious torment in hell - where does all this come from? "What we call the biblical story line isn't the shape of the story of Adam, Abraham, and their Jewish descendants. It's the shape of Greek philosophical narratives that Plato taught! That's the descent into Plato's cave of illusion and the ascent into philosophical enlightenment." [I do not know this story well enough to comment on this] "... t is also the social and political narrative of the Roman Empire, and so I began calling it the Greco-Roman narrative."
I don't understand the argument between Plato and Aristotle but McLauren suggests these conclusions based on its importance:
1. The Greco-Roman mind was habitually dualistic, in the sense that an enlightened or philosophic mind would always see the world divided in low, the profane physical world of matter, stuff and change on the low side and the sacred metaphysical world of ideals, ideas, spirit and changelessness on the high side. The categories of dualism might change (morphing into capitalist vx communist, left vs right, conservative vs liberal, for example), but the dualistic outlook istelf remains consistent.
2. This argument infused the Greco-Roman world with a peculiar energy and confidence...we might call it superiority or supremacy. Aristotelian thought led to Greco-Roman attention to the physical world with the resulting cities, temples, roads and other incredible feats of engineering. Through Platonic resources they pursued/pioneered the life of the mind. The assumed they were superior to all other humans in existence.
3. The physical and philosophical dualism fused to create social dualism and superiority. The Greco-Roman mindset epitomized an "us" vx "them" mindset, i.e. we are civilized and you are not.
It is hard to overestimate the power of this social dualism [and equally hard for those of us raised in it to see it or imagine seeing without it]. The Greco-Roman dream was a high society of philosophical enlightenment and material prosperity. Pax Romana represented this stasis and order and a social approximation of an ideal society in a Platonic sense. Barbarians were excluded and lived on a lower level.
Jews also had a dualism - those circumcised and those not - but it was not an imperial mindset. Knew they were to bless all nations but seldom aspired to rule the world.
McLauren believes that Christianity lost track of the frontward story line of Jesus emerging from Adam, Abraham etc. In fact it traded this true story for an alien heritage drawn from Greek philosophy and Roman politics.
Syncretism resulted - biblical data was reframed by the Greco-Roman narrative. The Garden of Eden transformed from an earthy place to a transcendent Platonic ideal; no longer a good Jewish garden it became a perfect Platonic garden where nothing ever changes - change is always bad. Eden becomes a state and not a story - a state of perfect innocence.
Framed this way the Fall into sin isn't simply a move from innocence to experience or even obedience to disobedience.
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