1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
2. How should the Bible be understood?
3. Is God violent?
4. Who is Jesus and why is he important?
5. What is the gospel?
6. What do we do about church?
7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
10. How can we translate our quest into action?

Now I know a number of commentators have said that while they like Brian's questions, they are no longer comfortable with his answers, and while that is perfectly fine (as I've said many times, this emerging conversation was never about having to agree with any particular author or leader) let me say right up front that I am not among them. For those of us who have been tracking with Brian this whole time, what he says in this book really comes as no surprise and really isn't even all that shocking. For the most part what Brian outlines here is pretty much where I am at in my own theology as well.

Throughout the book Brian frames his responses to each of these questions around an overarching critique of what he calls the "Greco-Roman six-line narrative." By this he means a very pervasive view of Christianity which sees the whole story in terms of 1) Edenic Perfection - 2) Fall - 3) Condemnation - 4) Salvation - 5) Heaven for Believers - and 6) Hell and Damnation (i.e. "eternal conscious torment") for Unbelievers. According to Brian, this narrative is not actually biblical, but has crept into Christianity through the influence of Neo-Platonic philosophy and Roman Imperialism. Now I know some reviewers have critiqued Brian for wrongly laying this all at the feet of Plato, and others have pointed out that what Brian is actually critiquing is the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative common to most Reformed theologies, and that this is significantly different than Platonism, and I think they both have a good point. As an aspiring church historian, and one who has some background in historical philosophy, I agree that Brian's account is grossly over-simplified. Though in his defense I would point out that a) in broad strokes it's not wrong, and Brian does actually acknowledge the complexity (see for instance his footnotes to chapter 4); and b) that for a book like this, it's simply not possible for Brian to get into all the nuances. Brian is trying to suggest where some of these ideas might have originated, not give a detailed account of the history of Christian theology. In so doing he makes the book more accessible to the average reader, but necessarily reduces some complexities.

However, I would also argue that ultimately it doesn't matter if Brian inaccurately labels this six-line narrative as "Greco-Roman", or if he oversimplifies the account of where it came from. Regardless, the reality is that this narrative exists, is quite common within many conventional forms of Christianity both today and throughout church history, and, as Brian argues, is not necessarily the most natural way of understanding the biblical narrative once we replace our conventional theological lenses for more historically authentic Hebraic ones (though I wouldn't go so far as to say the six-line narrative is "unbiblical," and I'm not sure Brian would either - it's all about what set of lenses you're using to interpret it). When we use these lenses, Brian suggests, we will begin to see the narrative as being less about an ontological fall from a state of perfection to a state of corruption, and more about a continually unfolding narrative in which an originally good creation (and note that "good" is different than "perfect") progressively and tragically decends into evil and systems of increasing complexity and injustice, while God continues to create opportunities for goodness and redemption to ultimately prevail. Having gone back to the Bible with these same set of lenses myself in recent years, and having found much the same thing, I have to say that I think Brian is on the right track.

Using this "new" foundation, Brian then tackles the rest of his questions. While I don't have the time to go into detail on each of them, just to summarize, Brian suggests 2) that we should read the Bible not as a legal constitution but as a community library; 3) that the violence of God in the Bible should be understood as earlier and insufficent understandings of God in a continually evolving and deepening revelation of God's character which ultimately culminates in the Divine Incarnation in Jesus, through whom we need to completely rethink our view of God; 4) that Jesus himself is the bringer of "a new Genesis, a new Exodus, and a new kingdom come"; 5) that the gospel is all about this new kingdom - a kingdom of peace, justice, and inclusive love; 6) that churches, in all their denominational diversities, should strive to become schools for learning how to practice Christlike love and which embody and communicate the good news of the kingdom; 7) that reading the Bible in the "new" ways he suggests (i.e. not as a legal constitution) and apart from the "Greco-Roman" narrative will lead us to stop condmening gays and lesbians, and help us think more maturely about a whole host of pressing issues regarding human sexuality; 8) that our eschatology should not be about an impending "end of the world", but about a continually unfolding creation and ever expanding kingdom of peace and liberation; 9) that within this kingdom we can welcome the religiously "other" without condemning or trying to assimiliate them, while still holding true to our own commitment to Jesus and offering Jesus and his kingdom to others as a free and gracious gift; and 10) that our quest for a new kind of Christianity needs to lead us beyond mere ideas into practical action in the world towards the goal of healing, liberation, unity, and ubuntu - an African word that means something like "one-another-ness, interconnectedness, joined-in-the-common-good-ness, and profound commitment to the well-being of all."

