Other Books by Brian D. McLaren

A New Kind of Christian

The Story We Find Ourselves In

The Church on the Other Side

A Search for What Makes Sense: Finding Faith

A Search for What Is Real: Finding Faith

More Ready Than You Realize

A Generous Orthodoxy

The Secret Message of Jesus

Everything Must Change

Finding Our Way Again

Copyright © 2005 by Brian D. McLaren. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McLaren, Brian D.

The last word and the word after that : a tale of faith, doubt, and a new kind of Christianity / Brian D. McLaren.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-10 0-7879-7592-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN-13 978-0-7879-7592-0 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10 0-4702-4842-4 (paperback)

ISBN-13 978-0-4702-4842-3 (paperback)

1. Belief and doubt—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3613.C569L37 2005

813′.6—dc22

2004027032

Preface to the Paperback Edition

I ALWAYS HAVE the same question running through my mind when other authors’ new editions come out: What would you do differently if you were beginning the book now, knowing what you know now? Have you changed your mind on anything you wrote about? I recently re-read The Last Word and the Word After That to see how I would answer, and thankfully, although there have been a few minor winces and blushes, I haven’t whacked myself in the head or said, “What was I thinking?”

Of course I knew I was taking a risk when I wrote The Last Word and the Word After That. I remember telling my sagely editor, Sheryl Fullerton, that I wondered how many friends I would have left after the book came out. After all, you can’t tinker with the conventional view of hell without having the defenders of the status quo give you heck. She assured me that I’d still have at least one.

Although I didn’t look forward to the controversy that this book couldn’t help but generate, I don’t regret taking the risk. As with its two prequels, I’ve heard again and again from people how God used this book to save their faith and that they wouldn’t be walking the Christian path today if it weren’t for coming across The Last Word. As often as not, when people tell me they’ve read all three books, they’ll add, “The last one was my favorite.”

But of the three books in the trilogy, this is the one I would do most differently if I were starting again. The difference isn’t due to any holding back on my part when I wrote The Last Word, but instead it is due to the fact that I’ve learned some things from other authors since the book’s publication that would have strengthened and augmented my argument had I known them then. For example, The Evangelical Universalist (Cascade, 2006), by Gregory MacDonald (a pseudonym, for reasons that are easily imaginable), makes many of the points I needed to create fictitious characters to articulate, and it critiques the conventional view with unmatched levels of clarity and charity.

Shortly after I submitted the manuscript for The Last Word, I received Andrew Perriman’s manuscript for The Coming of the Son of Man (Paternoster, 2006. See also his new Re: Mission: Biblical Theology for a Post-Biblical Church, Paternoster, 2007, and his website, www.opensourcetheology.net). Andrew was proposing a bold new reading of key New Testament passages relating to eschatology—the future, the end of the world, heaven and hell, and so on. Around this time, I also discovered that my friend Jay Gary was thinking along similar lines (www.jaygary.com), and Jay introduced me to Tim King (www.presence.tv), another Bible scholar grappling with eschatology in fresh ways. These scholars were joining N.T. Wright, Craig Hill, and others who, although their views vary on some details, are unified in their rejection of the pop-eschatologies that dominate most of our religious communities.

So right when the Left Behind novels were breaking historic sales records, our top scholars were leaving Left Behind eschatology farther and farther behind. Together, these scholars helped me realize that in The Last Word I had indeed been on the track of something that for most people remains elusive. I can describe that “elusive something” in terms of a percentage. Of the apocalyptic passages in the Bible that we conventionally interpret as referring to the end of the world and hell, all of our best scholars agree that somewhere between zero and one hundred percent of them actually refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. (There are few generalizations about scholars that one can make with this kind of confidence.) The question is what percentage.

