Thursday, September 04, 2014

Brian McLaren: 'We've entered a new era of Bible reading'


In his article series The False Teachers Tim Challies identifies Brian McLaren as a modern-day false teacher. The approach to Bible interpretation that Brian McLaren is championing is popular in liberal circles in the Episcopal Church and other denominations. It reflects the influence of post-modernism and relativism upon the thinking of Brian McLaren and theological liberals like him.

We've moved into a new era of approaching the Bible, controversial Christian author and speaker Brian McLaren says. It's an era that could see Christians abandoning the idea that there is one 'right' way of interpreting Scripture – an era he calls Bible 3.0.

Bible 3.0, as McLaren characterises it, is an approach that sees the Bible less as inerrant and more as being "in conversation with everything and everyone". It is an approach to Scripture that has been made necessary, if not inevitable, by the unprecedented access readers of the Bible have to a broad range of readings and interpretations of the Bible through the internet. Whereas in the past, Christians might have had to go to another denomination's church or part of the world to hear a different take on Scripture, today the internet allows us to immediately access a myriad of different interpretations of the same text.

"Now everybody can hear how everybody else is interpreting the Bible," he says. And the result is that we can no longer assume that all smart, good people interpret it the way our pastor, fellowship or denomination does. "Mastering one way of dealing with the Bible is not going to carry the weight it used to. We're going to have to deal with the fact that this book is contested." Read more

See also
The False Teachers: Brian McLaren

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