What pleasantly surprise me the most is how Brian deliberately based his case for each of these positions on a fairly in-depth and well-supported reading of key biblical passages. He wrestles with Genesis, Job, Revelation, John, Romans, and many other passages. He doesn't shy away from the "hammer" passages either (John 14:6 for instance) that his critics often use to try and nail him as a heretic, but instead dives right in and offers compelling alternative readings of them. In other words, while critics might disagree with his interpretations, no one can justifiably accuse Brian's views of being "unbiblical". And interestingly, few of the critical reviews I have read so far - and they are legion - have even bothered to take on Brian's use of scripture. They are content to critique Brian's views as "different" from their versions of Christian orthodoxy (and therefore automatically "wrong") but fail to address the biblical passages that undergird them.

Indeed, this accusation of un-orthodoxy is by far the most common response among critical reviewers. They rightly ascertain that Brian's version of the biblical narrative and the gospel, his view of scripture, and his opinions on homosexuality and religious pluralism are significantly different than most traditional evangelical views, and for most of these bloggers, stating that much is simply enough. To say that he is different is synonymous with saying his views are not "Christian" (and some do say explicitly that). They claim that Brian is light-years off the map of "historic Christian Orthodoxy", and that his views are "a repudiation of the church’s understanding of God and the gospel". But of course all this simply begs the question. Brian admits up front that he is offering a different take on the biblical narrative (it's right there in the title "A New Kind of Christianity"), but the question is not whether it is different, but whether it is right. Are Brian's proposals a better way of understanding the biblical narrative and the message of Jesus or not? Frankly I haven't found many critics who have bothered to engage Brian on that question at all.

I also find these accusations fairly ironic in light of my own recent experiences attending a moderate-to-liberal mainline Presbyterian seminary. Yes, by evangelical standards, Brian is pretty far off the map. However, by mainline Protestant standards, Brian barely even registers as a "liberal" at all. After all, Brian still wholeheartedly affirms the ancient creeds, which of course means he's a Trinitarian and believes in the divinity and bodily Resurrection of Christ, not to mention a whole lot of other beliefs that would fall under the category of "historic orthodox Christian faith". For instance, elsewhere Brian has affirmed that:

"I certainly believe in the need for saving faith, for forgiveness, for hope beyond death, for the pursuit of orthodox articulations of belief, for overcoming the damning effects of sin, for rejecting wholeheartedly the idea that we can be saved by our own efforts or through religion, and so on."

Frankly, compared to some of the liberal Christian theologies I have encountered here at seminary, Brian is still rather conservative. And in fact, what he is saying is not entirely new either. It has deep resonances with many different streams of Christianity throughout the history of the church, from the mainline liberal/social gospel tradition, to Anabaptists, the monastics, Eastern Orthodoxy, and many of the early Church Fathers and Mothers, not to mention non-Western and Third World post-colonial theologians, among many others. Indeed, one of the questions I have for Brian is whether he recognizes this fact, and in what prior streams he himself sees examples of his "new" kind of Christiany in, since to be honest, too often in the book it did feel like Brian was falling into the common Protestant trap of writing off the whole of Christian history since Constantine and acting like we've only just now rediscovered what it's really about. And while I do think there is a continual unfolding of truth through the Spirit, which means the gospel in our time is never going to look exactly like it has in the past, at the same time, I don't think it's a good idea to imply that the Spirit has not been active at all until she got to us. Not that I think Brian actually believes that, but it came across that way more than a few times in what he wrote. As a historian, I'd like him to be a bit more careful with that sort of thing.

Another thing that I'd have liked Brian to be a bit more careful about is the way he talks about those who disagree with him. At times in the book it came across as if he was painting with a very broad brush and rather condescendingly implying that anyone who disagreed with him were fundamentalists or fear-based, or reacting out of their vested interests (in jobs, positions of authority, etc.) Of course this has been a frequent criticism from a number of critical bloggers, and Brian has actually taken the time to respond to it and clarify his intent. As I suspected, he did not intend to paint with a broad brush at all, and really was only talking about those of his critics who do in fact fit his description of hateful, fear-based fundies, but that he certainly didn't mean to imply that this is everyone who happens to disagree with him. Nonetheless I wish Brian would have been a little more careful about this and offered a few more qualifiers to explain who and what he was actually talking about. As it was, I fear he may have unnecessarily alienated a good number of readers who felt he was unjustly caricaturing them or too quickly dismissing their own deep convictions.

There are probably a few other points I would quibble with as well in the book, but they would just be nit-picky, and areas that I'd rather converse about than critique (his evolutionary views of religion and social progress for instance). The bottom line for me however, as I said before, is that I still like where Brian is going and the responses he gives to these ten questions. I don't think he has given a definitive last word on any of it, nor (contrary to what some are assuming or perhaps hoping for) is he drawing any sort of line in the sand and forcing other "emergent" folks like myself to necessarily agree or disagree with him on any of it. Yes, some of us will agree with Brian and others will have reservations, but those who think it's all about whether we agree or disagree with Brian are simply misunderstanding the fundamental nature of the emerging conversation. Brian is simply offering more food for thought, fodder for conversation, and an invitation to continue the journey with him regardless of whether or not we are entirely on the same page. I for one am happy to go with him.