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about the author...  Pat Loughery is pastor of Mt. Si Vineyard Church Community, an emerging Vineyard church plant in North Bend, Washington. Married since 1993, Pat and Shannon adopted their first daughter, Kaileigh, at birth. Pat enjoys The Wiggles more than Kaileigh does.
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Last Word and the Word After That, a Review by Pat Loughery
Brian McLaren is a dangerous author. He’s also an incredibly courageous one.
It must take a constitution strong in both of these attributes to undertake the project that McLaren has just finished: deconstructing our contemporary doctrine of hell. Doesn’t it make you squirm just a bit to consider why you think the way you do about hell? Hell, it turns out, is a particularly interesting little can of worms.  The Last Word and the Word After That concludes the trilogy begun with
“A New Kind of Christian” and continued in “The Story We Find Ourselves
In”. For those not familiar with this trilogy, it tracks the
story of a group of characters who explore faith and leadership in a
changing culture.What I love most about these books is the storytelling method: Dialogical, engaging, fictional, character-driven rather than thesis-driven. McLaren has described this form of literature as “creative nonfiction” or “fictional theological-philosophical dialogues”, which seems to capture their flavor. They seem a lot like long-form parable or films “based on a true story”. As such, the author is able to engage in some interplay and propose some theories that he doesn’t necessarily have to hold but which are helpful to consider. The first book in the trilogy begins the story with Dan Poole, a fictional pastor wrestling with teaching and living Christian life in the zone between modern and postmodern worldviews. The second continues Dan’s story and examines the entire story of God in 7 episodes. The third book… well, let’s look at this one, shall we? In The Last Word… we continue the story of Pastor Dan and his friend Neo and their other friends as they examine the full meaning of the gospel message. And we watch them explore how a doctrine of hell has evolved through time, and why it has become a central portion of the contemporary Gospel message delivery. And so McLaren’s characters work through our doctrines of hell: exclusivism, universalism, conditionalism, inclusivism, and variations on those themes. Various characters in the story take these positions – in the beginning of the story and at the end. (A side note here: I LOVE that Brian writes Dan’s wife Carol’s story as not fully buying into the major transitions that her husband undergoes in approach and theology. My wife – my Carol – thanks Brian for leaving this possibility open). The story weaves its way through historical theology and also examines Jesus’ words about hell in their context as dialogue with his contemporaries in the Pharisees and Sadducees. Which view does McLaren espouse and point us toward? Good question, but I can’t answer the question. Certainly he’s pointing out our need to examine the doctrine and consider its evolution, priority in our culture and implications. He puts it this way: "Asking me - as people often do - whether I’m an inclusivist or a universalist is like asking a vegetarian if she prefers steak, pork or venison. The question that yields these answers as options is a question I have no taste for asking." The beauty of this book is that it allows us to take a fresh look at this important doctrine and re-evaluate what we believe and why we believe it, and whether we still believe it. That’s the beauty of deconstruction: you might end up, at the end, right where you started, but then again you might not. If we’re going to communicate and disciple people in our culture with the gospel message, understanding hell and how it got here is a crucial task to undertake. Even if we end up, after careful study, right back at our previous understanding of this doctrine and its impact on the gospel message, what Brian McLaren has done in this book – risking the danger and having the courage to ask hard questions about what we believe and why - will bear wonderful fruit in the Kingdom of God. May God keep the man safe in the aftermath. Very good observation of this book. I agree it is a very courageous undertaking for Brian to write this book. The book is very vital, I believer, for Christianity today. We do need to revisit our beliefs and views on hell. The amazing thing about Brian is that he can articulate in words so well what the rest of us are thinking but don't know quite the way to put it into words. Anyway, I love the book. I loved every word of it. I commend Brian in writing this book. It most certainly has me thinking about how I view hello. Print-friendly version of this page Mail this article
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