Another very influential man

I wouldn’t want to be a Christian in the USA. The Christian community there seems extremely divided not only along denominational lines but also theological.

For instance, there is a very clear division between liberal and fundamentalist theologies. This has historic roots from the beginning of the last century. It appears in the educational institutions as well as churches.

This is the background to the life work of Marcus Borg who died in January this year. He was a liberal and progressive Christian believer. He spent his life as a University New Testament scholar and was amongst the founders of the Jesus Seminar. This brought together leading ‘progressive’ academics who attempted to identify what are likely to be the authentic words of Jesus in the gospels. While the venture foundered on its devotion to its chosen tools of analysis, Borg emerged as one of the most interesting and accessible writers of this exercise in liberal Christianity.

I first came across him when I was given a copy of his very personal book: Meeting Jesus Again for the first time. It was to set the tone and approach of many of his subsequent books. Here was no stuffy, argumentative, self- absorbed progressive but a believer who allowed his academic exploration emerge from and return to his own spirituality.

A Library of Life – the 1990s

I have chosen two books for the 1990s. One made me radically re-examine my ideas about Jesus. The other gave me a deeper understanding of what sort of community a church might become.

• Jesus – the new vision by Marcus Borg
• Community and Growth by Jean Vanier

 

Jesus – the new vision

By the 1990s I had been a minister for just under 20 years. I had moved to my fourth church in Bath. I asked a lecturer from one of our Baptist colleges which Christian writers he thought I might need to read and ‘follow’ during the next couple decades of my ministry. He suggested among others, the New Testament historian Marcus Borg. What Borg wrote then and since has helped me re-address my relationship with Jesus and re-align my own Christian convictions.

Borg argues that we must examine Jesus through two lenses: the pre-Easter Jesus and the Christ of faith. This was not novel. Others have deemed it too simplistic but it captured my attention and became a challenge to my understanding of ‘what Jesus really was like’.

Borg concluded that Jesus was a …

• Jewish Mystic / Spirit Person: One of those figures in human history who had frequent and vivid experiences of the sacred.
• Jewish Healer: The historical evidence that Jesus performed paranormal healings is very strong; he must have been a remarkable healer.
• Jewish Wisdom Teacher: He taught a subversive and alternative wisdom.
• Jewish Social Prophet: Jesus stands in the tradition of the great social prophets of ancient Israel who challenged social systems.
• Jewish Movement Founder / Initiator: A movement came into existence around him which embodied his alternative wisdom.

In successive books he has kept to that fundamental analysis. It provides me with a foundation on which to build the content of discipleship and an explanation of why a person might consider becoming a Christian.

Borg has spread his wings into many other areas of Christian belief for at heart he wants to present Christian faith as contemporary and a viable alternative to current destructive Western cultural trends.

Borg took part in an interview for PBS (see here) and in its course gave this summary of his convictions about Jesus:

I have learned that the message of Jesus was not about requirements, was not about here is what you must do or believe in order to go to heaven. It was about entering into a relationship to God now in the present–I see in that–wisdom teacher and a social father. And for me as a Christian what Jesus was like as a figure of history is a powerful testimony to the reality of the sacred or the reality of God.

I agree. The Jesus I believe in is the one who grew up in Nazareth 2000 years ago. I will never know all the detail of his life. I cannot ignore what those of two millennia of faith have made of him. But if my faith leads me to believe that he is the human face of God I cannot ignore what he did in his lifetime.