The destruction of Jerusalem occurred in part because most of Jesus’ countrymen rejected the call to nonviolence implicit in his message of the kingdom of God. Instead, the Zealot party (with which the Pharisees had been closely aligned) launched a violent revolt against Rome in A.D. 67 by taking control of Jerusalem. For three years they held the city against Rome’s re-conquest, but in A.D. 70, four legions of Roman soldiers led by future-emperor Titus breached the city’s walls. Whether accidentally or on purpose, Titus set fire to the Temple built by Herod the Great, and it was burned beyond repair, along with many of the residential areas of the city. So Jerusalem was recaptured, but the temple was laid waste in the process, never to be rebuilt. The Zealots’ fight for liberation was crushed by Roman power. (A small group of Jewish rebels held out against the Romans at Masada, but they too were crushed in A.D. 73.)

I grew up not knowing anything about A.D. 70. Maybe the version of the Protestant doctrines of “sola Scripture” and “Scripture interprets Scripture” that I inherited meant that we weren’t supposed to know extra-biblical history, or that post-biblical history was irrelevant to biblical interpretation. But in my lifetime, more and more biblical scholars, including many conservative Evangelical ones, have started seeing in A.D. 70 the fulfillment of at least some significant percentage of the apocalyptic passages of the New Testament.

In fact, if you were watching a needle move on an old-fashioned gauge, it would have started near zero and would now be at or above 90 percent for many scholars.

Some fulfillments were obvious and hard to refute. For example, Jesus predicted that “not one stone” of the temple would be left upon another (Mark 13:2). That disturbing prediction had clearly been fulfilled before the end of the first century, never mind the end of the world. With the destruction of Jerusalem, animal sacrifice also came to an end (Heb. 10:8), as did a holy city to which one needed to go to worship the living God (John 4:21). If what Jesus and the apostles were anticipating was not “the end of the world” but rather “the end of the world as we’ve known it,” then it turns out they were right after all to expect that “this generation” would not pass until all prophetic fulfillments had come (Mark 13:30).

Could the destruction of the temple, the end of Mosaic sacrifice, and the dissolution of the Aaronic priesthood that occurred in A.D. 70 have marked in some way the end of the age which Jesus and his apostles expected? Could Jesus’ words about a fiery hell actually have found fulfillment in the fiery destruction of Jerusalem? What would that mean for us today? This is the kind of thing that I would explore more deeply if I were writing the book today.

But on second thought, including all this new data may not have made The Last Word a better book. It may have been too much too fast. Perhaps The Last Word presents all the new material that most readers can grasp at one time. Perhaps this additional data that I’ve come across since writing The Last Word constitutes ingredients for a book yet to be cooked, if not by me, by someone else. Just helping readers realize that Jews in the Old Testament didn’t have the conventional “Christian” view of heaven and hell would be plenty for one book to do; helping readers look afresh at Jesus’ varied teachings on judgment would also be plenty, as would helping readers understand the options available to them regarding the Bible’s teachings on final judgment. The Last Word attempts all three, and I think that triple goal was challenge enough for both my readers and for me. (How well the book succeeds, of course, is for you to decide.)

In the meantime, as you begin to read (or re-read) The Last Word, I want to say again that ultimately, this book isn’t about hell. It’s about the character of God, the Creator whose goodness can never be fully comprehended or finally captured, which is the reason there always must be a “word after that.”

Now that the first wave of readers has pioneered this new territory, I think the next wave will find the journey easier: they won’t be venturing unaccompanied into the unknown, but will be joining a group of pilgrims who have blazed trails before them. As a pilgrim myself, I can tell you that it’s a good journey, and the company is good too, and I thank you for risking becoming part of the adventure by turning the page.

This book is dedicated to the many people who love God or want to love God or are seeking for a God to love but have been repulsed by ugly, unworthy images of a cruel, capricious, merciless, tyrannical deity.

It is also dedicated to people who love God but have a nagging fear that God may turn out to be less than good or kind or loving in the end. This doubt makes their hearts uneasy, their worship forced and fake, and their commitment conflicted or half-hearted.

Along with them, it is dedicated to those who used to believe but for similar reasons have lost faith and grown spiritually apathetic or cynical.

Finally, it is dedicated to pastors, parents, friends, teachers, and neighbors who love all these people, listen to their questions with gentleness and respect, and want to help them find honest answers they can live with. Although this book will not answer all their questions, it will let them know that they are not wrong or alone in asking their questions, and it may help them find a place where they can in good faith have faith. That is my pursuit as well.

