Reimagining Christianity, by Alan Jones

The Emerging Church movement is varied and fluid. There are those who hold to orthodoxy and those who don't. So, we need to read the material from Emerging Church pastors and learn what they teach. One such person is Alan Jones, the dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, California, who wrote the book Reimagining Christianity¹. This book is nothing more than a heresy-fest authored by someone who has little, if any, understanding of biblical truth. I found in its pages scores of unbiblical, anti-Christian, and plain-ole stupid comments. In fact, the book is so bad that I would doubt the salvation of anyone who would knowingly approve of it. Seriously, it is that bad! So, who does approve of it? So far, Brian McLaren does:

"'It used to be that Christian institutions and systems of dogma sustained the spiritual life of Christians. Increasingly, spirituality itself is what sustains everything else. Alan Jones is a pioneer in reimagining a Christian faith that emerges from authentic spirituality. His work stimulates and encourages me deeply.' –– Brian D. McLaren, pastor (crcc.org) and author of A New Kind of Christian"²

Reimagining Christianity by Alan Jones is a seriously bad book. You'll see why when you read the quotes that I have extracted from it and listed below, quotes that deny the virgin birth, affirm evolution, cast doubt on the very words of Christ and the Bible itself, that say Christianity is sadomasochistic, that deny the penal substitution of Christ, and declare Christianity only one of many valid religions.

The quotes are in outline form by topic. I've highlighted some of the "better" quotes in brown, though I'm tempted to highlight them all. Get ready for some crud.