Acknowledgments

GRACE, THANK YOU for Italianizing me a bit, believing in me, encouraging me, and making me laugh. Thanks also for reading drafts of everything I write and giving me intelligent, honest feedback. I’ve never felt more supported or more blessed to have you as my partner in life, marriage, parenthood, ministry, and all the other crazy things we do together.

Jodi, thanks for caring about our relationship and for being generous with me when I’m traveling too much or holed up in my office writing. I’m going to miss you so much when you go to college! I hope you know how special you are to me and how deep you are in my heart. Rachel, Brett, and Trevor—thanks for becoming friends whom I respect so much. The only thing better than being your father is being your father and your friend. Thanks for all you’ve contributed to this book.

Cedar Ridge, thanks for another season of growth, joy, learning, and adventure together. Thanks for the freedom you give me—to think, to travel, to write, and to be a human being, not just to play a religious role. I am honored to be part of this community.

Sheryl Fullerton, thanks for being exactly the kind of editor I need. I feel I’m being inaccurate if I refer to “my” books; they’re really “ours.” Thanks also to the whole crew at Jossey-Bass. You take pride in your work, and I’m proud to be associated with you.

Four friends read this manuscript and gave me extensive feedback: Leif Hansen, Ken Archer (theologicalthinking.com), Mike Morrell (zoecarnate.com), and Dr. Stanley Grenz. Your insights and suggestions have made the finished product so much better than it would have been otherwise. Thank you.

To the people of the emergent community (www.emergentvillage.com), thanks for being courageous catalysts in my life and in the lives of thousands of people. I have learned to “know with you” in ways that have enriched my life profoundly.

To my critics, thanks for the times you offer your feedback with kindness, because you help me learn things I wouldn’t learn without you. And thanks for the times you offer your critique without kindness, because then you challenge me to grow in character. Speaking of critics, none of them should assume that real people mentioned in these acknowledgments or elsewhere in this book agree with anything said by the fictional characters of this book or by its author.

Thanks for all who encourage me with kind words, notes, letters, and e-mails. I hope this book will encourage you in return.

—B.D.M.

Introduction

THIS INTRODUCTION FRAMES The Last Word and the Word After That. If you want to encounter the story without my thoughts about it, you may want to read this last, after you’ve finished the rest of the book.

I BELIEVE THAT GOD is good. No thought I have ever had of God is better than God actually is. True, my thoughts—including my assumptions about what good means—are always more or less inaccurate, limited, and unworthy, but still I am confident of this: I have never overestimated how good God is because God’s goodness overflows far beyond the limits of human understanding. That conviction gave birth to this book.

Now if you believe everything is pretty much fine in the Christian church and its theology, if you believe that only small cosmetic or methodological tweaks are needed in a basically sound enterprise, then there’s no need to read this book. If, however, you believe that our common images and understandings of God are generally too small and even mean, then this book may help you—and us.

On the surface, this book appears to be largely about hell. But it isn’t really. Those who read it and react to it as such will have missed the point. True, the subject of hell is worth talking about. In researching the evolution of the conventional doctrine of hell for this book, I discovered that the story is truly fascinating, putting its horror aside for a moment. In Christian theology, hell (which a character in this series calls the tail that first wagged and then became the dog) is catalytic; too little attention has been paid to the practical effects various formulations of the doctrine of hell have had on Christian thought, worship, behavior, and practice. But the subject has all but disappeared, at least overtly, from most contemporary preaching—whether liberal or evangelical—although fundamentalist preaching is in many a place still quite spicy with it. As Martin Marty quipped, “Hell has disappeared and no one noticed.” The widespread suppression, cooling, civilizing, and now near-disappearance of hell deserves some notice and reflection from serious scholars and professional theologians. As a mediocre pastor, former scholar, and amateur theologian, I can’t claim to be sufficient for that task. I can only raise questions here that I feel need to be raised and hope that better scholars and professional theologians will provide better answers than I’ve been able to discover or construct.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

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Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!