Bible
1. "The point of reading the Bible is for mystical transformation, not for defending a particular position or to punish those we regard as deviant." Page 114.
2. "I find that treating the Bible literally kills its ability to probe me with disturbing questions. Literalism kills argument, and what's great about the Bible is that it invites dispute in conversation." Page 202.
3. "The Bible is great because it is in constant argument with itself." Page 203.
4. "In the middle ages, the mystics saw the necessity of reading from three books: the Bible, the Book of Nature, and the Book of Experience. One wasn't enough. The Bible, cut off from the other two books, becomes a self-authenticating collection of magic spells and incantations that are true because they're true." page 203
5. "Are the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament really his? My approach has always been skeptical with regard to the text and open with regard to that tradition." Page 209
Buddhism
1. "I've learned a lot from friends who once abandoned Christianity but came back to it by way of Buddhism. I have much sympathy with those who turn to that tradition for a breath of sanity." Page 11
2. "The United States is a Muslim country. The United States is a Buddhist country. I discovered that the nice woman next to me on a plane recently is a witch who values the spirits in trees, rivers, and mountains. She struck me as strong and gentle and full of love. I thought, 'How great to be a member of such an interesting and caring family.'" Page 22.
3. "John Shepherd, the dean of St. George's Cathedral in Perth, Western Australia, invited the abbot of the Bodhinyana Buddhist Monastery to preach at the service, which was a Eucharist -- the central Christian sacrament. The abbot accepted in full knowledge of this. Aboriginal dancers led the procession into the cathedral and later led the offertory procession to the altar. During communion, representatives of the Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Baha'i faiths read passages from their sacred writings, and after communion an aboriginal leader offered a dream-time reflection. Was this Christian? The answer, as far as I'm concerned, is 'Of course.'" Page 88.
4. "Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield tells us that people who are aware at the time of their death tend to ask very simple questions: 'Did I love well?' 'Did I live fully?' 'Did I learn to let go?' These are the questions of ultimate allegiance--the questions kept alive by the religious imagination. Page 231.
Certainty
1. "What does reimagining religion involve? -- exchanging the dogmatic stance of certainty for the way the imagination, which is not frightened by the thought that God is greater than religion." Page 12
Christianity
1. "Each of the monotheistic religions has its own peculiar neurosis: Judaism is obsessive/compulsive; Christianity is sadomasochistic; Islam suffers from megalomania." Page 20.
2. "And concerning Christianity, I am not interested in its survival, and it's adapting to the so-called modern world. Christianity doesn't need anyone to save it. If it has any truth, it will continue. If it hasn't, it deserves to die." Page 43
3. "I see the world through the images of Christianity, which teaches me that I encounter God in everyone I meet regardless of what they believe." Page 64
Doctrine
1. "A 'doctrine' is not like the fact to be believed but rather a way of being in the world that is validated by experience." Pages 207-208.
Evolution
1. "So we began not with Adam and Eve, but 4 billion years ago, when life began in the seas. Life came ashore only 425 million years ago. Our immediate ancestors were relative newcomers, showing up 423 million years later. Homo erectus this came on the scene 750,000 years ago, and Homo sapiens 150,000 years after that. Our crowd, Homo sapiens sapiens, has been around for only about 90,000 years. That's the background to our story, which celebrates our solidarity with the other animals. We are reminded that we share more than 98% of our DNA with the chimpanzee. And--wonder of wonders-- this human creature began to speak and tell stories." Page 205
God
1. "The doctrine of the holy and undivided Trinity is a doctrine about what it is to be human." Page 177
2. "God was clearly God, and yet God came to them in three ways that were distinct but not separate." Page 178
Jesus
1. "The church's fixation on the death of Jesus as a universal saving act must end, and the place of the cross must be reimagined in Christian faith. Why? Because of the cult of suffering and the vindictive God behind it." Page 132
2. "Duffy is right when he insists: 'The cross is not some arbitrary demand of God imposed on a hapless victim... but a marker where human beings find themselves, at the intersection of justice and mercy, time and eternity, death and life. All of which, of course, is the language of myth: but myth is the coin of religion, which make sense of our world by telling such stories." Page 133
3. "We call Jesus divine because he makes visible the mystery in his living, dying, and rising to new life. He shows us that we exist only in relationship with each other and that the secret of life is found in giving it away." Page 142
4. "Christ and Buddha are not antithetical." Page 146
5. "The question, 'Is Jesus God?' is not like questions such as 'Was Abraham Lincoln from Illinois?' The questions sound the same, but the latter question is easily settled by me and a few inquiries. The question about Christ's divinity is a far larger one, about how we interpret the world. We don't know what life means until we have learned how to turn it into a story-- a myth. A myth, in a sense, is not something untrue, but a story without which the truth could not be told." Page 149
6. "Jesus is the way to a new kind of life. Jesus and Buddha have this in common with all great spiritual teachers-- to make human beings more conscious of themselves, to get to be more real." Page 194
7. "The other thread of just criticism addresses the suggestion implicit in the cross that Jesus' sacrifice was to appease an angry God. Penal substitution was the name of this vile doctrine." Page 168 (See footnote on penal substitution³)
Mary
1. "I believe the Bible and the creeds but not literally, and I'm no atheist. I love the tradition and am nurtured by it. I have a great devotion to Mary the Mother of God but am agnostic about her literal virginity-- or, to put it bluntly, I couldn't care less about it." Page 31
2. "For my part, I won't allow those who insist on a literal interpretations [sic] of these myths and doctrines to deprive me of my devotion to her [Mary]. Was she literally a virgin? I don't know...But much of the emphasis on virginity arose from a negative and destructive view of sexuality. So I doubt very much whether Mary was literally a virgin..." Page 175
Miscellaneous
1. "Being a human being is to be summoned to participate in a great myth because our lives need interpreting. Our interpretation of life will depend on the particular myth to which we are captive." Page 115
2. "The opening of the Fourth Gospel has been translated, 'in the beginning was the conversation and the conversation was God and in the fullness of time that conversation entered into our flesh.' If I had to sum up the theological method of my faith commitment, it would be to affirm my trust in that conversation." Page 179
3. "We become truly free if we open our lives for other people and share life with them, and if other people open their lives for us and share them with us." Page 181
4. "It is a mistake to think that you have to swallow a few correct beliefs before you can embark on a spiritual journey." Page 193
5. "In short, if we start with experience (and I think we should), we are in for a rough ride. We are wedded to poetry, myth, metaphor, and the dangers of subjectivity. That's why we need each other to keep testing for reality." Page 194
Mystical
1. "Still others seemed centuries ahead of me, exploring terrain I have yet to discover. My friend Robert lives a cosmos full of intelligence and love. He sees in the history of the evolution of consciousness a divine direction and purpose." Page 36
2. "Mistrusted by both extremes, I see the mystical and contemplative as the necessary grounding for social action and involvement in issues of justice." Page 88
Religion
1. "Our first task in reimagining religion, then, is to move from the narrowly tribal, where our story is the only story, to a wider definition of "tribe" that can embrace stories other than our own, told by people who are different from us." Page 16
2. "I think of the many versions of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism now playing in the world and I wonder: why label? Why ask is it Christian, Muslim, Buddhist? Why not ask simply: is it true?" Page 33
Truth
1. "Stories about a Muslim or Christian heaven are great works of imagination but are diminished when taken to exclude others as literally true. They banish other equally valid fantasies about a realm that can never be described." Pages 163-164.
Yoga
1. "George took up yoga, which speeded his recovery. Later he stayed for several weeks in a Tibetan monastery in Northern California. He still calls himself a Christian but the disciplines of yoga and Eastern meditation are part of his life now and have helped him to go deeper into his own tradition." Page 147

From what I see of biblical revelation and what I read from Alan Jones, the two are in opposition. The book "Reimagining Christianity, is dangerous and is, in my opinion, helped along by the spirit of anti-Christ. Is it good for anything? Yes, two things: an example of heresy and lighting bond-fires.

_____________________

Jones, Alan., Reimagining Christianity, (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons), 2005.
www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471457078.html
Penal Substitution is the legal aspect of Jesus' atonement dealing with satisfying God's wrath. The Law of God has punishments. If you sin, you suffer God's wrath. Jesus' sacrifice was legal in that it fulfilled the requirements of God's law by substituting himself for us (Isa. 53:4-6), taking our place of death on the cross.

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